DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

Someones been reading the Protocols of the Elders of Cowdenbeath.

Ha ha.

Once upon a time, for example, I barely noticed whether a British politician was Scottish, but once six geldings and a coach with four horses were dispatched to bring the king to England and James left Edinburgh for his month-long journey through his new kingdom through the beautiful spring weather, and all the prisoners in Newcastle were released except those accused of "treason, murther and papistrie", and all those gaoled for debt had their debts paid off, and in York a conduit ran all day with white wine and claret and at Worksop the king was entertained by "excellent, soule-ravishing musique" by the Earl of Shrewsbury, I became uneasy.

i wd Excelsior that but, y'know, pearls and swine

The CPS initially said charges should not be brought against MacFarlane because the remarks did not cause the man harassment, distress or alarm.

I'm fairly sure that the test isn't whether the words caused distress, etc, but whether they were likely to. Whether he was alarmed isn't really the point. It's difficult, going on the facts given, to see how that decision could have been reached.

Email and web monitoring laws 'to be brought in soon'

Lord Carlile, the former official reviewer of terrorism legislation, said that "having come into government, the coalition parties have realised this kind of material has potential for saving lives, preventing serious crime and helping people to avoid becoming victims of serious crime".

So stick your civil liberties up yer arse. Vote Lib Dem.

http://www.karoo.co.uk/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=N0193991333956312495A&category=UK

shd be a separate thread for "things that cost the UK economy billions according to Friedmanite scumbags". i wd wish actual harm on these people but hey i'm on holiday so fuck 'em.

Scrapping public holidays could add £18 billion to the nation's annual economic output, according to a think-tank.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research said each bank holiday costs the United Kingdom economy in the region of £2 billion.

Too much annual leave clearly the problem here.

Denmark 39.5
Austria 38
Sweden 36
Slovakia 35
Luxembourg 35
France 35
Germany 34-39
Portugal 34
Czech Republic 33
Slovenia 33
Italy 32
Spain 32
Greece 32
Poland 31
Finland 31
Bulgaria 31
Belgium 30
Hungary 30
Romania 30
Ireland 29
Netherlands 28-29
UK 28

If we scrapped weekends we could add 200 billion more!

the sheer nebulousness of anything quality of life related "losing" the "economy" money is a nice lens, you can look back thru it and see straight into the insect brains of the economists who wish they ran the government

Short-sighted too as i'm fairly sure at-work productivity would increase if people didn't hate their fucking bosses / jobs so much.

And this 'research' gets wheeled out every bank holiday...

scrapping them? hell we get loads too few as it is. Spain has 13! i always thought a great sweetener to put in a pre-election manifesto would be to offer more public holidays. i mean if party X were going to give you 3 more Bank Holidays that'd be such a big deal in the UK. there should at least a couple more in Autumn/ Winter.

there shd be a few more. i guess the subtext of the "taking holidays will not make us the economic master race" guys' report is that they want the existing holidays spread out thru autumn and winter but tbh let's have them when there's at least the possibility of sunshine and warmness?

We should move the late May one to the end of June / start of July

I suspect what they really want is to kill Mayday, as proposed last year. Too much association with radicalism. Well, they can fuck right off.

bank holidays were invented or codified by a victorian banker iirc

nv is apt with 'insect brains of the economists', fuck all those bawheid dorks, esp the selfconsciously reasonable and modest behavioural economists that the restoration enjoys

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/georgeosborne/9194558/George-Osborne-Im-going-after-the-wealthy-tax-dodgers.html

of course you're 'shocked'.
we believe you george.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/19/metropolitan-police-accused-racism-firefighter

hey, the chief super said that half the allegations of racism against the Met were raised by police officers so obv they've got this shit sorted

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17815769

never thought I'd find myself agreeing with Nadine Dorries in any way!

she's been running with this line for a while now hasn't she? makes total sense that she's embracing the ~maverick backbencher~ role (and all she;s doing is aligning herself with the tory grassroots)

passion to want to understand the lives of others
passion to want to understand the lives of others
passion to want to understand the lives of others
passion to want to understand the lives of others
passion to want to understand the lives of others

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2133369/Eric-Joyce-gives-astonishing-interview-MP-youll-read.html

somewhat worrying that this twitchy psycho became a major and then a labour mp

Trainspotting sequel where Begbie's done pretty well for himself.

