281–290 of 413 posts
British democracy and government is cool. It's not enshrined in some document they got together and wrote down like the US constitution, it's this organic thing that they've stumbled towards over the last ~800 years with small changes like this one gradually evolving them into a modern liberal democracy.
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It's interesting how people never even learn about any upsides to that. Even if the balance comes out on the side of elected officials, it's good to at least have some idea of why so many societies have worked like that (other than "they were dumb and evil I guess"). The main thing is long-term stability and limits on backstabbing and ruthless competition. Sure it doesn't bring it to zero, plenty of bloody examples f…
You already get this in the UK, and also in other countries, most of which have royal families and associated aristocrats. There are also - notoriously - foreign-funded influencer, lobbyist, and donor operations. And the traditional industries - fossil fuels, property, finance, arms - also have a huge say. The reality is most decisions aren't made in Westminster. Parliament is a device for packaging and legitimising…
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Deadlock would be fine if the other two branches weren't running amuck.
Not a problem in the UK system, although the PM has a lot of power he is very much removable if the party doesn't support it.
Directionally the UK gov has arrested more people for speech crimes than the Soviets.. Anything they pass or even look excited for is a negative signal. These people seem inept on every front, and I can’t even generously find something clever about them. Iraq, Brexit, and Speech Laws. If a Brit told me the sky was blue, I’d double check myself.
And if an American told me it was blue, I'd have no need to check, I could have confidence it is not, and that their evaluation would change to another false answer in five minutes.
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Being able to vote in a strong leader to fix things directly is a feature. Democracy is not always the answer and when it is it can be too slow when time matters.
I think it's quite obvious now how this leads to the erosion of rights and laws, looking at the current state of the affairs.
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> There is no reasonable definition of "the Left" that includes the British Labour party. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(UK) > Labour, is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party. It sits on the centre-left of the left–right political spectrum
Centre-left doesn’t mean the Left. It just means it’s to the left of the other centrist party (Tories). Just because they lean left doesn’t mean they are the Left, Radical Left, Commies etc
PS You have be to be pretty extreme to think the Labour party isn't "left" enough for you. As in, I'm not sure what else they could do to appease the far left in practice without sever negative consequences for the UK.
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The first sentence of the cited article makes clear the matter at hand is not "elimination of jury trials" but "a plan to abolish some jury trials". The proposal is an attempt to reduce the time which those who are accused must wait for trial. FWIW the majority of all criminal cases in the UK are dealt with by either a single judge, or three judges[1]. This is hardly surprising as assembling a jury is vastly time con…
Any charge that can be punished with imprisonment should require a jury trial.
Thanks to its high cost and unpredictability, laughable inventions like "plea bargains" exist, only to selectively prey on the vulnerable.
It's not perfect (nor are jury trials), but when it comes to truth discovery and arriving at a proportionate sentence, as long as all parties are fairly represented, one without jury trials should be just as effective.
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They gave 16 year olds the vote, and 16 year olds can leave home, marry, join the army, and so on. Why should they not vote? They didn't run pointless elections by request of the very councils that were due for them, because those areas are being redrawn and would have to have fresh elections almost immediately, making the results meaningless. They also gave all the conservative hereditary peers lifetime peerages so…
> 16 year olds can leave home, marry, join the army, and so on. Why should they not vote? That's a separate argument. My point is Labour's change to the rules is very politically convenient for themselves. In the most recent polling, 32% of 16-17-year-olds would vote Labour, while only 17% of the overall electorate would vote Labour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_U... > They didn't run po…
No, you can do things that benefit you electorally, but are also just the right thing to do. Changing the voting system from FPTP would obviously benefit parties other than the major ones, but that doesn't mean it'd be wrong for those parties to do it if they got into power. So the question is if it's good policy, and so I argue it is, if someone can be living by themselves, working in the army or as a full-time apprentice, married, and having a child, they should be able to vote.
> When a court challenge loomed, Labour quickly u-turned on the latest round of cancellations. Funny how something can seem sensible one day, and can then be u-turned at the slightest whiff of legal scrutiny.
Yes, it's absolutely bad that the government isn't making sure these things are legal before doing them, just as with the Palestine Action proscription. It's also hardly a sign of it being gerrymandering, why would they bother when it's going to give them basically zero advantage, given it would only achieve getting a council that will have no time to actually do anything? The obvious conclusion is they thought it was a waste of money and effort to hold them, but if you have to fight a legal battle over it, it won't actually save any money or effort as that has a large cost, even if it is legal.
> Can you name a single Conservative hereditary peer that will be given a lifetime peerage in Starmer's reform plan?
BBC reporting as of two days ago: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxg76rgdp7o
> The BBC understands ministers have offered the Conservatives the chance to retain 15 hereditary members of the House of Lords as life peers.
So it's not specific names as it hasn't been finalised, but 15 of them. I accept I misremembered when I said "all", but the point stands: not gerrymandering.
When Wellington thrashed Bonaparte, As every child can tell, The House of Peers, throughout the war, Did nothing in particular, And did it very well; Yet Britain set the world ablaze In good King George's glorious days! (from Iolanthe by Gilbert and Sullivan) Gather a group of the most powerful people in the land; give them ermine robes and manifold privileges; require of them nothing other than that they meet regula…
> these nobles have lost their inherent power The nobles were the land owners, the business owners, the OG entrepreneurs, they were educated, and their children would grow up to be the same. Historically the system made sense. But the last 150 years or so have basically taken their power away. A couple of years ago an estate - that included a 9 bedroom country house, plus an entire village with a population of 100 pe…
Entire village? How's that work? What can the new owner do with the village? I imagine the inhabitants aren't enslaved?