UK Politics - Weeny, Weedy, Weaky

[EnglishEdward]

In converse, it never ceases to amaze me that some people are willing to forget all about their morals when it comes to spending their money. A boycott on the basis of property rights is completely in line with the original meaning of the word.

I believe that people should know what they are buying and where it comes from.

E.g. supermarket produce from Brazil should be labelled as being from Brazil,
so that you can follow your moral code in not buying it to your heart's content.

I, for one, have not asked British supermarkets, to exercise moral decisions on my behalf.
I prefer to choose myself, whether French wine, Brazilian mangos or chlorinated US Chicken.

 

[Traitorfish]

I may reconsider my assessment if the alleged victims start winning substantive damages
against Alex Salmond at civil litigation. Pending that I for one am wth the conspiracy theorists.

There's surely some distance to go between "the accusations do not withstand legal scrutiny" and "the accusations are evidence of a dark alliance between the Scottish National Party and the British deep state".

I cannot understand why. I have just listened to the Dubliners sing that song.
It all seems pretty innocuous to me. Although I prefer their Whisky in the Jar.

Hate speech legislation in Scotland has predominantly been used to discourage expressions of religious and ethnic hostility that are bundled together under the label of "sectarianism", and in the context of Scottish football, the authorities have historically chosen to identify "sectarianism" in any expression of sympathy for Irish nationalism which they deemed unnecessarily provocative.

 

[EnglishEdward]

There's surely some distance to go between "the accusations do not withstand legal scrutiny" and "the accusations are evidence of a dark alliance between the Scottish National Party and the British deep state".

I prefer the variant that the dastardly plot was entirely Scottish.
I doubt that many south of the border could be bothered with
what happens to an ex SNP Leader who lost his referendum.

Hate speech legislation in Scotland has predominantly been used to discourage expressions of religious and ethnic hostility that are bundled together under the label of "sectarianism", and in the context of Scottish football, the authorities have historically chosen to identify "sectarianism" in any expression of sympathy for Irish nationalism which they deemed unnecessarily provocative.

Thank you for your explanation.

If RoI play England at Wembley, I'd not grudge Irish fans singing that song.

 

[Senethro]

Only because the general sentiment among the english is to begrudge spending any thought or care at all toward irish issues and people.

 

[EnglishEdward]

That sounds like complaining that the English are not sufficiently sectarian.

Which annoys you most: indifference, hostility or people who enjoy
music without reading into it all sorts of political connations.

 

[innonimatu]

I, for one, have not asked British supermarkets, to exercise moral decisions on my behalf.
I prefer to choose myself, whether French wine, Brazilian mangos or chlorinated US Chicken.

Supermarkers are not a relevant gatekeeper, as in you could theoretically (and at least around here in practice) choose to buy at a different supermarket with a different policy. So if some want to boycott brazilian products, let them...

However, states (and their regulatory powers) are relevant in choosing what to allow or not allow on sale. And it is important that they do because without it there is a trap people all into: the downward price-quality spiral.

Mas production lowers costs, and so does mass trade. Sellers would rather not have the overhead of offering many different products if they can sell the same value in just a few. And many buyers prefer cheaper products. Over time this creates a pressure to offer the cheaper options and drop the more expensive ones. This also means offering lower quality products, or less expensive "replacement products". Because sellers won't carry a full range of qualities of products, the better ones tend to be pushed out of sale. And their producers start adapting by lowering or ceasing production. Meaning that the best made products lose economies of scale, get more expensive, and are eventually "nonviable to produce".

In one word, crapification. To a point where you cease being able to even find a quality product for sale, can only find crap. Regulation to keep the crap from entering the supply chain and starting this process is a good idea.

Brazilian meat shipments have been known to include spoiled meat... perhaps there are even more direct reasons to put the screws on them that worries about the forest? Unscrupulous people will be unscrupulous in many ways, pressure on brazilian authorities to start enforcing their own laws are imo welcome. This case is different though, it seems to be about a new law?

