Theresa May Becomes UK's 'Spy Queen' and New Prime Minister (arstechnica.co.uk) 238
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Ars Technica: Theresa May has become the new British Prime Minister. As she sat down with the Queen on Wednesday, a controversial surveillance draft legislation that looks to significantly increase surveillance of Brits' online activity will be debated during its second committee stage day in the House of Lords. Ars Technica reports: "The Investigatory Powers Act could be in place within months of May arriving at Number 10 -- if peers and legal spats fail to scupper its passage through parliament -- after MPs recently waved it through having secured only minor amendments to the bill. As home secretary, May fought for six years to get her so-called Snoopers' Charter onto the statute books." According to Ars Technica, Theresa May's key political moments on the Investigatory Powers Bill start in 1997 when she became the Member of Parliament for Maidenhead. During her opposition years, her home affairs record shows that she generally votes against the Labour government's more draconian measures on topics such as anti-terrorism and ID cards. Mid-2009: May votes against requiring ISPs to retain certain categories of communications data, which they generate or process, for a minimum period of 12 months. 2010: She was appointed home secretary in coalition government between the Conservatives and junior partner the Liberal Democrats. 2011: The previous government's shelved Interception Modernization Program is rebranded as the Communications Capabilities Development Program (CCDP) by home office under May. Mid-2012: The CCDP morphs into Communications Data Bill, which is brought before parliament. Late-2012: May's Snoopers' Charter bid fails as deputy PM Nick Clegg orders the home office to go back to the drawing board. Mid-2014: May rushes what she characterizes as an "emergency" Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill through parliament, after the European Court of Justice invalidates the Data Retention Directive for failing to have adequate privacy safeguards in place. Late-2015: British security services have intercepted bulk communications data of UK citizens for years, May reveals to MPs for the first time as she brings her revamped Snoopers' Charter bid -- this time dubbed the Investigatory Powers Bill (IPB) -- before parliament. Mid-2016: MPs support thrust of IPB as it passes through the House of Commons. July 13, 2016: Theresa May becomes the UK's new prime minister as peers in the House of Lords undertake a second day of committee stage scrutiny of the Investigatory Powers Bill. UPDATE 7/13/16: Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who led the Brexit campaign, has been made foreign secretary by the new Prime Minister Theresa May.
She "may" become the new prime minister (Score:5, Funny)
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Things are really going her way - you could say that this is the month of May.
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I know, it's like lolcats are writing for the news.
Theresa may has become PM?
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I'm guessing you don't live in any of those countries.
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It's more accurate to say that English is a Germanic language that's had the Romance verb system bolted onto it. (E.g. no other Germanic language has progressive tenses.)
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Italy had a hot young, recently retired, porn star run for office a few years ago. She won too if I remember right.
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Are you talking about Britain or America now ?
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Are they also this?
May fought for six years to get her so-called Snoopers' Charter onto the statute books...
During her opposition years, her home affairs record shows that she generally votes against the Labour government's more draconian measures on topics such as anti-terrorism and ID cards.
So middle of the road has a bill named "Let's snoop on citizens?"
What is going on there?
Don't you think she looks tired? (Score:2, Funny)
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Wrong.
She was elected to Parliament by the voters of Maidenhead and subsequently elected as party leader by the Conservatives. Under the Westminster system, that's as elected as it gets.
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Wrong.
She was elected to Parliament by the voters of Maidenhead and subsequently elected as party leader by the Conservatives. Under the Westminster system, that's as elected as it gets.
Great, so she was elected by 0.106% of the population, I hope they were representative of the views of the other 99%
Champion of the "Snoopers Charter" (Score:2)
In her previous incarnation she was champion of the "Snoopers Charter": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Wall of text (Score:5, Informative)
Dear editors,
I'm genuinely interested in understanding this summary but, it's effectively a gigantic wall of text that's almost impossible to understand or follow. Could you please, I dunno, edit...
UK And International Affairs (Score:5, Interesting)
Secretary of State for Exiting the EU - David Davis
Secretary of State for International Trade - Liam Fox
The first is getting us out of the EU, the second is for getting new trade agreements for when we are out of the EU.
All these three are Brexiters, and will be responsible for the aftermath. Very clever - as May was a Remainer, she has effectively delegated responsibility for the success or failure of exiting the EU on to those who campaigned to get us into this situation in the first place!
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maybe she gave the job to boris to keep him out of the country for as long as possible.
