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Reply | Latest mass casualty attack in Germany
at 11:26 17 Feb 2025
I thought you were posting about "these sort of incidents". There may be all kinds of reasons for the incidents across Europe, but there is a certain pattern when one looks at the majority of perpetrators. You really are all over the place with some of your posts. |
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Reply | Next Swansea manager odds 🤯
at 04:00 17 Feb 2025
I wondered about the first two myself. A bit of a gamble but both probably within our financial means. |
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Reply | Monk Sacked Again
at 19:02 16 Feb 2025
Saw Monk's final game when Cambridge lost 0-1 to Exeter on Sky TV. It was a pretty dire affair with a lot of midfield moves that broke down, rather like some of our games. Exeter had been on a bad run too with no wins since the turn of the year, but they shaded this one. I did wonder how long Monk could survive after that. |
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Reply | European security
at 15:32 16 Feb 2025
Well, that is a question I don't know the answer to. The anti-globalists will mutter about elites or Western liberal establishments, but it is probably also the case that relational networks form within legal circles that promote particular interpretations or approaches. |
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Reply | Latest mass casualty attack in Germany
at 15:20 16 Feb 2025
Add up the number of casualties and you will see where the main problem lies. I think you meant the Dunblane shootings (15 dead) not the Lockerbie PA 103 bombing, which was certainly connected with an Islamic country (whether by Libyans or the PLO), and led to 270 fatalities. |
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Reply | Latest mass casualty attack in Germany
at 12:22 16 Feb 2025
There speaks somebody with a very short memory, or more likely a highly selective perception of reality. I will only mention events with over 12 casualties, as obviously there are many more incidents with fewer killed. All the ones I list involve Islamists.
2004 Madrid train bombings (193 killed, 2,050 injured), 2005 London 7/7 attacks (56 killed, 784 injured), January 2015 ÃŽle-de-France attacks (20 killed, 22 injured), November 2015 Paris attacks (137 killed, 413 injured), 2016 Brussels bombings (35 killed, 340 injured), 2016 Nice truck attack (87 killed, 434 injured), 2016 Berlin Christmas market attack (13 killed, 55 injured), 2017 Manchester Arena bombing (23 killed, 250 injured), 2017 Barcelona attacks (24 killed, 152 injured).
For smaller scale UK attacks see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain [Post edited 16 Feb 12:27]
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Reply | European security
at 11:55 16 Feb 2025
Many of these bones of contention can be argued both ways, but I want to focus on something in the last paragraph that I think misunderstands what is happening. It isn't just that laws are expanding to deal with changing circumstances and technologies, but rather that there is a change in the relationship between national legislative bodies and judiciaries. Traditionally Parliaments made laws and judges determined whether laws had been broken, if necessary interpreting their meaning. However, what is happening now is that interpretation has moved on to extrapolation, in effect re-making laws without seeking consent from the governments that put them in statues or treaties. Former Supreme Court judge, Jonathan Sumption, has discussed this in a recent Spectator article, which gives several examples where the ECoHR has applied law in new ways.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/judgment-day-the-case-for-leaving-the-echr/
Sumption writes that "in 1978 the Strasbourg judges proclaimed what they called the ‘living instrument doctrine’. According to this, the court claims the right to develop the convention by recognising new rights thought to be in the spirit of the original treaty although never envisaged in it." Specific examples, include applying ECHR law outside European territories, moving from the traditional doctrine that governments are bound only by the final decision of a court to impose binding interim orders (as happened with the Rwanda flights), and extending Article 8 of the ECHR, which pertains to right to a family life, to include almost anything that intrudes upon an individual’s personal autonomy.
More widely, this is about a process of "juridification", whereby law start to invade other domains of social life, especially politics. Anybody interested can read classic literature about this by Jurgen Habermas and Gunther Teubner, and lots of recent stuff on judicial activism. It is a trend that has accelerated in recent years, on both sides of the Atlantic, and, as you say, is one that may be used by both Left and Right. Europe and the EU in particular have taken it further than any other international trading block. |
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Reply | Reform Wales
at 20:03 15 Feb 2025
Very similar to the RoI then. But I suppose that is in the EU and cannot be mentioned. |
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Reply | European security
at 19:52 15 Feb 2025
Vance's speech was ill judged and went down very badly. It contained exaggerated claims, and what I thought was a bad example to make a point about freedom of speech in the UK (buffer zones near abortion clinics), but it may be worth discussing whether there were some grains of truth in the midst of the hyperbole.
