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The Isle of Man is not in the UK

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Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#191

Post by NeedMoreTea »

pytester wrote: post #185
cgiles wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I confess that no one really knows what is going on in the mind of Jeremy Corbyn, possibly not even the man himself. What is unquestioned fact is that the party is split on Brexit. Known facts about Corbyn are: - He has opposed expansion of the EU throughout his political career - After the referendum, he urged rules on state aid to be jettisoned on the grounds they would no longer be valid after Brexit anyway -…

>OK, I confess that no one really knows what is going on in the mind of Jeremy Corbyn, possibly not even the man himself. It's fairly plain from the people who listen to his words and watch his actions but I can imagine it would be fairly confusing understanding him through the UK media filter. That is entirely deliberate. >What is unquestioned fact is that the party is split on Brexit. Depends what you mean by "spli…

The party hasn't split in the manner of the SDP's creation, but the views are split in the sense that the majority of MP's are remain, but the majority of membership appear to be heavily toward leave.

The whole official stance on Brexit is a clusterfuck, and while "negotiate another deal, referendum and campaign on one side depending on negotiation" may be an attempt to sound pragmatic, it hardly translates into an election winning policy or slogan. Quite apart from which the available wiggle room for negotiating a different deal has been very clearly laid out by the EU from the start. That hasn't changed. That can't change without UK compromise. He isn't getting his supposed left-Brexit.

There we get to the sticking point: The MP's would mostly like to remain, Corbyn speaks of the systemic problems of the EU and the UK would have more options out. Allegedly he was on the remain campaign for the referendum, yet did nothing. He disappeared, and was notable by his absence and silence. Is it any wonder no one is clear? Including those who might vote for him? Including his own MP's?

In historic terms he's not the most left they have been, but he's the furthest left since Foot. He shares some views with Kinnock and probably occupies a place in the political spectrum somewhere between the two. He may not be an old school sixties or seventies Labour Militant Tendency socialist, but he leans old-school left. To anyone of the Blair era, he's unrecognisable. Though that is more that Blairite Labour was Tory-Lite.

Still, despite the awful stance on Brexit, their election policies resonated with the electorate, and were a chance to get away from the dogmatic, idea-free Tory austerity. With a sensible, temporary stance on remain they could easily have been running the country by now. Dogma comes first.

Then politicians ask why people are sick of politics and politicians, and vote for the lunatic options.

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#192

Post by dageshi »

pavlov wrote: post #129
simonh wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this theory a lot, but the fact is most of the support for Brexit came from low income households, and people in low skilled or manual work. Generally the higher the household income, the lower the support for Brexit, even at the higher income levels. https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/brexit-vote-explained-poverty-...

Most of the support for Brexit came from tabloid newspapers owned by the ultra-rich. Polls in the 2010-15 timeframe consistently showed that Britain's European relationship didn't even make the top 5 of issues amongst voters. Consistently fewer than 6% listed Europe as their most important issue: https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/12/11/1544504400000/The-onl... Today more than 50% see Europe as the most important polit…

The only paper I think that actually really made a choice and tried to sell their readership on a side was The Sun. All the others pretty much had pro/anti brexit stances based on their readerships views on the matter.

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#193

Post by NeedMoreTea »

cgiles wrote: post #188
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. You're entirely right with every word. But politics. Cameron originally offered and called the referendum expecting a win for remain, to put the Tory lunatic fringe back in the box for a generation. They campaigned terribly, remain lost. So much for putting the hardliners back in line, they were brought front and centre, fed and given a spotlight. Michael Heseltine wrote a good piece about this a year o…

> Cameron originally offered and called the referendum expecting a win for remain, to put the Tory lunatic fringe back in the box for a generation. They campaigned terribly, remain lost... All true, but even then there was the opportunity for spin, especially because Cameron resigned. TM could have said, "I respect the need to leave the EU, but we can't just ignore the needs of Scotland and NI (not to mention busines…

Well again I am not going to disagree much.

I don't think TM could have pulled that off. At all. I suspect that Rees-Mogg, the ERG and other fools gallery (BoJo etc) felt their prey had been weakened after referendum, so could push right for hard exit. I'm not nearly stratospherically wealthy enough to understand why that is quite so appealing for the vastly moneyed. It seems like it would come with downside for them too, or maybe they'll all be asset stripping the bankruptcy sale from Cannes.