She should have made him ambassador to Mars. Send him over on the Embassy One.
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Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary isn't the only Cabinet Minister she's appointed which will have international implications, she has also created two new cabinet posts;
Secretary of State for Exiting the EU - David Davis
Secretary of State for International Trade - Liam Fox
The first is getting us out of the EU, the second is for getting new trade agreements for when we are out of the EU.
All these three are Brexiters, and will be responsible for the aftermath. Very clever - as May was a Remainer, she has effectively delegated responsibility for the success or failure of exiting the EU on to those who campaigned to get us into this situation in the first place!
I find it interesting to note that you only talked about what the first and second persons on your list are responsible for when in actual fact there are three people on your list. So, actually, the first one (Johnson) now seems to have been placed in charge of pissing off every every foreign dignitary he meets seeing as how he has been stripped of responsibility for negotiating trade deals and Brexit. These are two tasks that would very much be the job of the foreign minister in most other countries. I'm t
Scheming Boris (Score:3)
Yes, the Boris appointment was very interesting.
Personally, I find it all a little too convenient. It may very well have just been chance, but I wonder if Boris and Gove set up their 'stabbing in the back' thing as a way for Boris to exit from a situation he could not win from. Before his good friend Gove did this, Boris was basically trapped and would have had to follow through with brexit and all the ridiculous promises he made. He would basically have had to upset both the brexiters (by not being able to
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It's also a signal that she'll not obstruct Brexit, despite her own personal feelings on the issue. I wish us Americans had politicians half as honorable (honourable?).
Re:UK And International Affairs (Score:4, Interesting)
Lol! You just sound desperate. What if May hadn't given top jobs to Brexiteers? You would obviously say that Brexit was just a delusion, the referendum was only a lost buttle, but Remainers won the actual war. Now you see that Brexiteers got top jobs, especially Davis who is pretty radical on the issue, and you say: "Clever! They'll fail and they'll get the blame!".
What an hilarious exercise of wishful thinking. Reality check: your "multicultural" cesspool dream is dead, the "united states of europe" is not going to exist, and you pro-EU people are destined to the Landfill of History, live with it.
No he doesn't. You are presupposing that Brexit will be a brilliant success and that the EU will cave in to all of Britain's demands, which it will not do. Given the situation it is only proper that the Brexiteers be allowed to play things their way. They are the winners of the referendum, they have the British people's mandate and they should be allowed to step forward and take responsibility and if they are reluctant to take responsibility like Johnson and Farage have been they should be forced to. As for complaining about Brexiteers being put into positions where they are in charge of, or in the case of Johnson can at least influence, the Brexit process one can at the very least expect from May that if she is going to appoint Brexiteers that she at least appoint competent ones. Johnson is not competent, which is demonstrated by the fact that May does not trust him to negotiate Brexit nor does she trust him to negotiate trade agreements. The other two Brexiteers she appointed to do those tasks certainly seem more competent choices than Johnson when it comes to diplomacy and negotiating but then so would an average 9th grader.
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...and if they are reluctant to take responsibility like Johnson and Farage have been they should be forced to
First of all, I'm not aware of any democratic system since ancient Greece or Rome that contemplates the power to compel a citizen to serve as an official against his or her will. That alone would be pretty remarkable. I'm not sure such a thing would be consistent with the UNCHR or the ECHR (to which the UK is still bound).
Second, if those were indeed the terms, the Referendum Act of Parliament probably should have mentioned them. Compelled service aside, now you're talking about surprise compelled service
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we have a trade deficit with the EU, we're actually losing money by trading with it
You know that the former does not imply the latter, right? If you don't, you really, really need to study macroeconomics.
Who cares (Score:2)
We've got our flag to wave and we've "taken back control"...
Which - unfortunately - is how a large number of people actually think.
Like The New Statesman without the humour (Score:3)
She's put Bam-bam in as foreign secretary, and she's left a homeopathy supporter in charge of the NHS. However she HAS had the good sense to get rid of Michael Gove (snake in the grass has been returned to the green pastures of the Back Benches).
Where is Spitting Image when you need it?
UK? (Score:2)
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A national referendum is one of the more democratic ways of doing something. In the US you can only vote for a representative that (through gerrymandering and other tricks) may not even be who you want or what you want the government to represent. There is no way of disagreeing with a particular law or even your representative other than calling their office (and who do you think they work for, you or the guy they got 50k from) or breaking the law and thus challenging the law from a prison cell.
