General Politics Thread

[doulikefish]

Is it the chinese nessie?

[mjw]

Whatever it is it will end up on a plate somewhere.
They'll eat anything over there.

[WaffenThinMint]

With the Witney By-Election result, can the hysteria mongers now finally accept that the talk of the "resurgent far right in Britain" exists nowhere except in the wishful thinking of their imaginations?

Tracy Brabin (Lab) - 17,506 (85.84%)

Therese Hirst (Eng Dem) - 969 (4.75%)

David Furness (BNP) - 548 (2.69%)

Garry Kitchin (Ind) - 517 (2.54%)

Corbyn Anti (Eng Ind) - 241 (1.18%)

Jack Buckby (Lib GB) - 220 (1.08%)

Henry Mayhew (Ind) - 153 (0.75%)

Waqas Ali Khan (Ind) - 118 (0.58%)

Richard Edmonds (NF) - 87 (0.43%)

Ankit Love (Love) - 34 (0.17%)

Turnout - 25.56% - the seventh worst by-election turn out since the Second World War.

Total far right vote = 855 or 5.38 %

The National Front it appears didn't even turn up for the count!

[Alert Mongoose]

I'm not sure you can use that result as a barometer of opinion given the circumstances.

[capybara]

Min pricing announcement due shortly

[welshbairn]

19 hours ago, Peppino Impastato said:

What are you on about do you even watch it.  The BBC said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. 

They said the intelligence for WMD had been sexed up and the Director General got sacked for it.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

With the Witney By-Election result, can the hysteria mongers now finally accept that the talk of the "resurgent far right in Britain" exists nowhere except in the wishful thinking of their imaginations?

Tracy Brabin (Lab) - 17,506 (85.84%)

Therese Hirst (Eng Dem) - 969 (4.75%)

David Furness (BNP) - 548 (2.69%)

Garry Kitchin (Ind) - 517 (2.54%)

Corbyn Anti (Eng Ind) - 241 (1.18%)

Jack Buckby (Lib GB) - 220 (1.08%)

Henry Mayhew (Ind) - 153 (0.75%)

Waqas Ali Khan (Ind) - 118 (0.58%)

Richard Edmonds (NF) - 87 (0.43%)

Ankit Love (Love) - 34 (0.17%)

Turnout - 25.56% - the seventh worst by-election turn out since the Second World War.

Total far right vote = 855 or 5.38 %

The National Front it appears didn't even turn up for the count!

Who were the 87 who voted for that Nazi w****r Edmonds? Even the NF loyalists hate the b*****d.

[Honest Saints Fan]

Anyone watch the debate on John Nicholson's Turing Bill? Some great words across the house but the Justice Minister Sam Gyimah talked the bill out. Most blatant thing I've seen.

[Crossbill]

9 minutes ago, Honest Saints Fan said:

Anyone watch the debate on John Nicholson's Turing Bill? Some great words across the house but the Justice Minister Sam Gyimah talked the bill out. Most blatant thing I've seen.

Absolutely sickening lack of support and the filibustering from the Tories is just shameful.  I expect nothing less from the Tories, but for the Labour party not to support this is just beyond belief.  The sooner we can disassociate ourselves from this garbage heap the better.

[doulikefish]

42 minutes ago, Honest Saints Fan said:

Anyone watch the debate on John Nicholson's Turing Bill? Some great words across the house but the Justice Minister Sam Gyimah talked the bill out. Most blatant thing I've seen.

 

29 minutes ago, Crossbill said:

Absolutely sickening lack of support and the filibustering from the Tories is just shameful.  I expect nothing less from the Tories, but for the Labour party not to support this is just beyond belief.  The sooner we can disassociate ourselves from this garbage heap the better.

just reading about it,shocking stuff from the tories

[Rugster]

Disgusting

[Sooky]

The Tories are putting through their own legislation (I think possibly agreeing with a LD peer amendment) with better safeguards to ensure a blanket pardon on gay men doesn't mean that crimes that are still illegal, such as sex with minors or non-consensual sex, are pardoned at the same time.

