desensitized43

That whole argument just makes me so mad. I have an uncle that’s very “old labour” who won’t vote for starmers labour because he doesn’t think it’s “proper labour”. It’s a childish and pathetic attitude. Even if you believe this labour incarnation is far from perfect, and many do, even those not on the hard left, it’s surely better than the pure evil we have now? I genuinely think there’s an element that wants to burn the whole house down because they aren’t happy with the wallpaper.

But it isn't like Finland and Russia were great mates before Finland joining NATO. They'd still have needed to defend that border before. Regarding Ukraine, it'll be a question of priorities for the resource and balance of risk as it is for any country. They'll bitch and wine that Finland joining NATO is bad etc etc but their immediate problem is that they're engaged in a bloody offensive war in Ukraine that has the potential to turn the Russian public opinion against the regime. They'll see defeating Ukraine or at least being able to claim they've defeated Ukraine as the strategic imperitive. Not defending a thousand miles of border with a country that realistically wasn't ever going to attack them anyway.

I don't doubt that the Russians and Putin believe that they're under threat but we, and NATO can do nothing about one nation or man's paranoia. Russia have never been attacked directly by NATO.

Especially that one.

How do you figure that? NATO is a defensive alliance so it's only a problem for the Russians if he decides to attack any of them.

I'm really not sure how much valid data on the current Russian army we can glean from a conflict that ended nearly 80 years ago but the country you're referring to in that conflict is the Soviet Union, of which Russia was only one part. Their population wasn't just that of Russia, but also the modern day Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan etc etc. The population of Russia, although the largest in Europe, isn't so vast today that it would be able to throw ranks of cannon fodder at an enemy. Any country that switches to a "Total War" model is able to deploy many more men and materials to the field, but in so doing they pretty much guarantee that their economy is ruined for years, or decades after. As such it's really not something countries do unless there is a real existential threat to their existence - as Ukraine is current doing. Russia won't do this unless it's evident that losing the war means they won't have a country anymore. The stakes aren't that high for them.

He got all the big calls right.

Looks like the war might be spilling over into Moldova. Explosions targetting Russian radio broadcast towers in the occupied region of that country.

They’re very much caught between a rock and a hard place on it. If they believe that the details are so bad that it’ll destroy them then they won’t release it. There’s likely to be a vote in parliament to force its release which would be a de facto no confidence vote. I feel like they’re arrogant enough that they if they delay and delay it’ll blunt the anger in the public and on their own backbenches where they could try and control its release. Dont forget these are the people that lied to the monarch in order to illegally prorogue parliament. They think they’re untouchable.

I really don’t expect that report will ever see the light of day. They’ve done everything in their power to delay it’s publication so far. If it’s half as bad as they’re saying they’ll find any reason possible not to release.

The journalist who wrote that story and the editor of the paper are just as culpable for putting that in the paper as the scumbag MP who said it “off the record”. They should have published the MPs name so we all know who he is.

That would mean he'd have to admit that there's a problem and *shocked face* it's because of the Brexit he's been championing the whole of his career.

Exactly. The rules around not calling someone a liar assume that no one should be telling lies in the chamber, certainly not knowingly but even by accidently in giving information that turned out to be incorrect at a later time on further examination. Johnson has completely ripped up the rule book around lying in the chamber and used it for toilet paper. Normally I'd be in favour of the Michelle Obama way of dealing with such things - when they go low you go high - but this is about the kind of country we want to be. He's got to go.

I think Starmer made quite a good point yesterday (and I paraphrase a bit because I don't have the actual quote) when he said that MP's are protected from being called a liar because not being able to trust what someone is saying in parliament is corrosive to the system but in return it's the rules that you don't knowingly lie (or to use their wanky term, mislead) parliament. In other words, it's in the rules that you can't lie and it's in the rules that everyone else has to trust what you've said and not impune the honour of the house. They're 100% right to put the rules aside in this case. The problem we have is that we've never had someone who lies with the frequency and blantency that this clown does. There's also a complete lack of trust in what he's saying even when he isn't lying (boy-who-cried-wold syndrome) and lack of faith in his character. When other politicians had possibly lied to the house it had been pretty rare they'd actually been caught red handed and a lot of the time it was unintentional, and they always had the character to go. An example would be Amber Rudd who resigned for midleading the house on something that didn't even happen on her watch. Still, she accidentally misled the house and had the character to know she had to resign.

Having done a bit of reading on this, I can't find a single country where a NOTA majority vote triggers a new contest (or even that it's ever been the top choice on a ballot). Happy to be wrong though. This seems to be more of a thing used by statisticians to keep tabs on voter satisfaction or in an attempt to give turnouts a bit of a boost. So as far as I can tell it really doesn't 'accomplish' anything other than make a few people less likely to either not vote or spoil ballots. Is it worth it?

10 sponsors and 500 quid is infinite doable for the common man and woman though. It’s deliberately a very low barrier to enter for the reasons outlined earlier. I’m not a fan of the “none of the above” option. Not sure what it achieves. Are we saying we want constituencies to continually vote again until we finally get a result or vacant seats?

I get the view point of "I won't vote for party x under any circumstances" because I feel that way about a lot of parties - Tories, UKIP, BNP etc. What I do feel is that if you don't vote or spoil your ballot you lose the right to complain about anything they do for the next 5 years. It's really sad that in a world of rigged elections and autocracy that someone wouldn't vote in the free and fair election even if our system has some pretty gaping flaws. If you feel no one is representing you then you have 2 choices, vote for the closest available to your views or stand yourself as an independent.

You think in a jealous way? Ahmed from Syria gets put up at the local 3 star while i have to go to work?

Really not sure what the problem is with this “refugees in hotels” thing. I remember there was some noise around a hotel on the A38 in Bromsgrove near where I work because they’d decided to house asylum seekers. There were grammatically suspect leaflets put through peoples doors “informing” them and I remember seeing a video (might have even been posted on VT) of a far right bellend walking the corridors of the hotel knocking on doors telling the refugees to “enjoy their stay at my expense”. Pretty shameful stuff. Really not sure what the upset is here. If the hotel had been fully booked out with “regular” guests it would be perfectly fine. The argument that “it’s not a hotel anymore” is kind of a crap as well. What’s the problem?

Really not sure on the question. How does flying people to Rwanda “prevent illegal channel crossings”? Surely it’ll just make people less likely to declare themselves to UK authorities when they get here, asylum claim or not? They’ll still come because the legal routes to them have been closed. The illegal ones remain open it’s only now that the consequences of being caught or declaring themselves are a spell on Rwandan dachau.

Labour would have been worse. Give them a break They're trying their best Something about Corbyn

So if there’s no actual processing going on then what? So we wait for these people to either die or get bored and decide to walk out the door to become vagrants in Rwanda?

Can’t wait to see what the conditions are like in our wonderful new Rwandan detention (sorry, “processing”) centre. How long until the reports start rolling in of squalid conditions, lack of or substandard food, overcrowding, underfunding and detainees abusing each other or being abused by staff? Perhaps I should be more willing to give this a chance but even this has more than a whiff of “Guantanamo bay” to me.

Kurt Zouma? Is that you?

You won villatalk this week. Give this man the award right now.