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United Kingdom36161 Posts
On December 21 2013 07:16 hzflank wrote:
If it was not for the EU ruling, most British people would not even know that prisoners could not vote. Are you honestly telling me that you have ever even considered it? Whether or not prisoners can vote does not affect most people at all and it is just being used as an anti-EU talking point.
I would expect that most labour supporters would be fine with prisoners voting, while most tory supporters would be against it simply because I would think most prisoners would not vote tory.
Also, we don't have to completely give us decision making. We can be and are part of EU decision making.
70% in a yougov poll said they didn't want prisoners to have the right to vote. That's hardly a simple labour/conservative split, is it? That's an overwhelming majority. I think you'll be hardpushed to find any opinion poll that has a close result on this issue in the UK.
Again, I don't really see why the EU should have any say at all on whether UK prisoners have the right to vote in UK elections.
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On December 20 2013 06:39 hzflank wrote:
Joel, why have a bill of rights set by the British government? Why have British law at all, we might as well have each county just have it's own laws...or each town...or each household.
At the end of the day it is just a matter of where you draw the line. Personally, it makes no difference to me whether law is made in Westminster or Brussels.
Something tells me those in Brussels are far more unaccountable than your local politician whom you can walk to his house and bust his door in if it came to. There's something to be said for the politicians to fear their constituency. There's also the cultural divides which create a lot of problems, as evident by the incessant political squabbles in the US, and further the autonomy of local communities who may have different priorities and views than people thousands of miles away (Eastern European countries for instance).
While the rest of the world is decentralizing, the EU decided it'd be better to make a Mega-State and force the whole of Europe to become homogenized. This won't end badly...I'm sure. I mean it only took the US 80 years for our War (and the tensions still there trust me). As for each town, I'm certainly in favor, though you were being facetious. City-States are much better than Mega-States. Less nationalism, more interdependence (free-trade), more autonomy, more choice for the average person, and competition between City-States to lure in people to come there (more people = more tax revenue), means that on the average this condition is much better for the average person. This is why places like HK and Singapore and other more isolated / smaller countries tend to do much better than Mega-States, have citizens who are much happier because their values are not pitted against the values of a neighboring peoples, etc.
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On December 20 2013 21:47 marvellosity wrote:
I and many others don't see being able to vote in prison as a fundamental human right. It's for us to decide, or it should be.
It would be possible for every member state to decide what is and what isn't a fundamental human right. But that's not how the EU worked historically.
You say you don't want to leave the EU. But what you actually want is more than that: change the rules the UK has agreed to. That's possible if everyone else agrees. If not, well, you can still leave. But you can't say: 'Hey, I figured out I don't really like the consequences of this particular rule, so I'm going to ignore it.'
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
I'd rather have prisoners being able to vote than people who don't even know who the Prime Minister currently is
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
On December 21 2013 12:05 Wombat_NI wrote:
I'd rather have prisoners being able to vote than people who don't even know who the Prime Minister currently is
And I'd rather have nutella than peanut butter
thanks for that interlude
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Just to note the European Court of Human Rights is not the EU its just a requirement to join the Court if you want to join the EU, it could be possible to leave the court and stay in the EU.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On December 21 2013 19:55 marvellosity wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2013 12:05 Wombat_NI wrote:
I'd rather have prisoners being able to vote than people who don't even know who the Prime Minister currently is And I'd rather have nutella than peanut butter thanks for that interlude
It was written while drunk, albeit still my position :pThe ECHR must be annoying for some. It's a human rights/international scope organisation that actually enforces things.
Not that I agree with everything it does, but it does have a level of forcing its decisions to be adhered to that is nice to have IMO
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Business secretary Vince Cable has said he is "concerned about the social fabric" of the UK if spending cuts continue and the gap between rich and poor widens further.
"We have got to have a sensible balance on public spending cuts – which is getting very severe – some very good services are now being seriously affected," the Lib Dem MP told the BBC's Andrew Marr show.
Cable admitted that the coalition's abolition of the 50p tax rate had "not been a great political success, but we are not arguing for a reversal".
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David Cameron appeared to be rattled after he was confronted by an angry flood victim as he visited a village seriously affected by the latest Christmas storms.
Erica Olivares, 49, said her local council had done nothing to help villagers in Yalding, Kent, where homes were severely damaged in the latest storms.
In a heated on-camera exchange with the Prime Minister, the woman said she had been left stranded in her home with no electricity. No mentioned of the incident was made when the PM tweeted.
Ms Olivares told Cameron she was "absolutely disgusted" by the response of government agencies.
"We were literally abandoned," she told the prime minister in the street outside her devastated 18th-century cottage.
"We had no rescuers, no nothing for the whole day."
Mr Cameron asked what she needed and urged her to "get on to the council", but she replied: "They all decided to go on holiday."
