Off Topic The Politics Thread

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Should the UK remain a part of the EU or leave?

  • Stay in

    Votes: 56 47.9%
  • Get out

    Votes: 61 52.1%

  • Total voters
    117
  • Poll closed .
Trump bashing at full throttle now given his performance in the last 24 hours.

He is of course totally malign and I would never have voted for him. But he is transparently malign and always has been, the Americans knew what they were voting for. And to be reluctantly fair to him, he is actually trying to do the things he said he would try to do in the election campaign, no matter how idiotic they are. Apparently amongst US Republican voters his approval rating stands at 87%.

I know people, people who I like and respect, who voted for him. None of them like him, and they are all a bit shame faced about it, and they all gambled that the Republican Party machine would knock him into shape or neuter him, but to a person they detest Hilary Clinton and all the cronyism and corruption she stands for. I’m beginning to think that the (alleged but probably actual) Russian ‘influence’ in that election was most likely around highlighting Clinton’s many and various shortcomings, and her undoubted elite insider status, rather than promoting Trump in any way.

The liberal elite (yay, go me!) really has taken its eye off the ball in recent years, no one to blame but ourselves. We have Brexit, Trump, Corbyn, the Italian populists, the AfD etc to show for it.
I'm not so sure that the general US population that voted red DID know. I think he ran a well-orchestrated campaign (orchestrated in the main by those people who have something serious on him, like the Russians, the NRA, etc.) of deceit, deception, and overt racism. If you look at the demographics of how people voted, it's clear that in the states where a) a victory would gain biggest advantage in the Electoral College, and b) standards of education are lowest, he focused his rhetoric against 'outsiders' to a degree that - along with the actual fake news (Fox, Brietbart, Infowars) - fooled people ripe for fooling.

What we are seeing now is the real Trump - horrifically racist and xenophobic, determined to dismantle everything that Obama did in his eight years in office simply because he was so successful in bringing the US out of the global recession and providing greater coverage in healthcare and employee protections, all whilst having the temerity of being black. Trump is pathologically obsessed with discrediting his opponents, fomenting unrealistic hatred of 'foreigners', and creating the biggest possible divide in the nation - simply because a divided USA is the ideal situation for Russia. He's even gone so far as to be blatantly promoting russia and Russian interests without so much as a pretense of subtlety, like calling for their readmission to the G8, refusing to apply any sanctions even after the Senate and Congress voted 98% in favour of doing so, and calling for the reduction in safety checks and safeguards against asbestos (guess what - Russia makes 58% of the world's asbestos but hasn't got a market for it due to the very sensible safety regulations that countries now have in place).

Make no bones - Trump's behaviour shows one of two things, either of which make him utterly unsuitable for office: either 1) he's fully in debt to the Russians (both financially and morally, because I have no doubt some form of that 'pee-tape' exists); or b) he's suffering from dementia and simply says what someone behind the throne tells him to - and again, that's most likely directed from Moscow, given the way he always seems to side with them over his own country.
 
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300 million of them and they were the best two apparently
Had anyone other than Clinton ran I don't think trump would be president
 
anyone still use a fax machine

NHS 'Struggling To Keep Up' As It Holds On To Thousands Of Fax Machines
Labour Party FOIs revealed some trusts have as many as 603 fax machines.
The NHS is “struggling to keep up with the present” as it continues to use thousands of fax machines, Labour has warned.
Figures obtained by the party showed that the NHS in England still has at least 11,620 fax machines in operation, costing £137,000-a-year to maintain.
On average, NHS trusts were found to be spending more than £4,000-a-year on the machines as of April 2017, with one trust racking up an annual repair bill of £96,000.
Blaming austerity for the service’s ageing equipment, Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth called for more investment in technology and innovation.
The Labour MP said: “Not only does our NHS face a repair bill of £5bn, not only has it become reliant on old out of date equipment with even one hospital using an X Ray machine from 1984, it’s also still reliant on thousands of fax machines, with a repair bill in the hundreds of thousands.”
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Ben Pruchnie via Getty Images
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth blamed 'Tory austerity' for the dated equipment
Freedom of Information requests revealed that the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust had the most fax machines – with 603 in use as of April 1, 2017 – closely followed by the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, which had 550.
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Labour
Meanwhile, five other trusts expanded their collections between 2010 and 2017, with the Oxford Health NHS Trust acquiring 149 additional fax machines over the seven-year-period, bringing its total to 223.
The number owned by the Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust also jumped significantly from 30 to 129.
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Labour
Responding to the figures, a spokesperson for the Department of Health said the government wanted patients to receive “world-class care in world-class facilities” and had recently announced £3.9bn of new capital investment in the NHS.
“The Prime Minister and Health and Social Care Secretary have committed to a long term plan with a sustainable multi-year settlement for the NHS to help it manage growing patient demand, which will be agreed with NHS leaders, clinicians, and health experts,” the spokesperson added.
 