In this case
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Please don't post when you don't have a clue what is going on. The PM led (poorly) the "Remain" campaign. When the country voted against him, it was effectively a no-confidence vote in the PM. His position wasn't tenable.
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Britain is the name of a country. Someone from Britain is a Briton. Look it up.
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Britain is the name of a country. Someone from Britain is a Briton. Look it up.
'Great Britain' is the name of an Island. 'The United Kingdom' is the name of a country (actually its an abbreviated name of a country).
A 'Briton' is (was) a Celt from the island of Britain. They largely don't exist any more, but many people descended from Angles and Saxons (*spit*) like to refer to themselves as 'Britons' while referring to the Cymru (meaning 'comrades') as foreigners and 'Wales' comes from a Saxon word for foreigner. The 'Welsh' are actually the closest thing that survives today to Britis
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So the biased papers had people believing that if they voted "leave" they would "stay"?
Kinda, they basically told the gullible we'd be able to stop migration, keep all the money, have the influence AND still have full if not better access to the single market and all other eu benefits while simultaneously telling all the fat cats to fuck off. That's what the daily fail and co would have you believe a leave vote meant.
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So the biased papers had people believing that if they voted "leave" they would "stay"?
Kinda, they basically told the gullible we'd be able to stop migration, keep all the money, have the influence AND still have full if not better access to the single market and all other eu benefits while simultaneously telling all the fat cats to fuck off. That's what the daily fail and co would have you believe a leave vote meant.
And don't forget, they said that if we left the EU we'd have 350 million quid a week to spend on hospitals and (probably) free blow and hookers.
If you keep repeating a lie often enough, for a lot of people it becomes the truth.
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By telling them that the EU is planning to send 28 million Polacks, gyppos & other assorted wogs to steal their women and jobs.
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By telling them that the EU is planning to send 28 million Polacks, gyppos & other assorted wogs to steal their women and jobs.
And this is exactly what elderly English people earnestly believe and fear. Thats why the Leave vote was mostly elderly English people and the younger generation voted to stay. But as England is an aging population, Leave won by a very small margin.
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In this case, the PM didn't like the way the vote went and instead of doing what the people wanted, he stepped down.
That is how parliamentary systems work. Dave was elected by his party, not by the people.
Could happen in the US
It DID happen in the US, last year. John Boehner resigned, and was replaced by Paul Ryan. David Cameron is the head of the lower house of parliament, just like John Boehner was. The equivalent of Barrack Obama, as head of state, is Queen Elizabeth. She is not resigning.
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Dave's not here man.
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We really shouldn't have let Dave do that.
After the Brexit poll there was probably a creepy computerised voice in his office saying "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
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That's not really a great comparison because Queen Elizabeth has no executive powers, whereas Obama does.
The reality is that the UK simply just doesn't have a president equivalent, the closest thing is our prime minister, who, as you say, also doubles as leader of the house. All of Obama's executive powers are held by the Prime Minister in the UK.
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Gerrymandering by the legislature is no longer possible in:
Arizona
California
Hawaii
Idaho
New Jersey
Washington
If you don't live in one of these states put the pressure on to change the process.
Re:Wow, the UK is even more screwed up than the US (Score:4, Informative)
Seems you're a week or two behind the news.
The UK needs a new prime minister because the previous prime minister has voluntarily stepped down. David Cameron was against the exit from the EU. He decided that since the country's majority ran contrary to his stance, it was a good idea to vacate his position and let someone else lead.
Re:Wow, the UK is even more screwed up than the US (Score:5, Insightful)
He decided that since the country's majority ran contrary to his stance, it was a good idea to vacate his position and let someone else lead.
Not exactly. He decided to hand the metaphorical flaming bag of excrement (the literal flaming bag is an old Eton tradition, so I hear) to Boris Johnson so he could watch him squirm take the blame in the aftermath.
If you think this is anything to do with representing the will of the people or ethics, then I have a bridge to sell you.
Re:Wow, the UK is even more screwed up than the US (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to understand; to an American, the concept of a leader voluntarily submitting to the will of the people is completely alien.
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May has the dirt on EVERYONE. Thats how she became PM; everyone is too scared to stand against her.
(Hi, Theresa! I know you watch everything!)
