UK General Discussion

[afleitch]

I take it the Mail is trying to start a moral panic again?

[afleitch]

Why won't someone think of the children?

Well obviously parents don't. It's up to them to look out for what their teenage son is getting up to, whether it's restricting internet access in 2012 or throwing dirty mags in the bin in 1992. Teenagers will always find it though

[afleitch]

Just for some perspective on Lord Reform, if we had the Clegg plan, Senators elected during the 1997 Labour landslide would only just be leaving office today.

At least we're doing something about it, rather than stuffing the Lords with peers

[afleitch]

I do think the Lords proposal is interesting. I'd prefer it to be 100% elected, not 80% elected and would rather the Bishops be booted. They seem to be trying to go for a pre 2004 style French Senate which makes sense if you want to create a neutered upper house almost from scratch.

The Lords is to be elected in 3rds, every 5 years with members having one 15 year term. As a result, it will probably not be a place in which to build a career. The problem is though, if it becomes a carehome for old politicians the number of by-elections would be enormous. Given that the proposals suggest large STV constituencies so that Scotland for example would be one constituency, that means setting up polling stations nationwide to fill one seat.

Having 5-7 elected per seat every 5 years means that smaller (read: crazy) parties would have a chance to get in. 3-4 per seat would mean smaller more manageable seats and less crazies.

[afleitch]

I do think the Lords proposal is interesting. I'd prefer it to be 100% elected, not 80% elected and would rather the Bishops be booted. They seem to be trying to go for a pre 2004 style French Senate which makes sense if you want to create a neutered upper house almost from scratch.

Britain already has a neutered upper house, so a reform that recreates one makes no sense. Not that I'd expect the current government - or a Labour majority government for that matter - to come up with anything else.

I would agree with you. However the Lords could be kept down by the Commons in the era of suffrage on the basis that it was illegitimate and unelected. If you start electing members to a body then the balance of power can shift. So you just make sure you set out the ground rules for what the Lords can do (and more importantly what it can never do) before you then consider trivial matters like how to populate it.

[afleitch]

Missed this one, but ScotsLab have backed away from free tuition fees. Crap.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9261125/Johann-Lamont-Free-university-education-in-Scotland-is-holding-back-youngsters.html

They never really did support free tuition. UK Labour introduced tuition fees and it was the Lib Dems who twisted their arm in 1999 as part of the coalition deal. Post 2007, they opposed the SNP's abolition of the graduate endowment (which saved students an extra £2000) and then in 2010 decided they now supported free tuition, claimed the SNP were going to introduce fees and now two years later have decided fees are a good thing and that the SNP should introduce them.

[afleitch]

Newsnight is on in fifteen minutes. Oddly for something driven by the internet, this has the feel of an old-fashioned television event. A rather tasteless one, mind.

No one was mentioned of course. No doubt the chairman put a stop to it. It is not constructive to name any names of course, we shouldn't make this into a public 'referendum' less it resonate all the way to Australia.

[afleitch]

Not understanding the "gay witch hunt" comment...

There's a (really quite vile) homophobic tendency - one that isn't as common as it used to be, though it's still around - to assert that all gay men are child abusers.

Which is why I was glad he brought it up. A lot of these gossip sites have that tendency and have 'named' swathes of closeted MP's and political bigwigs.

[afleitch]

Not quite sure what's gonna come of this...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/9685693/Conservatives-hire-Boriss-campaign-guru-for-2015-election.html

A majority.

[afleitch]

Pleased with the capping of benefits rises to 1%. Public Sector workers, particularly those in HMRC and DWP who deal with benefit claimants haven't even had a pay rise.

[afleitch]

I think this final collective hissy fit will be the death knell for 'gay panic' politics in the UK so I will enjoy it for the spectacle that it is. The draft bill is being published in Scotland today. The SNP are keen to be first through the door with this.

[afleitch]

Things relating to a certain issue have taken a turn for the surreal:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/dec/13/anglican-church-protests-gay-marriage-ban

First of all it's a bluff. Indeed it's such an obvious bluff I'm suprised at the reaction to it.

There is almost no chance this particular caveat will be in the final bill and is not something the cabinet supports. Bear in mind that there is in all likelyhood a comfortable cross party majority for full equal marriage legislation. The law has already recently been amended to allow civil unions in religious buildings (which may also comprise a seperate religious blessing) and no restriction was placed on the CofE in that amendment.

This move is designed to force the CofE's hand on how it would internally administer same sex marriage requests, if at all. Why? Because that has been the underlying problem with the CofE, the CofW and indeed the Episcopalian Church in Scotland (and the Church of Scotland too) The mainstream churches have either been slow, or have refused to deal internally with 'the gays' not only as society has moved on, but the law has moved on too. I work fairly closely with the 'Faith in Marriage' equal marriage campaign in Scotland and there are sizeable minorities, possibly even majorities in favour of equal marriage in many of the presbyterys or churches. However the churches on the whole have had to oppose same sex marriage in their response to the consultation because if it becomes a reality it forces them to confront the issue head on and doing so opens them up to splits and arguments they would rather face in their own time.

The problem is, as the discussion over female bishops has shown 'in their own time' has taken fourteen years without a satisfactory conclusion. Civil law simply cannot wait while the established churches hum and haw. Everyone knows, opponents of the measure especially, that no church will ever be forced to marry people they do not want to marry and this presently doesn't happen anyway (see the Catholic Church and divorce) but it's all they have left and it's helpful to keep pushing the point because it sort of sounds like it 'might be true.' And as we all know on matters LGBT in the Commons in years past, things that sound like they might be true are often used to try and stall legislation. That's the same rhetoric we heard from the backbenchers and from CofE spokesmen early this week.

