[Hiberno-Britannic Politics] RIP Jo Cox

RMS Oceanic

So this archipelago



Has these nations.



These nations are almost completely not unique in that they're run by a system known as Politics!

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Run by this chap



These folk would rather he didn't


Otto running the show until Labour can overcome their drinking problem

Some of the Issues
- Recent election results: How even
- Austerity and Deficit Reduction: "Do more with less" (Genuine quote)
- Lib Dems: Completely dead, or just comic book dead?
- Scottish Nationalist Party: Just how Marxist are they?
- Europe: Time to put up or shut up. Preferably the latter.
- Healthcare: I'm kind of too anxious about this topic to make it funny.
- Welfare: We already have one Queen, thanks.
- First Past The Post voting system: The worst, or the worst?
- Human rights: Too Universal, or just Too Compassionate?
- Foxes: Not being culled cruelly enough to fix the deficit
- We haven't gone away you know

A spiffing place to keep up to date with the latest developments.

Irish Silesia An Poblacht na hÉireann

Run by this chap.



These guys would rather he didn't.




Some of The Issues
- A mountain of debt taken on by ill advisedly backing toxic bank debt
- Loss of confidence in the market
- Humiliating bailout by the EU
- Perceived resultant loss of Sovereignty
- And more austerity and deficit reduction
- Or maybe we should just default? [/Meaningful Look at Brussels]
- Gay Marriage: Maybe not the bringer of endtimes?
- Abolishing the Senate: Not just a topic for America or Star Wars threads!

A shockin' good place to see what the feck the craic is.

So, discuss the goings on in the Dail and the Commons!

Casual

Is Cameron actually touching the fox hunting ban or is that just a joke lots of people are making?

RMS Oceanic

Casual wrote: »

Is Cameron actually touching the fox hunting ban or is that just a joke lots of people are making?

If I recall correctly a spokesperson on Channel 4 said they intend to enact their entire manifesto, and confirmed Fox Hunting by name when questioned, as sure enough it's in there.

It will be a free vote, but it does feel like a dumb thing to throw your unexpected political capital away on when there's so much else you need to ram through.

Liiya

Casual wrote: »

Is Cameron actually touching the fox hunting ban or is that just a joke lots of people are making?

I don't know but my furry housemate won't stop banging on about it.

I think he promised a vote on it? I seriously doubt it will come back, the public is as far as I know strongly against it.

japan

Is the fox hunting thing controversial within the Tory party?

Given their majority is tenuous you'd think they'd avoid anything that might provoke a back bench revolt

RMS Oceanic

Liiya wrote: »

Casual wrote: »

Is Cameron actually touching the fox hunting ban or is that just a joke lots of people are making?

I don't know but my furry housemate won't stop banging on about it.

I think he promised a vote on it? I seriously doubt it will come back, the public is as far as I know strongly against it.

As a naive idiot, I kinda felt skeevish about how it was passed, namely Tony Blair invoking the Parliament Act to override the House of Lords, which at the time I felt was using a sledgehammer.

Liiya

Ahh I didn't know that! It was a long time ago. Was there a reason, as in, did he feel it wouldn't go through because of Tories and the house of lords voting for it or something?

RMS Oceanic

japan wrote: »

Is the fox hunting thing controversial within the Tory party?

Given their majority is tenuous you'd think they'd avoid anything that might provoke a back bench revolt

That's the fascinating thing about this result: Everything I've seen from them is like they're the 1997 Labour party, that they have this ginormous mandate to do whatever, when while it's true they don't have a junior party to apply the brakes anymore, their overall majority is still pretty slim, and how united will they end up being?

I'm not going to rely on this to reassure myself that everything will be fine, however. I figure Cameron's secure enough for the foreseeable future.

RMS Oceanic

Liiya wrote: »

Ahh I didn't know that! It was a long time ago. Was there a reason, as in, did he feel it wouldn't go through because of Tories and the house of lords voting for it or something?

I believe the House of Lords had already blocked it a few times. I'd need to read up on it.

Casual

Liiya wrote: »

Casual wrote: »

Is Cameron actually touching the fox hunting ban or is that just a joke lots of people are making?

I don't know but my furry housemate won't stop banging on about it.

I think he promised a vote on it? I seriously doubt it will come back, the public is as far as I know strongly against it.

Your housemate is a fox?

AlphaRomero

I'm feeling anxious, depressed, and/or angry.

I just don't understand how so many voters could be so short-sighted.

Liiya

RMS Oceanic wrote: »

Liiya wrote: »

Ahh I didn't know that! It was a long time ago. Was there a reason, as in, did he feel it wouldn't go through because of Tories and the house of lords voting for it or something?

I believe the House of Lords had already blocked it a few times. I'd need to read up on it.

That sounds familiar actually! Thanks, RMS!