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The UK has a tradition going back decades of deciding major constitutional issues via referendum. Political parties are traditionally nervous about making major constitutional change part of their manifesto, because of the potential for this to overshadow a General Election. Moreover, there would be doubts about whether a party that was elected on such a manifesto really had a mandate to take through the changes, as elections are fought across a wide policy spectrum and some of their voters may not have sup
Re: Wow, the UK is even more screwed up than the U (Score:5, Insightful)
David Cameron wasn't ousted, he pushed hard for a specific outcome in the referendum, and he lost. The voters rejected a deal he had negotiated, and a policy he willingly bet his premiership on. All that said, he could have stayed as long as the Conservative party wanted him, but it's reasonable for him to step down after losing.
The vote itself also wasn't binding, it's up to Parliament to execute it. This wasn't a law that was passed by referendum. Unlike in the U.S., Parliament (technically the "Queen in Parliament") is supreme in the UK, and can change any law it wants. There's no written constitution, and thus not really the concept of an "unconstitutional" law. The PM is elected by a majority of parliament. This system means that a government usually can get its manifesto legislation passed, and it's easier to hold a government responsible for keeping its promises. The U.S. system can allow for years of deadlock, and whereas an independent commission is responsible for defining constituency boundaries in the UK, they're set by politicians in the U.S. If a party can gain control of the legislature of a state (quick - name any member of your state legislature), it can effectively control that state's seats in Congress for a decade. All of this lends a lot more legitimacy to the UK government.
So yes, getting things done in the U.S. system is harder, and it's easier for a few states to block legislation. That doesn't mean the U.S. system has greater legitimacy, quite the opposite. The state governments are barely accountable for their actions, and even a party with strong popular support can fail to get its legislation passed thanks to the byzantine electoral system.
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supposedly 'independent' yet the boundaries were deliberately gerrymandered recently to make it harder to elect Labour MPs...
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All that said, he could have stayed as long as the Conservative party wanted him, but it's reasonable for him to step down after losing.
Cameron was cutting his losses. Being PM is now a poison chalice. He knew that whoever was in the job would have to oversee an economic disaster and the break up of the UK as Scotland and perhaps even Gibraltar and Northern Ireland become independent. It's bad enough that he set up the referendum causing it; he didn't want his legacy to be overseeing it too.
The referendum itself gives May very little mandate. Okay, there was a narrow majority to come out of the EU, but it said nothing about the single marke
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All that said, he could have stayed as long as the Conservative party wanted him, but it's reasonable for him to step down after losing.
Cameron was cutting his losses. Being PM is now a poison chalice. He knew that whoever was in the job would have to oversee an economic disaster and the break up of the UK as Scotland and perhaps even Gibraltar and Northern Ireland become independent. It's bad enough that he set up the referendum causing it; he didn't want his legacy to be overseeing it too.
The referendum itself gives May very little mandate. Okay, there was a narrow majority to come out of the EU, but it said nothing about the single market or freedom of movement or any number of other issues.
British democracy is now well and truly broken. May can rule, totally unelected and with no mandate, for another four years. That's long enough to leave the EU and set up deals with no say from the electorate, and by the time the next election comes around it will be too late to undo it. It's not like we can just re-join the EU or the single market. She seems to be planning to implement the wishes of a hard core minority of voters, against popular opinion and without a mandate.
Indeed, its clear why all the 'Leave' campaigners ran away as soon as they won; they knew what a mess they had created and have distanced themselves from it. All I can think is that the likes of Boris, Farage and Gove hate Britain and would like to see it broken up.
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"So yes, getting things done in the U.S. system is harder, and it's easier for a few states to block legislation. That doesn't mean the U.S. system has greater legitimacy, quite the opposite. The state governments are barely accountable for their actions, and even a party with strong popular support can fail to get its legislation passed thanks to the byzantine electoral system."
I think you have a rose tinted view of the UK's electoral system if you genuinely believe it leads to greater accountability. Let'
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Yes, gerrymandering causes some problems...
Some problems? You make it sound like a coffee stain on a brown T-shirt. Gerrymandering is a huge problem in the US.
Come on dude (Score:4, Insightful)
Come on dude, what you said was naive. If you were watching British news and reading articles at BBC, Sun.uk, The Times, etc. you would understand even if you are American.
But you are clueless and don't have any interest in UK politics. Then you talk as is you are speaking knowledgeably --- when in fact your opinion is a demonstrates a lack of knowledge and understanding of UK politics.
