The Westminster Arms

[DustyDiamond]

Shiny new thread 😍😍

The Westminster Arms:
A non-partisan politics pub-thread for varied political chit-chat & other such stuff

Cheers all 🍷

I still don't get the bit about September's Guardian crossword. Please can someone enlighten me.

Morning, Copper, ignore the actual words and just look across the very top row of squares. You get a letter, a black space, a letter, black space, and so on. Put it together and that's the first word.

Then look at the very bottom space and do the same.

Philistine is obviously a fan of Mr Bercow. Or is Mr Bercow himself

Arse, at the time Parliament was prorogued, that was the convention. The Court of Appeal said so. The Supreme Court - quite unusually - overruled the Court of Appeal. Lady Hale all but admitted that they had made new law. That is not their job.

People still bang on about Boris "lying to the Queen".

I do not know what he said to the Queen. No one does - other than Boris and HMQ. Anything else is pure speculation and very possibly slander or libel, depending on what form it takes.

Are you here to refight the referendum? Or the GE? Or are you here to comment on the politics of the day? It's hard to tell. FWIW, your posts about the current situation are far more interesting than the ones where you seem to be unable to let go of the past. Which we cannot change.

Arse, I was responding to this: "Even though the job is not done, and nobody is sure what it being 'done' will yet look like."

It seemed that you were complaining that it's not yet done, and the end state isn't yet transparent, and my response is that we are closer to those things than we would have been under labour or Lib dem. In other words, those who voted conservative over Brexit won't be cross about their progress in that matter right now. From the point of view of someone wanting Brexit, labour's plan was evidently unpalatable (based on voting patterns). The establishment had 3.5 years to find consensus. The Remain movement really got in the way of that, by giving people the idea that the whole thing could be cancelled instead of accepted and shaped. Labour didn't get a democratic mandate to be an integral part of the shaping. That ship sailed in December.

Parliament had not been suspended for such a length of time for many years and for such a clearly fake reason so was certainly not convention and anyone arguing as such is just trying brush another anti-democratic move under the carpet.

Even 'Boris' fans, delighted at the attempt to shut parliament up and down, talked in terms of 'Boris played a blinder' not, 'what's the problem, this it totally normal'

That ship sailed in December.

^ This. To the power of ten.

We had a referendum. It was binary. It was FPTP. We voted to leave. Old news.

We had a GE on 12 December 2019. The Conservatives won. Boris has a mandate and a majority of 80. Old news.

We legally left the EU on 31 December 2019. Old news.

Now we are in a transition period. Labour is having a protracted leadership election. Other stuff is going on right now. Not old news.

such a clearly fake reason

What exactly did Boris tell the Queen?

Yes, BBC is being threatened. It's supposed to be nonpartisan, but its producers and presenters and writers really do tend to have a particular shared set of values. Why should we have to pay for that if we want live TV, even if we never watch their offerings, under threat of prison? I have a lot of sympathy for the "streamline BBC, subscription model". Let it thrive or fail according to whether it genuinely is useful to people, not as of right. It's not the 1950s any more!

that was to ommmward

As much as I despise Corbyn, thought BJ a clown, despaired & raged around the attempts to subvert & overturn the EU Ref instruction, think Trump is just 😮, & have generally been aghast, outraged and agog at politics & politicians in general over the last few years....

I think it has all been a good thing overall in the round...!

Purely because people across all walks of life have become engaged in politics again & have been re-awoken to the power of a cross in a box & the preciousness of democracy

I hate Corbyn, with a passion, but one of his qualities is that he was able to connect with people (or enrage people) & engage them in politics
As have Trump, BJ & the various groups/individuals both pro- and anti-Brexit

Regardless of personal feelings towards each & all & towards their personal politics/policies - I'd argue they have most definitely made a positive impact in that respect

No answer?

How about this, then.

then the horrendous bullying and braying session that took place after it was reconvened

Now that I agree with. It was there, on television, for all to see. Now here's the next question.

Who is responsible for ensuring orderly proceedings in the HoC? The Prime Minister of the day or the Speaker?

And the next question.

What steps were taken by the person responsible to ensure Orderrrr in the HoC?

It was all conducted in the public eye.

I'm sure Boris takes into account the diametrically opposed wishes of the minority and then acts for the majority who voted for Brexit and him.

I don't see the current government as a threat to democracy. I saw the last one as a threat to democracy. Our system is based on majority government. Minority government with the speaker messing with convention, and hands tied by the fixed term parliament act (that was a stupid piece of legislation for short term reasons), and the legislature completely hamstrung by lack of consensus - THAT was a threat to democracy. By the time they were proroguing for a couple of extra days in order to have a queen's speech that would fail, and pulling legislation that they knew would get mangled into something that wouldn't wash with the electorate... It was all of a piece: political machinations by all sides to try to get their way rather than the other side winning, where what we clearly needed was a general election to give someone a proper mandate.

