General Election 2017

[blandy]

13 hours ago, darrenm said:

It's a footnote. It's completely inconsequential. What does it have to do with anything now?

It's the desperate distraction technique of a right wing media who have nothing left to throw at him and see the polls narrowing. And anyone making a big deal out of it is just falling into their trap. It's amazing the amount of limited thinkers who are suddenly parroting the 'terrorist sympathiser' stuff without knowing any of the background. 

While you might be right that the tories are throwing whatever out of alarm, the rest of what I've quoted isn't fair. There are plenty of people, limited of thinking or otherwise, who believe that it's indicative of a man with hugely flawed judgement and a flawed moral compass. Those flaws are seen by many people on left and right as too serious to make him a viable choice for either a party leader or PM. Other people see his good points, his financial honesty, his living by his values, his independence from party whips, his desire for social justice etc and decide that's more than good enough for them, especially when the government is so vile and led by a hollow shell of a being.

Both Corbyn and May are utterly unsuitable to be PM in my opinion, as is nutty Nuttals. The other leaders are all far more suitable than those 3 nobbers. It's a shame that in England the parties with the 3 dreadful leaders will probably get the most votes.  If I lived somewhere that was close in terms of Tory v labour, I'd probably vote labour, but honestly I'd do it with a fervent hope that neither Corbyn nor May were able to get a majority. The pair of them are that bad, that unsuitable.  They both got to be leaders through he weakness of their parties systems and the feebleness of their rivals. The world and the country are not in a good way and these muppets are kind of the result.  What a mess.

[blandy]

13 hours ago, peterms said:

Every count I've attended has had cocks on several ballot papers..

Weirdly, every ballot paper I've ever seen has had several cocks on it.

[Jon]

2 minutes ago, blandy said:

 They both got to be leaders through he weakness of their parties systems and the feebleness of their rivals. 

That doesn't stand up to scrutiny Pete. Jez has twice now been elected as leader of his party, the largest membership party in western Europe I think.  1 member/supporter (strongly vetted) 1 vote. With an increased and sizeable majority. Cruella has never even been elected by her own party.  

[blandy]

31 minutes ago, Jon said:

That doesn't stand up to scrutiny Pete. Jez has twice now been elected as leader of his party, the largest membership party in western Europe I think.  1 member/supporter (strongly vetted) 1 vote. With an increased and sizeable majority. Cruella has never even been elected by her own party.  

Corbyn only initially was on the list because other labour MPs nominated him, not because they supported him, they didn't, but to get a hard lefty into the ballot. That's the flaw I mean, Jon.  And then later, despite the MPs massively not wanting to be led by him, the system meant they couldn't stop it. Oh and don't forget that Owen whatever his name was being even more useless than Corbyn. Cruella , yes, absolutely.

[Risso]

31 minutes ago, Jon said:

That doesn't stand up to scrutiny Pete. Jez has twice now been elected as leader of his party, the largest membership party in western Europe I think.  1 member/supporter (strongly vetted) 1 vote. With an increased and sizeable majority. Cruella has never even been elected by her own party.  

That's the weakness in the Labour system Pete was talking about.

And who do you think chose May in the leadership election? Lib Dems?

[jon_c]

14 hours ago, darrenm said:

One is taking money off disabled people, cancer sufferers. The other is a possibly misplaced sense of standing up for the oppressed.

I don't care about his past talks with the IRA, it's his appearances on Russia Today and articles about Ukraine in the morning star. That's why I don't inherently trust Corbyn. And saying the Crimea invasion "is not unprovoked" isn't exactly standing up for the oppressed. 

Quote

• It is the US drive to expand eastwards which lies at the root of the crisis in the former Soviet republic, argues JEREMY CORBYN - and it's time we talked to Russia

---

Tomorrow will see a four-way meeting take place as Russia, the United States, the EU and Ukraine discuss ongoing tensions in the latter country.

But while the endless drama of meetings, lurid statements and predictions and mass demonstrations catches the world's eye, something more significant and fundamental is taking place in international politics.

As the US moves into relative economic decline, China's expansion and Russia's huge energy reserves and location are moving the politics of the world to a different place.

Russia and China have reached a momentous agreement to sell gas and do business in either of their own currencies - but not in dollars.

As with Iraq's 2002 move from dollars to euros, the new means of exchange downgrades the US dollar as the international currency of choice, but now on a far bigger scale.

The broad historical sweep since the end of the Soviet Union showed two decades of unipolar US power. But now the resurgence of Russia and the enormous economic power of China are ending that.

The history of conflicts since 1990 is grim. Hot wars took place in the Gulf, in the former Yugoslavia, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, all involving the US and Nato.