Pay attention is fine. Not paying attention is fine. Not paying attention and then trying to speak from a position of knowledge is just lame dude.
Re:Come on dude (Score:4, Insightful)
British news and reading articles at BBC, Sun.uk, The Times
One of these things is not like the others.
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While I'm inclined to agree with you, we really do have to stop calling the Americans idiots. The referendum has proven that the UK is, on average, at least as stupid.
It was always kind of obvious when you think about it. Yeah, they have Fox News, but our two most popular newspapers are The Sun and the Daily Mail. The former seems to be written for people with a reading age of about 7 (seriously, it uses extremely simple and child-like language with a minimum of long, difficult words), and the latter used t
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While I'm inclined to agree with you, we really do have to stop calling the Americans idiots. The referendum has proven that the UK is, on average, at least as stupid.
And even worse, I don't even have it in me to rag on the French. I mean normally there's some cheap jibes about strikes, but even that seems hollow now (doubly especially as we're getting all the downsides of strikes on Southern but indefinitely and without any strikes actually happening).
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We need to be nice to the French to get a good deal, or at least the best we can hope for which is one that only mildly screws us.
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Why is my post at -1? When I talk about moderation abuse, this is it. Seriously, can anyone explain why this system makes sense?
1) Scotland and Northern Ireland get a bad deal here since they wanted to remain in the EU. This is against their will. This would be harder in the US system.
2) Why should the Prime minister be ousted? This makes no sense.
3) When votes are done by elected officials, there aren't debates about whether the vote should count or of a revote is needed. No matter how things turn out, people will have a case if they say the outcome isn't valid.
Why is this system a good thing? Seriously, I think the US system makes more sense and I asked my questions in good faith.
1)It wasn't a separate vote, it was a UK vote. The result was the result like it or not for the UK. If you lose a vote you can't just pick up you ball and go do whatever anyway. It doesn't work like that.
2)The PM wasn't ousted he quit because he didn't want to deal with this mess he got us into.
3) When such a big decision comes out so close to a 50/50 split and pretty much all of the experts agree the 'wrong' side won, not least because of massive lies told during the campaign that were admitted to be lie
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1. Democracy rules. Scotland already had an independence vote, the answer was no. They must, therefore, surrender to the will of the Majority.
2. He wasn't ousted, he walked because things didn't go his way. His replacement is the same but WORSE.
3. I don't get it. What did I just read??
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Scotland voted no because they would not be able to stay in the EU otherwise. Since UK exits the EU anyway, there is one reason less for Scotland to remain a part of UK.
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If a simple majority of the population is the most democratic thing, then you're advocating for mob rule. There's a reason most places, especially larger ones have representative democracies. The other thing of course is that you only know what the population though on one particular day. If it was a supermajority, sure the numbers would change but the overall outcome likely wouldn't change if the referendum was rerun soon. With such a small swing, it's likely change frequently if it was re-run indicating i
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The Mandate for naming the RSS Boaty McBoatface was clear. The mandate for leaving the EU is not. Guess which we're doing!
It indicates to me that the British don't take such votes very seriously. But yes, I can see how a nation that would vote to name a royal ship "Boaty McBoatface" would also vote to leave the EU. It's all just a joke after all.
'Boaty McBoatface' was the least offensive option; the names that actually won the most votes were "Fuckface" and "Poopybum" but they got censored out. You might be able to tell from this that the British have a juvenile sense of humor but are too prudish to admit it and therefore hate themselves. Thats why they voted 'Leave'; because they hate themselves, and they especially hate young people (who will be the ones who have to grow up with the results of this fiasco).
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"-1, Overrated" works, too.
I always find it funny to get a "-1, Overrated" applied to a post that has no other moderation.
Punish the serf class. (Score:3, Insightful)
This looks a lot like punishment for the unwashed masses for their vote of no confidence in the Politicians (both sides) that the BRExit vote looked like.
I see a large number of the voters in that were voting against the politicians in one of their few chances (elections are not, as you have to vote for
politicians on one side or the other..) due to the complete lack of representation that seems to be in fashion these days, where bills are either pushed through
to support loud minorities 'See! The Government
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More people voted to leave than to stay. How is that not democratic?
Re:Punish the serf class. (Score:5, Informative)
Referendums on the other hand are just mob rule. "A device for dictators and demagogues". It's also worth bearing in mind that while most people who voted, voted to leave, it was a minority of the electorate.
