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Politics, The Final Frontier (Politics)
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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The EU referendum proved conclusively that democracy doesn’t work when people vote the wrong way.

Make sure you vote wisely in today’s election so that we can put an end to democracy once and for all.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Wiley can't help thinking that the EU elections are misunderstood in the UK.

It's really about the regions (not nationalities) letting off steam...against the centre(s)?

Least that is the what the League's success seems to imply. Well, to me anyway. BTW Can't see the Catalans being allowed to take their seats.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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You're a bit behindhand. In days of yore, the Commission (i.e. the permanent bEurocrats) were fighting the members of the EU (i.e. the governments of Germany, France, Britain etc) for ultimate control of the EU. During that stage, anything that tended to weaken national governments was encouraged by the Commission -- most particularly separatist movements but anything either regional or supranational.

This reached a crescendo with the launch of the Euro which was intended to remove national governments' control over their own budgets, interest rates etc. This was premature and the national governments did not just continue on their old merry ways but now could actually use the supranational resources of the Euro to go their own even merrier ways. Cue: financial crises all over the EU shop.

Then soppy old Markel declared Germany open to allcomers and since they all had to come through the other member states to get to Germany (and 'free movement' meant they could go to other states even after reaching Germany) we had the immigrant crisis on top of the financial crisis. Now it wasn't a question of Commission versus the national governments, it was a question of the survival of the EU itself. All hands were required for the pumps. Now separatist and regional forces were symptoms of the break-up of the EU and have been firmly removed from all agendas.

To the consternation of the Scots Nats for instance who were suddenly downgraded from darlings to villains. It was hilarious listening to them telling us that the EU was telling them they would have to apply for membership all over again and would spend five to ten years unattached to England but not attached to Europe! Ditto the Catalans and everyone else with a beef against their national governments. They all found now they had a beef against Brussels as well.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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A quick moan about BBC statistical whizzes. When they say, "And here are the Conservatives who have lost thirty one per cent..." what they actually mean is "thirty-one percentage points" which is not just a whole different thing but a whole lot worse.

And a quick hooray for my beloved Kensington & Chelsea. We used to be Tory, as befits the world's richest borough (o.n.o.), but we went Labour at the last election and Lib Dem at this one. We may be opportunistic turncoats but we never let riffraff like UKIP or the Brexit Party or the Greens in with a sniff. Follow our lead, Britain!
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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EU rules dictate that successful candidates have to be registered in their own country before they can trot off to Strasbourg. Two of the Spanish ones will be arrested by El Bill if they do. A twenty-four Act of Oblivion is a possibility or they could go to the consulate in Brussels, where they are currently hiding out, since that's Spanish territory. But getting out of consulates is not a done deal nowadays. Another solution is to move the European Parliament to Barcelona (it already moves around a fair bit) and declare it extra-territorial except this would exacerbate some already explosive travel expenses issues of the Chelsea vs Arsenal at Baku variety. What about using Gibraltar, that's a three-way street? A referendum wouldn't help as far as I can see. Anyway, have a think about it and send your suggestions to ... um ... I'll try to find out.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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In my area, the South East, we elected 10 candidates.

4x Brexit including a Nigel Paul Farage.

1x Conservative a certain Daniel Hannon.

3x Lib Dems

1x Green

1x Labour

That's 5 leavers. 5 remainers.

We have cunningly voted for a balanced ticket. Those mean spirited continentals think this is gridlock. They just don't understand the subtlety of voting within the South East electorate.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Baroness Chakrabarti is saying that Labour will call for a vote of no confidence against an in coming Tory Leader.

Wiles can't see ChangeUK going for a general election after their EU results.

"Err. We are still opting for a change...but only after the polls give us slightly more than 2.9%."

The Baroness is a lawyer by profession, she don't do maths.....
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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If MP's are going to vote on the basis of their recent election results then ChangeUK MP's are going to find themselves in the same lobby as all Labour and Conservative MP's. I do not know what Mr Coyote is by profession. Some sort of scientist with no interest in rocketry, I would imagine.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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You couldn't be more wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2VXOd3uXh8
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Mick Harper
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Protest Now, The Age of Dissent – A Special Issue (of the Guardian Review)

The Guardian, it is said, was founded in response to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, so not altogether surprisingly, the Guardian is commemorating the bicentenary. After a bit of flag waving, it starts thus

But people taking such stands have changed the world over and over, toppled regimes, won rights, terrified tyrants, stopped pipelines and deforestation and dams. They go far further back than the Peterloo protests and massacre 200 years ago, to ...

Now we have an AE technique that basically says, “Oh yeah? Go on then, name names” which most of you have fallen foul of from time to time when making extravagant claims.

