Off Topic Political Debate

Unfortunately her comment was taken by migrants as there 'needs to be no upper limit' so encouraged further migrants to embargo on a hazardous journey, many were simply economic migrants. Germany must also take its share of responsibility in the failure of Schengen both in the inability to secure its external borders and insisting the rules were adhered to. Migrants should have sought asylum in the first safe country.

I appreciate the enormity of the problem but despair at the outcome, it has certainly boosted very far right support in many countries.

 

The initial policy was that migrants should seek asylum in the first safe country - Italy and Greece had been protesting for years that they were being punished due to their geographical location, and these protests had been ignored. It is, quite simply, unfair that those countries should take the burden only on themselves. You say that you despair at the outcome yet what has happened has not fulfilled all the prophecies of doom which came out of the right wing press - where are the millions which were predicted ? Germany has taken the most yet the infrastructure is not even half stretched and the number of entries is going down, not up.

 

The BBC showed its bias on Sunday morning when it felt the need to apologise and warn viewers in a trailer about the upcoming interview with Marine Le Pen. Much to the BBC's horror she came across remarkably well, reasoned and confident.

It is the establishment's fault that in many countries where sensible discussion about immigration cannot take place, you end up with unpredictable results, such as Brexit and Trump.

 

I am surprised you are playing down the rise of the far right, especially in Germany.

 

I would not play down the rise of the far right (dubious about that description by the way) SH. A glance at the latest opinion polls in Germany show how complicated it all is:
CDU/CSU 33% (The CSU is the sister party of the CDU in Bavaria)
SPD 22%
Grüne 12%
FDP 7.5% (The FDP are not the same as the Liberals in England - more like neo liberal)
Die Linke 9%
AfD 12.5%
Others 4%

At the moment we have a large coalition of CDU/CSU - SPD (broadly the equivalent of a Conservative - Labour coalition......would that be possible anywhere else ?) which would have a greatly reduced majority if these figues are reliable. Like all polls this does not show the influence of non voting. Nobody will go into coalition with the AfD, so all they do is to make the maths more difficult. The only realistic alternative to this big coalition is a 3 way coalition of SPD - Grüne - Die Linke. The CDU would not even work together with the AfD in opposition - there is also the added complication that any party with less than 5% falls out of the reckoning (this happened to the FDP last time). So, an ironic result of the right (ie. AfD) could well be that the centre of politics in Germany moves to the left. Already we have the CDU saying they want Steinmeier from the SPD as the next Bundespresident.

 

In the recent local elections Merkel's party only polled 17.6% of the votes compared to AfD's 14.2%, quite an indictment on Merkel's policies when you think AfD has only been in existence for three years.

 

You are talking about the state elections in Berlin SH. The CDU have never done well there, but the end result of this was a red-red-green coalition government for the state (ie. SPD-Green-Die Linke), actually the first federal state to have this coalition. So, the end result was a shift to the left. Why are you so keen to see Merkel beaten when she is from the CDU - the equivalent of the Tories ? The only end result of Merkel being toppled at the next election would be Germany moving to the left, so I will be working very hard next year to help make sure you get your wish. Actually I quite like her, although she's in the wrong party. If by your references to the rise of the far right in Germany you were not referring to the AfD (and they are only right wing in some of their policies) but rather to Pegida, I hold them to have about as much significance as the English Defence League - simply a group of politicized Dresden/Leipzig football thugs who are getting too much publicity.

 

I'm disgusted the Tories ever got this through. Welcome to the beginning of the end of our last few remaining freedoms...


The UK has just passed a massive expansion in surveillance powers, which critics have called "terrifying" and "dangerous".

The new law, dubbed the "snoopers' charter", was introduced by then-home secretary Theresa May in 2012, and took two attempts to get passed into law following breakdowns in the previous coalition government.

Four years and a general election later -- May is now prime minister -- the bill was finalized and passed on Wednesday by both parliamentary houses.

But civil liberties groups have long criticized the bill, with some arguing that the law will let the UK government "document everything we do online".

It's no wonder, because it basically does.

The law will force internet providers to record every internet customer's top-level web history in real-time for up to a year, which can be accessed by numerous government departments; force companies to decrypt data on demand -- though the government has never been that clear on exactly how it forces foreign firms to do that that; and even disclose any new security features in productsbefore they launch.

Not only that, the law also gives the intelligence agencies the power to hack into computers and devices of citizens (known as equipment interference), although some protected professions -- such as journalists and medical staff -- are layered with marginally better protections.

In other words, it's the "most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy," according to Jim Killock, director of the Open Rights Group.

The bill was opposed by representatives of the United Nations, all major UK and many leading global privacy and rights groups, and a host of Silicon Valley tech companies alike. Even the parliamentary committee tasked with scrutinizing the bill called some of its provisions "vague".

And that doesn't even account for the three-quarters of people who think privacy, which this law almost entirely erodes, is a human right.

There are some safeguards, however, such as a "double lock" system so that the secretary of state and an independent judicial commissioner must agree on a decision to carry out search warrants (though one member of the House of Lords disputed that claim).

A new investigatory powers commissioner will also oversee the use of the powers.

Despite the uproar, the government's opposition failed to scrutinize any significant amendments and abstained from the final vote. Killock said recently that the opposition Labour party spent its time "simply failing to hold the government to account".