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no, we don't have the death penalty because it's against international law which we have absorbed into our legal system because it suits those who have done it (ie Tony Blair in 1999, abolishing capital punishment for treason - which was his very next act!).
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It's funny though. The Brexit vote was about the primacy of parliament yet when it threatens to exercise that by not acting on a non-binding, knife edge, exi
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So Democratically speaking if they do not like the leave the EU vote they can always have another one. A join the EU vote right after having left it as per the current democratic vote, see no problem. The biggest problem with the EU was it's completely undemocratic nature, where a bunch of corrupt bureaucrats owned by corporations had gained control of the EU, forcing undemocratic choices upon the population of the EU. This exit the EU votes will continue and I'll bet the lead to the creation of the EU2.0
Re:Punish the serf class. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well we can vote to rejoin the EU, sure, if all 27 other countries want us back, and if we join the Euro, and join the Shengen border free zone. And pay the full contribution without the rebates we negotiated. Personally I think we should do all that, and get over ourselves and stop being an awkward antagonistic special snowflake in Europe.
Europe is massively more democratic than it is perceived in the UK. The commission is headed by 28 representatives appointed by their democratically elected governments (albeit appointed to act in the interests of Europe) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] the European parliament is made up of MEPs voted in directly. The council is the elected heads of state of the member countries. Junker was the first president of the commission elected to the post by the elected European parliament.
There is a reasonably plausible democratic path to everyone involved, naturally there are lots of civil service type staff employed by the whole thing, and it is a bloated gravy train of bureaucracy, but that in itself is reformable and not undemocratic.
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A join the EU vote right after having left it as per the current democratic vote, see no problem.
And why not a "um maybe we don't want to leave in the first place" vote?
The biggest problem with the EU was it's completely undemocratic nature,
Except that it's not. I voted for my MEP. That's democratic. The council of ministers is selected from democratically elected ministers from each of the respective countries.
The law writing body, the commission is a professional body, not an elected one since they have
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So, where's the democratic mandate for the Eurogroup and Ecofin - who, to be fair, don't pass laws, merely mandate them. Where's the mandate for the ECB to dictate policy instead of doing it's job as a central bank? Again, nowhere.
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"Completely undemocratic nature"? People vote for their MEPs, and the MEPs appoint the council. That is as democratic as it gets. The claims made by the leave bloc were demonstrated to be flat out lies. The results of the referendum will be played out in real life, not the concocted fantasy the leave campaigns claimed. An uninformed vote is not democratic - there is a lot more to democracy than people voting.
You really don't seem to understand this.
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democracy IS the tyranny of the majority. It's two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. When the minority decide and enforce it through an oppressive regime (ie, unelected leaders, two such examples have occurred in the UK in the last ten years), that's despotism.
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democracy IS the tyranny of the majority.
Direct democracy is. Representative democracy with a good system of checks and balances is not.
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There are no checks and balances on the will of the people in any democratic system. Representatives who don't do the will of the people can be recalled. Constitutions can be amended. Uncooperative officials can be fired.
There's absolutely no way to stop it, unless the minority is willing to use force against the majority, in which case it's not a democracy anymore.
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It's more a case of - the Brexit voters did her the huge favor of removing the thing that has consistently stood in the way of May's surveillance ambitions: the EU privacy laws.
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Yep, it sure is a good thing they didn't become the Prime Minister!
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What UK? Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Gibraltar are all set to leave.
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Like how Gibraltar is currently dominated by the UK, but without the border controls the UK will make them have?
Re:The wording (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a shit question.
"Remain a member of the European Union" is ok, you know what is being voting for - and, equally importantly - the people who voted for the other option also know what its proponents were voting for.
"Leave the European Union" is utterly stupid. Nobody knows what it means. For some leave voters it means stop immigration at all costs. For other leave voters it meant "continue the free movement of people and goods within Europe".
Compare this question with the 2011 alternative vote question:
At present, the UK uses the "first past the post" system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the "alternative vote" system be used instead?
"alternative vote" was defined https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Imagine instead if this question had been:
At present, the UK uses the "first past the post" system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should a proportional voting system be used instead?'
I would expect that this would have carried. Much like the EU question, the alternative to the status quo is a shifting target that can be defined to whatever the proponent wants. Of course, had that question been asked then we'd then have had a mess to sort out when everybody wanted a different PR system.
