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UK Politics - summer edition


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On 29/07/2017 at 8:18 AM, BigFatCoward said:

Pathetic mini riot in Hackney last night. Over what? Fucking idiot was seen on camera swallowing the fucking drugs. How is that the police's fault. 

Has your opinion on this changed now it's clear that it wasn't illegal narcotics?

 

Calling someone who dies in custody a "fucking idiot" isn't exactly a great way to foster trust and understanding with the community. 

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16 minutes ago, Masonity said:

Has your opinion on this changed now it's clear that it wasn't illegal narcotics?

 

Calling someone who dies in custody a "fucking idiot" isn't exactly a great way to foster trust and understanding with the community. 

Why would it change anything? He still attempted to swallow something. 

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1 hour ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Why would it change anything? He still attempted to swallow something. 

Because the implication was that the drugs had killed him. 

Restricting the mobility and airflow of someone who you believe has something in their mouth that could result in suffocation is pretty negligent. Criminally so, perhaps?

Until the enquiry is complete I don't find it particularly reassuring that our resident boy in blue is pretty much gloating about the kid's death.

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6 minutes ago, Masonity said:

Because the implication was that the drugs had killed him. 

Restricting the mobility and airflow of someone who you believe has something in their mouth that could result in suffocation is pretty negligent. Criminally so, perhaps?

Until the enquiry is complete I don't find it particularly reassuring that our resident boy in blue is pretty much gloating about the kid's death.

At the same time it's hard to have sympathy for someone who was resisting arrest and hiding evidence by trying to swallow it. 

If I was a police officer I would imagine I would have even less sympathy 

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Firstly, clearly someone dying is a tragedy, however for some reason people nowadays seem to think that this affects the truth of what happened, it doesn't.  Whether it is tragic or not that a young man has dies, he is still dead because he was a fucking idiot, he would have got fuck all of a sentence even if the package was drugs, now he is dead of his own actions. 

So no, my opinion hasn't changed in the slightest, he was in all likelihood swallowing (what he believed to be) evidence and he choked on it.  Whether it was class A or ground up paracetamol it was entirely his own doing.  

All of this is irrelevant, my point was that the riot was pathetic and idiotic, because clearly the victim was primarily to blame for his own death, not the police (the police are screwed here, try to stop him swallowing/choking and he dies - you get the blame, do nothing and he dies - you get the blame) .

I'm just so bored of armchair policing, this isn't a cretin american with a gun shooting a woman in her pyjamas for no reason.  Whatever the outcome of the enquiry the overwhelming evidence in this case, at this time, is that the victim caused their own death.  Until there is reason to suggest otherwise setting fire to the streets and doing marches for justice is just pathetic.    

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11 hours ago, Masonity said:

I find it rather easy to have sympathy for a young man who hasn't been convicted of any crime (or even publicly accused right now), who died in custody.

What would you like your police service to do when they chase and detain a suspect and they attempt to evade justice by swallowing the evidence?  Talk me through the process you would like officers to go through in your considered opinion.  

We wouldn't convict someone who was dead, nor publicly accuse, but are you telling me you can't see quite clearly an offence of obstruction?

The offence of obstructing a police officer is committed when a person:

  • wilfully obstructs
  • a constable in the execution of his duty, or
  • a person assisting a constable in the execution of the constable's duty.

 

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3 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Firstly, clearly someone dying is a tragedy, however for some reason people nowadays seem to think that this affects the truth of what happened, it doesn't.  Whether it is tragic or not that a young man has dies, he is still dead because he was a fucking idiot, he would have got fuck all of a sentence even if the package was drugs, now he is dead of his own actions. 

So no, my opinion hasn't changed in the slightest, he was in all likelihood swallowing (what he believed to be) evidence and he choked on it.  Whether it was class A or ground up paracetamol it was entirely his own doing.  

All of this is irrelevant, my point was that the riot was pathetic and idiotic, because clearly the victim was primarily to blame for his own death, not the police (the police are screwed here, try to stop him swallowing/choking and he dies - you get the blame, do nothing and he dies - you get the blame) .

I'm just so bored of armchair policing, this isn't a cretin american with a gun shooting a woman in her pyjamas for no reason.  Whatever the outcome of the enquiry the overwhelming evidence in this case, at this time, is that the victim caused their own death.  Until there is reason to suggest otherwise setting fire to the streets and doing marches for justice is just pathetic.    

Deaths at police hands in the UK are (thankfully) extremely rare. By and large, our police force is conscientious and decent.