This was a manifesto commitment by the Tories and they support this just as much as the rest, but the PMB was poorly written.

It's actually quite shameful, as I see many people on Twitter doing, suggesting that the party is somehow against pardoning gay men convicted under gross indecency.

[Redstarstranraer]

42 minutes ago, Sooky said:

The Tories are putting through their own legislation (I think possibly agreeing with a LD peer amendment) with better safeguards to ensure a blanket pardon on gay men doesn't mean that crimes that are still illegal, such as sex with minors or non-consensual sex, are pardoned at the same time.

This was a manifesto commitment by the Tories and they support this just as much as the rest, but the PMB was poorly written.

 

It's actually quite shameful, as I see many people on Twitter doing, suggesting that the party is somehow against pardoning gay men convicted under gross indecency.

 

As I understand it the bill that was put forward today explicitly stated that:

"nothing in this act is to be interpreted as disregarding convictions for conduct or behaviour that is unlawful on the date of the bill's publication".

The BBC have reported that:

The bill is only intended to set aside convictions made under:

• Section 12 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 (buggery),
• Section 13 of that Act (gross indecency between men),
• Section 32 of that Act (solicitation by men), or
• Section 61 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 or section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885

And it would only do so under the conditions that:

• The other person involved at the time the act was committed was a consenting partner aged sixteen or above.
• The act wouldn't constitute an offence under section 71 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (sexual activity in a public lavatory)
• The act in question wouldn't still be illegal for any other reason.

Therefore anybody convicted of something that would still be a criminal offence today would not have been pardoned, hence this argument being forward by the Tories that this was why they could not support it seems disingenuous at best.  John Nicolson repeatedly stressed that nobody would be pardoned for a sexual offence that was still a crime today.  Gyimah was still claiming at the dispatch box this would lead to those convicted of assaulting or molesting minors being potentially pardoned and thus able to work in schools, which seems both factually incorrect and horribly lurid, misleading language.  

No idea why the Tories failed to support this and decided to kill it off.  It appears from reports that they will only support a bill that issues posthumous pardons, rather than the defeated bill which would have extended pardons to all those who had been convicted on the basis of being gay including the living.  Quite why the Tories don't apparently want to pardon those who are still alive I can't begin to fathom.  It does also seem they didn't want to support this bill because they themselves hadn't drafted it.

As to the idea the bill was poorly-drafted, I believe Stewart McDonald made a good intervention when he asked what is parliament for if not the scrutiny and amendment of legislation?  If the Tories had amendments in mind they believed this legislation required why not let it pass to the next stage and debate them?

 

[Cream Cheese]

The tories have a history of protecting their own.

[williemillersmoustache]

2 hours ago, Sooky said:

The Tories are putting through their own legislation (I think possibly agreeing with a LD peer amendment) with better safeguards to ensure a blanket pardon on gay men doesn't mean that crimes that are still illegal, such as sex with minors or non-consensual sex, are pardoned at the same time.

This was a manifesto commitment by the Tories and they support this just as much as the rest, but the PMB was poorly written.

 

It's actually quite shameful, as I see many people on Twitter doing, suggesting that the party is somehow against pardoning gay men convicted under gross indecency.

 

They'll get the option to apply to be disregarded, what you wrote up there is ignorant, ill informed shite.  Just so you're clear.

[WaffenThinMint]

10 hours ago, Alert Mongoose said:

I'm not sure you can use that result as a barometer of opinion given the circumstances.

Poppycock - for a by-election under such emotive circumstances and the ludicrous Princess Di style beatification by the media of Jo Cox (including the inevitable "Do it for Jo" - vomit!) the turn out was a complete disaster all round, so it's pretty much a perfect indication of the state of Britain's far right just now.

Indeed, if anything they ought to have done a lot better from those wanting to register a "f**k you!" to being morally clubbed into the seat being given to the Labour candidate for no other reason than being of the same party as the murder victim (pity Labour weren't quite so understanding over the by-elections caused by the murders of Ian Gow or Sir Anthony Berry...)

