Stuart Galbraith Posted February 5 Posted February 5 However one looks at it, when we seperated out Diego Garcia from Mauritius when it declared independence, we probably broke international law. This is an attempt ot recitify the situation, and whilst I dont think anyone likes it very much, I dont think anyone else has come up with a better solution. The Tories main solution was to pretend there wasnt a problem for over 50 years. Well, we are now run by a lawyer. They dont ignore law, they process it and so it goes. Personally, I dont really care what happens to it. It really shouldnt be out problem. We got out of Empire in the 1960's, and its a little late in the day Americans kicking off about our trying to divest ourself of the last elements, when they were so instrumental in our dumping the rest of it. How would I solve it? Just to piss off the current incumben of the White House, Id sell it to China and Iran purely for the comedy value. But then im probably a very bad person.
R011 Posted February 6 Posted February 6 Elections to local councils that are going top be reorganized out of existence next year? Sure, why not. It's only money.
Tim Sielbeck Posted February 6 Posted February 6 4 hours ago, R011 said: Elections to local councils that are going top be reorganized out of existence next year? Sure, why not. It's only money. Are they stopping the elections because of the reorganization or are they reorganizing to stop the elections?
Ssnake Posted February 6 Posted February 6 Since there'll be other elections thanks to the reorganization, the answer is obvious.
Tim Sielbeck Posted February 6 Posted February 6 21 minutes ago, Ssnake said: Since there'll be other elections thanks to the reorganization, the answer is obvious. Ever hear of gerrymandering?
Stuart Galbraith Posted February 6 Posted February 6 (edited) 1 hour ago, Tim Sielbeck said: Ever hear of gerrymandering? Yeah, he was lead singer in Gerry and the Pacemakers. Ok, so lets cut through the right wing waffle here. There is going to be a reorganization of local councils, since half of them are bankrupt after the brilliant financial management of call me Dave and the Bojo dream team over the last 14 years. So the idea seems to be to reorganize them into larger councils, similar to what was done with several in the 1970's, when we last had a financial hiccup. Lets look at what a council does. It collects waste (or more accurately contracts someone to do it for them), it mends roads. So miserable are they funded and so divorced are they from most peoples concerns these days, I had to look it up to remind myself of the stuff they do, other than funding prodigeously large council pension plans in Reykyavik. https://www.nalc.gov.uk/about/parish-and-town-councils.html 'Parish and town councils run numerous services, depending on their council size. These include delivering services (such as allotments, car parks, celebrations and festivals, community buses, community and leisure centres, litter bins, parks and open spaces, public toilets and street lights), improving the quality of life (such as community hubs, neighbourhood plans, funding community projects and services, suitable housing, setting up dementia-friendly groups, solar panels, tackling loneliness and youth projects), and giving the community a voice (such as on planning matters with principal authorities and developers, local police and health services, and the government).' So lets look at that. Where I live they have overpriced car parks. They dont empty the litter bins enough. We have no leisure centres because they closed them all. Gum is all over the streets along with litter because they dont clean up enough. We do have some community buses, but so infrequent I wouldnt know how to catch one. Council tips have a layer of bureaucracy to get in that would put the movie Brazil to shame. No youth projects because they closed the youth centres here, and dont raise their voice to central Government so you would notice to make any difference. Most of the town centres have either closed their toilets, or have a ghastly automatic abortion that self cleans or turns you out on the street after 15 minutes, whether you have finished or not. We also dont have any local police (unless you count 10 miles away as local) and our local health services are on life support. They do have allotments, Ill give them that. My uncle uses one. OTOH, its not exactly challenging to manage a small field that other people till, and I daresay they charge over the odds for the privilege. You may think that with such utter indifference to doing the jobs they are supposed to do that most people wouldnt vote for them at all. And you would be right. People generally dont turn out for council elections, recognising they they will not substantially change for the better without funding, which central Government has been loathe to do for decades. So they vegitate, pretend to be vital, and pretend people vote for them. Putting it off 12 months to me means absolutely nothing at all. Perhaps in London or Clacton it might mean something, but here, I have sheer indifference to the subject. Personally I dont think making bigger councils will make any difference. We tried this in the 1970's with abortions like Avon council, which eventually was dismantled by the tories because it was too big and inefficient. And I daresay the same will be trut this time. Basically, Farage and his gang of cretins are pretending this is an assault on democracy. My view, the assault on democracy began in the 1980's when they started underfunding this theoretically vital corner of Democracy, and its a little late for Farage to try and get us all worked up about it, the artless rabblerousing tosser. Any questions? Edited February 6 by Stuart Galbraith