 

[Samson]

I believe that people should know what they are buying and where it comes from.

E.g. supermarket produce from Brazil should be labelled as being from Brazil,
so that you can follow your moral code in not buying it to your heart's content.

I, for one, have not asked British supermarkets, to exercise moral decisions on my behalf.
I prefer to choose myself, whether French wine, Brazilian mangos or chlorinated US Chicken.

Yeah, but if you did not want to sell French wine, Brazilian mangos or chlorinated US Chicken you should not have to.

 

[Traitorfish]

I prefer the variant that the dastardly plot was entirely Scottish.
I doubt that many south of the border could be bothered with
what happens to an ex SNP Leader who lost his referendum.

Whether the plot originated in the Home Office or the Scottish Office is really besides the point.

The theory is that the leadership of the Scottish National Party constructed a narrative in which the leadership of the Scottish National Party successfully abused the power of his decades and that senior party members including the current leadership were wholly aware of this abuse and chose to ignore this; the theory holds that the leadership of the Scottish National Party believed that this narrative in which the appear as at best utterly clueless and at worst utterly villainous would in some way flatter them; that they successfully shopped this narrative to the police and prosecution services, who chose to pursue this prosecution on behalf of and for the benefit of a party with which they have a notoriously acrimonious relationship; and the theory asks us to believe not only that the leadership of the Scottish National Party expect that they will in some way benefit from all this, but that they will benefit from this.

This all stretches credible. It is more plausible that those making the accusations did so for their own reasons, sincere or insincere; that the police and prosecution services perused these allegations because they have a history of pursuing dubious allegations against figures associated with the Scottish National Party (because, as noted above, they're a pack of Yoons); and that the leadership SNP lend their tacit support to these prosecutions because they were terrified that, if the accusations were true, it would appear that they had condoned the alleged abuse of powers.

No part of this requires a vast and sweeping conspiracy.

 

[Takhisis]

I cannot understand why. I have just listened to the Dubliners sing that song.
It all seems pretty innocuous to me. Although I prefer their Whisky in the Jar.

It is definitely not innocuous.
Copied from Wikipedia:

The lyrics say the convict's crime is that he "stole Trevelyan's corn"; this is a reference to Charles Edward Trevelyan, a senior British civil servant in the administration of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in Dublin Castle. Trevelyan famously said, "the judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson". He believed that the starving Irish could subsist on maize, a grain that they could not afford, and had little knowledge of or experience in preparing.

The song was regularly heard from on the terraces in the late 1980s from supporters of the Galway county hurling team. The song was adopted by Republic of Ireland national football team supporters during the 1990 World Cup and subsequently by Celtic supporters in the early 1990s.[9][10]

Celtic Football Club in Glasgow has a large following in Ireland and among people in Scotland of Irish descent.[11] During the Great Famine in Ireland during the 1840s, 100,000 Irish famine victims emigrated to Glasgow. When Celtic's long-serving Irish goalkeeper Packie Bonner had a testimonial match in 1991, he invited Pete St. John to attend the event and speak to the crowd before the game. St John began by thanking Glasgow for looking after the famine victims, and then began to sing "Fields of Athenry", accompanied by thousands of fans. He later described it as one of the most memorable moments of his life.

The song's popularity, due in part to its use at sporting events, has helped to attract tourists to Athenry. In recognition of this, the town's officials invited Pete St. John to a civic reception and presented him with a mace and chain as a token of their appreciation.

The song is also associated with the Connacht, Munster, London Irish and Ireland rugby union teams.[12] It's also seen by many as Galway's county song, sung at the various GAA matches when the county is playing.[13]​

i.e. it's a song about the Irish famine and the damage it caused.