I don't blame just the conservatives for the threat to democracy; lib Dems take their share with the ftpa; all those remainer wreckers in the last parliament, including bercow, also take a share; as do the MPs who kept voting that a minority government couldn't be dissolved to have a general election (and thank goodness for the SNP and lib Dems in the end for voting for an election).

I'm sure Boris takes into account the diametrically opposed wishes of the minority and then acts for the majority who voted for Brexit and him.

Agree, Silvery.

That is the constitutionally proper approach as he was elected on a clear mandate, with a thumping majority, and the key manifesto commitments were included in the Queen's Speech, which was also passed with a thumping majority.

ommmward
One difficulty is that we've had so much "they're all LITERALLY fascists" frothing from various sections of the media over the last three years, when they didn't seem to be, to me, that it'll take me a bit of time to get beyond "boy who cried wolf" suspicion to work out whether it's an undermining of the free press or a shake up of the lobby system (or both).
I, personally, have not seen much 'they're all literally fascists' frothing, but we probably don't follow the same news sources. Do you have any links of this sort of thing? IMO there is no news source in the UK that is totally without bias, although I think some try harder than others. I am just very aware, having lived in a country where news is controlled by the government, of how this sort of thing starts and believe we should really guard against it.

By the way, when I say 'news is controlled by the government', you can be sure that the government in question denied absolutely that they were in any way controlling output, despite closing down news sources, imprisoning journalists etc.

Afternoon all,

We've been asked by, well, let's just say A Lot of you to have a look at this thread and having done so we must sadly report that these Westminster Arms appear to have been opened under improper licence.
Both 'teams' in this discussion have their own homes to go to where they can wear team colours and wave scarves to their hearts' content, but the sign above the door calls for neutrality - which we interpret as a quiet pint in convivial company.
Despite claims to non-partisanship this has not been the case, so we're closing up shortly. (Not deleting, just closing. It's 'last orders' for this one. It's costing us a fortune in bouncers.)
Do feel free to restart another thread, we will give you a little bit of time to pick a more neutral landlord for the next one.
Regards
The Management

Hmm, I suppose I mean corbynista outriders like Owen Jones and ash wossname. I can't give a specific link; this was my impression from various bits of commentary on election night type coverage. Also the kinds of throwaway remarks you get on comedy programmes.

Complete change of subject but pertinent to the relevance of the bloated BBC.
They sent Katty and Christian and Emily to Iowa and we all ended up none the wiser. Couple of tongue in cheek tweets from AF Neil this am gave a much clearer flavour of the debacle. Anthony Zucker, who is based in the US has a detailed piece on the website which gives the full picture but will never be reported on any of the News programmes on TV.

I happen to have contacts who were at the Caucus. They want to know why they just can't go and spend 5 minutes casting their ballot like normal folks. Their inside verdict was Mayor Pete and Biden tied with Bernie and Warren a couple of notches back. Will be interesting to see if this ties up with the Democrats' thrice verified tally - certainly wasn't what the pollsters had.

Zucker was able to verify that The Donald polled over 90% in the Republican caucus. The BBC news anchors on TV last night forgot to mention that the Republicans were even bothering.

The Donald is kinda enjoying himself today, but difficult to blame him when across the aisle is such a demonstrable shambles - makes their claims about his incompetent White House ring a wee bit hollow.

I am no fan of The Donald but it says something when the Other Side are making him look good.

Please would you (MN admin) give a clear indication of what's not allowed? It's very disappointing to have an active discussion halted.

I couldn't give a toss who hosts the next thread btw

I'd like to see them carry on though

I really, really didn't want them to be dragged back into old, tired, done to death brexit arguments but hey-ho 🤷🏻‍♀️

I really did try to keep it from derailing into wankery - I'm not 'partisan' btw, I take each poster as they come
There was no 'false pretences' at all

I'm not a kicking stick however, in real life or on a chat board 🤷🏻‍♀️

(((dusty)))

Who'd like to volunteer?

Seeing as how I'm apparently persona non grata 🙄

I'd offer but I'm guessing I'm ruled out now as well.
Will ask MNHQ for guidance.

Hi ommmward,
Thanks for your query but it's just the usual guidelines. Keep the goading down at the back, etc.
Unfortunately we read this entire thread as goading, and would ask that whoever (possibly you?) opens the next WA thread does so with one eye on civil discussion about politics and some sense of neutrality. There are other threads for tub-thumping, where we have asked posters of each 'side' not to follow each other to. This was supposed to be non-partisan.

I'll do it.