Tim Sielbeck Posted February 6 Posted February 6 (edited) Why now? Why not before now? If the members of the council are so incompetent why not replace them? If there is no money now how does making new boundaries ease the financial problems when it seems they will be spreading fewer resources over a larger area? Edited February 6 by Tim Sielbeck
Stuart Galbraith Posted February 6 Posted February 6 Why? Because they are a fig leaf that central Government actually cares about little people. They didnt care as long as they were existing on life support and they were 'getting the deficit down.' (which we didnt as it happened). Why now? Because we have a new Government that believes in providing local services. There is proably not going to be extra money, but socialists being socialists believe that bigger is better. Well it certainly wasnt in the 1970's, perhaps with digital technology and AI it will work better now. But suffice to say what we have now is not working. I could walk out the front of my house and take a picture of the state of the roads and illustrate how things now are. Local council leaders are elected. Usually they are people with mediocre experience of the real world, and some view it as a stepping stone to central Government. Some of them (judging by the utterly appalling planning decisions they make) are presumably in it for the financial kickbacks. There is really only one way to solve this problem, and intermediate level of Government between central Government and local Government to keep their foot on local councils to deliver better services. I always envisaged a Wessex Assembly for example. Although judging how the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Government have turned out, maybe that would just be moving the politically inept to a higher tier. Basically, the Tories made a bloody great mess, and now are throwing their toys out the pram as Labour try (perhaps effectively, perhaps not) to fix it. Same as it ever was.
Stuart Galbraith Posted February 6 Posted February 6 Funeral of what's reputed to be the last Bomber Command pilot.
lucklucky Posted February 10 Posted February 10 The sad state of UK https://www.samizdata.net/2025/02/blasphemy-laws-are-incompatible-with-free-speech/
Stuart Galbraith Posted February 10 Posted February 10 When someone is actually complaining about syntax in a telegraph story (both examples of which say much the same thing), you begin to think there isnt a lot of substance left in that blog. I gave up at the second paragraph. We are not America. We dont have to apishly follow your 1st Amendment. And rather more to the point, in the US the President is now threatening to chase down Hamas supporters, and threatening to deport them. Something Id also happily endorse, and of course having no first amendment we are probably free to do so, and you arent. Did anyone point that out to him? Personally I loathe antisemitism, absolutely hate it. But it is a right to express it in the US, even if you are foreign. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/30/trump-pledges-to-deport-hamas-sympathisers-on-college-campuses You cant go extolling Americas protection of freedom of speech as something to be emulated, at the same time as breaking that same right when it suits you. Its called hypocrisy, and there is quite enough on this site thank you very much.
lucklucky Posted February 10 Posted February 10 I am not American...1st amendment is not applicable to foreign citizens. Hypocrisy is different laws for... actually worse, it is possible racism and political discrimination that your government likes to do.
Stuart Galbraith Posted February 11 Posted February 11 8 hours ago, lucklucky said: I am not American...1st amendment is not applicable to foreign citizens. Hypocrisy is different laws for... actually worse, it is possible racism and political discrimination that your government likes to do. That seems to be a sweeping statement that is not altogether true. Other than when it is, which seems to be subject to what chicken entrails you happen to be looking at. https://www.freedomforum.org/non-citizens-protected-first-amendment/ We dont have different laws. We have 2, maybe 3 different legal systems, but only 2 substantively of any authority, and only one law. Anyone telling you different is paying too much attention to the vapid agitprop from the right wing.