So where do the votes come from to make up the gap? Labour is dogmatically voting against, SNP are firmly remain, LibDems have no one left, so without Labour or ERG support it's not happening.

Labour have taken a remarkable manifesto that even I could mostly support, a decent election resurgence, an electorate firmly in favour of many of the ideas, and turned it into a huge trail in the polls to the worst government and PM's since Lord North (That minor difficulty in 1776). That's quite an achievement!

Among the Labour supporters I know, the opinion of Corbyn varies wildly. He achieved a remarkable election campaign, and achieved worse than nothing in opposition. He seems terrible in the Commons. Some think his electioneering will swing it come election, as many think he should be replaced before we get 5 years of BoJo (heaven help us).

A cold restart of the system seems to be in order. Bring it back with proportional representation. :)

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#194

Post by pavlov »

toasterlovin wrote: post #189
pavlov wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"At the end of the day, people showed up and voted for something. Twice (basically). That means something." "Voted for something and it means something" is the portrait of Brexit. A question was posed to the public but it was never explained properly, and so nobody knows what it means. Did people want a border in Ireland? A third-party status for UK products imported to EU? A separation from European scientific colla…

You're changing the topic. The post I responded to was attempting to make the case that consent was manufactured and, thus (presumably), invalid. Do you accept my argument that this is not a reasonable approach to arguing about the validity of the Brexit vote?

What exactly are you arguing? That we shouldn’t examine the evidence of how Brexit became public issue #1 when it barely registered in polls a few years earlier?

The validity of the vote is simple: it means exactly what Parliament decides it means at any time. Referendums don’t become law automatically, and Britain doesn’t have a constitution that could force it (unlike some countries like Switzerland).

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#195

Post by msla »

sorokod wrote: post #3
msla wrote: post #2

The article is correct, but it's also less than relevant for most people outside the UK, unless they live on the Isle of Man. British politics provides endless wells of "Well, actually..." any time anyone says something about the subject. Shades of Mornington Crescent.

I am familiar with Camden and Mornington Crescent area, but "Shades of Mornington Crescent"?

As others correctly pointed out, I'm referring to the parodic panel game "Mornington Crescent" from I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue; the "game" is ostensibly about making moves from tube stop to tube stop while obeying an immensely complicated set of rules which are written down in full in a gigantic book... which doesn't exist in the real world.

The Wikipedia article is fairly anodyne, but the talk page was surprisingly acrimonious on the topic of whether this joke is a game, or whether this game is a joke; ultimately, the side insisting it is so a real game seemed like they were attempting to prevent Wikipedia from "spoiling" it by stating outright that there are no actual rules:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mornington_Crescent_(game...

... which reminds me of the surprising persistence with which some people tried to get Wikipedia to state that drop bears are real:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Drop_bear/Archive_1

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#196

Post by joveian »

pytester wrote: post #162
pjc50 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their position is to negotiate another deal (if possible) and put it to a public vote That's not really much more information - revoke if the deal is not accepted? What do they actually want from the deal? What is the party's true desired outcome, being in the EU or not being in the EU? It's very hard to form an accurate picture of Corbyn. I can't think of anything impressive he's done, and he's doing tremendously…

>That's not really much more information - revoke if the deal is not accepted? If the deal is not accepted, then referendum on may's deal vs remain, and they will campaign to remain. As I said. >What do they actually want from the deal? Single market and customs union as per the manifesto. >What is the party's true desired outcome, being in the EU or not being in the EU? Soft brexit. >It's very hard to form an accura…

Watching from the US, I agree that it is unreasonably being called confusing.

However, you are leaving out the part where Labor has said they will end freedom of movement and the EU has said they will not agree to single market but no freedom of movement. So while the Labor position seems clear, it doesn't seem realistic and it is also unpopular with a large portion of the party (as would be any brexit position).

Antisemitism is also a major issue in Labor (not just Labor), although I get the strong sense that fewer UK voters care about that than one might hope. It still seems likely that some people who might otherwise be strong supporters of Corbyn do not enthusiasitically support him because of this.

