UK General Discussion

[Insula Dei]

BTW, what's with the Falkland enthusiasm in the UK media? Any specific reason the temperature over those barren cliffs a hemisphere away is rising again? (Well, outside of the presence of a prince of the realm.)

[Insula Dei]

Would public support be behind UK military actions in the unlikely case of Argentinian aggression?

I find it somewhat amusing that either the British or the Argentinian populace should care about the islands, but in the Argentinian case I can at least see where the irridentist emotion would come from, in the UK case I honestly wonder why anyone would care about those islands at all. (Beyond some vague notion of patriotism).

[Insula Dei]

Wow, what a horrible week for the Tories! I wonder what the LibDem leadership is making of all this.

[Insula Dei]

Some late thoughts on the reshuffle: what strikes me about Clegg is that he somehow combines being fluent in Dutch, being the leader of a party that needs coalitions to ever be in government, and really, really sucking at coalition politics. No continental junior coalition party leader would allow Cameron to walk over him as he's doing.

The Lib Dems have allowed a reshuffle that significantly tilted the coalition to the right without even seeming to have been really consulted in the matter. Clegg should have told Cameron that demoting Clarke and promoting Hunt was out of the question. The Lib Dems really seem to have zero impact on coalition policy.Same thing when Cameron took the BSkyB deal away from Cable, Clegg should never ever have allowed anything of the sort.

If I were a Lib Dem I'd start to hope someone would have the guts to at least force Ineptness Incarnate away from the party leadership before the now almost inevitable 2015 massacre.

[Insula Dei]

10 minutes into the speech and Ed is, dare I say it, actually doing quite well.

Yeah, pretty good speech.

[Insula Dei]

Soooooo,..., Grant Shapps no future Tory Leader after all?

[Insula Dei]

lol, British libel laws.

[Insula Dei]

I remember the Dutroux Period over here, when there were a lot of stories about 'sex and murder' parties involving everbody from the Prime Minister to the Archbishop. If that's the way the Saville story is headed across the Channel, that'd be...an interesting study in media hysteria vs. libel laws.

[Insula Dei]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/video/2012/nov/08/david-cameron-this-morning-video

Gotta give credit where credit's due: Cameron is handling this whole mess quite well.

[Insula Dei]

So, Autumn Statement. Any reactions?

Will we see the Tories fall below 30 in polls over the next 2 weeks or so?

[Insula Dei]

Obviously the main news story of the day is the death of Sir Patrick Moore.

RIP.

The last two days I've been without internet so this is the first I've heard of it. Bizarrely I remember thinking about him on Saturday and wondering if he was still alive... now I know.

It's funny you should say that (well, 'funny'), since it was only this Saturday that I last saw Moore at work in The Sky At Night and spend quite a bit of time thinking 'Wow, Patrick Moore is really in a bad way these days.'

[Insula Dei]

Media round here have picked up on the referendum story, and from what I'm hearing they're mostly going on about how this makes Cameron look like a weak and ineffectual leader, afraid of his own shadow and lacking the courage to take decisive action on his own. 'If you want out, just say so.'-sort of thing. Especially that he doesn't want a referendum before 2015 doesn't go down too well. (Pretty fair assesment, I'd say)

[Insula Dei]

Huhne's text messages to his son (and the replies!) make for chilling reading. Makes you feel sorry for the guy.

[Insula Dei]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/feb/14/harold-wilson-roy-hattersley-wrong-about

Thoughts?

[Insula Dei]

The cynic in you would be wrong. Rome doesn't really care about the toying around with slightly unorthodox positions on the celibate by transalpine bishops.

[Insula Dei]

Nice article about something I knew nothing about:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n05/michael-grayshott/short-cuts

[Insula Dei]

Are you even aware of what that kind of language is actually code for?

Lisping marxist millionaires hold a lot of important positions in society. It's important we stay aware of this.

[Insula Dei]

I seem to recall people being very enthusiastic about Brown's Citizens UK speech (?) a couple of day before the 2010 election.