Political Discussions And Ranting Thread

[Toast 16,138]

37 minutes ago, YoungWillz said:

When Bawjaws has made statements that no Scot could or should ever become Prime Minister of the UK....

 

 

I don't think you can complain about that, there have been quite a few so far.

[YoungWillz 21,042]

Just now, Toast said:

 

I don't think you can complain about that, there have been quite a few so far.

Oh I know, but there isn't a quota or a limit is there?

 

In the ridiculous scenario that Labour win an overall majority and in the even more ridiculous scenario that my local Labour MP (should he retain his seat) becomes leader of that party, Bawjaws' position is that he shouldn't become PM of the UK. Which in itself is ridiculous. Plenty of Scots represent the Tories in English seats, are they next to be excised in retaining the "purity" of the "English" parliament?

[Grim Up North 3,725]

1 hour ago, YoungWillz said:

Oh I know, but there isn't a quota or a limit is there?

 

In the ridiculous scenario that Labour win an overall majority and in the even more ridiculous scenario that my local Labour MP (should he retain his seat) becomes leader of that party, Bawjaws' position is that he shouldn't become PM of the UK. Which in itself is ridiculous. Plenty of Scots represent the Tories in English seats, are they next to be excised in retaining the "purity" of the "English" parliament?

 

Imagine how annoyed you would be if you were Welsh (1 PM who was born in Manchester) or Northern Irish.

 

[Lord Fellatio Nelson 6,218]

7 hours ago, Grim Up North said:

 

I think this is something you would like as a Scot.

 

I think we are stronger and better together but sympathise with a lot of the issues of feeling neglected by the south.

 

Unions, whether European or UK, need work and all parties need to feel they are part of the union and that it is delivering on most of what they want from a union.

 

Difficult to achieve but unfortunately one has already failed subject to us freeing ourselves from the strait jacket and the other may well fail once that has happened.

Is your tongue firmly in your cheek or rammed up a kilt wearers arsehole when you say that?

Please, quantify exactly how the South has 'neglected' the North.

An itemised list of our wrong doings to them please.

[Grim Up North 3,725]

21 minutes ago, Lord Fellatio Nelson said:

Is your tongue firmly in your cheek or rammed up a kilt wearers arsehole when you say that?

Please, quantify exactly how the South has 'neglected' the North.

An itemised list of our wrong doings to them please.

 

Mainly the weather forecast 

[Lord Fellatio Nelson 6,218]

1 hour ago, Grim Up North said:

 

Mainly the weather forecast 

That puts that one to bed then.

[YoungWillz 21,042]

Boris been lying through his teeth again.

 

Denied he said the police were spaffing money up the wall - see the LBC interview when he quite clearly said it.

 

Now the Luxembourg PM has said no concrete proposals, no written proposals, no major progress. And Johnson unsurprisingly doesn't turn up for the press conference. Just like he didn't turn up for the protestors at Heathrow.

 

EU however walking into the trap. Johnson knows EU won't grant an extension for the sake of it now. So now he can ask for one....

[YoungWillz 21,042]

Tory wannabe and Margaret Thatcher admirer (yes she was born in 1980), Jo Swinson speaking to the conference. Again. Seems to be an almost never-ending speech.

 

"Look at these parties" she says "acting like dictators".

 

Oi, Swinson, your party's policy is to deny Scotland an independence referendum, even when they want one. It is to deny the people a say on Brexit specifically and just revoke Article 50. Dictator?

 

"14 year old Olivia says she was never asked if she wanted Brexit" she says in disgust.

 

Oi Swinson, I was never asked if I wanted a Coalition Government where your party abandoned its flagship policy on tuition fees in favour of Austerity just so you lot had a seat in Government. And at least I was entitled to vote.

 

Quite apart from using her own children as bargaining chips and the blood of dead teenagers in London in the debate, she's re-floating some sort of PFI for environmental challenges. Look how well that worked in Scotland's hospitals, schools, etc etc.

 

I really really hope she gets gubbed in her own seat. Oh sweet Portillo, where is thy sting?

 

 

[Sean 6,315]

8 minutes ago, YoungWillz said:

Tory wannabe and Margaret Thatcher admirer (yes she was born in 1980), Jo Swinson speaking to the conference. Again. Seems to be an almost never-ending speech.

 

"Look at these parties" she says "acting like dictators".

 

Oi, Swinson, your party's policy is to deny Scotland an independence referendum, even when they want one. It is to deny the people a say on Brexit specifically and just revoke Article 50. Dictator?

 

"14 year old Olivia says she was never asked if she wanted Brexit" she says in disgust.

 

Oi Swinson, I was never asked if I wanted a Coalition Government where your party abandoned its flagship policy on tuition fees in favour of Austerity just so you lot had a seat in Government. And at least I was entitled to vote.

 

Quite apart from using her own children as bargaining chips and the blood of dead teenagers in London in the debate, she's re-floating some sort of PFI for environmental challenges. Look how well that worked in Scotland's hospitals, schools, etc etc.

