Guys I’m seeing a lot of rumblings bouncing around online that several news outlets will be breaking a major story tomorrow, essentially proving that Russia’s financing of Johnson was much greater than previously estimated, and that Ukrainian born businessesman Alexander Temerko was much more directly involved in the plot to oust Theresa May than was known at the time.
It might come to nothing, but it’s been growing steadily all day so keep an eye out.
There are some signs of improved competence: UK pays £87m for no-deal Brexit ferry contracts
We've heard this before, but this time they're giving them to actual ferry companies! They have boats that go on the water and everything!
The government has awarded £86.6m of contracts to ferry companies to transport medicines in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Brittany Ferries, DFDS, P&O and Stena Line will be able to deliver those supplies from 31 October, it said.
The contracts are aimed at making sure deliveries of vital products continue, if the UK leaves the EU without a deal.
The government was criticised earlier this year after awarding a transport contract to a company with no ferries.
The contracts will be in place for six months so the government is prepared for different Brexit scenarios, a spokesperson said.
Should the contracts need to be cancelled, the UK will pay the firms £11.52m. The UK paid £51m to cancel no-deal ferry contracts after the Brexit deadline extension at the end of March.
klemming on
Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
Insert joke about making a big decision three years ago and changing his mind now here
Also interesting how he's decided it's not viable as the entire car industry is visibly shifting in the direction of electric.
Clive Sinclair should re-assert himself. He was right, he was just four decades ahead of his time.
maybe no one wants a car that’s marginally better than other cars at five times the price
I would've thought just setting up a full manufacturing business for it at this point would be a dubious prospect. With the automotive industry finally coming around, and newcomers like Tesla already pretty well established, the window for this particular venture to be a success seems to have closed already. Best bet would probably be to make a few concept cars to advertise to other companies the licensing rights for any patented features that would've set theirs apart from the crowd.
Insert joke about making a big decision three years ago and changing his mind now here
Also interesting how he's decided it's not viable as the entire car industry is visibly shifting in the direction of electric.
Clive Sinclair should re-assert himself. He was right, he was just four decades ahead of his time.
maybe no one wants a car that’s marginally better than other cars at five times the price
I would've thought just setting up a full manufacturing business for it at this point would be a dubious prospect. With the automotive industry finally coming around, and newcomers like Tesla already pretty well established, the window for this particular venture to be a success seems to have closed already. Best bet would probably be to make a few concept cars to advertise to other companies the licensing rights for any patented features that would've set theirs apart from the crowd.
There's also the issue Tesla has highlighted very well: just cause you know electric and electronic devices doesn't mean you know how to build a car on a mass manufactured scale. Basically, what are the odds he can consistently build a reliable car?
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
i honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out a dyson electric car needed to cost £90,000 in order to turn a profit and he realized that wasn’t gonna work out very well
There are some signs of improved competence: UK pays £87m for no-deal Brexit ferry contracts
We've heard this before, but this time they're giving them to actual ferry companies! They have boats that go on the water and everything!
The government has awarded £86.6m of contracts to ferry companies to transport medicines in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Brittany Ferries, DFDS, P&O and Stena Line will be able to deliver those supplies from 31 October, it said.
The contracts are aimed at making sure deliveries of vital products continue, if the UK leaves the EU without a deal.
The government was criticised earlier this year after awarding a transport contract to a company with no ferries.
The contracts will be in place for six months so the government is prepared for different Brexit scenarios, a spokesperson said.
Should the contracts need to be cancelled, the UK will pay the firms £11.52m. The UK paid £51m to cancel no-deal ferry contracts after the Brexit deadline extension at the end of March.
So we’re now spending four times as much as before, but this time we get some boats. Some very expensive boats. On the plus side, If we don’t need the boats, we only pay as much as we paid the company with no boats to provide us with no boats the last time that we didn’t need them.
I don't live in the UK so my views hold no weight. In general, I think a good deal in the Brexit case where close to half want out and half want in is something that makes everyone unhappy. My thought at the beginning was a Norway model. The problem Boris has is that the Norway model is right out. This probably means he can't get a deal that works both with the EU and Parliament but it also means that if he gets a deal, he'll probably won't survive it. I (again probably because I'm far enough removed that it won't fuck up my life) don't think no deal is going to happen because even though there are political forces (Farange) pushing that way, most everyone in Parliament knows the shitshow following will be their political funeral.