The period saw the European Union cement its relationship with Nato, and more recently the US shift its military focus to the Asia-Pacific region as it now sees China as its main rival.

The EU and Nato have now become the tools of US policy in Europe.

The US remains overwhelmingly the military superpower. It seized opportunities in 1990 and in 2001 to increase its military spending and develop a global reach of bases unmatched since the second world war.

The expansion of Nato into Poland and the Czech Republic has particularly increased tensions with Russia.

Agreements Gorbachov reached before the final demise of the Soviet Union and subsequent pledges that Ukraine's independence would not see it brought into Nato or any other military alliance appear to have been forgotten by Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen in his increasingly bellicose statements.

Indeed, a huge joint exercise is planned for this July between Nato and Ukrainian forces. This can only make an already dangerous situation even worse.

On Tuesday night the Stop the War Coalition hosted an extraordinarily well-informed public meeting on the crisis at the Wesley Hotel in Euston, London.

Jonathan Steele, a former Guardian Moscow correspondent, outlined the situation expertly, noting that coverage has been dominated by two Hs - hypocrisy and hysteria.

While there were democratic forces in the Maidan protests motivated by falling living standards and corruption, there were also far-right nazi groups involved.

The far-right is now sitting in government in Ukraine. The origins of the Ukrainian far-right go back to those who welcomed the nazi invasion in 1941 and acted as allies of the invaders.

Stop the War officer and long-term anti-war activist Carol Turner pointed out that the sanctions against Russia are confused and controversial, largely targeting individuals, while the effect on Germany of any broader-reaching economic sanctions would be huge.

And already Gazprom has increased the price of its exports to Ukraine.

The overall issue is still one of the activities and expansionism of the post-1990 United States.

Turner referred to statements made by the US in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse. In an article in the International Herald Tribune of March 9 1992 Patrick Tyler of the New York Times outlined the new strategy by which US defence secretary Dick Cheney was preparing for expansion - and many future conflicts.

Tyler wrote that "the classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower, whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behaviour and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging US primacy."

The author of this strategy, Paul Wolfowitz, specifically divested it of any role for the United Nations, which had been used to provide a mandate for the Gulf war of 1990-91 while the Soviets were preoccupied with their state falling apart.

The plan was never to remove nuclear strike aircraft from Europe or reduce the role of Nato, despite the end of the Warsaw Pact.

"We must seek to prevent the emergence of European-only security arrangements which would undermine Nato," Wolfowitz warned.

Wolfowitz wanted to make arrangements in eastern Europe similar to those in the Gulf, where Saudi Arabia had been armed as an ally for regional wars. Now it is acting as a US ally in the Syrian conflict.

On Ukraine, I would not condone Russian behaviour or expansion. But it is not unprovoked, and the right of people to seek a federal structure or independence should not be denied.

And there are huge questions around the West's intentions in Ukraine.

The obsession with cold war politics that exercises the Nato and EU leaderships is fuelling the crisis and underlines the case for a whole new approach to foreign policy.

We have allowed Nato to act outside its own area since the Afghan war started. The Lisbon Treaty binds the EU and Nato together in a mutual alliance of interference and domination reaching ever eastwards.

The long-term effect of the behaviour of US Secretary of State John Kerry, backed by the EU and the British government, is to divide the world. An ever-growing and more confident Russia-China bloc will increasingly rival Nato and the EU, meaning a new cold war beckons.

Would it not be better if when the four powers sit down together they looked at agreeing on a neutral, nuclear-free Ukraine, the possibility of de-escalating the crisis and cut out the hypocrisy of feigned moral outrage from a country that has invaded many others, has military bases scattered worldwide and whose arms industry has made billions from the death and destruction of so much life in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Peace campaigners in Britain need to look at the dangers of the mutual defence agreement with the US and the way it ties us into all their strategies. We also need to look at the role of Nato overall.

The Nato summit due in Newport, Wales, in September is a good opportunity for us to express our opposition to the strange notion that expanding a nuclear alliance east makes us safer.

It does not. It makes the whole world infinitely more dangerous.

 

Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-972b-Nato-belligerence-endangers-us-all#.WSvUjMvTXqB

[blandy]

29 minutes ago, Risso said:

That's the weakness in the Labour system Pete was talking about.

And who do you think chose May in the leadership election? Lib Dems?

Yeah pretty much, though as all the others were metaphorically knifed or self destructed in the Tory election, it was abandoned part way through the process and May became leader, unopposed, didn't she?

[Awol]

16 hours ago, TrentVilla said:

The IRA stuff isn't an isolated example as this clip shows as does his attendance at a memorial service for one of the Munich 72 attackers.