 

I really really hope she gets gubbed in her own seat. Oh sweet Portillo, where is thy sting?

 

 

You would think that she would come across as less insane given the other parties but no.

[Sean 6,315]

On 16/09/2019 at 15:16, YoungWillz said:

Boris been lying through his teeth again.

 

Denied he said the police were spaffing money up the wall - see the LBC interview when he quite clearly said it.

 

Now the Luxembourg PM has said no concrete proposals, no written proposals, no major progress. And Johnson unsurprisingly doesn't turn up for the press conference. Just like he didn't turn up for the protestors at Heathrow.

 

EU however walking into the trap. Johnson knows EU won't grant an extension for the sake of it now. So now he can ask for one....

I do smell a rat in Luxembourg.Insisting  the press conference was outside in front of loud anti brexit protestors seems like a deliberate ploy to me.

[Bibliogryphon 9,577]

48 minutes ago, Sean said:

I do smell a rat in Luxembourg.Insisting  the press conference was outside in front of loud anti brexit protestors seems like a deliberate ploy to me.

 

I think you can interpret it either way depending on what you want to believe. The room would not accommodate all the journalists and maybe Boris felt that booing over a press conference would embarrass his host.

 

but it is not a good look possibly for either camp.

[YoungWillz 21,042]

I'm missing something, clearly.

 

Everyone's baffled as to how the UK can leave the EU  on 31 October if an extension is asked for and granted. Simple. UK fails to nominate an EU Commissioner. EU law requires automatic expulsion in that event. Bawjaws goes to Court to enforce that if necessary. EU law will take precedence over any UK law.

 

Is there something which impels Bawjaws to nominate?  

[msc 18,439]

13 minutes ago, YoungWillz said:

I'm missing something, clearly.

 

Everyone's baffled as to how the UK can leave the EU  on 31 October if an extension is asked for and granted. Simple. UK fails to nominate an EU Commissioner. EU law requires automatic expulsion in that event. Bawjaws goes to Court to enforce that if necessary. EU law will take precedence over any UK law.

 

Is there something which impels Bawjaws to nominate?  

 

Reprimand, not expulsion. They tried floating that one in July/August and it sunk. Nothing compels him to - although if there is to be an extension, a man inside learning all their plans seems like a smart idea tbh.

 

imo he's going to try and bribe one of the other countries governments to veto an extension. Hungary seem contenders.

[TQR 14,390]

Still, at least he’s popular with the public.

 

 

[En Passant 3,741]

Dick Emery lives! 

[Joey Russ 7,220]

 

 

[YoungWillz 21,042]

Wait.

 

China floods world with cheap steel Outrage as British Steel begins to fail.

 

What now? Sell British Steel to China.

 

OldWillz (who worked for British Steel for decades) would be outraged, it would probably have killed him if he wasn't dead already.

[TQR 14,390]

I’m embarrassed of my nation, but not as embarrassed as I am for the other side of the pond.

 

 

[paddyfool 379]

Does anyone else find it weird how elderly US politicians have got all of a sudden? Even more so than the obese 73 year old in the White House, there's also the 78 year old Bernie Sanders (with his recent heart attack), the 77 year old Michael Bloomberg, and the 76 year old Joe Biden in the running to oppose him.

 

If any one of these four individuals (including Trump) gets elected next year, they'll be the oldest US president at the time of election in history [the relatively spry 70-year-old Elizabeth Warren falls a little shy of this mark, however; Reagan was 73 when he was reelected].

 

 

 

 

 

[En Passant 3,741]

No real idea which thread this belongs in, but it's undoubtedly political in nature and deserves as wide an audience as possible imho. He got me anyway.

 

 

Below is a post from former chief fire officer from Derbyshire fire and rescue (very good and highly respected chief)

Grenfell...

Who’d be a fire chief?
Who’d be a firefighter?

I’ve not read the Grenfell Inquiry yet. Something to look forward to next week.

As a firefighter, you spend decades being told to follow procedures and training. They work, fires get put out, you get to go home safely.

You are told you did a good job, you are audited and the auditors tell you that you are competent and professional. It is reaffirming and reassuring.

Step outside those procedures and you fail your assessment, you are not competent. You don’t want to be there.

All these procedures are written to tackle fire in buildings built to a regulated standard.

The building is supposed to behave in a predictable way. Arm Chair enthusiasts would imagine that fire is not predictable. Well, you are wrong, it is a matter of scientific fact that fire develops and behaves predictably depending on the fuel, air and environment.

That is why firefighters can have standard operating procedures (SOPs) that for the most part work and do the job. If fire was unpredictable you could not have an SOP.

For decades building regs worked and we never suffered a Grenfell even in the 80 and 90s when there were 40% more fires than we have today.