Recent Events

Unhappily, I resigned from the Labour Party in March this year but will continue my work in the House of Commons, as an Independent Member of Parliament for Falkirk. Readers should note that my commitment to Labour values is still the same and my work in Parliament and in Falkirk continues in much the same way, allowing for some minor adjustments in my priorities and with a few less party political constraints.

O_O that interview

not saying this kind of guy flags up the farce of representative democracy, just saying

on a related note, i find that now the prospect of house of lords reform is upon us, the idea of another elected chamber full of career politicians fills me with dread

yes. terrible as the Lords is, i'm willing to believe that a Lords as envisioned by the Commons wd be even more terrible.

considered re-starting a "representative democracy is the shabby veneer on the rotten edifice of capitalist power" thread but what's the point? cynics gonna cynic, nihilists gonna despair, apologists for this fucking shambling death factory we call the free world gonna apologise

(inspired by re-reading previous discussions of the political process rather than thinking too hard about the boneheaded thug upthread)

it's terrible now in the sense of being a ludicrous oddity that no one takes seriously and doesn't actually wield that much power.

also i do feel it's important that there's somewhere in the legislature that doesn't have to pander to the electorate

if you mean "making lowest common denominator appeals to achieve a 'majority'" then yeah.

this is biggest part of the problem tho, how do you have a second tier of government that has real checks and balances on the lower tier, isn't an old people's version of the lower tier, and still has some democratic accountability/doesn't just represent the most powerful vested interests in the country?

apart from forbidding membership of the existing political parties in the upper house

also how do you "represent" a group of people whose interests - conscious and unconscious - are radically opposed to each other?

The other problem is how you have all those things and still maintain it has 2% of the power / legitimacy of the Commons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Law_of_Oligarchy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17821018

"It can't be right to have people able on housing benefit to live in streets and homes that hard-working people are unable to live in themselves."

1. fuuuuuuck youuuuuu shapps
2.'hard working' and 'on housing benefit' are not mutually exclusive
3. you know what's really not right? a council unable to house people because there's fuck all social housing and no control on private rents

impossible to reconcile the housing concept of both 'basic right' and 'marketable asset', innit.

this is biggest part of the problem tho, how do you have a second tier of government that has real checks and balances on the lower tier, isn't an old people's version of the lower tier, and still has some democratic accountability/doesn't just represent the most powerful vested interests in the country?

idk how important democratic accountability is in a second chamber - it's ideally meant to be a check ON the flaws of representative democracy. the trouble is how you balance that with having some form of credible composition

I don't see why we can't have an elected second chamber, just like every other representative democracy on earth.

we're getting rid of ours, tbf

well not so much democratic accountability but representation of sections of society that need representation, i.e. not those sections that already have all the power.

of course the problem for me is that the whole edifice is a sham, but it's interesting to think about what an upper chamber with actual teeth cd be if it wasn't just a mirror of the lower chamber.

arguably slightly less of a sham if you remove hereditary peers, retired MPs from the lower house, QCs, bishops etc. The problem is not replacing them with identikit career politicians. Wild ideas: ban party affiliation? Elect using full PR?

Appoint people at random like jury duty, idk.

i said ban party affiliation upthread, i'm all for that. the major parties are the biggest barrier to democracy within the system as it exists.

of course if you banned them then analogous structures wd probly coalesce within 5 years, see the Iron Law of Oligarchy article i posted.

sorry, didn't see that re. party affiliation. Agreed that oligarchy is an iron law, but political structures can be devised to ameliorate oligarchy to a greater or lesser extent- e.g. Rawls' veil of ignorance (admittedly a thought experiment rather than a working model).

xp jury service idea is an interesting one! That would be truly democratic in the sense of the Athenian polis...