Brexit discussion thread X (Please read OP before posting)

Cork Boy 53

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

So lying to the monarch is treason. And the current Home Secretary, Pritti Patel, used to be in favour of capital punishment (as was Gove). I must check out Paddy Power's odds on Johnson being beheaded.

Since you mention it, up to the 19th century the penalty for treason was hanging drawing and quartering for men or burning at the stake for women. It was later replaced by hanging until dead and since 1998 the maximum sentence has been life imprisonment.

Tell me how

Strazdas wrote: »

A panelist on Newsnight makes the very good point that if the SC overturns the Scottish result, it will play out extremely badly in Scotland.

Haven't various bodies from across the UK entered submissions to the SC ahead of it's ruling next week.

I think if it is overturned, it will play out badly by all who think Boris was pulling a fast one. As someone said on the thread this morning, you can already write the editorials for both sides irrespective of what way the ruling goes.

They obviously know it is going to receive a lot of attention as they have increased the number of judges on the panel to from 9 to 11.

Strazdas

murphaph wrote: »

If the SC confirms the Court of Session judgement then nobody needs to recall parliament. It will have never been prorogued and will thus be still sitting. That is essentially what the Court of Session ruled. MPs would just need to turn up.

It's more of a courtesy to the SC that MPs are waiting before retaking their seats I believe.

I was watching that Rise of the Nazis documentary this evening. It's shocking just how fast (matter of months) Germany went from liberal democracy to police state dictatorship. Crucial to this was infiltrating the criminal justice system. The independence of the judiciary is absolutely critical. The attacks on these judges are Nazi in nature. Nobody should be under any other illusions.

I watched that episode only last night. The parallels with Johnson are very striking. Germany went from being a democracy to a dictatorship in the space of six months. The usual right wing authoritarian tactics : simply bypass the parliament, undermine the judiciary and introduce emergency powers and claim you are "doing it in the national interest".

Zubeneschamali

Misconduct in public office carries a sentence up to life imprisonment.

Capt'n Midnight

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Misconduct in public office carries a sentence up to life imprisonment.

But thanks to a European Court of Human Rights ruling the UK can still sentence people to a "whole of life" sentence, because they could be released by the Justice Secretary in exceptional circumstances.

Hermy

Inquitus wrote: »

Nearly 100,000 posts on this Brexit thread and we are still none the wiser, quite breathtaking, the incomptence, the cluelessness, the number of PM's, the now minority government.

Well I must admit to being a little bit wiser for the near 100k posts.

When I voted to reject Nice and Lisbon twice, I was oblivious as to how little I really knew about the EU.

Since Brexit my ignorance and my opinion of the EU has changed significantly and much of that is down to these ongoing threads.

So as bewildering as Brexit has been and continues to be I have also found it to be informative in equal measure.

Professor Moriarty

Strazdas wrote: »

I watched that episode only last night. The parallels with Johnson are very striking. Germany went from being a democracy to a dictatorship in the space of six months. The usual right wing authoritarian tactics : simply bypass the parliament, undermine the judiciary and introduce emergency powers and claim you are "doing it in the national interest".

It's an excellent series and, though the strategy may be less blatant, the similarities are obvious and concerning.

Akrasia

Strazdas wrote: »

I watched that episode only last night. The parallels with Johnson are very striking. Germany went from being a democracy to a dictatorship in the space of six months. The usual right wing authoritarian tactics : simply bypass the parliament, undermine the judiciary and introduce emergency powers and claim you are "doing it in the national interest".

For the last few weeks I've noticed that after 9pm, the main UK terresterial channels have been either news/politics, reality fluff, WW2 documentaries

Given that most of the politics is dominated by pro brexit politicians and talking heads, and most of the documentaries have been about 'the rise of hitler' It's a striking contrast. And worst of all, is that loads of brexit voters will watch the 'rise of hitler' documentaries and think thoughts like 'Britain was at it's best when it was fighting the germans'
Or, 'the EU is like the third reich'

Instead of looking at their own political system today and how closely it compares with the german zeitgeist just prior to the rise of National Socialism.

When you turn on LBC you hear a lot of extremely earnest callers repeating soundbytes as though they were their own original thoughts. That's what propaganda does. It's the art of repeating lies in such a way as they are adopted as truths.