Is it fair to say that European politicians supported, or at least failed to regulate, mass immigration when their electorates did not want it?
Has there been a cultural shift around developments like "no platforming" and the demonisation of small-c conservative voices as "far right"?
Has there been a extension of law that regulates what people can say without facing a criminal sanction, and if, so is that a good or bad thing?
More generally, has law been increasingly used to buttress socially-liberal social policies and some not so liberal economic policies through EU-wide legislation and international courts, so that policies are implemented that national electorates cannot change? [Post edited 15 Feb 19:54]
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Reply | Stoke City v Swansea City : Match day thread
at 16:59 15 Feb 2025
Have to feel angry for the Swans fans who travelled all the way to the Potteries to see this kind of performance. This has got to be the weakest team we have fielded since relegation. Tymon put in a shift, but I struggle to pick out anybody else worth a mention. Eom in particular does not look suited to this league. That DoF appointment looks likely to take us down if it means that Williams stays in charge, |
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Reply | QPR
at 21:43 14 Feb 2025
4-0 at the moment. Jerry Yates has just missed an absolute sitter. I wonder if he will find his level next season. |
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Reply | Which teams will go down?
at 21:04 14 Feb 2025
Yep, we are in the situation now where this amounts to things going our way. |
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Reply | Keir Starmer today
at 20:57 14 Feb 2025
I said there were issues with "parties and lying", and by the latter meant lying more generally, which includes Pincher. There was no doubt that Johnson has character defects and managed affairs ineptly (what I called chaotic management). I am not a fan and do see myself as defending him. I said he was a clown and would extend that to chancer. it is just that I see his problem as general ineptness rather than calculated action to achieve some overarching illicit goal. And yes, at the end the chorus of criticism from the ones I mentioned spread to other factions who had their own eyes on power. Anyway, the thread has been skilfully turned to what Johnson did a couple of years ago, and it should really be about what is happening under Starmer now. Looking at the BBC News today, things seem to be getting worse for Reeves. I doubt that this will develop into ""Expenses-Gate" or "Handbag-Gate", but lots of little fibs add up - as they did for Boris. |
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Reply | Keir Starmer today
at 19:22 14 Feb 2025
I don't think sections of the Party turned on Boris Johnson because he lied to the House about the parties. Rather the parties provided an opportunity for those (mainly on the "one nation" side of the party) who had opposed Brexit, did not like the tactics Johnson used to get past Parliament's attempts to block it, resented the action he took to discipline them, and did not like the way No 10 was being run. There was also the fallout from Dominic Cummings' sacking and his subsequent attempts to damage Johnson.
If Partygate was not about parties and lying then what was it about? What is Johnson supposed to have done that achieved an illicit benefit. Pincher resigned because of alleged drunken groping, and yes, he could have been sacked more quickly. Paterson had been doing paid consultancy on the side for Randox Laboratories and Lynne's Country Foods, and was alleged to have tried to influence ministers and the Food Standards Agency to the advantage of those companies. Some of his approaches were about alleged shortcomings in food or milk quality that Paterson was claiming his companies' products could help mitigate. However, this did not result in any new contracts for the two companies or get the FSA to change course. Yes, Johnson was then at fault by trying to get the rules of the Commons Standards Committee changed rather than quickly sacking Paterson, but he had to back down so that nothing actually changed. Some said Johnson's problem was that he did not like sacrificing ministers or special advisors when they came under media attack. What I cannot really see is how you join up all the dots to link all these things together in some overall scam or plan to gain a political advantage on a particular issue. It seems to me more about chaotic management and an arrogant disregard of the views of rivals as well as opponents. What the critics end up alleging is a general lack of integrity, but no single focused scandal except Partygate. [Post edited 14 Feb 19:30]
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Reply | Small Boat Crossings
at 16:42 14 Feb 2025
Changes in visas for dependants of students seem to be a big part of this. The surprising thing is that although overseas student numbers rose sharply in the couple of years after COVID-19, the reduced number this year isn't much lower than intakes in the period before the pandemic. I was surprised to see that overseas applications for Welsh pre-registration nursing degree courses actually rose this year (though admittedly overseas students have never been a big part of the student intake in that subject). I'd say that the pegging of the UK home student fee for some years is also a big factor affecting university finances. |
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Reply | Keir Starmer today
at 16:20 14 Feb 2025
I said clown, you say chancer. I will swap if you like. I did not mean to draw any line between the two things. |
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