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
The problem is that a huge chunk of the half who want out, only want out because they have been lied to about what "out" means. In that scenario, the calculus on what should be done changes.
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ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
We’ve already had a compromise that made everyone unhappy. It was the May deal and it failed to pass parliament three times with record margins against.
We’ve already had a compromise that made everyone unhappy. It was the May deal and it failed to pass parliament three times with record margins against.
Because everybody hated it, natch.
The problem has been the same from the start. Any form of negotiated exit is inferior to membership and still leaves us with the same set of economic and diplomatic problems that necessitated the EU in the first place. A no deal exit solves none of those problems and provides no basis to. No WA is good enough to get support and no deal is only wanted by a minority of loonies.
I don't live in the UK so my views hold no weight. In general, I think a good deal in the Brexit case where close to half want out and half want in is something that makes everyone unhappy. My thought at the beginning was a Norway model. The problem Boris has is that the Norway model is right out. This probably means he can't get a deal that works both with the EU and Parliament but it also means that if he gets a deal, he'll probably won't survive it. I (again probably because I'm far enough removed that it won't fuck up my life) don't think no deal is going to happen because even though there are political forces (Farange) pushing that way, most everyone in Parliament knows the shitshow following will be their political funeral.
Norway doesn't even like the Norway model, it's kind of pointless because pretty much to all intents and purposes you are in the EU just without any real say (Norway is so close to being in it that it sends representatives to the EU parliament who have the right to speak and ask questions, just not to vote). They also pay membership fees and can't really negotiate significant international trade deals because their custom's policy is set by the EU.
It's the least damaging form of Brexit, if you eventually decide to just 'technically' leave the EU so that people shut up about Brexit all the time. But it's not going satisfy Farage's lot and will make the EU more like the thing they keep complaining about.
I don't live in the UK so my views hold no weight. In general, I think a good deal in the Brexit case where close to half want out and half want in is something that makes everyone unhappy. My thought at the beginning was a Norway model. The problem Boris has is that the Norway model is right out. This probably means he can't get a deal that works both with the EU and Parliament but it also means that if he gets a deal, he'll probably won't survive it. I (again probably because I'm far enough removed that it won't fuck up my life) don't think no deal is going to happen because even though there are political forces (Farange) pushing that way, most everyone in Parliament knows the shitshow following will be their political funeral.
Norway doesn't even like the Norway model, it's kind of pointless because pretty much to all intents and purposes you are in the EU just without any real say (Norway is so close to being in it that it sends representatives to the EU parliament who have the right to speak and ask questions, just not to vote). They also pay membership fees and can't really negotiate significant international trade deals because their custom's policy is set by the EU.
It's the least damaging form of Brexit, if you eventually decide to just 'technically' leave the EU so that people shut up about Brexit all the time. But it's not going satisfy Farage's lot and will make the EU more like the thing they keep complaining about.
Norway also knuckles under to pretty much any EU decision that doesn't involve Fishing, Agriculture and Oil without a peep. Even then its only to preserve its local industries from being crushed or taken over by EU companies. It also allows Free movement to the point that Polish is now the biggest minority group in the country and its rare to hear Norwegian spoken on a building site.
People talk about Eurabia? the way things are going we are all going to bow to Rome before to long.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
I don't live in the UK so my views hold no weight. In general, I think a good deal in the Brexit case where close to half want out and half want in is something that makes everyone unhappy. My thought at the beginning was a Norway model. The problem Boris has is that the Norway model is right out. This probably means he can't get a deal that works both with the EU and Parliament but it also means that if he gets a deal, he'll probably won't survive it. I (again probably because I'm far enough removed that it won't fuck up my life) don't think no deal is going to happen because even though there are political forces (Farange) pushing that way, most everyone in Parliament knows the shitshow following will be their political funeral.
Norway doesn't even like the Norway model, it's kind of pointless because pretty much to all intents and purposes you are in the EU just without any real say (Norway is so close to being in it that it sends representatives to the EU parliament who have the right to speak and ask questions, just not to vote). They also pay membership fees and can't really negotiate significant international trade deals because their custom's policy is set by the EU.
