The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[tonyh29]

T'was only a council election but the Tory candidate beat the SNP in scotchland yesterday ... That must have been a bit of a turn up ?

[HanoiVillan]

The excuse the intelligence gathering people gave when they failed to prevent the attack on the twin-towers was that there was just too much data to pick out the plotters.

So what is their chosen solution for preventing future attacks?

More data!

To be fair, what Theresa May is proposing for the UK is illegal in the U.S and every other Western Democracy. The level of snooping on private citizens is not deemed acceptable everywhere else. I'm pretty sure even the DDR would have thought it a bit OTT.

Would it be much of an exaggeration to state that every power to intrude and every law presented as necessary to prevent terrorism has been abused?

Not even slightly an exaggeration. 

[bickster]

T'was only a council election but the Tory candidate beat the SNP in scotchland yesterday ... That must have been a bit of a turn up ?

Bit of a tattie result that

[Xann]

is it the / a government that will abuse this data ?

Brother in laws and chums will be lapping it up.

If you tender for a big job against YouGov Tone, you might want to use a computer and printer not connected to the internet. Then send it by post

[Xann]

Tory health minister deliberately blocks law to give NHS cheap drugs when patents expire

Independent

Whose interests are being represented here?

 

[HanoiVillan]

Goodness me, how can he can look himself in the eye? Absolutely awful. 

[bickster]

Goodness me, how can he can look himself in the eye? Absolutely awful. 

He doesn't, he checks his bank statement

[HanoiVillan]

Incidentally, while we're questioning the integrity of people involved in politics, here is a guy who isn't a Tory MP, but is a supportive Tory figure in the think-tank world:

His name is Matthew Jim Elliott. Companies House have a new website, which reveals some rather interesting information about Mr Elliott:

 

Organisation: Business for Britain Ltd (pressure group that wants a vote for EU exit)

Role: Director

Appointed: 20th February 2013

Still There?: Yes

 

Organisation: The Britain-in-Europe Campaign Ltd (campaign to stay in the EU)

Role: Director

Appointed: 22nd November 2011

Still There?: No, left on 1st October 2015

 

Nice work if you can get it, obviously. 

 

EDIT: Removed two 'organisations' as one may have been the No2AV campaign which he also worked on. The point stands though - playing both sides beautifully, this guy is. The purpose of British democracy is to make Mr Elliott wealthier. 

Edited November 8, 2015 by HanoiVillan

[tonyh29]

Sounds like Tory rebels scuppered it but how can it be representing the interests of England when 56 SNP MP's get to vote on Sunday shop opening hours in England  ( and Wales )

and why would anyone want to vote against extended opening on a Sunday anyway ?  Which they already have in Scotchland anyway by the sounds of it ... 

[blandy]

Sounds like Tory rebels scuppered it but how can it be representing the interests of England when 56 SNP MP's get to vote on Sunday shop opening hours in England  ( and Wales )

and why would anyone want to vote against extended opening on a Sunday anyway ?  Which they already have in Scotchland anyway by the sounds of it ... 

At the moment MPs are elected to the Westminster parliament for the UK and NI, and not for England only (or anywhere only). So the system allows and even requires MPs to fulfil their roles as Gov't or opposition including, obviously to oppose the Gov't. The SNPs are quite entitled to vote to oppose, or to indicate they will oppose any measure.

Sure there's the point/mess about Scotland having for some stuff, it's own Parliament, and make it's own laws via the Holyrood parliament (different members) and it could do (like most of our Gov't system) with sorting out and modernising. But I think confusing the point about whether an MP's view or vote on Sunday shop hours in Berwick or Barnstaple with "not in the interests of England" is wrong. People who are British and don't live in Britain can vote in elections. People who are part of Westminster parliament can vote on English shop hours if they live in Scotland. You don't have to reside somewhere to form a judgement. You can bet your life the single Tory MP in Scotland would want to support her Party in votes that affect England. Ditto the Lib Dem etc.

The Evel thing is a rigged and not thought through notion to try and embed permanent Tory control over English matters. It's like so much of what the tories do - they have an idea and decide to try and barrel it through, without thinking long term for the country, but mainly/entirely for short term party political advantage, only to realise later they've screwed up badly. It's insane. They're incompetent. They mess everything up.

