Britain - The Official Thread

  • Thread starter Ross
  • 13,290 comments
  • 604,409 views

How will you vote in the 2024 UK General Election?

  • Conservative Party

    Votes: 2 6.9%

  • Green Party

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Labour Party

    Votes: 14 48.3%

  • Liberal Democrats

    Votes: 2 6.9%

  • Other (Wales/Scotland/Northern Ireland)

    Votes: 1 3.4%

  • Other Independents

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Other Parties

    Votes: 2 6.9%

  • Spoiled Ballot

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Will Not/Cannot Vote

    Votes: 8 27.6%
  • Total voters
    29
  • Poll closed .
ExigeEvan
I didn't.

It would have involved driving about an hour to do it. Not surprised by the lack of turnout, no one really knows what to expect from this role, even less so with the cuts to the police.
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This.

Plus, I had no idea who was campaigning for the North Wales post.
 
I had no idea it was even happening until myself and other family members got ballot papers in the post the other week.

No idea who was running for the position here, and I don't think anyone else I know did either. Looks like I was part of the no-voting majority.
 
I can't vote (16) however was looking at the candidates. All of the political party ones had none to very little policing experience, the two others were a guy from the "No Tollerance Policing Party" who stated his policing experience as rebuilding the iraqi police force while he was in the military. So the only logical candidate was the independant guy who had been chairman of the counties police board for the past 17 years.
 
Is there any real reason to have a police and crime commissioner? As in, any useful, logical reason? Or is it just a massive waste of money and another level of bureaucracy?

I didn't vote, incidentally. And turnout in the Leeds area was around the 14 percent mark.
 
I didn't vote, not because I was unaware of it, it's been plastered over TV and newspapers for months but simply because it's a massive waste.

I laughed my ass off when I heard nobody in Wrexham turned out to vote.
 
homeforsummer
Is there any real reason to have a police and crime commissioner? As in, any useful, logical reason? Or is it just a massive waste of money and another level of bureaucracy?
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It is an attempt by the government to try and make a gap between police and politics I believe.

Not 100% on that though.
 
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haitch40
It is an attempt by the government to try and make a gap between police and politics I believe.
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Well they failed at the basic point of concept if that's was the aim.

That was not however one of the main stated aims, which was to make local police accountable to the local populous, by means of an elected individual being responsible, an aim I'm fairly certain it will not succeed in doing. What it has almost certainly done is make one tier of the police very political.
 
Bend over, here it comes again.

My thoughts exactly when the Coalition formed.
 
Well is Carney any good?

Canada seems to be rather stable, economically, compared to a lot of other countries.
 
I love blaming everything on Candainians, just ask Rob :lol:

Actually I respect them as they don't typically wave swords around.
 
Canada's financial system has definitely weathered the recession better than most other 1st world countries, partially because of Carney (he kept the overnight interest rate at .75-1 percent), but a lot of it has to do with the tightly regulated Canadian banks (which is the government, not the central bank). When the crisis hit, American and British banks were in crisis, but Canada's large banks have come out of the recession strong and in good financial health. There's also the rising prices of commodities that have kept Canada in good economic health (oil, minerals, etc). I honestly can't say much too further in depth, I haven't really followed it closely enough.
 
Noob616
There's also the rising prices of commodities that have kept Canada in good economic health (oil, minerals, etc). I honestly can't say much too further in depth, I haven't really followed it closely enough.
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You survived much the same way Australia did, also a low population-density and resource-rich country.

Get it out of the ground, and sell it to the highest bidder.

That won't work in the UK so I hope he has a few more tricks up his sleeves.
 
ExigeEvan
You survived much the same way Australia did, also a low population-density and resource-rich country.

Get it out of the ground, and sell it to the highest bidder.

That won't work in the UK so I hope he has a few more tricks up his sleeves.
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It's not quite that simple, the Canadian banking system was a big part of it as well, but a lot of it had to do with the rising value of our dollar (the Canadian dollar trades above the USD), which is mostly due to us being the USA's biggest foreign oil provider. The only thing is, the banking system doesn't have a ton to do with the Bank of Canada. The banks are regulated by the Ministry of Finance.
 
ExigeEvan
True, but is that because your banking system was exceptionally good, or just that the others were exceptionally flawed?
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Bit of both I reckon. The World Economic Forum has ranked Canada's banks as the best in the world for 5 years straight; that being said, it's a lot easier to have banks tightly regulated when you aren't a major financial center like the UK or US. There's also that we have far less banks than other countries, most of the market is held by the "big 5", and there's not many smaller banks. Once again, this all has little to nothing to do with Carney and the Bank of Canada.
 