So the bluff was called; put in this 'quadruple lock' because using the above tactic it looks to the public like it's something the CofE 'might have wanted' which as Ben Bradshaw says in the article, makes the Church of England look much more reactionary and unreasonable than it actually is.

So now what? Well if the CofE and CofW think a complete bar is unreasonable, they now have to argue why, in light of things, same sex marriage should in fact not be completely barred when applied to Anglican churches. Cue uncomfortable disussions and submissions within the churches and highlighting again the fact that all marriage is 'civil' which is exactly what proponents of equal marriage have wanted.

[afleitch]

Andrew Mitchell stitched up?

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/18/andrew-mitchell-downing-street-police-plebgate-_n_2324257.html?1355861558

[afleitch]

I think next Christmas I might record a charity single for the Heysel disaster...

[afleitch]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9771841/TV-debates-could-take-place-a-year-before-election-day.html

Funny how it seems to, so far, only be the coalition parties worried about the debates.

Miliband not worried? Thurely thome mithtake?

[afleitch]

Operation Yewtree latest: Jim Davidson arrested.

Why is it everyone I've ever disliked get's arrested? What are the chances!

[afleitch]

The most disgusting thing about that is describing it as "brave."

As it isn't means tested everyone gets it. That includes pensioners with high disposable incomes (including those retired and living in Spain for example) It was introduced by Labour in part to combat fuel poverty a problem that the energy companies themselves have committed £4bn to providing free heat insulation, 20% savings and payment plans.

This year, people born in 1953 will turn 60s. We have a cash and asset wealthy population of baby-boomers about to retire. My dad turns 60 this year, is retired and has a monthly disposable income twice as high as I do and will be given a £200 bonus every year which he has said himself he doesn't need and certainly won't be needed to pay his gas and electricity bills. It's not an appropriate use of public funds.

Of course, given that the over 60's and the soon to be 60's are probably the largest voting block, untested freebies thrown to their parents generation who often were dirt poor as pensioners will no doubt continue

[afleitch]

The most disgusting thing about that is describing it as "brave."

As it isn't means tested everyone gets it. That includes pensioners with high disposable incomes (including those retired and living in Spain for example) It was introduced by Labour in part to combat fuel poverty a problem that the energy companies themselves have committed £4bn to providing free heat insulation, 20% savings and payment plans.

This year, people born in 1953 will turn 60s. We have a cash and asset wealthy population of baby-boomers about to retire. My dad turns 60 this year, is retired and has a monthly disposable income twice as high as I do and will be given a £200 bonus every year which he has said himself he doesn't need and certainly won't be needed to pay his gas and electricity bills. It's not an appropriate use of public funds.

Of course, given that the over 60's and the soon to be 60's are probably the largest voting block, untested freebies thrown to their parents generation who often were dirt poor as pensioners will no doubt continue

The Tories should've been open about it at the last election then.

Well it's a Lib Dem proposal. I don't see how the Tories could be open about a policy another party has put forward

[afleitch]

Just came across this from last month. Don't understand why Scottish Labour is so crap.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-20755329

Do you think that's crap because you disagree with her view that free university leads to lower standards or do you think they are crap because they are embracing more right wing views?

They are crap because they send their 'best' down to Westminster and leave their second rate, ex councillors or union patsies to harangue the Scottish people bleating on about the 'Tories at Westminster' in a Scottish election until people's ears bleed. They are technocratic political scabs who are not fit to hold office in Scotland again.

[afleitch]

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/01/07/boris-johnson-child-benefit-_n_2423292.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

The fact he's the most popular politician in the country makes me sick.

Well it's certainly not going to be Ed now is it He's referring of course to the axing of child benefit for wealthy families; you know, those who earn two to three times the average wage who are still entitled to claim it. He admits himself he and his wife had received nearly £50,000 over the past twenty years which probably went on his ski-ing holidays.

If he called it an "absurd system whereby low-income people paid in their taxes for richer families to receive this Mussolini-like reward for procreation", then I fully agree with him, because that's exactly what it is. I know of a Tory in my local association who think's it's crazy for him to receive it but spends it on his daughter's pony lessons.

[afleitch]

What? Did you read my post, or the article for that matter.

[afleitch]

Alasdair Milne, a career BBC bureaucrat who's tenure as Director General in the 1980s was cut short for political reasons, has died at the age of 82.

Which perhaps we can be thankful for given his views on women at the BBC.

[afleitch]

UKIP sacked their youth chair because of his support for gay marriage, which runs contrary to UKIP's blatant attempt at winning votes off of a moral panic policy.

[afleitch]

Andrew Marr has had a stroke :/

[afleitch]

If this coalition's a "Ronseal Deal", I must assume that 'the tin' isn't the manifesto of The Conservative Party or the Liberal Democrats then.

No, it's the Coalition Agreement.

"Does what it says on the tin." What parts of the coalition agreement did they tell the electorate about again?

All of it. It was published in hard copy and on-line forms upon its signing. It  couldn't be made available before it was written, after all.

Sorry, I guess I'll have to clarify what I meant to make it a bit more obvious, when were the electorate given a chance to democratically elect a government based on such a coalition agreement?

No. Because obviously, no agreement on a coalition could be made because one didn't need to be formed until after the election. Labour's whoring just didn't work, and a coalition with the Conservatives was formed. That's how politics works Isn't it fun!