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3 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Firstly, clearly someone dying is a tragedy, however for some reason people nowadays seem to think that this affects the truth of what happened, it doesn't.  Whether it is tragic or not that a young man has dies, he is still dead because he was a fucking idiot, he would have got fuck all of a sentence even if the package was drugs, now he is dead of his own actions. 

So no, my opinion hasn't changed in the slightest, he was in all likelihood swallowing (what he believed to be) evidence and he choked on it.  Whether it was class A or ground up paracetamol it was entirely his own doing.  

All of this is irrelevant, my point was that the riot was pathetic and idiotic, because clearly the victim was primarily to blame for his own death, not the police (the police are screwed here, try to stop him swallowing/choking and he dies - you get the blame, do nothing and he dies - you get the blame) .

I'm just so bored of armchair policing, this isn't a cretin american with a gun shooting a woman in her pyjamas for no reason.  Whatever the outcome of the enquiry the overwhelming evidence in this case, at this time, is that the victim caused their own death.  Until there is reason to suggest otherwise setting fire to the streets and doing marches for justice is just pathetic.    

Well said. The police do have an image problem, which may or may not be of their own making. Personally the majority of the police officers I've met are highly intelligent and sensible and do a very good job. The perception amongst a lot of people is that they live under a police state and that prejudice is rife, and so there a huge over reaction and jumping to conclusions as soon as any incident like this occurs. 

 

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27 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Well said. The police do have an image problem, which may or may not be of their own making. Personally the majority of the police officers I've met are highly intelligent and sensible and do a very good job. The perception amongst a lot of people is that they live under a police state and that prejudice is rife, and so there a huge over reaction and jumping to conclusions as soon as any incident like this occurs. 

 

i wouldn't go that far.  

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2 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Well said. The police do have an image problem, which may or may not be of their own making. Personally the majority of the police officers I've met are highly intelligent and sensible and do a very good job. The perception amongst a lot of people is that they live under a police state and that prejudice is rife, and so there a huge over reaction and jumping to conclusions as soon as any incident like this occurs.

Seeing as how subject is how poor black people have a very different experience of the police than middle-class white people, your personal experience as a middle-class white person is the very opposite of relevant to this discussion. (As would mine be.)

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1 hour ago, mormont said:

Seeing as how subject is how poor black people have a very different experience of the police than middle-class white people, your personal experience as a middle-class white person is the very opposite of relevant to this discussion. (As would mine be.)

I can still state my experience. Jeez.
If these officers suddenly morph into racist violent lunatics as soon as a black person comes into view then fair enough. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2017/aug/26/labour-calls-for-lengthy-transitional-period-post-brexit

Labour backing a transitional period of 'Soft Brexit' beyond the date we withdraw from the EU.

Quote

This will mean that under a Labour government the UK would continue to abide by the EU’s free movement rules, accept the jurisdiction of the European court of justice on trade and economic issues, and pay into the EU budget for a period of years afterBrexit, in the hope of lessening the shock of leaving to the UK economy. In a further move that will delight many pro-EU Labour backers, Jeremy Corbyn’s party will also leave open the option of the UK remaining a member of the customs union and single market for good, beyond the end of the transitional period.

Permanent long-term membership would only be considered if a Labour government could by then have persuaded the rest of the EU to agree to a special deal on immigration and changes to freedom of movement rules.

Be interesting to see how things proceed in the next reading of the Bill. 

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Worth noting that we are about five weeks short of it being one year to get the EU deal concluded.

So far, I am not optimistic that any kind of reasonable deal is going to be achieved. And neither are our politicans. They all seem to be saying, "We need a transitional deal", i.e. a lot more time than the 18 months we did have, a third of which May has somehow managed to completely waste.

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The time-wasting is down to two things, so far as I can see:

- Unpreparedness. No-one in either the civil service (understandable) or the Tory party (less so) had any idea of what Brexit, in practice, should consist of. Huge amounts of time have been and are being spent arguing about what the goals should be, instead of trying to achieve them. In addition, few people in the Tory party seem to have had any idea of the scale of the undertaking, and more time was wasted while this was explained to them.

- Infighting. As noted above, nobody agrees on what Brexit actually is in practice, but there are people with very firm ideas about how it should be achieved, other people with 'red lines', and yet other people looking to use it for personal political advantage. This leads to the current absurdity where at one and the same time the government is trying to get a transitional deal and also briefing against the EU negotiators in the UK press. You can't make significant progress on the former while doing the latter.