What should have happened is that DC should have negotiated with Europe on, say, Britain adopting the Norwegian model and leaving the EU. Once he'd got approval then gone to the country with
"Remain a member of the European Union"
"Adopt the Norwegian model of membership in the EEA"
(Or he could have gone for a no-free movement of people or goods WTO rules model alternative)
Now the question is clearer - and even if it had gone against DC, at least everybody would have known what was going to happen.
Britain is utterly crap at negotiating. We have an adversarial system, both in parliament and in the judiciary. Most European nations have had much more experience with having to establish coalitions. It's going to be interesting to see how the next two years go and whether the press is reporting how those "evil Europeans are ganging up on us" when almost certainly none of them are arguing for what they really want but instead for what they understand they can really get.
At least for some things in Europe we used to have a veto. That gave us a lot of clout - however awkward we were we couldn't be completely ignored (and the 10-12% control of the vote helped too). We also tended to hold the balance of power in Franco-German differences - so neither country to afford to upset us too much. We're giving all that up. That might mean Europe now tears itself to pieces or it might mean that Europe can now rebuild itself stronger in a more cooperative model.
We've now got idiots saying that any deal with Europe should now go to another referendum. I predict that there is NO deal that can be made that will attract a majority of the votes. The single largest minority is probably "remain in the EU" which has already been rejected. I suppose we could put two deals on the referendum and force people to chose one or the other - just make sure that the other option is so bad that it cannot win.
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The result is 53.1% for leaving if you remove Scotland from the totals.
You could also remove N.Ireland but it was only about 90,000 votes difference (in favour of remaining)
T.M is the UK's 2nd female PM and very possibly the last PM of the "United" Kingdom
UK
Leave 17,410,742 (51.9%)
Remain 16,141,241 (48.1%)
Total 33,551,983
Scotland
Leave 1,018,322 (38%)
Remain 1,661,191 (62%)
Total 2,679,513
383,570 (14.3%)
UK (without Scotland)
Leave 16,392,420 (53.1%)
Remain 14,480,050 (46.9%)
Total 30,872,470
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Or the EU could simply let Scotland inherit UK's membership, thus minimizing losses to both itself and Scotland.
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But it won't. Because unlike Westminster, no other European capitals are insane enough to let parts of their countries split off and instantly have EU membership, so will veto Scotland's attempt to do so.
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The result is 53.1% for leaving if you remove Scotland from the totals.
And if you exclude all those who voted Remain, it's 100% for Leave!
Re:The wording (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, from all the people I know who didn't vote they didn't vote because they said they just couldn't tell who was lying and who wasn't, so didn't feel informed enough to vote. It's not that they didn't care, it's that they'd rather make no choice than a bad choice. Their feelings on the matter weren't "Don't care" but typically something like "I want the best for my country, and kids", they just had no idea which option that was.
Of course, many people who did vote also had no idea who was lying to them, either they just decided the opposite, that it's better to risk making a bad choice than no choice.
The referendum result was clear, but it's certainly not the case that the British public made an informed choice. The result of the referendum was by and large an uninformed choice. Not that it matters, but I suspect if the debate was much more clearly informative that many of those that didn't vote would have and I suspect in a fully informed debate many people wouldn't have taken the risk. Ultimately leave won the referendum, but lost the argument, because much of what remain predicted would happen has happened - Farage admitted he lied about the NHS, other leavers like Daniel Hannan admitted they lied that they'd be able to bring immigration down now, Cameron has in fact left and we do in fact now have 4 years of dictatorship ahead of us, the pound has in fact tanked, and the FTSE 250 is down whilst the 100 is being proped up only by a commital of £250bn stimulus reserve (12 years equivalent of EU fees) by the BOE. Project fear turned out to be project fact, and team leave fled for the hills when their bluff was called leaving everyone else to suffer the consequences and clean up the mess.
After all is said and done it looks most likely that we'll end up in the EEA, paying the same amount we do currently, without a seat at the table, and having suffered a few years of reduced economic capability. The whole things looks like it will have become a completely unnecessary needlessly damaging exercise with nothing clear to show for it.
From that I don't think hardly anyone really had their say as such, I just think millions of people had a completely random stab in the dark. The number of us who had done our own fact checking to verify the claims from both sides (by actually looking up and understanding statistics on the economy, migration and so forth) and who were able to vote on the actual facts were an absolutely tiny minority.
