UK Politics - Weeny, Weedy, Weaky

[Sommerswerd]

(2) Regarding migration from the the UK; Australia, Canada and New Zealand, those countries already have control of their borders in that there is no right for UK citizens to emigrate from the UK to those countries.

Really? Well I certainly learned something today.

 

[Takhisis]

Spy, spy, spy on the common populace while everybody's busy looking at Brexit! (as sung by Elan the Bard)

Facial recognition to be rolled out across London by police, despite privacy concerns
Only a handful of arrests were made in almost three years of trials but police insist technology is ‘fantastic crime-fighting tool’
(full article)​

Interesting points:

• eight successful arrests in three years
• 96% false positive rate
• the authorities promised to notify victims a.k.a. passersby and didn't
• police are fining people for covering their faces

Brought to you with the help of Brexit™, a project for, by and from the rich, giving cover to all sorts of totalitarian measures since whenever it began.

 

[Traitorfish]

The self-declared "biggest gang in London" strikes again.

 

[Kyriakos]

Are they using craniometry as well?

 

[Zardnaar]

Labour party membership up.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51245211

 

[Gorbles]

Should be fun to see the reactions to this one. Last time around, when the increase benefitted Corbyn, we had a lot of "ooh, are these people legitimate, bit strange to see so many joining up". Not seeing that now the surge is expected to mostly be a moderate voting base. How strange

 

[Takhisis]

Are they using craniometry as well?

It'd definitely be a return to the days of the Empire.

 

[Takhisis]

Inefficiency for the win! Resulting in inefficacy for the loss!

Terrorist freed from jail days before knife attack
Islamist extremist under surveillance by undercover police stabs two people in London before being shot dead by officers​

Notice the subtitle, and how the police is still insisting with rolling out cameras to track people's gait, hair colour, skin colour, thermal patterns and what-not but still showing that they cannot stop an actual dangerous criminal whom they have identified and located from committing actual crimes.
Next step: precogs.

Also, bonus track:

John Bercow says he was subject to antisemitic abuse from Tories​

Because Labour are the natural antisemites, of course.

 

[Takhisis]

Also:

Brexit: Scotland would be ‘enthusiastically’ welcomed by EU if it wins independence, says Tusk
‘If you ask me about our emotions, you will witness I think always empathy,’ says former European Council president

Scotland would be welcomed enthusiastically by the European Union if it won independence from the rest of the UK, according to Donald Tusk.

Speaking after the UK officially severed its 47-year membership of the bloc on Friday, the former president of the European Council also said negotiations over future trade will be focused on “damage control”.

On the issue of Scottish independence, which Downing Street is resisting, Mr Tusk said while he wanted to “respect the internal debate” in the UK, he felt “very Scottish” after Brexit.

“Emotionally I have no doubt that everyone will be enthusiastic here in Brussels, and more generally in Europe,” he added on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

He warned the process of rejoining the bloc would not be automatic and there would still be a process of application for any country wishing to join the EU, but added: “If you ask me about our emotions, you will witness I think always empathy.”

The comments drew criticism from Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, who said Mr Tusk’s intervention was “irresponsible”.

Mr Raab said: “I think it was frankly un-European and rather irresponsible given the separatist tendencies in Spain, in France, in Italy. I’m not sure European leaders, let alone leaders here in the UK would actually welcome that kind of language.”

In response to accusations there was no plan for Scotland, Mr Raab added: “I don’t think that’s right, we want to make sure, with the levelling-up agenda, with the opportunities of Brexit right across the board, that Scotland’s got the great opportunity to take advantage of all those benefits.

“At the same time, we obviously expect the SNP to deliver on its commitment to honour the outcome of the independence referendum and not keep coming back and asking for a second one.

“But a lot of this is a distraction from the standards in schools, the high level of taxes, that actually the job of the Scottish government in discharging its responsibility to the Scottish people ought to be focused on.”

On Friday, Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, who has been demanding Boris Johnson grant the Scottish government the powers to hold a second independence referendum, said Brexit was a “profound moment of sadness” for many who did not vote to Leave in Scotland.

The comments from Mr Tusk come after a YouGov poll which showed 51 per cent support for independence – a majority for the first time in five years.

However, a majority of Scots surveyed also said they would not like to see another vote on the issue in 2020 or 2021, but most said they would like to see another referendum within the next five years.