A lot of the protestants in Ireland are from the time when, after England's second conquest/reconquest in the times of the Tudors, Stuarts and Cromwell, the Catholic Irish were massacred (especially by Cromwell) and replaced with or at least displaced by transplanted protestant populatons from England and Scotland (to the point that there's a dialect of Scots still spoken in Ireland, called ‘Ulster-Scots’).
At the same time there's been a lot of (Catholic) Irish immigration in the opposite direction.
Out of the two biggest football clubs in Glasgow and therefore Scotland you get:

• Celtic, the club for the Catholic, Irish and Nationalist sectors of the city, who utter songs such as the one about the fields of Athenry.
  
• Rangers, their marked opposite, Protestant, British, and Unionist to the core, whose favourite songs, as far as I remember, are ‘IRA Go Away’ and ‘Billy Boys’, whose lyrics I won't post here but strongly suggest you look up. The latter one is specifically about killing Catholic Irish for fun.

Both clubs have large subsections of Millwall-like fans and, being far bigger, they outnumber Millwall. In Northern Ireland itself supporting Celtic or Rangers is an indicator of whether you're a terrorist papist who rejects HM's righteous rule/spirited patriot-martyr or a murderous monster and living symbol of oppression/loyal vassal acting in self-defence.

Singing or even humming the wrong song at the wrong pub might be ruled as suicide after a criminal investigation. Yes, it's that bad, but it's next door and it exists whether people south of the border/east of the Irish sea realise it or not.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Nevertheless the problem is not the song. It seems to be peoples' attitudes.
And suppressing the song is merely treating the symptoms not the problem.

Songs might be banned if they advocate violence,
but the lyrics of that song are merely about past grief.

The way I see it; anti-hate laws should be limited
to being against the active promulgation of hatred.
Anythingmore and there is a very slippery slope
over the precipice of unintended consequences.

 

[Takhisis]

That's where you're getting it wrong, Edward. It's not past grief, it's part of the present. Ireland is definitely not a solved problem. It's a barely contained situation.

 

[EnglishEdward]

NHS fees scrapped for overseas staff

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52761052

NHS staff and care workers from overseas are to be exempt from paying a surcharge to use the health service after mounting pressure from MPs.

Boris Johnson's spokesman said the PM had asked the Home Office and Department for Health to exempt NHS and care workers "as soon as possible".
The health immigration surcharge on non-EU migrants is £400 per year and set to rise to £624 in October.

It seems that after a campaign in various places, the adverse unintended
consequence of a measure against healthcare tourism is to be removed.

 

[Arwon]

That's where you're getting it wrong, Edward. It's not past grief, it's part of the present. Ireland is definitely not a solved problem. It's a barely contained situation.

Which is a good time to note the irresponsibility of holding, by choice and for internal party political reasons, a referendum upending the constitutional order one-hour underpins the settlement of a recent post-conflict state depend.

 

[Senethro]

Adverse unintended effect my ....

 

[Gorbles]

The current rate of £400 a year is double what it what it was when first introduced in 2015.

This seems like a reasonable thing to put as a burden on a specific demographic in the first place.

 

[Arakhor]

Well, as Tory policies go, it's not an innately terrible idea, but insisting on levying that surcharge on health workers whilst there's a pandemic going on is obviously going to make you look even worse than normal.

 

[EnglishEdward]

It seems that the surcharge was introduced by Cameron and Clegg

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-introduces-health-surcharge

and not by the evil Boris or the Brexiters.

 

[Hrothbern]

It seems that the surcharge was introduced by Cameron and Clegg

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-introduces-health-surcharge

and not by the evil Boris or the Brexiters.

is it not a Home Office policy ?
That means in 2015 the overzealous Theresa May with those anti-EU migrants red lines later as PM
The pre-Brexit phase ?

 

[Arakhor]

It seems that the surcharge was introduced by Cameron and Clegg

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-introduces-health-surcharge

and not by the evil Boris or the Brexiters.

I did say that it was a Tory policy. When you're in power for ten years, you have a lot to answer for.

Besides, did anyone actually claim that Johnson was evil? He's lazy, incompetent and has narcissist leanings, but he's not evil.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Asking people to pay for services they use. Despicable.