Mr Cameron tried to defuse the confrontation by promising to contact the council himself. He then moved on to another property.
Speaking to the cameras in Yalding, Mr Cameron said the severity of flooding in the area made it difficult to ensure homes were protected.
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United States43523 Posts
1) Live on floodplain
2) Get flooded
3) Wait for other people to bring you things?
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People who are without power aren't really at fault. It's not all about flooding...
If power lines go down somewhere between your house and a power station, that's not your fault for the location of your house. It could be a very sensibly located house and still lose power.
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United States43523 Posts
And they think the local council is made of electricity? Call the power company ffs.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
Yeah it's a bit shite, but for a day or two surely it's manageable? Stiff upper lip and all that?
It was mental up the north coast of Ireland, I believe it was worse again over the water, is the worst over or is there more stormy weather to come?
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Britain has landed itself in a "constitutional mess" in the wake of the summer vote against military action in Syria, in which the Commons can be guaranteed to back intervention only to defend the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar, according to a former Foreign Office minister.
In his first interview on the Syrian crisis since losing his ministerial post in the autumn reshuffle, Alistair Burt said the failure of MPs in August to back the principle of military action against the Assad regime for the use of chemical weapons had left the mainstream opposition forces "absolutely devastated".
Burt, who was the minister overseeing Syria policy for three years, said the rules on the power of parliament to sanction British military action were evolving and required clarity. He revealed that ministers were unclear after the Syria vote whether the British government was even permitted to provide intelligence or logistic back-up to a US strike designed to deter President Bashar al-Assad from using chemical weapons.
"There is now a question mark about what parliament actually will authorise military support for," Burt said. "There is the Gibraltar and the Falklands – I think we can assume those. I am not sure we can assume anything else. Where does that leave us and our partnerships around the world? We have put ourselves in a constitutional mess this way."
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"There is now a question mark about what parliament actually will authorise military support for," Burt said. "There is the Gibraltar and the Falklands – I think we can assume those. I am not sure we can assume anything else. Where does that leave us and our partnerships around the world? We have put ourselves in a constitutional mess this way."
The alternative is to take part in military action against the will of the people. Where would that leave British democracy?
I'm sure parliament would still honour Britain's collective defense obligation. As for promises made to insurgents, well the government might want to cut down on them or accept the embarrassment of not being able to keep them.
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United States43523 Posts
The will of the people has never before featured in British military initiatives. Those powers were always wielded by the PM on behalf of Her Majesty. This is new and confusing ground for the British constitution as the Foreign Office has always known the will of the Cabinet and been able to act accordingly.
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Isn't it a bit presumptuous to call it a constitutional mess? It looked like we were talking the extent to which alliances and friendships are honored and supported. Her Majesty's government interprets too much into the grey area between British soldiers and materiel deployed and they get stung by the backlash. Votes severely tying down what the UK can do to help allies in unpopular causes prompts disappointment and unreliability. Political crisis/foreign relations crisis yes but constitutional crisis?
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On January 02 2014 19:05 KwarK wrote:
The will of the people has never before featured in British military initiatives. Those powers were always wielded by the PM on behalf of Her Majesty. This is new and confusing ground for the British constitution as the Foreign Office has always known the will of the Cabinet and been able to act accordingly.
To some extent this is true in many democracies. But to basically come out and openly support the government's right to act against to will of the public seems like political suicide.
And convincing parliament is a significantly lower bar than convincing the public at large anyway.
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On January 02 2014 23:29 hypercube wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2014 19:05 KwarK wrote:
The will of the people has never before featured in British military initiatives. Those powers were always wielded by the PM on behalf of Her Majesty. This is new and confusing ground for the British constitution as the Foreign Office has always known the will of the Cabinet and been able to act accordingly. To some extent this is true in many democracies. But to basically come out and openly support the government's right to act against to will of the public seems like political suicide. And convincing parliament is a significantly lower bar than convincing the public at large anyway.
Labour pretty much did exactly that in 2003 and were somehow voted in again next election
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Most people in Britain think immigration is a problem - but not where they live, a major new report has revealed.
While 70% think it is a problem facing the country, just 20% see it in their local area, with hostile media coverage thought to be a key reason for their attitudes.
The findings come from an Ipsos Mori study that reveals stark divisions between different generations, political ideologies and social classes in their feelings towards people coming to the UK.
And it comes amid a fevered debate about the arrival of Romanians and Bulgarians after visa restrictions were lifted on New Year's Day.
Writing for The Huffington Post UK on Thursday, Romanian ambassador Ion Jinga hit out at the "alarmist" media for an "insulting campaign" against his countrymen.
On Thursday evening, Ipsos Mori published a major analysis, based on opinion polls carried out over many years.
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