It's the least damaging form of Brexit, if you eventually decide to just 'technically' leave the EU so that people shut up about Brexit all the time. But it's not going satisfy Farage's lot and will make the EU more like the thing they keep complaining about.
Norway also knuckles under to pretty much any EU decision that doesn't involve Fishing, Agriculture and Oil without a peep. Even then its only to preserve its local industries from being crushed or taken over by EU companies. It also allows Free movement to the point that Polish is now the biggest minority group in the country and its rare to hear Norwegian spoken on a building site.
People talk about Eurabia? the way things are going we are all going to bow to Rome before to long.
Yes, but, Norway is doing fine and given the political situation in the UK where half want in and half want out, it seems like a reasonable off the shelf solution that would make everyone unhappy but not too unhappy. It obviously is not on the cards given Parliament couldn't even get May's deal through.
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
I don't live in the UK so my views hold no weight. In general, I think a good deal in the Brexit case where close to half want out and half want in is something that makes everyone unhappy. My thought at the beginning was a Norway model. The problem Boris has is that the Norway model is right out. This probably means he can't get a deal that works both with the EU and Parliament but it also means that if he gets a deal, he'll probably won't survive it. I (again probably because I'm far enough removed that it won't fuck up my life) don't think no deal is going to happen because even though there are political forces (Farange) pushing that way, most everyone in Parliament knows the shitshow following will be their political funeral.
Norway doesn't even like the Norway model, it's kind of pointless because pretty much to all intents and purposes you are in the EU just without any real say (Norway is so close to being in it that it sends representatives to the EU parliament who have the right to speak and ask questions, just not to vote). They also pay membership fees and can't really negotiate significant international trade deals because their custom's policy is set by the EU.
It's the least damaging form of Brexit, if you eventually decide to just 'technically' leave the EU so that people shut up about Brexit all the time. But it's not going satisfy Farage's lot and will make the EU more like the thing they keep complaining about.
Norway also knuckles under to pretty much any EU decision that doesn't involve Fishing, Agriculture and Oil without a peep. Even then its only to preserve its local industries from being crushed or taken over by EU companies. It also allows Free movement to the point that Polish is now the biggest minority group in the country and its rare to hear Norwegian spoken on a building site.
People talk about Eurabia? the way things are going we are all going to bow to Rome before to long.
Yes, but, Norway is doing fine and given the political situation in the UK where half want in and half want out, it seems like a reasonable off the shelf solution that would make everyone unhappy but not too unhappy. It obviously is not on the cards given Parliament couldn't even get May's deal through.
It would make Remainers uphappy, and would make Leavers furious - with no upside to try to sell it. It's just Brexit for the sake of Brexit.
No Deal would be a catastrophe, but some people would get very rich off it and we would be free to make whatever deals we wanted with however we wanted and radically change domestic politics without getting checked by the EU courts. Those can be sold as a positive, even if they're all bad.
The British Government is expected to announce plans to make everyone show a driver’s license or passport in order to be able to vote. Story from the editor of The Sunday Telegraph.
Needless to say, this disenfranchises anyone who struggles to afford a passport and who doesn’t have access to a driver’s license. I’ll be very interested to see the analytics on the impact this would have on an election or second referendum in the coming days.
Oh, ID has been needed for Dutch elections forever. You are also required to be able to identify yourself to the police from ages 15 and up. You can get an ID-card or passport with an expiration date of 10 years at your local municipality. The cheapest option for a minor is €30 and €55 for an adult. You can vote with a recently expired ID I didn't realize the UK worked differently.
I guess its good that the UK is moving closer to the way things are done in other EU countries, eh? /s
Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
Brits have strong opinions about the need to identify themselves. It's nothing I super agree with but I always seen to be in the minority when I state not feeling like it's a big deal to have better public records
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
It's also that proving your identity to the standard required to get a driving licence or passport is not easy
We don't have a system that consistently tracks identity, and the documents that are available aren't issued in the same formats, or with the same information, across the country
For a passport you need to be able to obtain quite a lot of documentation about both you and your parents, and you need to provide it all as original documents
Getting a provisional driving licence is probably the easiest way in, but you still need to obtain your birth certificate (costs and administrative requirements vary) and combine that with other evidence that will then be interpreted to determine whether it's adequate
There are a lot of people for whom this kind of exercise is not going to be trivial, and they aren't edge cases
I'm not opposed to ID requirements in principle, but there needs to be a properly robust system for obtaining the relevant documents
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Brits have strong opinions about the need to identify themselves. It's nothing I super agree with but I always seen to be in the minority when I state not feeling like it's a big deal to have better public records
The point is that it provides an indirect way to suppress certain groups from voting. By limiting the options for what constitutes valid ID, you can massively reduce voting eligibility simply by making it inconvenient to get those IDs.