Also speaking on the issue, Labour’s shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, told the BBC: “I desperately don’t want them to, I want a United Kingdom. I will always argue for that UK and I’m hoping they don’t go along that path.

“But I just say to Boris Johnson and his colleagues, do not do things that will threaten the unity of our country – and the language that we’ve heard even in the last 24 hours is divisive, rather than holding the country together.

“And if he can’t secure a good deal, it will again encourage others therefore in Scotland to go their own way and I think it would be completely counterproductive for the Scottish people.”​

To have Raab speak of irresponsibility would be risible, were he not actually in power.

 

[Arwon]

secession is good but secession is bad

 

[Hrothbern]

Also:

Brexit: Scotland would be ‘enthusiastically’ welcomed by EU if it wins independence, says Tusk
‘If you ask me about our emotions, you will witness I think always empathy,’ says former European Council president

Scotland would be welcomed enthusiastically by the European Union if it won independence from the rest of the UK, according to Donald Tusk.

Speaking after the UK officially severed its 47-year membership of the bloc on Friday, the former president of the European Council also said negotiations over future trade will be focused on “damage control”.

On the issue of Scottish independence, which Downing Street is resisting, Mr Tusk said while he wanted to “respect the internal debate” in the UK, he felt “very Scottish” after Brexit.

“Emotionally I have no doubt that everyone will be enthusiastic here in Brussels, and more generally in Europe,” he added on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

He warned the process of rejoining the bloc would not be automatic and there would still be a process of application for any country wishing to join the EU, but added: “If you ask me about our emotions, you will witness I think always empathy.”

The comments drew criticism from Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, who said Mr Tusk’s intervention was “irresponsible”.

Mr Raab said: “I think it was frankly un-European and rather irresponsible given the separatist tendencies in Spain, in France, in Italy. I’m not sure European leaders, let alone leaders here in the UK would actually welcome that kind of language.”

In response to accusations there was no plan for Scotland, Mr Raab added: “I don’t think that’s right, we want to make sure, with the levelling-up agenda, with the opportunities of Brexit right across the board, that Scotland’s got the great opportunity to take advantage of all those benefits.

“At the same time, we obviously expect the SNP to deliver on its commitment to honour the outcome of the independence referendum and not keep coming back and asking for a second one.

“But a lot of this is a distraction from the standards in schools, the high level of taxes, that actually the job of the Scottish government in discharging its responsibility to the Scottish people ought to be focused on.”

On Friday, Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, who has been demanding Boris Johnson grant the Scottish government the powers to hold a second independence referendum, said Brexit was a “profound moment of sadness” for many who did not vote to Leave in Scotland.

The comments from Mr Tusk come after a YouGov poll which showed 51 per cent support for independence – a majority for the first time in five years.

However, a majority of Scots surveyed also said they would not like to see another vote on the issue in 2020 or 2021, but most said they would like to see another referendum within the next five years.

Also speaking on the issue, Labour’s shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, told the BBC: “I desperately don’t want them to, I want a United Kingdom. I will always argue for that UK and I’m hoping they don’t go along that path.

“But I just say to Boris Johnson and his colleagues, do not do things that will threaten the unity of our country – and the language that we’ve heard even in the last 24 hours is divisive, rather than holding the country together.

“And if he can’t secure a good deal, it will again encourage others therefore in Scotland to go their own way and I think it would be completely counterproductive for the Scottish people.”​

To have Raab speak of irresponsibility would be risible, were he not actually in power.

Risible indeed, but yeah.. it is his role as Minister of Foreign Affairs to protest

BTW
Tusk's statement of this Sunday is likely a supporting reaction on the open letter of Nicola Sturgeon of last Friday

Meanwhile Edinburgh is continuing the charge, with SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon urging Europeans to “leave a light on for Scotland” in an open letter published Friday.
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-tusk-scotland-rejoin-eu/

With NI kind of staying in the EU and the North of England getting extra attention from BoJo... Scotland is screwed in this Brexit affair.

 

[Lillefix]

With NI kind of staying in the EU and the North of England getting extra attention from BoJo... Scotland is screwed in this Brexit affair.

He might even wat to get rid of Scotland anyway, since they are less likely to vote Tory.

 

[EnglishEdward]

.... the police is still insisting with rolling out cameras to track people's gait, hair colour, skin colour, thermal patterns and what-not but still showing that they cannot stop an actual dangerous criminal whom they have identified and located from committing actual crimes..