The sane answer is to have a representative English Parliament for English matters, elected by PR - reflecting the spectrum of views across the country, so that these views are considered fairly. Ditto for the other parts.

For UK wide stuff, have members of all the parliaments involved.

Get rid of the HoL as it is now, make a second chamber of about 200 (instead of 800, now).

Sorted.

 

 

[Davkaus]

Have to say this keeping a history of peoples last year what they surf for me is absolutely ridiculous

It's invasive, expensive, and pointless.

Anybody with even the slightest concern about surveillance can  type a few words in to Google, and have a VPN connection through an overseas server in a matter of minutes.

It's going to cost the ISPs to store all of this extra data, that'll entirely be made up of stupid shit that the police have no interest in. 

On top of that, it'll lead to interesting questions about identifying internet users, if they try to use ISP logs as evidence. An IP address is not a person.

I wrote a fairly lengthy letter to my MP about this, the first time I've felt so enraged by a new policy that I felt compelled to contact him, mostly focusing on how end to end encryption is out there and they can't put the genie back in the bottle, along with pointing out the ridiculousness of trusting each ISP to hold this huge cache of data securely and responsibly, a week after Talktalk got hacked by a 15 year old.

I got back a snippet that ignored every argument I made, and can be summarised as "GCHQ need this to catch all of the paedo-terrorists, and we can definitely trust them (GCHQ, not the paedo-terrorists, I assume). Edward who? Never heard of him".

I'm not sure what I expected.

[tonyh29]

Sounds like Tory rebels scuppered it but how can it be representing the interests of England when 56 SNP MP's get to vote on Sunday shop opening hours in England  ( and Wales )

and why would anyone want to vote against extended opening on a Sunday anyway ?  Which they already have in Scotchland anyway by the sounds of it ... 

At the moment MPs are elected to the Westminster parliament for the UK and NI, and not for England only (or anywhere only). So the system allows and even requires MPs to fulfil their roles as Gov't or opposition including, obviously to oppose the Gov't. The SNPs are quite entitled to vote to oppose, or to indicate they will oppose any measure.

Sure there's the point/mess about Scotland having for some stuff, it's own Parliament, and make it's own laws via the Holyrood parliament (different members) and it could do (like most of our Gov't system) with sorting out and modernising. But I think confusing the point about whether an MP's view or vote on Sunday shop hours in Berwick or Barnstaple with "not in the interests of England" is wrong. People who are British and don't live in Britain can vote in elections. People who are part of Westminster parliament can vote on English shop hours if they live in Scotland. You don't have to reside somewhere to form a judgement. You can bet your life the single Tory MP in Scotland would want to support her Party in votes that affect England. Ditto the Lib Dem etc.

The Evel thing is a rigged and not thought through notion to try and embed permanent Tory control over English matters. It's like so much of what the tories do - they have an idea and decide to try and barrel it through, without thinking long term for the country, but mainly/entirely for short term party political advantage, only to realise later they've screwed up badly. It's insane. They're incompetent. They mess everything up.

The sane answer is to have a representative English Parliament for English matters, elected by PR - reflecting the spectrum of views across the country, so that these views are considered fairly. Ditto for the other parts.

For UK wide stuff, have members of all the parliaments involved.

Get rid of the HoL as it is now, make a second chamber of about 200 (instead of 800, now).

Sorted.

 

 

on  the basis they allowed these extended hours in Scotland how can they therefore be against them in England ?Their remit is just to sabotage for want of a better word ... That isn't democracy ... 

As I said , why would anyone be against it ... Presumably it means more jobs  or more pay for those that already do work  in retail and probably more money through the tills instead of offshore to amazons tax haven 

 

edit - I may be wrong but I think Blair would have won all 3 of his terms without Scotland  so your argument there doesn't quite hold true , though of course it doesn't harm the Tories either 

 

edit 2 ... Apparently I'm not wrong Without Scotland, Labour would still have won in 1997 (with a majority of 139, down from 179), in 2001 (129, down from 167) and in 2005 (43, down from 66).

 

Edited November 10, 2015 by tonyh29

[blandy]

The tories are changing the constituencies, Tony. They're getting rid of some. Turkey's don't vote for Christmas. They're doing it in a rush, before the electoral registers are properly updated and against the advice of the bod tasked with looking at all this. He said give the councils I think it was 18 months to update the registers. The govt is giving them a year less, so inevitably many urban places with younger populations will appear to have fewer voters. These places almost exclusively vote in labour MPs. These will get abolished or merged. They're gaming it for their own ends. They are vile.

