Off Topic Politics Thread

I was a huge admirer of Tony Benn apart from his anti-EU stance.

 

Oh right , very principled man .

Some of our press would have tried to eat him alive .

 

Yet his 1991 speech on the EU and his reasons against it have been shown to be right.

“Thirdly, nationalism can arise. Instead of blaming the Treaty of Rome, people say, ‘It is those Germans’ or ‘It is the French’. Nationalism is built out of frustration that people feel when they cannot get their way through the ballot box. With nationalism comes repression”

 

I would argue that nationalism arises when cynical operators exploit people’s grievances by blaming others. It is absolutely nothing to do with the EU.

 

Another thing I have said for years is that student loans for certain skills shortages especially for state positions should have something tied into them like 7 years NHS (dedicated not day tripping) employment and the loans are paid by the government.

 

"Today, a company linked to Baroness Michelle Mone was told it must repay the government £122m for breaching a contract https://www.private-eye.co.uk/.../spe.../profits-of-doom.pdf"
Lock the ****ers up!

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Appreciate I only added a snippet, but this was his point.
By parliament opting to give powers to the EU during the various treaties throughout the late 20th century it pushed democracy away from the people and handed a foothold to nationalism.

He even said the EU will introduce lots of great things that he agrees with, but if the people don’t think they have an influence then it is something he can’t agree to.

 

This is one of those Brexit myths. We didn’t ever, at any point , surrender any of the supreme sovereignty of the UK parliament.

 

Stabbings reported at a synagogue in Manchester.

 

Suspect reported dead, shot by armed police upon arrival at the scene. Awful news, on the day of Yom Kippur too

 

Clearly a targeted attack on the Jewish population. Sickening.

 

Witnesses report the suspect is still alive. Going by the speed of response, the police must have had some advance knowledge of this incident, but maybe not the location. The suspect was shot 6 minutes after the alarm was raised.

 

Just seen this on a live blog:

The man believed to be the attacker was shot by Greater Manchester Police firearms officers and is also believed to be dead.

However, police said it cannot currently be confirmed due to safety issues related to “suspicious items on his person”.

The bomb disposal unit has been called and is at the scene.

 

Two people killed in the attack.

 

The police clearly believed the suspect was carrying a bomb - if that is indeed the case the speed of the police response to take him down before he could detonate it was crucial in averting a much bigger mass casualty scenario. Mind you, if he did indeed have a bomb, why would you bother stabbing people?

 

Whether that is true or not we heard 20 years of politicians saying "but we can't do that because of the EU" which is pretty close to what Tony Benn was alluding to because a lot of the argument of "we still had authority" was only on paper. Yes we can go against something the EU dictats but there are penalties in place for those that do, "rebates" that get withheld. all sort of blackmail strategies if you do not toe the line!

It is one of the main reasons Labour went mad on PFI. They used money from the future by signing maintenance contracts that would only then appear on the books each year rather than a liability from the start being paid back and this meant they could spaff the actual tax intake on "the public" and still keep within the "strict" 3% of GDP allowed for a deficit in the EU dictats!

There wer loads of things we could have "sovereignly" gone against but the comeback for any resistance is the problem! That sovereignty meant nothing in the end and politicians on both sides were happy to constantly trot out the "Unfortunately we can't because we're in the EU" line. So we removed the excuse, whats the excuse now? Ahh we can;t X or Y because we're not in the EU. It is laughable. lol and rofl and lmao.

 

I’m not responding to this, because it doesn’t make an awful lot of sense.

 

Probably to get inside. Most synagogues lock the doors during services. Some of the larger ones might have security or police outside but not all.

 

My local school is a very small, Jewish primary school and I always think it's incredibly sad that when I wander or drive past they feel it's necessary to have two big security guards on the gate, who don't leave their post all day

 

Good point. Looks like a controlled explosion has just occurred.