Liiya

Casual wrote: »

Liiya wrote: »

Casual wrote: »

Is Cameron actually touching the fox hunting ban or is that just a joke lots of people are making?

I don't know but my furry housemate won't stop banging on about it.

I think he promised a vote on it? I seriously doubt it will come back, the public is as far as I know strongly against it.

Your housemate is a fox?

Yes. Least, she thinks she is.

Casual

AlphaRomero wrote: »

I'm feeling anxious, depressed, and/or angry.

I just don't understand how so many voters could be so short-sighted.

Only 35% voted Tory. And frankly for a lot of people the Tories are pretty beneficial. You just have to be a older property owner. Of course if you're not one of those the Tories will fuck you without lube.

japan

I'm also really curious what sleight of hand they're going to pull with respect to the Human Rights Act

They're claiming they'll repeal it, but the UK is still a signatory to the ECHR, and is still bound to implement its principles in national legislation

So either they need to replace it with something identical in effect our we're in the uncharted water of a member state refusing to implement an EU instrument

RMS Oceanic

AlphaRomero wrote: »

I'm feeling anxious, depressed, and/or angry.

I just don't understand how so many voters could be so short-sighted.

There are at least half a dozen factors crashing into each other to explain this, but I'm confident this is one of them:

RMS Oceanic

japan wrote: »

I'm also really curious what sleight of hand they're going to pull with respect to the Human Rights Act

They're claiming they'll repeal it, but the UK is still a signatory to the ECHR, and is still bound to implement its principles in national legislation

So either they need to replace it with something identical in effect our we're in the uncharted water of a member state refusing to implement an EU instrument

If the understandably impatient EU took the UK to task for that, that would be great ammunition for the Leave group in the EU Referendum.

Casual

japan wrote: »

I'm also really curious what sleight of hand they're going to pull with respect to the Human Rights Act

They're claiming they'll repeal it, but the UK is still a signatory to the ECHR, and is still bound to implement its principles in national legislation

So either they need to replace it with something identical in effect our we're in the uncharted water of a member state refusing to implement an EU instrument

I'm going to take great pleasure in the schoodenfroody when Camerons "renegotiations" with the EU continue to fail as spectacularly as they have been and he looks like the incompetent twat he is.

RMS Oceanic

Casual wrote: »

japan wrote: »

I'm also really curious what sleight of hand they're going to pull with respect to the Human Rights Act

They're claiming they'll repeal it, but the UK is still a signatory to the ECHR, and is still bound to implement its principles in national legislation

So either they need to replace it with something identical in effect our we're in the uncharted water of a member state refusing to implement an EU instrument

I'm going to take great pleasure in the schoodenfroody when Camerons "renegotiations" with the EU continue to fail as spectacularly as they have been and he looks like the incompetent twat he is.

As japan pointed out in the last thread, I have no idea what he really wants from Europe. "No more ceding powers", maybe, but ceding powers hasn't been on the cards.

I do think the EU as structured has flaws: Setting the Eurozone aside, I think a lot of its power is in bureaucracy that the directly elected parts have little sway over, and to an extent I can sympathise with that frustration. But picking up your ball and going home doesn't fix that.

japan

RMS Oceanic wrote: »

japan wrote: »

I'm also really curious what sleight of hand they're going to pull with respect to the Human Rights Act

They're claiming they'll repeal it, but the UK is still a signatory to the ECHR, and is still bound to implement its principles in national legislation

So either they need to replace it with something identical in effect our we're in the uncharted water of a member state refusing to implement an EU instrument

If the understandably impatient EU took the UK to task for that, that would be great ammunition for the Leave group in the EU Referendum.

I don't know what the enforcement mechanism is, is the thing

I'm not sure anybody really does, because as far as I know it's only come up in the context of new member states or CAP negotiation, which has a built in dispute mechanism

Casual

japan wrote: »

RMS Oceanic wrote: »

japan wrote: »

I'm also really curious what sleight of hand they're going to pull with respect to the Human Rights Act

They're claiming they'll repeal it, but the UK is still a signatory to the ECHR, and is still bound to implement its principles in national legislation

So either they need to replace it with something identical in effect our we're in the uncharted water of a member state refusing to implement an EU instrument

If the understandably impatient EU took the UK to task for that, that would be great ammunition for the Leave group in the EU Referendum.

I don't know what the enforcement mechanism is, is the thing

I'm not sure anybody really does, because as far as I know it's only come up in the context of new member states or CAP negotiation, which has a built in dispute mechanism

The French have historically ignored the EU of certain things and gotten away with it Scot free. Of course they probably have the most sway in the EU after the Germans so they can probably get away with things we can't.