The Torygraph is reporting this today - yes a right wing paper but no denial that the story is true. It seems he went to a wreath laying ceremony for this particular terrorist less than a year before becoming party leader. Why on earth would he mourn someone involved in the brutal murder of innocent Olympic athletes? Not just that but Jews murdered in Munich, about as symbolic of anti Semitism as you could possibly get.

Strangely there doesn't seem to be a record of him attending funerals or ceremonies for innocent Jews killed by those same people he honours, invites to Parliament and calls "friends".

 If Corbyn supports terrorism he should at least be honest about it and drop this clear lie about being a man of peace. It's fair to say Shami Chakrabati definitely earned her peerage...

At what point will his supporters drop the pretence that JC is a kindly, benign & avuncular old chap and admit he is a partisan supporter of some really bad people and there is zero evidence of him changing those views? 

Does his judgement on these issues really not matter as long as he promises people lots of free stuff?

If a potential Tory PM had a history of supporting neo-Nazis and the KKK would Tory voters say "well yeah it doesn't really matter, that's all in the past and only the left wing media trolls care about it anyway"? 

Feels like we are through the looking glass and I honestly can't understand how this stuff doesn't matter to so many people, so could someone - anyone - please explain to me how and why Corbyn's record is okay? 

[Risso]

2 minutes ago, blandy said:

Yeah pretty much, though as all the others were metaphorically knifed or self destructed in the Tory election, it was abandoned part way through the process and May became leader, unopposed, didn't she?

She won the first two rounds convincingly, and her remaining challenger in the last round withdrew as she knew she was going to lose.  

[blandy]

1 minute ago, Risso said:

She won the first two rounds convincingly, and her remaining challenger in the last round withdrew as she knew she was going to lose.  

That's what I thought, ta. I wonder what would have happened if gove hadn't knifed Boris Johnson, or leadsom hadn't done a ukip when talking to the times/ telegraph, and there had actually been a vote without the "bloodshed". We'd still be effed I guess.

[Guest av1]

Here

Quote

 

Abbott said.

'every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us'

Shadow Home Secretary.

Staggering. 

Edited May 29, 2017 by av1

[peterms]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

I like and rate Caroline Lucas and detest Theresa May, but that kind of tweet is ludicrous. The pm doesn't decide who goes on watch lists, (or the state of alert for that matter). It doesn't really help or advance anyone's cause to lie like that, or propagate lies.

if the twit hadn't  mentioned May, then fair point to a degree.

I couldn't disagree more.

It's a very basic principle of government and public administration that politicians are responsible for policies, and staff for putting those policies into operation.  This is so for the library service, bin collection, security, policing, and the conduct of war, to give examples.  To take your example of states of alert, the Home Secretary (if such power has been delegated by Parliament) will periodically approve or review the broad guidelines for what constitutes a state of alert and what it entails, and staff will get on and work within those guidelines.  Similarly, the local council's Leisure Committee will approve a policy on book purchase, and staff will decide on individual books.

There are a limited number of possibilities that could explain how Caroline Lucas comes to be on a watch list while someone who is actually potentially dangerous doesn't.

Perhaps the policy guidelines which staff are working to allow placing on watch lists people who attend peaceful demonstrations like this.  That would be the responsibility of the Home Secretary of the day (T. May).  There will certainly be such guidelines, and it is certainly a political responsibility, not a matter of operational detail, to agree them.  Did May approve such guidelines that would say that peaceful demonstrators should be watched?  It wouldn't be the first time, and there have been scandals in the past about the use of the security forces to spy on people with vaguely left-wing sympathies but who have by no stretch of anyone's imagination been a threat to national security.

Perhaps the Home Secretary abdicated her responsibility for approving such guidelines, and told staff to do whatever they liked.  In that case there would be very serious questions about the judgement both of the Home Secretary and the staff concerned, from the head of the service down.

Perhaps staff flouted policy guidelines and did what they wanted, regardless.  That would raise pretty fundamental questions about both political control, and the management of the service.  It does happen.  Examples would include recent revelations about spies infiltrating pressure groups and fathering children before abandoning them, and the older case of the woman who gave birth while shackled to a bed, both of which showed an extremely worrying lack of managerial control of security staff which in the end is a political responsibility, even though politicians would (we assume) not have been told about or asked to approve such actions.

There are separate questions about why an individual known to MI6 and MI5, allowed to go to Libya in the knowledge that he and his family were connected with an armed struggle there, and reported several times by the local community as a cause for concern, was not taken more seriously.  That's a matter of operational competence, possibly resources, and possibly the current inquiry will throw some light on that, but don't bank on it.

The question of how someone like Lucas becomes a target for political spying is down to the political responsibility of the Home Secretary of the time - there's simply no escaping that.

[Awol]

10 minutes ago, av1 said:

Other MP's doing bad stuff in the past seems to be line JC supporters are going with. Staggering. 

