Off Topic The Politics Thread

[Star of David Bardsley]

Agree mate many could have been saved through various means but sadly the huge majority died because they caught this 2222 disease. Personally I think the borders should have been closed at the start and the penalty for breaking the rules should have been grater? That 400 people wedding/1200 at a rave/200 in that club not to mention countless breaches of lockdown rules. I said many months ago It comes down to respect and common sense. Plenty of people have respected the guidelines and won't get it while many others have not.

And plenty will have respected the guidelines and just been generally good people who undeservedly died due to Johnson sitting on his arse doing **** all for weeks at the start or because a world-beating track and trace system barely worked.

 

[ELLERS]

And plenty will have respected the guidelines and just been generally good people who undeservedly died due to Johnson sitting on his arse doing **** all for weeks at the start or because a world-beating track and trace system barely worked.

And what about recently? more deaths happened months after the initial lockdown. Stop blaming Boris for everything as you sound stupid. Many people broke the rules and we are paying for it. as for the T&T nearly 35% of people ignored it once contacted... is that also Boris fault? Maybe in your eyes but for normal folk many people took the P.

 

[Star of David Bardsley]

And what about recently? more deaths happened months after the initial lockdown. Stop blaming Boris for everything as you sound stupid. Many people broke the rules and we are paying for it. as for the T&T nearly 35% of people ignored it once contacted... is that also Boris fault? Maybe in your eyes but for normal folk many people took the P.

Not sure the spike in deaths after he bravely battled the experts to save Christmas is the defence you think it is. I assume “normal folk” is code for dopey Express readers.

 

[qprbeth]

ANDREW NEIL: Censorship, bullying, threats of jail... how Nicola Sturgeon's storm troops turned Scotland into a banana republic without the bananas
By Andrew Neil For The Daily Mail

Published: 09:30 AEDT, 25 February 2021 | Updated: 01:47 AEDT, 26 February 2021



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These are dark, even dangerous days in Scotland. The stramash between the country's two most famous politicians, Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, has resulted in vital public documents being censored or banned, important information being suppressed, the media cajoled and cowed, the legal system brought into disrepute, the Scottish Parliament neutered and even bloggers being threatened with jail.

The relentless twists and turns in the Salmond-Sturgeon saga make it hard to follow, not just in the rest of the UK, to which Scotland is increasingly another country, but even north of the border.

So many have just switched off. But that is a mistake because what is happening in Scotland is a clear and present danger to democratic accountability, the impartial rule of law and a free Press – an integral part of these islands.


So let us stand back from the mind-boggling detail and consider the enormity of what is happening.

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At one stage the search function of the Scottish Government's Freedom of Information website stopped producing results for certain contentious documents.

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The Scottish Government has refused to publish relevant legal advice to shed light on why it persisted in fighting the judicial review case, even when it knew it was heading for defeat. But the most egregious attempts to stop relevant evidence from being published happened this year. When Salmond made his submission public last month the Scottish media was wary of touching it, given all the legal threats flying around.

The Spectator magazine, of which I am chairman, was not subject to any warnings and posted it online anyway. The Scottish Crown Office, the legal arm of the Sturgeon Government, wrote to complain and demanded we take out at least one paragraph. We complied and left the rest online.

The Spectator then went to court in Edinburgh to establish that there was a legal basis for publication. The court agreed. The Crown Office did not object. The Scottish Parliament, after much faffing about (as is its way), decided it could publish the Salmond submission too, thereby paving the way for the former first minister to testify before it. So, all good. Democratic accountability restored.

Not really. The SNP decided to ramp up the argument that publishing the Salmond submission could lead to identifying the women who complained about Salmond's behaviour, and whose anonymity was rightly guaranteed by the court.

It was all nonsense. Anonymity was never at risk. But the Crown Office had used the same argument in the past and it was wheeled out again, oiled by those who had most to gain from it. A group of women who claimed to work for the Scottish Parliament posted identical 'spontaneous' tweets asserting, with no evidence (they hadn't even seen the submission), that publication would enable identification of the complainers. They turned out to work for the SNP, not Parliament, so it's not difficult to work out who was behind that cack-handed pile-on.

The Crown Office dusted off its old arguments and joined the chorus for censorship. In a craven act of surrender, Parliament decided to pull its publication of a submission it had only just posted, then repost it with major redactions as dictated by the Crown Office, shredding what credibility the inquiry had left in the process.