Bethryn

You can read the basic proposal here:

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1308660-protecting-human-rights-in-the-uk.html#document/

They want to take the original HCR into British legislation, possibly make official Parliamentary interpretations of some aspects of it, and then use that.
They don't want Strasboug to have a say in British law, and they don't want to have to abide by Strasbourg case-law history.
This is apparently to deal with deporting people, life imprisonment for murderers, voting for prisoners, artificial insemination for prisoners(???), and forcing the prosecution to prove that defendants charged with drug crimes knew the drug was illegal.

They want to get the EU to agree with them that putting the HCR into British law is an acceptable way to hold to it; if they can't agree, then at the point where the new laws come into effect, Britain withdraws from the ECHR.

japan

Hrrmm

That document seems to take it as an article of faith that the UK supreme court won't arrive at the same conclusions as Strasbourg given the same starting principles

It doesn't actually seem all that bad, it seems to primarily be a sop to daily mail readers

RMS Oceanic

I don't know how they can say Strasbourg can never have a say when they're signed to the ECHR. This will likely be the sticking point.

surrealitycheck

RMS Oceanic

surrealitycheck wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__HBBf_eDLM

Jazz

That psychopath IDS is back at the DWP.

Not surprising at all... but fuck. Fucking goddammit.

RMS Oceanic

Jazz wrote: »

That psychopath IDS is back at the DWP.

Not surprising at all... but fuck. Fucking goddammit.

Why couldn't he be chief whip for ten months.

Jazz

So apparently the Tories were promising that £12billion of "welfare" (ugh) cuts because they were expecting to be in coalition with the Lib Dems again, who would block some of them.

Now they find themselves actually having to do it, I wonder if anyone on the blue side is going to start getting cold feet at the sheer scale.

Or will they only start getting the message when the bodies start piling up in the streets?

Burnage

Have there been any suggestions yet as to where exactly those cuts are going to come from?

Jazz

Burnage wrote: »

Have there been any suggestions yet as to where exactly those cuts are going to come from?

They refused to specify during the election campaign. The Graun had a good article about it. Excerpt with most of the important bits:

As we know from this week’s leaked Whitehall documents, when it comes to cuts there is no longer any “low-hanging fruit”. What’s left are in large part harsh cuts hitting middle-income working families: or, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies politely puts it, the “less palatable options”.

What we do know is that the Tories will freeze the level of working-age benefits for two years from next April, disqualify most 18- to 21-year-olds from claiming housing benefit, and reduce the household benefit cap from £26,000 to £23,000. Those three policies, the IFS calculates, will find the Tories about £1.5bn a year.

So where will the remaining £10.5bn come from?

The Tory line throughout the campaign has been: trust us on our track record. We made the cuts before, and we’ll make them again. The coalition did indeed make about £18bn of welfare cuts over the last parliament – but importantly, in view of what they need to achieve over the next five years, very little in the way of savings.

The bulk of the cuts – roughly two thirds – came from below-inflation uprating of benefits; the rest from restricting child benefit for wealthier families and some cuts to child tax credit. The cuts made here were more or less cancelled out by massive overspending on disability benefits and housing benefit.

According to social researcher Declan Gaffney, the net savings from five years of supposed welfare “revolution”, measured against the savings expected in 2010, were about £2bn. Contrary to Tory rhetoric, the coalition track record on finding welfare savings was dismal.

To reach £12bn by 2018, the Tories will not only have to massively increase the pace of welfare cuts made over the past five years, but achieve net savings. They will have to focus on the five big ticket items: tax credits (currently about £30bn a year); housing benefit (£21bn); disability living allowance and personal independence payments (£15bn); incapacity benefits (£14bn); and child benefit (£12bn).

One key area will be incapacity benefit spending. Previous attempts to cut this failed (spending rose at least £3bn above anticipated levels under the coalition): the high number of successful appeals against the notoriously unpopular fit-for-work tests revealed that there were simply not, as the coalition passionately believed, millions of people fraudulently claiming the benefit.

The Department for Work and Pensions believes there is scope for reform, however, and we can expect more drastic measures to try to reduce the numbers claiming employment and support allowance, by moving as many as possible on to the less-well remunerated jobseeker’s allowance.

This will be controversial, and Whitehall has concerns over the ability of the outsourced service (formerly run by Atos, now Maximus) to do this. Savings here will be painful, in human terms, and are far from guaranteed.

Housing benefit will be another target area, but the anticipated increase in spending (up £3bn a year from 2020) will be difficult to reverse given the growth in working households on low or static incomes forced to draw on housing support to meet high rents, particularly in London and the south.

Tax credits and child benefit cuts would appear to be necessary but they will take hundreds if not thousands of pounds a year out of the pockets of many of the middle-England voters that delivered David Cameron the premiership. Cuts to smaller budget items, such as carer’s allowance and statutory maternity pay may deliver marginal savings but at the cost of alienating the same demographic.

EDIT: The Mirror's take on it (yes, yes, I know).