If you make the law require a form of ID that requires going to a certain government department to acquire, then you can target specific areas of the country and lower their voter turnout by closing down/understaffing the relevant departments in those areas, while making it easy in areas.
If X-Shire tends to vote the way you want, while Y-Shire tends to vote the opposite way, then you can get an advantage by opening additional centres for acquiring ID in X-Shire and understaffing/closing those in Y-Shire.
It's a very sneaky and underhanded method and works extremely well in any country without compulsory voting.
Oh, ID has been needed for Dutch elections forever. You are also required to be able to identify yourself to the police from ages 15 and up. You can get an ID-card or passport with an expiration date of 10 years at your local municipality. The cheapest option for a minor is €30 and €55 for an adult. You can vote with a recently expired ID I didn't realize the UK worked differently.
I guess its good that the UK is moving closer to the way things are done in other EU countries, eh? /s
While there's nothing inherently wrong with ID-ing yourself in order to vote, at least in the last 10 years or so the voter ID issue has typically revolved around 3 elements:
There's almost never any evidence of existing fraud where a new ID system would provide a clear benefit.
ID requirements are almost always proposed with a burden (cost, qualification, documentation, or just plain access to the ID office) that can be difficult for some segments to meet, making it likely that they wont bother to obtain a valid ID and therefore "opt out" of voting.
Voter ID requirements are almost always proposed by political groups (usually conservative) who would benefit from the segments in #2 having lower voter turnout.
It's almost always framed as "Party A wants to protect the integrity of voting, while Party B doesn't want them to" when the reality is almost always "Party A sees an opportunity to suppress votes to their advantage in the next few elections, while Party B doesn't want them to".
If it's cheap, easy to get, and can be obtained substantially before the next election for which it is required - as is the case for many countries who have been utilising Voter ID for some time - then you probably wouldn't hear too much about it.
The problem is that proposed introduction of Voter ID systems are often none of these, and there's usually an ulterior motive why they aren't.
Such as the small matter of the proposal to fund the system by selling the information.
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
in virginia, presenting ID to vote for me—a middle class white guy with a car—has been totally fine and not a burden
but that’s the point of the law
there are less-advantaged groups who don’t have easy access to transportation, or a DMV within miles of where they live, or easy access to the records necessary to obtain an ID, or haven’t had a drivers license or 20+ years
every single place in the US voter ID has been proposed has been a place where Republicans hold thin majorities in many districts within that state and that’s not a coincidence
I have a driving license, but I might see if they accept my expired passport anyway. I'd like to hear their reasoning that I might have become other than the person this thing claims in the last three years.
I have a driving license, but I might see if they accept my expired passport anyway. I'd like to hear their reasoning that I might have become other than the person this thing claims in the last three years.
"How do I know you're not Nicolas Cage wearing klemming's face"
You need to be realistic about the world we live in man.
Surely there's a Boris Johnson article from back when Labour wanted ID cards about how this is an affront to democracy?
"I will in no circumstances carry one and even were I compelled to do so, I would take it out and destroy it on the spot were I ever asked to produce it. It is a plastic poll tax that will do nothing to assist the struggle against terrorists and will hugely expand the powers of the state over the individual." B. Johnson
Surely there's a Boris Johnson article from back when Labour wanted ID cards about how this is an affront to democracy?
"I will in no circumstances carry one and even were I compelled to do so, I would take it out and destroy it on the spot were I ever asked to produce it. It is a plastic poll tax that will do nothing to assist the struggle against terrorists and will hugely expand the powers of the state over the individual." B. Johnson
I suspect if Labour couldn't get ID cards through back in 2005, with a passable majority, then Johnson won't be able to get compulsory voter ID through in the current parliament. Or, without a solid majority, the next one either.