I get actually angry about this shit, not because it isn't what I wanted but because it is unnecessarily being turned into a complete clusterfuck by selfish idiots.

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Given that the Tory Eurosceptics have been arguing strongly for Brexit for 25 years (if not 40), then you'd have assumed some of them would have least sat down and come up with some ideas on how it could be achieved.

I'm still startled at how little thought went into this.

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20 hours ago, mormont said:

The time-wasting is down to two things, so far as I can see:

- Unpreparedness. No-one in either the civil service (understandable) or the Tory party (less so) had any idea of what Brexit, in practice, should consist of. Huge amounts of time have been and are being spent arguing about what the goals should be, instead of trying to achieve them. In addition, few people in the Tory party seem to have had any idea of the scale of the undertaking, and more time was wasted while this was explained to them.

- Infighting. As noted above, nobody agrees on what Brexit actually is in practice, but there are people with very firm ideas about how it should be achieved, other people with 'red lines', and yet other people looking to use it for personal political advantage. This leads to the current absurdity where at one and the same time the government is trying to get a transitional deal and also briefing against the EU negotiators in the UK press. You can't make significant progress on the former while doing the latter.

I get actually angry about this shit, not because it isn't what I wanted but because it is unnecessarily being turned into a complete clusterfuck by selfish idiots.

Isn't that actually one thing? How can you prepare for something, when you have no idea what you actually want? And that's what the Tories try figure with their infighting - or so it looks from the outside. Well, if we discount the pipedream Johnson have our cake and eat it nonsense, that is.

21 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2017/aug/26/labour-calls-for-lengthy-transitional-period-post-brexit

Labour backing a transitional period of 'Soft Brexit' beyond the date we withdraw from the EU.

Be interesting to see how things proceed in the next reading of the Bill. 

It's not like Labour's position has been more coherent or realistic than the Tories, as the bit of the special deal with reagards to freedom of movement shows. What they might try is to actually enforce the existing migration within the EU, and then sell it as a win, if they get elected. But that's the beauty if being the opposition party. You can demand and claim a lot of things, as they don't have to withstand a reality test.

Anyway, a friend gave me two interesting youtube links. One is Vernon Bogdanor giving his analysis of Brexit, and why he thinks this soft Brexit is not really an option for Britain.

youtube of the lecture if anybody has an hour to spare.

The other one being Michael Dougan of Liverpool University.

Michael Dougan of Liverpool University and his Brexit breakdown as it is now in 20 mins.

Dougan giving a more lengthy lecture on Brexit plus discussion.

What is interesting about it (at least imo) is that their analysis does not differ that much, despite them apparently having a different political leaning. Bogdanor obviously as a conservative intellectual. And Dougan, who seems to be rather left to the center. They differ a bit, when it comes to their conclusions regarding Brexit.

Bogdanor considers Hard Brexit as the only logical outcome (he is pretty consistent in his argumentation) if Brexit proceeds, while Dougan dodges that point a bit (imo at least). He hopes for either aborting the whole process, or some sort of soft Brexit, and is obviously not that fond of the fall out of a hard brexit (labour rights, enviromental and consumer protection), and is quite cross with the "left wing leave" campaigners.

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21 hours ago, Notone said:

Isn't that actually one thing?

No, but the two are certainly interacting - by which I mean, making each other worse.

If the government were just unprepared, they could fix that. But they can't, because the minute they try someone like Davis decides to posture to the tabloids. And the infighting can happen because nobody has a clear idea of what the end goal is, so it's impossible to lay down the law and call an end to it.

21 hours ago, Notone said:

It's not like Labour's position has been more coherent or realistic than the Tories

True, and they have similar problems; no clear idea of what their policy is, and division over Europe in the Shadow Cabinet.

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2 hours ago, mormont said:

If the government were just unprepared, they could fix that. But they can't, because the minute they try someone like Davis decides to posture to the tabloids. And the infighting can happen because nobody has a clear idea of what the end goal is, so it's impossible to lay down the law and call an end to it.

Yes, and this is exactly why I think of it rather as one point. Namely the UK Tory goverment having no idea what they actually want in the end. The unpreparedness is just the result.

However a more cynical observer might arrive at the conclusion, that this infighting is just staged, and internally they agreed to let the talks to fail, instead of just walking away. The 48%+ remain plus the soft Brexit vote is something they'd rather not upset. I leave it to you to guess, how big a chunk of the electorate is for a hard Brexit. This way they can at least blame those inflexible unimaginative Europeans.

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