That speech outside downing street was a whole lot o nothin’ really but i enjoyed it for hearing the chorus of protestors just outside the gates while the clown does his “business as usual” spin.
4 Likes
That would be the ultimate nuclear option- not only dragging the queen directly into things, but also ordering her to use the one power that all modern monarchs have avoided, even in the most strained of cases, because it basically invites a second civil war.
Sadly, I can’t rule it out completely, but the UK has more anti-democracy procedures to be called on before that.
and
I’m not wanting to give them ideas, but unfortunately, they already know about these.
8 Likes
Listening to the political pundits tonight debate all this… it’s just a constant waking nightmare, isn’t it. Rhetorical because yes it is. If it gets extended to january then we have several more months of roadblocks, deadlock, impasse and extreme right wingers continuing to poison the discourse. How do we possibly extract ourselves from this unholy mess of our THEIR own making? Personally, i still want to stop brexit dead in its tracks, the last 3 years of this fuckery has only strengthened my resolve that we should remain [draconian EU laws like the copyright directive notwithstanding]. An imp of the perverse inside me does want to see how bad it can get after a full on crash out of the EU so i can say to leavers “this is what you wanted, you halfwits”, but of course i don’t want that because it’ll affect me and the people i care about and for others it really is a matter of life or death regarding meds. So, i dunno…
5 Likes
Promises, promises.
And risk that sweet, sweet tax money? Yeah, right.
“ In terms of countries, most votes in favour came from France (62), Italy (39), Germany (38), Spain (34) and the UK (31), while the most votes against it came from Germany (49), Poland (33), UK (30), Italy (27) and the Netherlands (17).[33]”
So while as close as the Brexit referendum, the narrative that article 13 is a dastardly plot pushed by an unelected body upon the poor Britons (as told by Brexiteers, whose parties voted in favor of it) doesn’t really hold up.
4 Likes
Most narratives about how EU is bad don’t hold up.
6 Likes
Why yes, that too. But those didn’t get mentioned. There are plenty of laws I don’t agree with and I wish there were others, but it’s not as if I didn’t vote for the parliamentarians in Brussels.
Edit: I also made the point because the very people who pushed for Brexit actually favor more draconian laws on about every level, from dismantling NHS to reducing workers’ protection rights and, of course, a British firewall and internet surveillance.
4 Likes
I think drafting this law plays directly into that narrative, axel voss, who has a hard-on for state surveillance sneaking it in to an otherwise sensible bill. When you look at the mass protests and a huge online petition and all the lobbying that went on from media conglomerates it gives the impression of a homogenous voting bloc who just ignored the wishes of its constituents. Not that I believe the narrative, I just think it massively bolstered the EU’s critics. The number of times I wrote to my MEPs to stop this nonsense and apart from the UKIP guy (unsurprisingly) I was met with a void of silence.
2 Likes
Boris de Pfeffel doesn’t have a majority anymore, even with the DUP.
8 Likes
Sorry been away from a grown up computer and just got back to work and they want me to… work which surely isn’t right?
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldselect/ldconst/99/99.pdf
I think. As I said there was a really excellent chapter in a book which I read some years ago which had a great exegesis on the topic. It’s not something I often read up on so I can’t for the life of me remember who it was. I will post it (pretty sure it can be sci-hubbed) if my ancient spongebrain gets jogged.
1 Like
13 posts were split to a new topic: Transphobe Phillip Lee
But there will be no reduction in the chocolate ration. In fact, they’ve raised it to 20 grammes per week
6 Likes
I need to make some corrections
7 Likes
British Trump and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
8 Likes
6 Likes
Wait, that was a political speech? It sounded more like he was giving these cops a preview of what they’d have to deal with outside a pub at 2AM on a Friday night.
5 Likes
Probably. But it could also ratchet up the IRA. They aren’t for the most part agitating for reunification, and are pretty antagonistic to the Irish Government. There’s particularly bad blood between them and the Irish military.
There’s a fair bit of opposition in the Republic to actually pulling the trigger on Reunification, even though support for the general idea is pretty much the default. The likelihood of a Unionist insurgency, and the fact that the IRA won’t be going away is a big part of that. There’s also a lot of resistance to the idea of NI’s two major political parties getting a seat at the table, and concerns that it’ll act as an ecconomic anchor.
Reunification is kind of a quagmire, cause NI is kind of a quagmire. Its just that it might be a much better, more solvable circumstance than Brexit.
But they’re trying to take away Pints!
3 Likes
It already HAS done that, no question, and I reference it above, too.
I think there are elements on both sides of the Troubles conflict that would very much prefer a return to the bad old days, because some of them have become more marginalized since the Good Friday accords, and I’d wager that they’ve been quietly radicalizing some young people who still feel strongly about the conflict (maybe hearing it from older radicals), and want to feel like they’ve got a chance to engage in some glorious conflict for the “people” (however they define that)… what’s that line from that Tom Waits song (Road to Peace) “They fill their children full of hate/ to fight an old man’s war/ and die along the road to peace”… which is about the Israeli/Palestine conflict, but has some relevance here I think. For some people who spend their life in a conflict, peace can be a hard sell, because they no longer feel as if their life is nearly as meaningful, as when they were fighting for their lives and for a great cause.
Agreed. The Good Friday accords were likely not perfect, and not everyone got what they wanted out of it, but it was working, and it seems like the majority were happy with the compromises that were struck, and some level of normalcy has seemed to have been reached. Crashing out with no deal on the Irish border issue could make the whole thing topple, and the people who are pushing for a no deal brexit are well aware of that fact, and frankly do not care enough to not do it anyway. It’s maddening.
5 Likes
I think that’s what they’re gearing up for currently. What I’m saying is that should Reunification become a serious possibility, or actually happen. The IRA will be plenty excited and and violent in their opposition to that. And more than happy to swap Ireland in for the UK/England as their big bad guy.
I think they very much care. You look at all the statements and actions Johnson has made, and some of the stories linked above, the importance of the DUP to the UK’s far right at the moment, and even the Trump administration’s take during Pence’s recent trip. And its pretty clear they want it.
Its sounding very much like Johnson and his ilk are dreaming about reestablishing direct control over the whole of Ireland. Part of the wistful, we’re still an empire, dictating terms to others drive behind the whole mess.
1 Like
Except (in theory anyways) isn’t the exactly what the IRA want, a republic of Ireland that is all of the island? But I can certainly see them being unhappy with the outcome, precisely because it’s about the conflict and the glory of battle, not about obtaining a specific political outcome, not really anyway. But that does go both ways, I believe. On some level, this is about toxic masculinity, and some sort of legitimating violence giving cover to it.
I’m not so sure, but that is an entirely plausible interpretation of what’s happening. It’s highly unlikely that the UK can rebuild empire in the far flung reaches where it once was, but Ireland was their first foray into empire, and is just right there… I can see some pro-Empire factions believing that everything started to go wrong with Irish independence…
1 Like