...the great revolutions of France and then of Haiti against France and back before that to peasant uprisings and indigenous resistance...

So three names then. A peaceful protest mown down by the soldiery, a full blown revolution and a slave revolt. As my imaginary Jewish mother-in-law would say, "That's a list?" We also have another rule: when advancing claims pertaining to the whole of human history try to avoid picking examples from a single thirty year period e. g. 1789 - 1819. Also, and I really hate mentioning this, try to avoid examples of popular protest that led to
a) not much save the establishment of the Guardian newspaper
b) a bloodbath, the second nastiest person in European history and a restoration of the status quo ante
c) probably the worst governed country of the last two hundred years.

... in Africa and the Americas to colonisation and enslavement and to countless acts of resistance on all scales that were never recorded

So how come you know about them? But moving swiftly on to one that is recorded ...
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Mick Harper
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Right now, for example, Florida’s Coalition of Immokalee Workers is forming another alliance with students to pursue rights for farmworkers by targeting nationwide US burger chain Wendy’s

The thing that most depresses me about today’s left-wingers (I can’t speak for history) is not so much their complete lack of proportion but the unwisdom of their choice of fight. Remember, these people are responsible for moving the human race on so, however much we may mock them as individuals, collectively they are a vital asset.

So let’s analyse what’s wrong here, if anything. The first and the always is the identification of heroes and villains. It is assumed unquestioningly, not just by the writer but by the Guardian readership as a whole (who remember are responsible etc etc), that Immokalee Workers are deserving of help and Wendy’s of castigation. The first and always corrective is the felicific calculus. Who is doing the greatest good for the greatest number: Wendy’s burgers or the Immokalee Workers? That at least provides us with a playing field, though not yet a level one.

Next, what is doing the greatest good to the greatest number: a penny on the burger or a dollar on the burger-worker’s pay? To invert a favourite left-wing slogan: should we be supporting the few against the many?
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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The Algonquin wits ran a competition to come up with the most boring title for a magazine article. The winner was "Canada: Sleeping Giant of the North". That's what we'll be after Brexit. Canada without the Montreal Raptors. The actual most boring country will remain New Zealand. It took over from Britain when we joined the Common Market and became a cafe society.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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You don't get too many lefties against the poor do you?

Well not unless it is against Indian farmers who want to plant variants of GM crops.

A strange alliance of Hindu Nationalists, Traditionalists, Greenpeace warriors, and oh yes, the makers of pesticide, have for many years resulted in a ban on GM cotton and aubergine. Well the farmers have had enough and started planting GM anyway.

https://bit.ly/2WWnb3X

Now you don't have to be a lover of GM to have some sympathy with the farmers......who after all are just trying to get by.

So, to counter this, you need a strong argument that you actually have the farmers' welfare at heart, to run alongside your ahem leftie conservatism.

Aha... the great GM crops/ Indian Farmer suicide myth.


https://bit.ly/2F1BDNR

It's project fear. Western Lefties and Greens need to reconnect with the idea of progress rather than constant smart-arse scaremongering.

Girls, Guys, Guevara lovers, get a grip.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Michael Gove is going to ban plastic straws in the UK. This is Barry Bonkers.

There is virtually no problem with mismanaged plastic waste in the UK.

The problem is Chinese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Sri Lankan.

China is particularly good at copying ideas that make their companies profitable. Less so at efficient plastic waste disposal.

I wonder why?
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Mick Harper
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Plastic waste has an interesting (and AE-interesting) history. When it started life, back in the fifties, it was put in landfill. Although we have learned that land cannot be filled with quite the careless rapture we thought it could be in those halcyon days, it remains the case that burying plastic in land fill does no appreciable harm to the planet.

It does however upset the 'nature lobby' so policy changed and it was sent off to fill land in third world countries out of sight of the nature lobby. Once they were alerted by Panorama, that was stopped and the plastic got burned. That released too many toxins into the atmosphere. So it was made recyclable. Nobody recycled it very much and anyway soon nobody had much use for black pellets that could be used for road surfacing but not much else. So plastic was made biodegradable and could now be safely jettisoned into the sea.

It turned out that biodegradable means reduction to microscopic bits of plastic which now not only fill the oceans, that are not only irrecoverable, that not only enter and poison the marine food chain, that not only herald the end of life as we know it but means that there is no alternative, unless we wish to give up plastic, but to put it into landfill.

Unfortunately Greenie People never change their mind about What Is Bad even when it turns out to be Easily-the-Best (e.g. nuclear power) so this won't happen either. They would rather the end of life as we know it than give up their List of Nasties. It is after all what they live for.
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