The Leaver zeitgeist on Twitter has been that labour and (in a hypothetical second ref) Remain can both only achieve substantial numbers of votes fraudulently. It is the twin of the equivalent right wing US sentiment, and I suspect is driven by a similar fundamental belief that any vote cast by certain groups is inherently illegitimate, with 'voter fraud' acting as a figleaf for concern trolls (they never seem very interested in the fact that there have only been 27 cases of verified vote fraud in the uk in the last three years).
Meanwhile fraudulent disinformation at the party and government level has swayed entire elections. I wonder how attaching an amendment proposing huge fines and jail time for knowingly misleading the public would play out.
Independence is another unwinnable battle. No matter what happens you'll have 50% of the population extremely pissed off about it.
So, for me, I'm not a rabid indy advocate, all things being equal I'd probably prefer to see greater devolution (I was attracted to Kezia Dugdale's federal UK idea)
However, the political issue that's going to dominate the next ten years or so is undoing brexit
And the quickest and cleanest way of accomplishing that, that I can see right now, is independence
I'm all on board for a federal UK, indeed I feel like it was promised in 2014 for staying in the union. I don't think it'll ever happen though because it doesn't benefit the big two parties so neither of them are interested.
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Also interesting how he's decided it's not viable as the entire car industry is visibly shifting in the direction of electric.
Clive Sinclair should re-assert himself. He was right, he was just four decades ahead of his time.
Steam | XBL
Of course it'll come to nothing.
UK pays £87m for no-deal Brexit ferry contracts
We've heard this before, but this time they're giving them to actual ferry companies! They have boats that go on the water and everything!
maybe no one wants a car that’s marginally better than other cars at five times the price
but that business model has worked so well for Apple!
I would've thought just setting up a full manufacturing business for it at this point would be a dubious prospect. With the automotive industry finally coming around, and newcomers like Tesla already pretty well established, the window for this particular venture to be a success seems to have closed already. Best bet would probably be to make a few concept cars to advertise to other companies the licensing rights for any patented features that would've set theirs apart from the crowd.
And Dyson's own vacuum cleaners!
Steam | XBL
There's also the issue Tesla has highlighted very well: just cause you know electric and electronic devices doesn't mean you know how to build a car on a mass manufactured scale. Basically, what are the odds he can consistently build a reliable car?
So we’re now spending four times as much as before, but this time we get some boats. Some very expensive boats. On the plus side, If we don’t need the boats, we only pay as much as we paid the company with no boats to provide us with no boats the last time that we didn’t need them.
Excellent.
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― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Because everybody hated it, natch.
The problem has been the same from the start. Any form of negotiated exit is inferior to membership and still leaves us with the same set of economic and diplomatic problems that necessitated the EU in the first place. A no deal exit solves none of those problems and provides no basis to. No WA is good enough to get support and no deal is only wanted by a minority of loonies.
Norway doesn't even like the Norway model, it's kind of pointless because pretty much to all intents and purposes you are in the EU just without any real say (Norway is so close to being in it that it sends representatives to the EU parliament who have the right to speak and ask questions, just not to vote). They also pay membership fees and can't really negotiate significant international trade deals because their custom's policy is set by the EU.
It's the least damaging form of Brexit, if you eventually decide to just 'technically' leave the EU so that people shut up about Brexit all the time. But it's not going satisfy Farage's lot and will make the EU more like the thing they keep complaining about.
Norway also knuckles under to pretty much any EU decision that doesn't involve Fishing, Agriculture and Oil without a peep. Even then its only to preserve its local industries from being crushed or taken over by EU companies. It also allows Free movement to the point that Polish is now the biggest minority group in the country and its rare to hear Norwegian spoken on a building site.
People talk about Eurabia? the way things are going we are all going to bow to Rome before to long.
Yes, but, Norway is doing fine and given the political situation in the UK where half want in and half want out, it seems like a reasonable off the shelf solution that would make everyone unhappy but not too unhappy. It obviously is not on the cards given Parliament couldn't even get May's deal through.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
It would make Remainers uphappy, and would make Leavers furious - with no upside to try to sell it. It's just Brexit for the sake of Brexit.
No Deal would be a catastrophe, but some people would get very rich off it and we would be free to make whatever deals we wanted with however we wanted and radically change domestic politics without getting checked by the EU courts. Those can be sold as a positive, even if they're all bad.