[tonyh29]

 

The tories are changing the constituencies, Tony. They're getting rid of some. Turkey's don't vote for Christmas. They're doing it in a rush, before the electoral registers are properly updated and against the advice of the bod tasked with looking at all this. He said give the councils I think it was 18 months to update the registers. The govt is giving them a year less, so inevitably many urban places with younger populations will appear to have fewer voters. These places almost exclusively vote in labour MPs. These will get abolished or merged. They're gaming it for their own ends. They are vile.

According to Factcheck ;Labour tends to get more parliamentary seats for a smaller percentage of the popular vote , and I seem to recall them changing boundaries under the Blair years to rig things in their favour and make it difficult for the Tories to win  presumably they were equally as vile   ?

 

Despite the fact that the difference between the total votes cast for both parties were very small, Labour ended up with 355 seats and the Tories got just 198. That’s 55 per cent compared to 30 per cent.

 

 

Clearly the system is broken if a party in power can then stack the odds in their favour once elected  but it sorta detracts from my initial point though that 56 MP's appear to be playing games with the UK for their own benefit .... to quote Alex Salmond " As you know, by choice, SNP MPs have abstained from every vote on English legislation that does not have an immediate Scottish consequence. If you’re asking me should people in England be able to run their own health service or education system, my answer is yes. They should be able to do it without the bossy interference of Scots Labour MPs. "

I guess bossy interference doesn't count when they aren't labour MP's 

Edited November 11, 2015 by tonyh29

[Eames]

Goodness me, how can he can look himself in the eye? Absolutely awful. 

Vampires have no reflection. This is known. 

[chrisp65]

I'm torn on this whole shop hours thing.

On the one hand, independent shops are up against it with larger shops and the internet. On the other hand, I'm not sure allowing my local store to stay open 24/7 really gives that much of an advantage. You just get to work an extra 10 hours with the lights on and the power on, for pretty much the same number of sales, but spread out more. I can't believe my local record store mop up that many additional sales at 10:30am on a Sunday because they are open an hour before HMV? 

Part of me signs up to the 'siesta' day where much of life is deliberately closed down to mark time, to remind us to take a break. In a way, I'd sign up to the keep Sunday special type of campaign. But not for the benefit of any deity. For the benefit of individuals and families having the opportunity to be comfortably stereotypical and kick back after a communal lunch etc etc.. 

Part of me also believes, that if I've worked 55 hours between Monday and Friday, it's a bit annoying I can't buy the parts to fix my tumble dryer after lunch on Sunday. Or go for a traditional sunday pizza.

So. I'm not so much sitting on the fence. As trying to have the best of both worlds, painting my fence on a Sunday after my long lunch. With paint bought on a Sunday in direct contravention of when the Lord thinks gentiles should buy paint. As it happens, I'd try and buy the paint from the local shop. Providing it's open, and they aren't selling that thin Leyland shit at ridiculously high prices. If they are, I'll pop down Wilkinsons.

Edited November 11, 2015 by chrisp65
inglish as a second language

[blandy]

The tories are changing the constituencies, Tony. They're getting rid of some. Turkey's don't vote for Christmas. They're doing it in a rush, before the electoral registers are properly updated and against the advice of the bod tasked with looking at all this. He said give the councils I think it was 18 months to update the registers. The govt is giving them a year less, so inevitably many urban places with younger populations will appear to have fewer voters. These places almost exclusively vote in labour MPs. These will get abolished or merged. They're gaming it for their own ends. They are vile.

According to Factcheck ;Labour tends to get more parliamentary seats for a smaller percentage of the popular vote , and I seem to recall them changing boundaries under the Blair years to rig things in their favour and make it difficult for the Tories to win  presumably they were equally as vile   ?

Despite the fact that the difference between the total votes cast for both parties were very small, Labour ended up with 355 seats and the Tories got just 198. That’s 55 per cent compared to 30 per cent.

