Senate The UK Politics discussion

We're skint, we're skint, we're skint - oh, you're the DUP from Norn Ireland? Here, have a billion!

 

Yup, here have a bribe of £1b for 10 votes

£1b to keep herself in power.



I don't actually begrudge NI getting some more money, hell they need it but I do have an issue with the way it's come about. The money is in my eyes nothing more than a bribe.
It just leaves a nasty taste in the mouth especially considering the issues still under the surface in NI and some of the unpalatable beliefs of the DUP.


I can see the DUP looking to Turkey for ideas on their education bill in the future

 

As someone from Northern Ireland, I kinda welcome the investment. Roads in the province are beyond dangerous. But, I don't welcome the DUP in government.

 

It's it because they're swivel-eyed loons?

Note: Very valid reason.

 

A couple of good things that's come from the general election (and there hasn't been much)

1. It looks like Nicola and the SNP are in disarray... Scotland's position within the United Kingdom looks more secure now than it has at any point since 2011.

2. It occurs that with an extra £1bn to spend over the next two years the DUP and Sinn Fein now have a pretty good incentive to get the power-sharing executive back up and running so they can make sure the money is spent on the communities they represent.

A couple of reasons to be cheerful.

 

Point 1 - I'm not sure, given the Leave vote, this is a good thing for Scotland.

 

Scotland's position is that if they left the UK and reapplied to join the EU as an independent nation they'd have to commit to joining the Euro. That's not going to fly at all in Scotland (indeed confusion over the currency an independent Scotland would use was the major sticking point in 2014)

The other thing people miss is that within SNP support there was actually quite a high number of people in favour of leaving the EU - The SNP's position of leaving one union (the UK) and joining another union (the EU with single currency. etc) was totally incoherent and an anathema to many natural SNP supporters. Combine that with the general annoyance at the SNP already trying to force another referendum on Scotland so soon after 2014 and that's the reason the SNP are on the run for the first time in years.

Hopefully the influence of the Scots (and the N.Irish for that matter) will help ensure we arrive at the place I always thought we would on Brexit which is essentially an EEA type arrangement.... Although there is still lots of shouting on all sides I do think we're slowly inching our way towards a sensible deal.

I'm feeling pretty positive about things at the moment (for the first time in quite a while)

 

You miss my point.

A vote of historic stupidity materially harms Scotland. They are probably annoyed they didn't horse trade a defeated referendum for a guarantee of no Brexit referendum.

 

It looks to me as though Scot's accept that whilst they didn't vote to leave the EU the EU referendum was held within the context of the UK wide plebiscite and the UK chose to leave the EU and so that decision has to be respected.

What is important now is getting a sensible deal that allows for as much access to the single market while respecting the leave vote. Scot's know this which is (one of the reasons) why the SNP lost half their seats at the general election and the pro-leave/pro soft Brexit Lab and Con parties made large gains.

England and Wales voted against Theresa's hard Brexit position (no deal better than a bad deal) and so to me it looks as though the British people are actually unifying around a soft Brexit position and expect their politicians to act accordingly...

Of course the EU may not play ball. They may want us out at all costs so nobody else dares to follow our example... But somehow I think Davis and Barnier are going to come to a sensible outcome.

We shall see.

My tip (I shouldn't really be making tips after my failure with the 2017 general election) is that the next Hollyrood election in 2021 will see to the SNP leaving government in Scotland and possibly some sort of Lab-Con power share administration being formed, which again I think would be very good.

Rather than a Con/DUP alliance I'd have prefered the 2017 UK election to have lead to a national government to oversee Brexit... But with Corbyn leading Labour and the parties so split (over everything other than Brexit) that was a non-starter. Shame.

 

I would actually argue the decision is not to be respected. The people, especially when populist stupidity is involved, are not to be trusted with decisions that matter like this.

 

I know right? To me it looked like point 1 was a "yes, you guys are stuck with me in this scary ride!"

 

going back as far as Plato, there's been an argument for politicians making decisions that, though unpopular, are the right ones. David Cameron, aka British Barack Obama, was not in support of leaving the EU and made the call to mollify Eurosceptics from the right faction of his party. He probably banked that the British people would not be so breath-takingly stupid.

Once the vote was in, he would have been well within his rights to say "this is a mistake, I'm going to have the Parliament debate it because uninformed plebs who believe in conspiracies of elites are not fit to decide significant policy changes" and let the Commons defeat it.

The fact that Corbyn's done so well says the British public are not, right now, trustworthy on big decisions, G-FETT.

 

Well that was an argument not to have a referendum. However Parliament gave the British people a referendum and said it would honour the vote. Just because the British people voted the wrong way doesn't mean Parliament can or should ignore their wishes.

Lab and Con are both in agreement that the referendum result is to be respected and we're leaving the EU. I think all regions and parties of the UK (even the SNP) are reconciled to that although SNP and Lib-Dems are floating the idea of having a referendum at the end of the negotiation with a chance people could reject the deal and we'd effectively remain on current terms... I personally don't think that's going fly.

However there is still quite a lot of room for negotiation as to what Brexit means (although unhelpfully Cameron and Remain was quite explicit that a vote to leave the EU would also mean leaving the single market... But I think we can gloss over that lol)

Perhaps... But that's democracy. If we finish up with a Corbyn government at some point in the future it will be because that is what the British people in their wisdom will have decided to vote for and that result will have to be respected also... Unless you think the British army should stage a coup d'etat the morning after Corbyn wins power to prevent him from entering Downing Street?

Nobody ever said democracy was perfect or that it can't throw up the "wrong" result... But its still the best form of government we have and so votes have to be respected even when they go wrong.

 

No, I think right now populist forces are gaining traction and they represent a threat to democracy by riding roughshod over the institutions we created to protect us from ourselves. And from time to time those institutions have to say "ok, that's enough, behave".

 

If reconciled means we're all happy that people got to vote for an idea that nobody with any influence or power has a clue how to implement or even what the voters want implemented, mainly because leavers voters didn't have a clue what leaving the EU really meant except the empty promises that were immediately disavowed by the leave campaign. Or which couldn't be implemented by anybody except by a complete madman who would pretend to believe, or just pretend that things can be improved with more austerity and cuts and fewer taxpayers.

In other words, people got to vote on whether they want the UK to have a new form of government, whatever that might be, which has been disingenuously induced by a supposed obligation to leave the EU on whatever terms the rest of the EU agree to.

 

Changing the subject completely this is another WOW moment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-40419819

Not every day you see a former chief supt facing 95 Manslaughter charges - If convinced that will be some serious jail time!

 

Good. Hope he rots in jail.

 

I think he's about 80 years of age... So safe to say if he's convicted he'll almost certainly die in prison...

 

He'll be convicted, but not sentenced to prison.

 

I don't get what you're refering to there , do you have any examples of this ?

 

Brexit, Le Pen, Trump.

 

I find it surreal that May led off PM questions yesterday with an announcement about the Hillsborough-related charges, which date back almost 30 years ago. How is that possible? There can't be many MPs left in Parliament from 1989 (not that that's relevant, but the PM is announcing something related to an event that took place when I'm sure a handful of MPs were very young).

 

It was one of the worst cover-ups/scandals in UK policing. What's surreal about the announcement?