When you're someone like Nick Ferarri, and you have a token balance expert guest on at 9am who explains that the original yellowhammer document described itself as the 'base scenario' and he accepts their point, and then he allows caller after caller to refer to it as the 'worst case scenario' without correcting them.... then you know that they are just interested in promoting a propaganda.

Strazdas

Akrasia wrote: »

For the last few weeks I've noticed that after 9pm, the main UK terresterial channels have been either news/politics, reality fluff, WW2 documentaries

Given that most of the politics is dominated by pro brexit politicians and talking heads, and most of the documentaries have been about 'the rise of hitler' It's a striking contrast. And worst of all, is that loads of brexit voters will watch the 'rise of hitler' documentaries and think thoughts like 'Britain was at it's best when it was fighting the germans'
Or, 'the EU is like the third reich'

Instead of looking at their own political system today and how closely it compares with the german zeitgeist just prior to the rise of National Socialism.

When you turn on LBC you hear a lot of extremely earnest callers repeating soundbytes as though they were their own original thoughts. That's what propaganda does. It's the art of repeating lies in such a way as they are adopted as truths.

When you're someone like Nick Ferarri, and you have a token balance expert guest on at 9am who explains that the original yellowhammer document described itself as the 'base scenario' and he accepts their point, and then he allows caller after caller to refer to it as the 'worst case scenario' without correcting them.... then you know that they are just interested in promoting a propaganda.

I would hazard a guess that many / most Brexit voters would be quite happy to live in a semi democratic / semi authoritarian state under Johnson.

Their paying lip service to "democracy" is a joke basically. They have many authoritarian instincts and make Conservative supporters of 20 years ago look like moderates and liberals. They seem to have become very radicalised by Brexit.

Borderhopper

Strazdas wrote: »

Akrasia wrote: »

For the last few weeks I've noticed that after 9pm, the main UK terresterial channels have been either news/politics, reality fluff, WW2 documentaries

Given that most of the politics is dominated by pro brexit politicians and talking heads, and most of the documentaries have been about 'the rise of hitler' It's a striking contrast. And worst of all, is that loads of brexit voters will watch the 'rise of hitler' documentaries and think thoughts like 'Britain was at it's best when it was fighting the germans'
Or, 'the EU is like the third reich'

Instead of looking at their own political system today and how closely it compares with the german zeitgeist just prior to the rise of National Socialism.

When you turn on LBC you hear a lot of extremely earnest callers repeating soundbytes as though they were their own original thoughts. That's what propaganda does. It's the art of repeating lies in such a way as they are adopted as truths.

When you're someone like Nick Ferarri, and you have a token balance expert guest on at 9am who explains that the original yellowhammer document described itself as the 'base scenario' and he accepts their point, and then he allows caller after caller to refer to it as the 'worst case scenario' without correcting them.... then you know that they are just interested in promoting a propaganda.

I would hazard a guess that many / most Brexit voters would be quite happy to live in a semi democratic / semi authoritarian state under Johnson.

Their paying lip service to "democracy" is a joke basically. They have many authoritarian instincts and make Conservative supporters of 20 years ago look like moderates and liberals. They seem to have become very radicalised by Brexit.

Ah yes, people are very much in favor of restricting civil liberties to get the political scenario they want, as long as it’s the civil liberties of those they don’t like.

No one who votes for the leopards eating peoples faces party ever expects the leopard to eat their face.

Alan_P

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

But thanks to an EU ruling the UK can still sentence people to a "whole of life" sentence, because they could be released by the Justice Secretary in exceptional circumstances.

Not an EU ruling. The European Court of Human Rights is an agency of the Council of Europe, which was setup post WW2 and is solely concerned with the protection of human rights (Ireland were founder members, BTW).

You'll frequently find Brexiteers arguing for Brexit because of ECHR rulings they don't like, which is about as logical as arguing for Brexit based on US Supreme Court rulings.

It seems likely the UK will remain a member of the COE and thus subject to the ECHR, btw, so it seems there are some transnational judicial regimes they are happy with.

Leroy42

That is the bit that gets me. Even if you accept that Yellowhammer is worst case rather than base, why are people not asking why Brexit even has the possibility of doing any of it?

Why aren't Johnson, Gove, JRM, IDS, Farage etc being asked where all this was during the ref campaign. Did they factor it in and who should pay for this?

Where has the, so far £8bn, funding of preparations come from and how much else will it cost.