Stuart Galbraith Posted February 12 Posted February 12 Now this is either going to be strangely interesting, or the most boring video you ever watched. Basically its a training video from one of the electricity boards, covering wind damage to elextricity pylons in the big storn of 1986 (remember that winter very well, it was the time Challenger blew up IIRC). If you stick with it then its eerily like some kind of lost footage video that never quite gets to the point, or a viral video for a new computer game, 'when pylons attack'. Well if you havent got anything better to do but watch mind melting right wing agitprop, its probably a distinctly better waste of time.
Stuart Galbraith Posted February 12 Posted February 12 (edited) You do realise that England is just one of Britain's 4 constituent parts, right? Its just like basing how White America is, looking at figures for New York. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_people_in_the_United_Kingdom Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland are all whiter than England, well into the 90's still. Population in constituent nations of the United Kingdom United Kingdom NUTS 1 Region's Year 1971 estimations[34][35][36] 1981 estimations[37][38][39][36] 1991[40] 2001[41][42][43] 2011[44][45][46] 2021[47] Number Percentage Number Percentage Number Percentage Number Percentage Number Percentage Number Percentage Northern Ireland – – – – – – 1,672,698 99.25% 1,779,750 98.28% 1,841,713 96.77% Scotland – 99.6% 4,908,140 99.1% 4,935,933 98.74% 4,960,334 97.99% 5,084,407 96.02% 5,051,875 92.9% Wales – 99.6% 2,788,533 99.1% 2,793,522 98.5% 2,841,505 97.9% 2,928,253 95.6% 2,915,848 94.2% England – – – 95.4% 44,144,339 93.8% 44,679,361 91% 45,281,142 85.4% 45,783,401 81% Ever felt had? Edited February 12 by Stuart Galbraith
Mr King Posted February 12 Author Posted February 12 3 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said: Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland are all whiter than England, well into the 90's still. For now. And yes Stuart, the great replacement is underway in the US too. You will note, I started a thread dedicated to just that. This ethnic cleansing is going on throughout the West.
Stuart Galbraith Posted February 12 Posted February 12 Probably forever. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as we have seen have their own nationalist agenda's that make ours look utterly like trivial by comparison. The Scots are now regularly chanting at English people to get them out too, which just goes to show. As for your great replacement, is that the one thats has people chanting 'Jews will not replace us?' Well if you had looked at the Palestine thread today, and I see you havent, we have already covered that last one. The Prime Minister today was already talking about it and has promised to fix it. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/pmqs-live-mps-erupt-as-kemi-badenoch-and-keir-starmer-clash-over-migration/ar-AA1yT8Cy?ocid=BingNewsSerp Personally I thought you would be delighted, isnt the Orange messiah trying to get Palestinians out of Gaza?
Mr King Posted February 12 Author Posted February 12 1 minute ago, Stuart Galbraith said: Probably forever. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as we have seen have their own nationalist agenda's that make ours look utterly like trivial by comparison. The Scots are now regularly chanting at English people to get them out too, which just goes to show. As for your great replacement, is that the one thats has people chanting 'Jews will not replace us?' Well if you had looked at the Palestine thread today, and I see you havent, we have already covered that last one. The Prime Minister today was already talking about it and has promised to fix it. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/pmqs-live-mps-erupt-as-kemi-badenoch-and-keir-starmer-clash-over-migration/ar-AA1yT8Cy?ocid=BingNewsSerp Personally I thought you would be delighted, isnt the Orange messiah trying to get Palestinians out of Gaza? Great replacement is definitely being carried out, as to if its THE JEWS, well no, but a number of them are involved in it because they belong to the political spectrum that's carrying it out. But there are plenty of non Jews involved in selling out their own people. As for Trump, I have had no problem calling him out on things I disagree with. Recently it was both immigration related. H1b visas and our involvement in the Palestinian / Israeli religious war. If Trump imports a bunch of Palestinians into the US it will undermine everything he was elected for.
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