Corby also seems to have a bit of an authoritarian streak, although it is hard for me to tell for sure since UK politics seem to be structurally more publicly heavy handed from the party leadership than US politics. It seems to affect how he responds to various issues and might make them have more negative effect than they might otherwise.

Another huge issue seems to be the raging battle between the human friendly side vs the business friendly side of Labor that should really be two different parties but can't because of the voting system (same issue in the US). I would agree that much of the vitrol against Corbyn seems to be due to him being on the human friendly side.

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#197

Post by marcus_holmes »

sokoloff wrote: post #167
marcus_holmes wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does it matter? there were some rules, that I was obeying, then there were some other rules, that were retroactively enforced. From my point of view, same same ;)

Yes, I think it does matter. It's arbitrary and capricious if HMRC can change the rules and retroactively apply them. It's totally reasonable (absent a statute of limitations lapse) IMO for them to go back and retroactively enforce rules that you weren't following once they detect that. (I would even entertain that it would be unreasonable for them to not do so.)

not from my point of view. I don't know all the tax rules (no-one does, not even a specialist tax consultant or a HMRC employee). The different between a rule that isn't enforced and not-a-rule is meaningless. The difference between a rule that isn't enforced and a rule that no-one is aware of is meaningless.

Like I said, I obeyed all the rules, and then one was retroactively applied. It really doesn't matter whether the rule existed before or not.

And yes, all tax authorities are capricious. The stories I heard about the ATO in Australia make the HMRC look like a model of predictable reliability.

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#198

Post by marcus_holmes »

markkanof wrote: post #183
benj111 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but she preferred paying the accountant" Why? At the extreme, would she have preferred to pay 100% to accountants rather than the government? If everyone took that view, who would pay for the schools and roads etc? I suppose that wouldn't happen, the tax rate would be increased, so everyone's paying tax and a massive accountants bill, so really the rational move is to pay the tax.

There are a lot of things that government spends taxes on that many of us don't agree with. Better to spend that money employing someone providing a useful service than contributing to fund things that you find immoral, such as fighting unjust wars.

this. exactly. She'd lived through WWII, been bombed by the Luftwaffe, operated one of the first radar stations, and had firm opinions on governments.

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#199

Post by toasterlovin »

pavlov wrote: post #194
toasterlovin wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're changing the topic. The post I responded to was attempting to make the case that consent was manufactured and, thus (presumably), invalid. Do you accept my argument that this is not a reasonable approach to arguing about the validity of the Brexit vote?

What exactly are you arguing? That we shouldn’t examine the evidence of how Brexit became public issue #1 when it barely registered in polls a few years earlier? The validity of the vote is simple: it means exactly what Parliament decides it means at any time. Referendums don’t become law automatically, and Britain doesn’t have a constitution that could force it (unlike some countries like Switzerland).

I am arguing that pointing to the fact that the owners of right wing publications are very wealthy is not evidence that somehow consent was manufactured for Brexit, since the owners of left wing publications are also very wealthy. Owners of large businesses are usually very wealthy. Doubly so with publishing businesses, which are often unprofitable, and, thus, require a wealthy benefactor to keep operating.

And pointing to fact that Brexit was a non-issue a few years before hand is also irrelevant. There are a myriad of political issues being hashed out now that weren't on anybody's radar a few years ago. This is a normal part of how media and popular culture work.

Re: The Isle of Man is not in the UK

#200

Post by growlist »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #127
tristanperry wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those downvoting, there is truth in this e.g.: * Ireland voting (twice) on the Nice Treaty - 2001 then 2002 * Denmark voting (twice) Maastricht Treaty - first 1992 then 1993 * Ireland (again) this time on the Lisbon Treaty - 2008 then 2009 There was also a case where the Labour government (in the UK) promised a referendum on a couple of EU treaty changes, before changing their mind after other countries' referend…

Had Cameron taken this approach, things could have worked out OK for the UK. Every one of those involved renegotiation and change of treaties before a re-vote. The timeline could have been: Cameron attempts to renegotiate with EU, achieves little. Calls a referendum, leave achieves a very narrow margin. Cameron doesn't resign, but attempts to renegotiate with the EU, achieves some small but significant improvements.…

UK economy at least seems in rude health overall, so reputational damage doesn't seem to have affected business.
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