I am unclear how the UK police can prevent indivisual
crimes under current legal arrangements:

The alternative solutions to Islamic terrorism:

1) Execution

2) Burmese style mass deportations to perhaps Antarctica?

3) Permanent life imprisonment.

4) Release in strait jacket with radio controlled electric shock machine collar.

5) Chinese style re-education, and body part supply, camps for ethnic Muslims.

do not seem very palatable to me.

 

[Mega Tsunami]

He might even wat to get rid of Scotland anyway, since they are less likely to vote Tory.

Quite. With Labour going so far to the left, we are liable to live in a bit of one-party state for the foreseeable. Without Scotland that would become a virtual certainty.
I just wish that Sturgeon would stop wining about independence, and do something about it – by declaring UDI of course, Rhodesia style. Why take the huge risk that indyref2 will come back with another No.

Talking of Independence, here is a good piece from The Times a couple of weeks ago talking about the unification of Ireland and I have to say I agree with it somewhat.
It really does look like the tide is turning (only partly because of Brexit) and if I had a vote, I would vote for unification of Ireland.

I just hope that, if there is a vote, it is substantially in favour of a united Ireland.
(We all know how Remainers chose to ignore a 52-48 defeat, after all).

A united Ireland would be good for everyone.
Rather than obsess about the ‘break-up’ of the UK we should accept that the Republic and north are moving ever closer

Spoiler :

Faster than many realise, the time is coming to think dispassionately about the unification of Ireland. When the expected border with the rest of the UK is established in the Irish Sea the case for reuniting north and south will get its biggest boost since partition in 1921.

I suggest this may not be a bad thing. Before describing unification on the whole island of Ireland in the language of the “break-up” of the UK we should remember that there will be a corresponding coming-together. We should think about the gains. The idea makes so much sense.
“It is hereby declared” (says what has come to be known as the Good Friday agreement between the British and Irish governments) “that Northern Ireland . . . shall not cease to be [part of the UK] without the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland voting in a poll.”

The agreement goes on to require the UK government to hold such a poll if “at any time it appears likely to [the secretary of state] that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland”.

And how likely is that? We already have the first straw in such a wind. Four months ago, before we even knew a border was to be established in the Irish Sea, a poll conducted in Northern Ireland for Lord Ashcroft’s Conservative Home website gave — for the first time — a slender margin (51-49 per cent) for unification. The demographics were clear: only the over-65s showed a clear majority against. The younger the respondents, the more they opted for unification. Ninety per cent of nationalists and (more surprisingly) 33 per cent of unionists thought a poll would occur within the next decade. Teasingly, one in ten self-declared unionists either said they would vote in favour or didn’t know how they’d vote.
It is difficult to see how the next few years could do other than accelerate this trend. After Brexit in a fortnight’s time, and unless the whole of the UK later decides to stay within the EU in all but name, then Great Britain’s economic habitat begins to diverge from Northern Ireland’s, which, as the withdrawal agreement stipulates, will remain in close alignment with the EU’s. Divergence is the only rationale for Brexit, and Northern Ireland is not going to diverge: a prospect that Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, has said is good news for the province.

The euro is increasingly accepted there; goods will remain able to travel freely across the land border with the Republic but not the sea border with Great Britain; and though these changes may make little immediate practical difference, there’s such a thing as a change in the weather in the confluence or divergence of cultures. An all-island consciousness is developing steadily, particularly among younger citizens.

But how about the Republic? Though the Irish constitution formally commits the country to unification it has become commonplace in Britain to respond with a knowing wink, and the observation that pigs will fly, and the last thing Dublin actually wants is the ruckus and expense of taking on the burden that is the north. I used to believe this myself. I no longer do. Just think about it: wouldn’t you, if you were an Irish taoiseach, dream of being the statesman who made the dream of a united Ireland come true? What laurels. What a legacy. You’d be a second de Valera, your victory less dubious than his.