There are millions that will be severely affected by any type of disruption and or price rises. Its amazing that an huge amount of the country is willing to so negatively affect so many others for their own ideology.

murphaph

Leroy42 wrote: »

That is the bit that gets me. Even if you accept that Yellowhammer is worst case rather than base, why are people not asking why Brexit even has the possibility of doing any of it?

Why aren't Johnson, Gove, JRM, IDS, Farage etc being asked where all this was during the ref campaign. Did they factor it in and who should pay for this?

Where has the, so far £8bn, funding of preparations come from and how much else will it cost.

There are millions that will be severely affected by any type of disruption and or price rises. Its amazing that an huge amount of the country is willing to so negatively affect so many others for their own ideology.

If your only source of "news" are "newspapers" that Wikipedia rejects as propaganda, then it's easy to be convinced that the whole civil service is in on "project fear".

Vast numbers of people simply don't believe these projections.

An Ciarraioch

Not sure if one could call it progress, but Sammy Wilson states that if Stormont remains mothballed, Westminster could provide the supervisory role:

https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/dup-s-brexit-backstop-alternative-sinn-fein-assembly-veto-will-not-block-progress-says-mp-1-9070379

CelticRambler

On that question of whether Yellowhammer is a "base" or "worst" case scenario, couldn't they be one and the same? Perhaps I've been out of the anglophone managementspeak sphere for too long, but I'd never heard the term "base case" until it was used in the context of the Yellowhammer revalation last month. Giving the UK govt the benefit of the doubt for once: if your starting point (i.e. base) for contingency planning is to assume the worst (which it should be) then we might be looking at a genuine example of some idiot in Whitehall using the wrong words earlier in the summer.

Obviously this doesn't excuse people like Andrea Leadsome arguing against publishing the information on the grounds that it might frighten people, and certainly doesn't excuse Theresa May from setting in motion a process that would take Britain to the edge of chaos ... but neither does it warrant any of the rest of us getting our knickers in a twist - especially as it's only a summary document anyway!

Professor Moriarty

murphaph wrote: »

If your only source of "news" are "newspapers" that Wikipedia rejects as propaganda, then it's easy to be convinced that the whole civil service is in on "project fear".

Vast numbers of people simply don't believe these projections.

The Tories are lying blatantly and rampantly. They ran an ad on Facebook quoting an article by the BBC about school funding. However, they changed a key fact in the headline of the article so that it read as if the Tories were ploughing money into schools whereas the article was actually highly critical.

beggars_bush

Hermy wrote: »

Well I must admit to being a little bit wiser for the near 100k posts.

When I voted to reject Nice and Lisbon twice, I was oblivious as to how little I really knew about the EU.

Since Brexit my ignorance and my opinion of the EU has changed significantly and much of that is down to these ongoing threads.

So as bewildering as Brexit has been and continues to be I have also found it to be informative in equal measure.

Yep
It has confirmed how entwined we are with the EU.

Which I'm fine with. Some very rational thinking people in the EU

Akrasia

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

The Tories are lying blatantly and rampantly. They ran an ad on Facebook quoting an article by the BBC about school funding. However, they changed a key fact in the headline of the article so that it read as if the Tories were ploughing money into schools whereas the article was actually highly critical.

From that article “Facebook confirmed that headlines can be altered when running ads on the platform.”

Wtf. Facebook, as if they weren’t already peddling enough nonsense, they allow advertisers to link to news sources and falsify the headlines (the only part of the story that most people bother to read)

beggars_bush

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

Not sure if one could call it progress, but Sammy Wilson states that if Stormont remains mothballed, Westminster could provide the supervisory role:

https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/dup-s-brexit-backstop-alternative-sinn-fein-assembly-veto-will-not-block-progress-says-mp-1-9070379

DUP would collapse all stormont governance overnight if they could

Borderhopper

beggars_bush wrote: »

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

Not sure if one could call it progress, but Sammy Wilson states that if Stormont remains mothballed, Westminster could provide the supervisory role:

https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/dup-s-brexit-backstop-alternative-sinn-fein-assembly-veto-will-not-block-progress-says-mp-1-9070379

DUP would collapse all stormont governance overnight if they could

You will find that, after a general election result that takes the DUP out of their current position of influence, they will do a 180 where direct rule isn’t acceptable and Stormont is the only show in town.

lawred2

Borderhopper wrote: »

You will find that, after a general election result that takes the DUP out of their current position of influence, they will do a 180 where direct rule isn’t acceptable and Stormont is the only show in town.