This whole argument confuses me. The "balance", they say, is a free press that can hold public figures to account but not invade privacy. The solution seems patently obvious.

Politicians - at least those with council, authority and parliamentary seats or with governmental brief - serve us. Everything they do should be subject to press scrutiny and they have no privacy until they fall out of that world. Everyone else is a private individual and press should be subject to the same laws regarding their conduct around them as any other private individual.

You can write a story on the McCanns, Chris Jeffries, Jimmy Savile, Milly Dowler or whomever without sending 30 guys to camp outside their house night and day for a month, photographing them, rifling through their bins, trying to access their phone messages, using thermal imaging cameras to look inside and so on and so forth. Meanwhile everything an MP does is our business.

No laws need to be changed, just the concept of public interest. The term "interest" has been skewed to mean "what we want to read about" not "things we have a stake in" and it needs changing back. I don't have a stake in Siena Miller's tits and unless she chooses to get them out for a magazine, it's not "in the public interest" to publish them. But if a politician uses his position to get boys to fellate him, it certainly is.
 
Famine
You can write a story on the McCanns, Chris Jeffries, Jimmy Savile, Milly Dowler or whomever without sending 30 guys to camp outside their house night and day for a month, photographing them, rifling through their bins, trying to access their phone messages, using thermal imaging cameras to look inside and so on and so forth. Meanwhile everything an MP does is our business.

No laws need to be changed, just the concept of public interest. The term "interest" has been skewed to mean "what we want to read about" not "things we have a stake in" and it needs changing back. I don't have a stake in Siena Miller's tits and unless she chooses to get them out for a magazine, it's not "in the public interest" to publish them. But if a politician uses his position to get boys to fellate him, it certainly is.
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This is a problem we deal with here. In my opinion, public servants at any level should have to forfeit any right to privacy they might otherwise expect, publicly and privately. Because we all know that those people rarely accomplish their shenanigans in public, preferring to do it privately. National defense? Nonsense. If you didn't do anything sketchy you would have no reason to try and hide it.

One thing this change would accomplish is curbing people who want to be in office from getting in office. They won't want to be there because they simply won't be trusted, will be followed, scrutinized, watched at dinner, etc. We'll be left with honest people who don't necessarily want to live that life but step up because everybody in their community wants them to do it.
 
Liquid
Max Clifford arrested in latest sex ring update

Starbucks agree to pay more tax

£20 million. Over two years. On a related note, HMRC are a joke, they keep accepting crappy compromises from companies who owe them billions, like Vodafone.
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I was listening to the radio when I briefly heard 2 accountants who ear their bread by finding loop holes in the law. The panel (which I believe were the same that gave Starbucks and google a rough ride) seemed shocked to find out that even though their current loopholes had been closed, they were actively seeking more.

C'mon, accountants have been around a lot longer than computer hackers, and yet there are still people that don't appreciate those that find ways to do things. And in the case of these guys, perfectly legal.

[EDIT] Also, I'm confused by the Starbucks tax. If they're not profitable should they still be expected to pay tax? Or is it because of the way they run the business (I heard something about UK branches buying over priced product from the Dutch?) that makes it unprofitable?

[EDIT2]Linkage to what I heard on the radio. They even notify the HMRC of the scheme who then make it illegal. If they can find 100 ways a year to beat the tax scheme then surely that's 100 times per year that it proves the system is too complicated.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20624848
 
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Very sad, such a shame that an apparently kind and caring woman should have felt compelled to take her own life over something so ridiculous. The Australian DJs who perpetrated the hoax will be facing very difficult times of their own I would imagine... although they should have realised that their childish prank could have had serious consequences for the staff of the hospital, they probably couldn't have imagined that it would result in a suicide.
 
Wait what? I don't understand... Why did this nurse Jacintha Saldanha kill her self over this prank call from this radio show? :confused: I've just listed to the prank call on youtube (Not sure if this is the actual prank call or just a prank recreating the prank call, "prankception") and nothing they said would provoke a person to kill themself. Just two aussie radio hosts putting on bad accents of the Queen asking about kates "tummy bug" and when they could come and see her. So I fail to see how these radio hosts are responsible for this nurses suicide.

So I imagine there were other reasons for this nurse to take her own life, if it was even suicide, has it been ruled out it wasn't murder? Or some freak accident?

Those nurses must have been incredibly naive to belive they was actually talking to the Queen and surely the hospital security needs to be checked if it's that easy to to pretened to be the Queen and ask about Kate's health if that was some psycho nutter and not just a prank call they could have asked which room she is in and turned up to do what ever they wished.
 

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