And there’s evidence the mood is changing in the Republic. Four years ago a poll there found that a third of voters favoured unification. Last summer two thirds did. Historically the cause had been associated with anger rather than positivity but (said the Irish writer Finn McRedmond in a magazine article last year) “the argument is no longer tied to the Troubles, and an accompanying anti-English sentiment”, but to “economic logic”. Moderate opinion in the south, worried about Brexit-related turbulence, sees the constructive case for unity.
McRedmond cited as sharply instructive the blunder made last year by Mary Lou McDonald, leader of Sinn Fein in the Republic, when she marched behind a banner that read “England get out of Ireland”. “The stunt,” writes McRedmond, “garnered widespread criticism. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s deputy, Simon Coveney, didn’t mince his words when he called it ‘offensive, divisive and an embarrassment’. This incident was symptomatic of a party that has misread the room.”
Mr Varadkar reads the room differently: “People who you might describe as moderate nationalists or moderate Catholics,” he says, “who were more or less happy with the status quo, will look more towards a united Ireland . . . I think increasingly you’ll see liberal Protestants, liberal unionists, starting to ask the question as to where they feel more at home.”
But who will pay? Northern Ireland has been a laboratory test-bed for regional subsidy and the experiment has failed spectacularly. Before we get too excited about “levelling up” in the English north and Midlands, we should take a look across the water. The province has been a bottomless pit. At around £12 billion net per annum, Northern Ireland costs the taxpayer slightly more than our net payments to the EU. We pay more to keep the province in the Union than we’ll get back by leaving the EU.

It would be worth it if it were achieving its object but it isn’t. Beset by corruption and by politically driven public spending on hopeless investments, the province and its people are victims of a political class that Westminster keeps paying not to be difficult, thus engendering a culture of threatening to be difficult. We throw money at them to go away. They are not loved across the water and they know it. It’s a wretched and humiliating fate visited on them, and it’s partly the fault of the English who, to adapt one American journalist’s words, will do anything for Ulster except read about it.
It isn’t working. Not far south of Belfast, in the Republic, it is. Neither side has much by way of natural resources but, instead, tremendous human resources, which only one side has learnt to harness. Meshing the two together will be painful — look how difficult it has proved in Germany — but it can be done; and done better without us. England has not been good to the Irish, or good for the Irish. It is time we had the humility to recognise that. Northern Ireland, I sense, is already on the road to such a recognition.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/a-united-ireland-would-be-good-for-everyone-0hrcbz3nj

 

[Arakhor]

(We all know how Remainers chose to ignore a 52-48 defeat, after all).

Graceless in victory, as always, I see? Besides, it was the Govt, aptly aided by the Opposition, who chose to ignore that it was a purely advisory referendum, not anybody else.

 

[Hrothbern]

Considering the kind of political profile of the Tories and the SNP, both will aim at getting their main cities transforming towards Industry 4.0.
Both will aim to keep their social care and social security at minimum sustainable levels, to free up as much as they can to invest and transform towards Ind 4.0.
Though they will have another balance.

And although it is not "there can be only one"... it is "there can only be a few hubs"

Scotland has a history of inventors-engineers, but that is what it is... history.
The economical question for the SNP is whether that historical wave can be repeated. And considering that Westminster will aim at "England First" whether this needs Scotland to break out fast or whether more economical independency enables Scotland to grow (fast enough) its own Ind 4.0 hub inside a UK, and break out later with a stronger economical base.
The political question for the SNP how the desire of Scottish people to break out can be kept alive and strenghtened in numbers and risk appetite.

With all the national and international news, and so much distracting politics.... what is happening right now everywhere in the western world is a full competition between the main cities (clusters) to attract the (human) capital to launch Ind 4.0.
Once the main hub(s) in a country are established... other cities will likely come no further than the second violin.
A kind of geographical monopoly

 

[Gorbles]

Quite. With Labour going so far to the left

Corbyn was centre-left and we couldn't even keep him, what are you joking about?

 

[Manfred Belheim]

If no one ever gets your point then maybe you should stop blaming us.

Not when you're being wilfully obtuse darling, which does seem to be a standard tactic around these parts.

But also I think it's more relevant that the person you were initially replying to knows what you're on about, rather than some observer who jumps in half way through having not bothered to see what the context was.

 

[Kyriakos]

I think N. Ireland should be united with Ireland. Moreover this by itself wouldn't dismantle the Uk. Scotland leaving... is an entirely different case.
N.Ireland= Slovenia
Scotland= Croatia
England= Serbia ^_^

 

[Yeekim]

I am unclear how the UK police can prevent indivisual
crimes under current legal arrangements.

Indeed... it's hard to find fault with the police here, imho.
What could they have done better?