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other leavers like Daniel Hannan admitted they lied that they'd be able to bring immigration down now
Can you explain why not? It seems like it wouldn't be that hard for an island nation to control immigration.
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Because the reality is numerous studies (well, those from impartial organisations) have shown immigration is of net economic benefit to the UK, and not one single prime minister would ever be willing to create a situation where we go into recession because we've decided to cripple a number of industries just because of a bunch of blame gaming.
Migration to the UK was already controllable for migrants coming from outside the EU, and we already had a points system for those people, and yet, more people still m
Re:The wording (Score:5, Interesting)
It wasn't that hard:
£350 - nope, that was a lie.
71 failed no votes - true, but that amounted to 3%, we actually got our way about 90% of the time.
EEA without free movement - we were constantly told this wouldn't happen, and still are being told this.
Fisherman won't have to deal with quotas - even if that were to happen, how long would it take for them to be reintroduced after they return to over-fishing indiscriminately?
109 laws on pillows - John Oliver covered that nicely.
The EU need us more than we need them (trade deficit) - only if you ignore the fact the EU's GDP is five times greater than the UK's.
All you had to do is check if there was a modicum of truth in what you heard.
Re:The wording (Score:5, Funny)
109 laws on pillows - John Oliver covered that nicely
I didn't hear that one, but I remember when the right wing press through a massive shit fit over the EU regulating domestic (i.e. not certified for use in commercial kitchens) oven gloves.
Oh woe those evil Europeans forcing regulation on us hard working British manufacturers of deeply shitty oven gloves.
The EU law was to insist that they would work at a mere 200C which is of course inane because most domestic ovens reach 250. But that wasn't the cause of complaint. No, the complaint was that British manufactuers would have to stop selling oven gloves that wouldn't be safe even as low as 200C.
It came as a bit of a shock that it was actually legal to sell oven gloves that can't be safely used to take stuff out of a normal oven. Apparently the EU are evil for wanting to stop manufacturers salling blatently substsandard goods.
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The EU law was to insist that they would work at a mere 200C which is of course inane because most domestic ovens reach 250. But that wasn't the cause of complaint. No, the complaint was that British manufactuers would have to stop selling oven gloves that wouldn't be safe even as low as 200C. It came as a bit of a shock that it was actually legal to sell oven gloves that can't be safely used to take stuff out of a normal oven. Apparently the EU are evil for wanting to stop manufacturers salling blatently substsandard goods.
Ye gods, I've taken things out of the oven with completely ordinary kitchen towels. Even after a really long time meat in the oven will only have a core temperature of 80C even if the air is 200C, only the metal will come close and the thin wire/sheet metal doesn't store that much heat so it'll drop way below that before it can heat the gloves 150C+. The only time you're likely to hit 200C is if you drop your oven mitt into a frying pan just as you're about to sear the meat and leave it there for several se
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Bloody hell! (in a posh accent)
Well, perhaps not so posh; apparently she is from a working class background, which isn't quite as unusual as one might think - a lot of working class Britons tend to be conservative, in that they just want things to work more or less like they use to. But she also seems like a very decent, down-to-earth person with some views that seem to be not at all common in the Tory party - and I suspect that there may be quite a lot of turbulence ahead for the government, despite their glossy show of unity just now.
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Well, perhaps not so posh; apparently she is from a working class background
According to Wikipedia she is the daughter of a vicar. Even if he was a poor and hard-working vicar, in English class terms that makes her at least middle class.
Re: Bloody hell! (Score:2)
I agree, both Corbyn and May appear to be honest. Cameron, being a PR man by trade, could never master honesty (he had a bit of trouble with competence too).
Theresa May looks like the best of a bad bunch. On the debit side, her authoritarian tendencies have only increased during her time as Home Secretary (it seems to afflict nearly all who hold that post). To her credit, she has taken more notice of actual evidence than some politicians when making decisions and seems to want to be fair.
She'll need all t
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I'm unsure what her appointment of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary means; maybe she had to have him inside the tent and has given him a last chance or enough rope. Seems a bit reckless though.
I think it is a brilliant piece of strategic nastiness, that one can only admire, as an engineer. She wanted to remain in EU, he was the highest profile brexiteer; now he can sort out the mess. If he fails miserably - and it seems not unlikely - he'll get all the blame; if he succeeds, it shines a positive light on her as a good leader. Well played, I think.