Clearly the system is broken if a party in power can then stack the odds in their favour once elected  but it sorta detracts from my initial point though that 56 MP's appear to be playing games with the UK for their own benefit .... to quote Alex Salmond " As you know, by choice, SNP MPs have abstained from every vote on English legislation that does not have an immediate Scottish consequence. If you’re asking me should people in England be able to run their own health service or education system, my answer is yes. They should be able to do it without the bossy interference of Scots Labour MPs. "

I guess bossy interference doesn't count when they aren't labour MP's 

I almost wrote, but for brevity didn't, that Labour undoubtedly would try and rig things in their favour. They're equally as self interested in that kind of thing, yes. However this is a tory thread, so "Ah but..." doesn't really make much of an argument.

There's no dispute that the boundaries need tweaking to reflect the changes in populations etc. That's fair enough. But it should be done fairly and not rushed.

I don't agree with your comment about the SNP at all, on this. The SNP member of Westminster are entitled to vote on this. The situation with Jocko Sunday hours is different because there is a premium paid to people's wages, who work on Sundays. That is not in the "English" version. it's not about not permitting shops to open on Sundays, but about making sure people who have to work at the weekend get properly paid for doing so - for being away from their kids etc. The SNPs are against having wages driven down (in both Eng and Scot). They're right, as it happens. 

[Jon]

I can't see why a supermarche or local indy shops (or whoever) shouldn't be able to open at 8am on a Sunday, or 5pm on a Sunday, or whenever. Shops should be able to, by and large, choose their own hours that suits their needs. If they want to open on Sunday but maybe not be open on Monday morning as there's not much trade, that should be up to them. At the moment, trade is restricted on a Sunday, for reasons I don't fully understand, other than legacy and religious bollocks.

[tonyh29]

The tories are changing the constituencies, Tony. They're getting rid of some. Turkey's don't vote for Christmas. They're doing it in a rush, before the electoral registers are properly updated and against the advice of the bod tasked with looking at all this. He said give the councils I think it was 18 months to update the registers. The govt is giving them a year less, so inevitably many urban places with younger populations will appear to have fewer voters. These places almost exclusively vote in labour MPs. These will get abolished or merged. They're gaming it for their own ends. They are vile.

According to Factcheck ;Labour tends to get more parliamentary seats for a smaller percentage of the popular vote , and I seem to recall them changing boundaries under the Blair years to rig things in their favour and make it difficult for the Tories to win  presumably they were equally as vile   ?

Despite the fact that the difference between the total votes cast for both parties were very small, Labour ended up with 355 seats and the Tories got just 198. That’s 55 per cent compared to 30 per cent.

Clearly the system is broken if a party in power can then stack the odds in their favour once elected  but it sorta detracts from my initial point though that 56 MP's appear to be playing games with the UK for their own benefit .... to quote Alex Salmond " As you know, by choice, SNP MPs have abstained from every vote on English legislation that does not have an immediate Scottish consequence. If you’re asking me should people in England be able to run their own health service or education system, my answer is yes. They should be able to do it without the bossy interference of Scots Labour MPs. "

I guess bossy interference doesn't count when they aren't labour MP's 

I almost wrote, but for brevity didn't, that Labour undoubtedly would try and rig things in their favour. They're equally as self interested in that kind of thing, yes. However this is a tory thread, so "Ah but..." doesn't really make much of an argument.

There's no dispute that the boundaries need tweaking to reflect the changes in populations etc. That's fair enough. But it should be done fairly and not rushed.

I don't agree with your comment about the SNP at all, on this. The SNP member of Westminster are entitled to vote on this. The situation with Jocko Sunday hours is different because there is a premium paid to people's wages, who work on Sundays. That is not in the "English" version. it's not about not permitting shops to open on Sundays, but about making sure people who have to work at the weekend get properly paid for doing so - for being away from their kids etc. The SNPs are against having wages driven down (in both Eng and Scot). They're right, as it happens. 

did not would    

Tthing is you can't all come in here saying I'm not a labour supporter and then only ever attack the Tory party as vile for doing something that has been happening since the dawn of time  .... Balance isn't the same as Ahh but  when it vald as an attempt at countering VT myopia  and I even gave you examples to back it up  ..just as I did with showing how Labour could have won without Scotland 

Finally , If you believe the SNP line  about wages as their justification then I have £100,00,00 that I want to get out of Nigeria but I need your help , send me your bank details and I'll let you keep a % as a show of my thanks

[chrisp65]

sort code 23:43:80

a/c NW5553/108801

High Street, Penarth Branch