It is no coincidence that the censored bits go to the heart of Salmond's claims about Sturgeon's honesty before Parliament. To mislead it is a resigning matter under the ministerial code. What did she know and when did she know it? That was the crucial question in the Watergate hearings. The chances of the inquiry asking it are now slim.

Salmond cannot now be questioned about these bits of his submission. Nor can Sturgeon when she appears. Nor can the inquiry take into account anything it has not published when coming to its conclusions. So, job done for the Sturgeon camp. The lengths to which they have gone to redact and censor would shame North Korea.

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Two weeks after the Government's case crashed and burned – at huge taxpayer expense – Salmond was arrested and charged with a long list of sexual offences, of which the most serious was attempted rape

Nicola Sturgeon claims Alex Salmond peddling 'alternative reality'



Democratic accountability and transparency in Scotland are choked in a Kafkaesque fog.

The Crown Office, which is meant to be independent, has become the 'lickspittle arm' of the SNP Government, says Alistair Bonnington, former professor at Glasgow University's School of Law. It operates 'at the direct command of the cabal currently at the head of the Scottish Government'.

The Crown Office is in crisis. In a recent case involving the famous Glasgow Rangers football team it was forced to admit to a 'malicious prosecution' – legalese for proceeding with a prosecution even though you've been advised that you don't have enough evidence to secure a conviction.

It's already had to pay out over £20million in compensation and legal fees. The final bill could be close to £100million.

Nobody has been sacked. Nobody has resigned. Perhaps becoming the legal shock troops of the Sturgeon Government in its dealings with the Salmond insurrection is a way to ensure survival.

And to a compromised legal system we must also add a supine press (the Scottish Daily Mail being an honourable exception). The broadcasters are especially compliant, often little more than Sturgeon TV, while Scotland's once powerful big-city newspapers are shadows of their former selves.

They no longer have the editorial resources to hold government to account or the funds to stand up to legal bullying. The Scotsman, for example, now barely sells 10,000 copies a day. The fact it took The Spectator to go to a Scottish court speaks volumes for the sad state of the Scottish media.

If Scotland was Texas, the Justice Department in Washington DC would have sent in the Feds by now to investigate the various breaches of first amendment rights, which guarantee free speech and protect a robust Press.

But Westminster stands by powerless as rights meant to be UK-wide – independent law officers, a parliament prepared to hold government to account, a press strong enough to speak truth to power – are trammelled by the power of a near one-party state.

Scotland's destiny was surely never to resemble a banana republic – without the bananas.

my assessment on this is clouded by my own view, which he has all but admitted to "we all do things we regret when we are drunk" that he was a nasty egotist and who when he thought he could get away with it.. was a sexual predator. I have experienced this myself (yuck!) and so can well believe what he said about himself.

 

[ELLERS]

Not sure the spike in deaths after he bravely battled the experts to save Christmas is the defence you think it is. I assume “normal folk” is code for dopey Express readers.

People knew about Christmas and the risks. They were told about the new variant. As a family (8 people) we decided not to meet up for one day and risk undoing all the sacrifices and hard work of isolating. None of us have caught covid, so I guess us dopey Express readers have done something right?

 

[Stroller]

People knew about Christmas and the risks. They were told about the new variant. As a family (8 people) we decided not to meet up for one day and risk undoing all the sacrifices and hard work of isolating. None of us have caught covid, so I guess us dopey Express readers have done something right?

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[Star of David Bardsley]

People knew about Christmas and the risks. They were told about the new variant. As a family (8 people) we decided not to meet up for one day and risk undoing all the sacrifices and hard work of isolating. None of us have caught covid, so I guess us dopey Express readers have done something right?

At least you acknowledge you’re a dopey Express reader. This is progress.

 

[ELLERS]

At least you acknowledge you’re a dopey Express reader. This is progress.

Typically you. I don't read the Express I was just making a point.... which you couldn't answer.

 

[Star of David Bardsley]

Typically you. I don't read the Express I was just making a point.... which you couldn't answer.

It wasn’t really a point at all. You and your family aren’t representative of the millions of people who will have mixed who wouldn’t have done had Johnson just been up front with people rather than going for the theatre of making Starmer out to be a grinch in parliament and craving the headlines of being a Christmas-saving superhero in the gammon press.