I also enjoyed this from Abbott when quizzed on previous support for the defeat of the British Army in Ireland. 

Here

In 84 she said.

 

 

She now compares that view to an afro hairstyle she had at the time. 

 

 

 

 

That's clear then. No politician - or indeed anyone - can be held to account for things they've said or done in the past, so long as they utter five magic words: "we have all moved on." These aren't the droids you're looking for, move along. 

These lunatics are at 34% in the polls.

[blandy]

3 hours ago, peterms said:

It's a very basic principle of government and public administration that politicians are responsible for policies, and staff for putting those policies into operation.  This is so for the library service, bin collection, security, policing, and the conduct of war, to give examples.  To take your example of states of alert, the Home Secretary (if such power has been delegated by Parliament) will periodically approve or review the broad guidelines for what constitutes a state of alert and what it entails, and staff will get on and work within those guidelines....

There are a limited number of possibilities that could explain how Caroline Lucas comes to be on a watch list while someone who is actually potentially dangerous doesn't....Perhaps staff flouted policy guidelines and did what they wanted...It does happen...

The question of how someone like Lucas becomes a target for political spying is down to the political responsibility of the Home Secretary of the time - there's simply no escaping that.

The state of alert is set by JTAC based on intelligence as to the nature, capability, timing, intent etc. of terrorist threat. It's not set by the PM or the Home Secretary. The whole mechanism now in use was set up by Labour about a decade ago.

caroline Lucas was spied on by the met police from around 2007.

now how any of that means that "May put Caroline Lucas on the watch list, because she attended an anti fracking protest, but not the Manchester bomber" is quite beyond me, largely because it's completely untrue. Some of what you wrote has merit, but the tweet is wrong.

[Rodders]

I'll be honest, my main focus for voting is economic. I think neoliberalism is gutting society, and the tories are particularly bad for worsening the gap between the haves and have nots. I really want a change from this system. Whilst "old" socialism ( or any dogmatic ideology ) isn't likely the answer, the symbol of more state involvement to protect greater numbers is important to me.

If you vote based on people, you could arguably make a case for never voting for anyone. I view my vote as an endorsement of investment, and re-regulating the financial sector more properly. I certainly don't agree with everything or everyone associated with Labour. There are some nutters there, and I'd have more than a few qualms re consistency with foreign policy for example, but hey, I get one box to tick, not one box and a separate sheet of paper for me to "please explain your thinking." 

I find the tories to be an utterly unconscionable choice - certainly at national level at least. lib dems seem so afraid of making a wrong move, all I know is they have decided to stick their mast on Brexit. Brexit saddened me, but we get on with it, so that obsession seems misguided. Could vote Green but then it's a total waste of time with this joke of an electoral system. 

As it is, where I am, it's either tory or labour - cardiff north is one of those marginals where oddly enough it could make a difference so for me it's a no brainer. 

Edited May 29, 2017 by Rodders

[Awol]

@Rodders good post, ironically it's Brexit that creates the opportunity to bin the neo-liberal economic model we were previously locked in to.

No doubt the Tories are a mess, May is a weak and wobbly leader, her party is intellectually bankrupt and frankly needs to die as a political force ASAP. 

Were Labour lead by almost anyone else I'd vote for them, but they're not and in our system the PM has a huge amount of control. Given his record it is too much of a risk for that person to be Jeremy Corbyn, imo. It is, as you say, a no-brainer. 

[Risso]

As poor as May and Co are, can you actually imagine a country run by Corbyn, McDonnell and Abbott?  It would make Mugabe's running of Zimbabwe look the very model of competency.

[Rodders]

I think the Tories will win overall - I just can't help but think of polls prior to Brexit and Trump to give much credence to the 'shifting' tides. But, anything that forces them to reign in their smugness is good. A hung parliament again, why not. 

If Labour were to win, I would imagine we could see some of those other less incompetent rebels deciding to play ball. Either way, I do think individual politicians have far less influence on the day. I do have such mixed feelings though - very enthusiastic about the -  admittedly ambitious - manifesto, but doubts over individual abilities. 

However, if it can at least show some of the "normal leaders" that going left on certain policies is actually an electable strategy then that would be positive. 

[PompeyVillan]

7 minutes ago, Risso said:

As poor as May and Co are, can you actually imagine a country run by Corbyn, McDonnell and Abbott?  It would make Mugabe's running of Zimbabwe look the very model of competency.

I was looking forward to going back to the 1970s but the promise of a safari is much more alluring! Where do I sign up?

Is it one of the holidays you collect tokens for in The Sun, because I'm not doing that. Do they even have a Butlins in Zimbabwe?

[a m ole]

Dominic Raab is a reprehensible human being, isn't he?