But the government has downplayed much of the controversy surrounding the bill. The government has consistently argued that the bill isn't drastically new, but instead reworks the old and outdated Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). This was brought into law in 2000, to "legitimize" new powers that were conducted or ruled on in secret, like collecting data in bulkand hacking into networks, which was revealed during the Edward Snowden affair.

Much of those activities were only possible thanks to litigation by one advocacy group, Privacy International, which helped push these secret practices into the public domain while forcing the government to scramble to explain why these practices were legal.

The law will be ratified by royal assent in the coming weeks.

 

I share many people's concerns about privacy. I think though that one consequence of more legislation is that some people will become more careful about what they make public or find new ways of hiding anything sensitive. Also there must come a time when the sheer quantity of material on social media will make policing it more challenging than the number of people keeping watch can cope with.

 

You may have stumbled upon the real reason why Theresa May needs to hire 30,000 more civil servants - nothing at all to do with Brexit...

 

So the polls are wrong again. In France the Margaret Thatcher admiring Francois Fillon has come from nowhere to become the right's leading candidate to challenge Marine Le Pen for next years' French Presidency. Sarkozy, the former president, who decided to place himself to the right of Le Pen, was eliminated, too much baggage from his previous term and court cases ahead. This now leave Fillon to fight it out with the previous favourite Alain Juppe, the convicted fraudster of public funds.

Fillon could be excellent for France if only he can convince the public that radical reforms are desperately required. I somehow think France is still not ready to embrace ideas like abolishing the 35 hour week and cutting 500,000 public sector jobs over five years.

If Fillon wins the nomination it is seen to improve the chance of Le Pen winning the Presidency, although she would still be the underdog.

 

Can you stop hoping Le Pen wins the French election you vile little ****. It will never happen.

 

If you bother to read my comment properly you should deduce that my preference would be for Fillon, the decent candidate on the right. Le Pen would be a disaster because of her protectionist left wing economic policies.

You need to learn to post without insulting other posters and to read a bit slower.

 

It is very hard to place Le Pen on a normal left-right spectrum SH. From my side she has some very good economic ideas and is, in some cases, 'Green', particularly when talking about things like 'local' agriculture. She is also in favour of pulling out of NATO, and, ending the French relationship to nuclear energy. She is also striking all the right chords in relation to people's fears of globalization, unrestricted free trade, predatory speculative banking etc. But......she is a populist and behind all this she has a vision of France which is anything but multi cultural, and there, naturally, my interest in her plummets. She may have perfected the art of saying different things to different groups of people at different times - like Hitler did. Both the workers and the capitalists thought that he was 'on their side'.

 

Interesting piece on the French news today looking at the policies of different candidates and how the public rate them. Le Pen had a very poor rating, with only 25% of her aims striking a chord with the voters. She still cannot rid herself of her father's views that are out and out racist despite trying to get him out of the FN. She is unlikely to get elected next year as she is regard as extreme, and Fillon is regarded as very much a moderate, which is the direction that the country is currently heading in. Sarkozy tried to take the party to the right and has been rejected. We have seen that across Europe the people have grown their support for the EU since the vote in the UK, and extremes are not thought of as very sensible.

 

Universally Le Pen would clearly be labelled a far right candidate however that does not stop her promising things to the electorate which would also be popular to the traditional left, very similar to UKIP's attractiveness to Northern Labour voters. In UKIP's case it concentrated on immigration. Le Pen has promised worker's rights protection, early retirement, and protectionists policies to allay the threat of job losses. She needs the left wing vote to be elected.
It only took Hollande about 3 days to admit he could not deliver on his promises but by then the damage was done with France in limbo for 5 years.

Fillon sounds an excellent candidate but will France elect a politician that actually dares to prescribe the nasty tasting medicine it desperately needs.

Will enough of the electorate vote for a smaller state and longer working week?

 

Interesting YouGov poll out today showing huge gains for eurosceptics on the continent with France being the third most eurosceptic at 63%. Brexit UK is only 48%.

The voters were asked in 12 states whether they preferred mainstream liberal politicians or 'authoritarian populism'.

The pollsters concluded: 'The results may well be cause for concern for politicians in mainstream established parties across the continent. The implications for electoral success are potentially enormous. They added that, even if anti-EU parties do not win power in the upcoming elections, the surge in support for them will inevitably influence the policies and rhetoric of mainstream policies.

 

The problem is SH. that descriptions such as 'left' and 'right' are open to different interpretations. They have changed much through time - before immigration became a theme hard left meant only one thing ie. collective ownership of the means of production, whether from the state, or, ultimately, by the workers themselves. According to that description 'hard right' would mean exactly the opposite ie. everything is left to free market forces (call it Laissez Faire or neo liberalism). Why then do we class racism as being 'on the right' ? If you think it is not possible to be a left wing racist then try reading the writings of Friedrich Engels. There is no mention of multi culturalism in any left wing texts before the second world war - in fact, historically speaking, Marxists were against immigration because it split the working class along ethnic lines.

 

Ha.....through your own mouth (or rather keyboard) you admit that Brexit UK. has gone down !

 

If the UK can leave with 48% what can happen with France at 63%, Netherlands at 55% and Italy at 47%?