 

[ELLERS]

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2 things...Firstly that was from the 16th of December. I remember it well. A few days later new data came out regarding the new variant and many families like us cancelled Christmas. There were plenty of warnings at the time.
Secondly, Keir Starmer position changes from week to week or should I say 'weak to weak', so I wouldn't listen to Captain Hindsight.

 

[Stroller]

2 things... Firstly that was from the 16th of December. I remember it well. A few days later new data came out regarding the new variant and many families like us cancelled Christmas. There were plenty of warnings at the time.
Secondly, Keir Starmer position changes from week to week or should I say 'weak to weak', so I wouldn't listen to Captain Hindsight.

Of course, 'Captain Hindsight ' suggesting to Johnson that he ought to do something that he subsequently actually did. The 'new variant' had been known for weeks.​

 

[ELLERS]

It wasn’t really a point at all. You and your family aren’t representative of the millions of people who will have mixed who wouldn’t have done had Johnson just been up front with people rather than going for the theatre of making Starmer out to be a grinch in parliament and craving the headlines of being a Christmas-saving superhero in the gammon press.

But they were upfront with people. At the time they thought Christmas was okay due to data but a few days later the data came out and contradicted it. There was plenty of warning as I recall many moaning about not seeing family at Christmas. I would like to see Starmer try and be an opposition rather than a grinch... but that won't happen.

 

[ELLERS]

Of course, 'Captain Hindsight ' suggesting to Johnson that he ought to do something that he subsequently actually did. The 'new variant' had been known for weeks.​

Stop talking rubbish. The new variant may have been known for weeks but new data was released just before Christmas which changed things. As I said, I remember it well because as a family we took the decision just before Christmas for that reason.

 

[Star of David Bardsley]

But they were upfront with people. At the time they thought Christmas was okay due to data but a few days later the data came out and contradicted it. There was plenty of warning as I recall many moaning about not seeing family at Christmas. I would like to see Starmer try and be an opposition rather than a grinch... but that won't happen.

So much warning that nine days before Christmas he was belittling “Captain Hindsight” for actually predicting the future while knowing there was a new variant which could change his instructions within days. Your timeline is absolute bollocks.

 

[ELLERS]

So much warning that nine days before Christmas he was belittling “Captain Hindsight” for actually predicting the future while knowing there was a new variant which could change his instructions within days. Your timeline is absolute bollocks.

No my timeline is correct. You are the one talking utter bollox as usual.

 

[Stroller]

Stop talking rubbish. The new variant may have been known for weeks but new data was released just before Christmas which changed things. As I said, I remember it well because as a family we took the decision just before Christmas for that reason.

'He wants to cancel Christmas, Mr Speaker'.

 

[ELLERS]

So much warning that nine days before Christmas he was belittling “Captain Hindsight” for actually predicting the future while knowing there was a new variant which could change his instructions within days. Your timeline is absolute bollocks.

And just to prove you are stupid and talking bollox.
From the BBC 23rd Dec
The government has scrapped plans to relax Covid rules at Christmas for London and much of south-east England, where tier four restrictions will now apply.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-55056375

 

[Star of David Bardsley]

And just to prove you are stupid and talking bollox.
From the BBC 23rd Dec
The government has scrapped plans to relax Covid rules at Christmas for London and much of south-east England, where tier four restrictions will now apply.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-55056375

Genuinely not sure if you’re ignorant, an apologist or just being stupid.

He knew about the variant weeks before. He knew there was a good chance he’d have to change the guidance, which was blatantly wrong even without the Kent variant. He could have been responsible in the weeks before but had to be the hero.

 

[ELLERS]

'He wants to cancel Christmas, Mr Speaker'.

At least if you are going to debate this, stick to the point.
I have already said (previously) that Boris was stupid to say what he did in the house on the 16th as the new data made him look silly.
However
We were told just before Christmas that new data showed a steep rise in infections and Christmas was basically over.

 

[ELLERS]

Genuinely not sure if you’re ignorant, an apologist or just being stupid.

He knew about the variant weeks before. He knew there was a good chance he’d have to change the guidance. He could have been responsible in the weeks before but had to be the hero.

idiot who can't even admit when he is wrong. Go away until you are decent enough to admit you were talking bollox.
As proved.