By-elections are also traditionally the one time the minor parties can punch well above their weight, & seats where the other main parties are standing aside are an open goal for them to acquire a morale boosting saved deposit & the credibility it brings (see Haltenprice & Howden 2008, which gave the English Democrats their first saved deposit, despite a record number of candidates to split the protest vote).

Despite all this, they all had an absolute 'mare of an election, where even a veteran candidate like Richard Edmonds got the sort of vote that would have made a Loony Party candidate blush. They're f**ked.

5 hours ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

Who were the 87 who voted for that Nazi w****r Edmonds? Even the NF loyalists hate the b*****d.

Got to say that was particularly satisfying, especially as he came behind the two independent UKIP candidates Waqas Ali Khan and Henry Mayhew - typical of the c**t that he didn't give us the satisfaction of seeing him seethe & bottled out of the result, probably because he was in some pub somewhere with the rest of his loser mates saying that it was all one big Judeo-Masonic Communist Homosexual Martian conspiracy... oh hang on a minute, was that Richard Edmonds or was it Donald Trump? Getting hard to keep track nowadays.

[jmothecat]

Absolute disaster for the far right. Great to see. f**k them.

[WaffenThinMint]

4 minutes ago, jmothecat said:

Absolute disaster for the far right. Great to see. f**k them.

But... but... but... but the BNP has just taken control of Heybridge Parish Council! This is how Nazi Germany all started! We must all descend on Heybridge at once waving yellow lollipops & tell them how racist & fascist they are for voting in... oh hang on, no one stands in Parish Council elections under party tickets, do they? In fact, most are elected unopposed because most don't care a flying f**k who's in charge of the bus shelters & community notice boards.

To be fair the Heybridge lot appear to be using the BNP as a flag of convenience & seem to have more in common with the old closet greens/Nimbys that used to find a home in the Tories back in the day their local branches had more autonomy.

The English Town & Parish Councils throw up all sorts of anomalies like this such as Bridlington being run by the Social Democratic Party decades after Owen & co called it a day. You get someone with a bit of a personality (or who at least pisses off enough people in the "big" parties locally to everyone's amusements) standing for some bunch of no-hopers, the local authorities encourage them to stand for the Parish/Town/Village Council because they need enough members for meetings to be quorate, & occasionally they manage to get their mates or family to join in - before you know it, Little Buttock On The Rise is being "run" by the Blowjobs On The NHS Party. At least that's slightly better than our own community councils, which appear to be exclusively run by professional alcoholics.

[Alert Mongoose]

Absolute disaster for the far right. Great to see. f**k them.

I thought the Labour candidate won?

[pandarilla]

But... but... but... but the BNP has just taken control of Heybridge Parish Council! This is how Nazi Germany all started! We must all descend on Heybridge at once waving yellow lollipops & tell them how racist & fascist they are for voting in... oh hang on, no one stands in Parish Council elections under party tickets, do they? In fact, most are elected unopposed because most don't care a flying f**k who's in charge of the bus shelters & community notice boards.

To be fair the Heybridge lot appear to be using the BNP as a flag of convenience & seem to have more in common with the old closet greens/Nimbys that used to find a home in the Tories back in the day their local branches had more autonomy.

The English Town & Parish Councils throw up all sorts of anomalies like this such as Bridlington being run by the Social Democratic Party decades after Owen & co called it a day. You get someone with a bit of a personality (or who at least pisses off enough people in the "big" parties locally to everyone's amusements) standing for some bunch of no-hopers, the local authorities encourage them to stand for the Parish/Town/Village Council because they need enough members for meetings to be quorate, & occasionally they manage to get their mates or family to join in - before you know it, Little Buttock On The Rise is being "run" by the Blowjobs On The NHS Party. At least that's slightly better than our own community councils, which appear to be exclusively run by professional alcoholics.

You seem a little obsessed by this topic. What's the deal chief?