Norway doesn't really have the same thing.
Needless to say, this disenfranchises anyone who struggles to afford a passport and who doesn’t have access to a driver’s license. I’ll be very interested to see the analytics on the impact this would have on an election or second referendum in the coming days.
I guess its good that the UK is moving closer to the way things are done in other EU countries, eh? /s
Source: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/paspoort-en-identiteitskaart/vraag-en-antwoord/wat-zijn-de-kosten-van-paspoorten-en-identiteitskaarten
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We don't have a system that consistently tracks identity, and the documents that are available aren't issued in the same formats, or with the same information, across the country
For a passport you need to be able to obtain quite a lot of documentation about both you and your parents, and you need to provide it all as original documents
Getting a provisional driving licence is probably the easiest way in, but you still need to obtain your birth certificate (costs and administrative requirements vary) and combine that with other evidence that will then be interpreted to determine whether it's adequate
There are a lot of people for whom this kind of exercise is not going to be trivial, and they aren't edge cases
I'm not opposed to ID requirements in principle, but there needs to be a properly robust system for obtaining the relevant documents
The point is that it provides an indirect way to suppress certain groups from voting. By limiting the options for what constitutes valid ID, you can massively reduce voting eligibility simply by making it inconvenient to get those IDs.
If you make the law require a form of ID that requires going to a certain government department to acquire, then you can target specific areas of the country and lower their voter turnout by closing down/understaffing the relevant departments in those areas, while making it easy in areas.
If X-Shire tends to vote the way you want, while Y-Shire tends to vote the opposite way, then you can get an advantage by opening additional centres for acquiring ID in X-Shire and understaffing/closing those in Y-Shire.
It's a very sneaky and underhanded method and works extremely well in any country without compulsory voting.
- There's almost never any evidence of existing fraud where a new ID system would provide a clear benefit.
- ID requirements are almost always proposed with a burden (cost, qualification, documentation, or just plain access to the ID office) that can be difficult for some segments to meet, making it likely that they wont bother to obtain a valid ID and therefore "opt out" of voting.
- Voter ID requirements are almost always proposed by political groups (usually conservative) who would benefit from the segments in #2 having lower voter turnout.
It's almost always framed as "Party A wants to protect the integrity of voting, while Party B doesn't want them to" when the reality is almost always "Party A sees an opportunity to suppress votes to their advantage in the next few elections, while Party B doesn't want them to".If it's cheap, easy to get, and can be obtained substantially before the next election for which it is required - as is the case for many countries who have been utilising Voter ID for some time - then you probably wouldn't hear too much about it.
The problem is that proposed introduction of Voter ID systems are often none of these, and there's usually an ulterior motive why they aren't.
but that’s the point of the law
there are less-advantaged groups who don’t have easy access to transportation, or a DMV within miles of where they live, or easy access to the records necessary to obtain an ID, or haven’t had a drivers license or 20+ years
every single place in the US voter ID has been proposed has been a place where Republicans hold thin majorities in many districts within that state and that’s not a coincidence
"How do I know you're not Nicolas Cage wearing klemming's face"
You need to be realistic about the world we live in man.
"I will in no circumstances carry one and even were I compelled to do so, I would take it out and destroy it on the spot were I ever asked to produce it. It is a plastic poll tax that will do nothing to assist the struggle against terrorists and will hugely expand the powers of the state over the individual." B. Johnson
I suspect if Labour couldn't get ID cards through back in 2005, with a passable majority, then Johnson won't be able to get compulsory voter ID through in the current parliament. Or, without a solid majority, the next one either.
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Interesting because the economic uncertainty and "stronger together" was a key line of argument for the No campaign last time
Scotland: "This deal is getting worse all the time..."
Steam | XBL
Meanwhile fraudulent disinformation at the party and government level has swayed entire elections. I wonder how attaching an amendment proposing huge fines and jail time for knowingly misleading the public would play out.
Yeah, but independence with staying in the EU as a sweetener might be more sellable.
So, for me, I'm not a rabid indy advocate, all things being equal I'd probably prefer to see greater devolution (I was attracted to Kezia Dugdale's federal UK idea)
However, the political issue that's going to dominate the next ten years or so is undoing brexit
And the quickest and cleanest way of accomplishing that, that I can see right now, is independence