Likelihood and severity, you’ve heard these banded around. In the nineties the likelihood was massive but it seems nowadays the severity has mushroomed as whole buildings are burning down on a regular basis.

If you ever drove through Salford in the 90s a single burnt-out flat was a common sight as you looked up at the high rise buildings. Like a broken tooth.

A fire put out using tried and tested procedure in a building designed to contain the fire to the flat of origin. Most people in the other flats wouldn’t even know that a fire had occurred until the morning after.

No common fire alarm, no mobile phones yet a successful outcome and no mass evacuation.

Why?

Because the buildings were not wrapped in flammable material allowing unchecked spread up the facade and ingress through windows.

Because the internal separation was solid and fire-resistant, because mostly the fire doors unless vandalised worked.

At this time the fire brigade was the responsible authority for fire legislation. We issued fire certificates and our word was law.

Admittedly we didn’t issue certs on domestic property but such was our regulatory power in other premises the local authority building control accepted that we knew what we were about and went with our recommendation

All that changed through deregulation at the end of the 90s. (The reform act of 2005 in fact). I was in fire protection at the time and I remember the old hands predicting a disaster.

It was like giving the kids the keys to the sweet shop. Building owners were now (2006) responsible for the fire safety standards in the same way a manager is responsible for health and safety at work. Some do it well, some do it badly, some do what they can afford and hope it’s enough.

Well, it’s not good enough and it is coming home to roost.

As a chief, you expect your firefighters to follow the policy and be competent, you have the dubious pleasure of being ultimately responsible for making sure that this is the case. It is a massive responsibility, you do your best. You audit the boys and girls to death. They are sick of being assessed. But they are safe, competent and they go home at the end of the shift.

Grenfell.

Imagine turning up at a building where everything has gone wrong the whole fire protection system had failed and the fire is spreading through what should be concrete fire-resistant rooms and up the outside beyond your capability to reach it.

You now need to tell 200 firefighters to forget everything they ever learned and do things completely outside of every procedure they have trained on. Things that could get them killed. It’s a miracle none were.

Every fibre in your body is screaming to do something new and evacuate whilst every professional brain cell is saying “are you mad” if you evacuate the people in the flats with no breathing apparatus they are doomed and it will be seen to have been your call.

Evacuating a burning building means taking people from what you understand to be a place of relative safety (or at least it should be if built right) and asking them to enter smoke-filled corridors and stairs knowing some won’t make it. We are talking about people of all ages and abilities here. Your mum, your grandad, your kids.

What would you do?
How brave are you now sitting in your armchair with the daily mail sword drawn about to slay the guilty?

Making life and death decisions outside of policy because a building had been let slide as a result of a succession of systematic governmental failure, safe in the knowledge that if you lose one firefighter or members of the public are found in stairwells dead you will be squarely in the frame of “going outside of procedure”.

Not so easy is it.

It is no surprise that candidates for chief fire officers jobs total one or two per position when advertised these days.

I stand with Dany Cotton and I stand with London Fire Brigade.

I look forward to part two of the report that looks at root cause including building regs and I sincerely hope the author does his job properly.

I hope everyone understands that firefighters turn up when everyone else’s risk assessment had gone wrong and are tasked with sorting out the mess.

We are not chefs, a missed instruction does not result in a ruined dish. We have to take what ingredients we have been given and bake a cake on the hoof whilst the kitchen is on fire and then have some armchair baker who may have watched his mum make a jam tart once tell us how well we have done.

Don’t get me started on sprinklers. I’ve been vocal, been on the telly, been sat in front of ministers with hard evidence to prove the case and been fobbed off.

Politics is at the root of Grenfell, I doubt any politician will be vilified in the way firefighters and chiefs have this week

Who’d be a chief?
Who’d be a firefighter now?

[TQR 14,390]

So far things are going swimmingly for the 14,252nd new UKIP leader, Pat Mountain. Notable only for, other than looking like Catherine Tate’s Nan, revealing a bit much about her party.

 

 

[paddyfool 379]

Arg, what a shitshow of choices we have in the UK today. I suspect Farage will be far from the only person spoiling his ballot.

 

I'll continue to have my tiny shout at keeping worst-of-the-lot mini-Trump Johnson out, but I expect it'll be a futile effort. 

[Deathray 2,940]

27 minutes ago, paddyfool said:

Arg, what a shitshow of choices we have in the UK today. I suspect Farage will be far from the only person spoiling his ballot today.

 

I'll continue to have my tiny shout at keeping worst-of-the-lot mini-Trump Johnson out, but I expect it'll be a futile effort. 

 

It's a bit of a crap v crap v crap v crap v crap v crap fest isn't it....

[Deathray 2,940]

Voter ID in the Queens Speech.

 

Whilst the principle makes sense, how the fuck does that work with postal votes?

[TQR 14,390]

June Mummery, Brexit MEP, complains we won’t have any representation. It’s almost as if that’s what she voted for?
 

 

The absolute pinnacle of stupid cuntery.