They have no position of influence any longer. Sure even with them the government is over twenty seats short of a majority.

Borderhopper

lawred2 wrote: »

Borderhopper wrote: »

You will find that, after a general election result that takes the DUP out of their current position of influence, they will do a 180 where direct rule isn’t acceptable and Stormont is the only show in town.

They have no position of influence any longer. Sure even with them the government is over twenty seats short of a majority.

At the moment. With the likelihood of a hung parliament high following a general election, the DUP may be in a similar position again. I think this would explain why they haven’t been jettisoned yet- they may yet be needed.

woohoo!!!

The DUP are the equivalent of FF, except even more pig headed.
Religious loons supporters, check.
Talk out of both sides of mouth, check.
Links to dodgy set ups and dodgy money, check.
Wrap the flag around them whenever needed, check.

No doubt they'd be horrified of their similarities but both assume that their truth is gospel, to keep out the other/enemy. Just as for FF, when the bubble bursts, the fall out will be spectacular.

Brilliant entertainment, awful political judgement.

A Shropshire Lad

Cameron deciding to cash in on Brexit with his book.

A Shropshire Lad

A Shropshire Lad wrote: »

Cameron deciding to cash in on Brexit with his book.

The article I read said all profits would go to charities.

woohoo!!!

Deleted User wrote: »

A Shropshire Lad wrote: »

Cameron deciding to cash in on Brexit with his book.

The article I read said all profits would go to charities.

That's fair enough. And no doubt the timing is uncomfortable for Johnson et al.

LeinsterDub

[Deleted User] wrote: »

The article I read said all profits would go to charities.

And the profits from the speaking appearances generated of the back of the book?

LeinsterDub

LeinsterDub wrote: »

And the profits from the speaking appearances generated of the back of the book?

Will go to him, I suppose. He's not a criminal whose story has been legally held as something that cannot make money.

The man made mistakes. He instigated this entire thing. But, it is what it is.. If he gives his book's profits to charity, that's good.

Sierra Oscar

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Will go to him, I suppose. He's not a criminal whose story has been legally held as something that cannot make money.

The man made mistakes. He instigated this entire thing. But, it is what it is.. If he gives his book's profits to charity, that's good.

I’m not entirely convinced it’s all that fair to just heap the blame for Brexit at Cameron’s feet.

A Brexit referendum was always on the horizon with or without Cameron. The divisions within the Conservative party on Europe had been building for decades and UKIP’s influence was growing. UKIP and the hardcore leavers would have gotten up to their usual dirty tricks with or without Cameron being PM.

I reckon it would be interesting to do a study looking at the rise of English nationalism in recent years and it’s association with the Monarchy. We’ve had an ever growing number of monarchy related celebrations over the last two decades and a major scaling up of events such as the Commonwealth games. The hosting of the London Olympics added to the sense of self-importance too and a nation ready to ‘go it alone’. Now in no way do I think the Monarchy is anti-Europe or anything like that, but I do think there has been consequences for English nationalism as a result of such events. I remember being in London for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and you could actually sense the old fogeys harping back to the ‘good old empire days’ at the time. Then you had that ridiculous ‘flotilla’ sailing up the Thames which Farage tried to replicate during the referendum. Madness altogether when you look back on it.

lawred2

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

I’m not entirely convinced it’s all that fair to just heap the blame for Brexit at Cameron’s feet.

A Brexit referendum was always on the horizon with or without Cameron. The divisions within the Conservative party on Europe had been building for decades and UKIP’s influence was growing. UKIP and the hardcore leavers would have gotten up to their usual dirty tricks with or without Cameron being PM.

I reckon it would be interesting to do a study looking at the rise of English nationalism in recent years and it’s association with the Monarchy. We’ve had an ever growing number of monarchy related celebrations over the last two decades and a major scaling up of events such as the Commonwealth games. Now in no way do I think the Monarchy is anti-Europe or anything like that, but I do think there has been consequences for English nationalism as a result of such events. I remember being in London for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and you could actually sense the old fogeys harping back to the ‘good old empire days’ at the time. Then you had that ridiculous ‘flotilla’ sailing up the Thames which Farage tried to replicate during the referendum. Madness altogether.

The whole annual exhibition of poppy fascism too..

Military demonstrations at sports events...

It's all gone a bit jingoistic, triumphalist and right wing really