The LibDems say it is transphobic to call Ian Huntley Ian Huntley and say he should be held in a women's prison

what do you think
will it be a vote winner

maybe he will finally get punished
how do child killers get on in womens prisons
 
The LibDems say it is transphobic to call Ian Huntley Ian Huntley and say he should be held in a women's prison

what do you think
will it be a vote winner

maybe he will finally get punished
how do child killers get on in womens prisons

Ah, the Lib Dems. Cyril Smith would be proud of them...
 
Sky News Breaking‏Verified account@SkyNewsBreak 1h1 hour ago
MPs have voted 324-302 against a Lords amendment to give the sifting committee more power to oversee EU law changes

Sky News Breaking‏Verified account@SkyNewsBreak 43m43 minutes ago
MPs have voted 326-301 against Lords amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill to make exit date subject to parliamentary approval

MPs reject Lords Amendment 39 relating to the removal of 29th March 2019 from the face of the Bill as Exit Day by 324 votes to 302 (majority: 22)
 
It's all over. Phillip Lee has gone. PHILLIP LEE. We didn't listen. And now he's gone. How do you feel now, you 17.4 million bastards?
I am incredibly sad to have had to announce my resignation as a minister in Her Majesty’s Government so that I can better speak up for my constituents and country over how Brexit is currently being delivered. Statement to follow shortly on my website.
apparently he felt so strongly about it he abstained in the votes
 
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As somebody said today, history may turn out to show Trump to be a bad man but a good president.
I’m getting irritated by the BBC reporting of his meeting with Kim, going on about how disappointing it is that Kim didn’t bring his nukes with him and hand them over, or at least leave them in the cloakroom, and how there is no detailed plan for going forward. An agreement to keep talking is about the best that could be achieved today and they got that.

Trump is a disruptive influence, if he followed the old traditional rules he’d be about as effective as Theresa May, running away from confrontation and challenges. Although he is detestable and many of the things he is doing are likely to be damaging to Americans and the world (and are likely to be reversed) he’s delivering a shake up that the old school desperately needs - if they can learn from it. If you organise a society where the top 0.1% get obscenely rich and ever more so, the next 9.9% look after themselves very well, and the rest at best stagnate or find themselves getting poorer by seeing some of what they have transferred to the hyper rich, and you call it a democracy and let the people with nothing to lose vote, you end up with people like Trump, who promise disruption. The way our government is handling Brexit means we are ever more likely to end up with a populist disrupter of our own. Corbyn or Rees Mogg? All the signs are that the elite is in denial, hoping all this weird stuff will just go away.

Saw arch Brexiteer conspirators and alleged Russian stooges Banks and Wigmore in some Commons committee. These are horrible people who are only really interested in causing a bit of chaos for a laugh, and who have only a passing familiarity with honesty. But I have to admit they handled this meeting very well, treating the MPs with absolutely no respect.
 
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I am incredibly sad to have had to announce my resignation as a minister in Her Majesty’s Government so that I can better speak up for my constituents and country over how Brexit is currently being delivered. Statement to follow shortly on my website.
apparently he felt so strongly about it he abstained in the votes
Probably didn’t want his reputation or that of his family massacred by the right wing press, as they have done every other MP who votes against this farce.