David Cameron's Conservatives have doggedly refused to reveal how they plan to fulfill their promise to cut £12 billion from the welfare bill.

Yesterday, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith confessed that the party has not yet calculated exactly how it will slash the social security fund.

However, a leaked DWP document shows that options being considered could include axing statutory maternity pay, forcing single parents of three-year-old children into work, and making it harder for sick people to claim benefits when they are unable to work.

The list of potential cuts was drawn up by civil servants in 2014, in response to concerns about how the next government could keep welfare spending below a cap of £119.5 billion per annum.

Here are some of the groups that could be affected by the proposed cuts:

1. Pregnant women and new mothers

The leaked document suggests axing statutory maternity pay as one cost saving option.

2. Single parents of young children

Currently, single parents are not forced to seek work until their youngest child reaches the age of five. It has been suggested that this could be lowered to age three.

3. Ill and disabled people

The DWP document proposes that it could be made harder for sick people to become eligible for out of work benefits.

4. Recipients of housing benefit (including those in work)

Under a Conservative-led government, the bedroom tax could be increased for some types of renters.

5. Young people

In line with earlier statements by the Conservatives about restricting benefits for young people, under 25s could be barred from claiming housing benefit and incapacity benefit.

6. Larger families

It has been suggested that benefit payments could be limited by family size.

7. People who receive any state benefits at all

Anyone who receives any sort of welfare benefit could be hit by an across-the-board freeze at current levels.

Jazz

The Mirror has a newer article:

100 days of Tory cuts carnage as George Osborne plans to fast-track £12BILLION in savings

Senior Tories revealed how ­ministers would try to push through the majority of the welfare cuts within two years instead of the original three-year timescale.

But Prime Minister David Cameron hopes to kick it off with a 100-day policy blitz.

One senior party source admitted: “When it comes to cuts, we want the pain to be out of the way long before the next general election.

“Without the restraint of the Lib Dems, it means we can go further and faster when it comes to controlling the welfare bill.”

Ministers are looking at means testing unemployment benefits like Jobseeker’s Allowance, according to a document leaked earlier this year.

Other proposals to slash the £125billion welfare bill include limiting Child Benefit payments to the first two children and taxing Disability Living Allowance and Personal Independence Payments.

The Tories also want to reduce the maximum any household can receive in benefits from the current £26,000 a year to £23,000.

Other cuts include a £3.8billion raid on tax credits, which are relied on by millions of families on low wages.

The number of people who get Carer’s Allowance could also fall by 40 per cent.

Such moves are likely to pile the ­pressure on food banks and ­charities as the cost of living crisis deepens.

Senior Labour MP John Mann warned: “People don’t realise what’s going to hit them.

“The entire benefits system is going to crumble and almost everyone will lose out – apart from private landlords who will remain untouched. It will be a return to the ­Victorian age.”

The Bassetlaw MP added: “Everyone will have to stand on their own two feet – even people with no legs.”

Council, police and fire service budgets are also expected to be slashed under Mr Osborne’s cost-cutting plans.

Astale

Compared to american newspapers/magazines, british ones seem to wear their political bias on a sleeve.

I don't think you'd ever see something like that lightbulb cover. Thinly veiled distaste, sure. But nothing like "Bob Smith fucking sucks" you seem to get over there.

Bogart

TV news is unbiased (despite what Tories say about the BBC), papers are all hugely biased.

Rhesus Positive

Uhh, Bogart, you've got that the wrong way round. BBC is lefty rubbish, The Mirror is a socialist rag, and the Mail and Express are in the pocket of their corporate overlords.

The only true unbiased news source is My Mate Down the Pub. For a wider national view I use the Mail Online comments section, and for the big questions I turn to Common Sense Reasoning.

Mojo_Jojo

Channel 4 news is pretty left leaning. It's a counterpoint to sky news.

altid

One effect of this election has been pretty much all of the right leaning broadsheets pissing away the last of their credibility (especially the torygraph). For example, a headline in the times:

and this buried in the middle of the paper a few days later:


Not that anyone who reads those papers will remember, but it would be nice if they did.

Rhesus Positive

John Whittingdale is the Culture, Media and Sport Secretary.

You may know him as the guy who claimed that the BBC licence fee was "worse than poll tax".

Hooray.

Bogart

We said that up is down. In fact, down is down. We regret any misconceptions that might have arisen from our article.

Bogart

Rhesus Positive wrote: »

John Whittingdale is the Culture, Media and Sport Secretary.

You may know him as the guy who claimed that the BBC licence fee was "worse than poll tax".

Hooray.

It is tough to find an intelligent, moderate Tory these days in a position of any power. Ken Clarke was probably the last one.

altid

Some people can't do gracious defeat very well. George Galloway has started a legal challenge to have the result in his former constituency set aside - after all, he only lost by a mere 11,000 votes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32685844