Cameron: "Cuts will change our way of life"

[dennis tooth]

It's nothing about what's indiscriminate to me or you, it's about things having a definition. There is absolutely no suggestion that what they're going to do is an indiscriminate bombing campaign. That's just a fact, one that you should swallow if you have any regard for international law.

Bombing by its definition, is indiscriminate.

[VladimirIlyich]

It's nothing about what's indiscriminate to me or you, it's about things having a definition. There is absolutely no suggestion that what they're going to do is an indiscriminate bombing campaign. That's just a fact, one that you should swallow if you have any regard for international law.

You had a good point until I saw a 'regard for international law' being mentioned.

[Denny Crane]

Several legal scholars have reservations about certain components of IHL.

 

International Humanitarian Law is very fuzzy.

 

You can bomb a hospital or a school if the intelligence says the bad people are there and it advances military objectives and there is no agreed definition of how much is too much.

 

This isn't a sleight on the military people who despite doing the killing often have far more integrity than the politicians.

 

If there is shit information like from Cameron mythical 70k ground troops " who want to help" and they feed dud info you end up with lots of civilians with bombs on their cornflakes.

 

You only need to digest what has so far come out of Kunduz to see what can go wrong.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

You had a good point until I saw a 'regard for international law' being mentioned.

 

Well, I do have a regard for terms as described by international law. You obviously do not. 

[dennis tooth]

Theres only one international law and thats to be on the winning team.

[dennis tooth]

Well, I do have a regard for terms as described by international law. You obviously do not.

 

Just a shame you dont grasp it.

[VladimirIlyich]

Well, I do have a regard for terms as described by international law. You obviously do not.

Haha.

It doesnt matter if you or me agree on International law as the fuckers that matter dont give a shit about it.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Haha.

It doesnt matter if you or me agree on International law as the fuckers that matter dont give a shit about it.

 

Yes, but when discussing the terms... 

 

you know what, you're right. They're carpet bombing Syria. Good times.  

[dennis tooth]

Haha you cant even get a pcso to come out to a burgalry, international law is for african warlords or serbs who cant get a doctor to write them a note and its 'laws' have been trampled so many times precedent suggests theres no such thing only might makes right. However if we were to look up the international ghost laws it wouldnt pass any legal test given its involving bombing a sovereign country. Perhaps anyone arguing that could point me to their legality argument?

[dennis tooth]

Yes, but when discussing the terms... 

 

you know what, you're right. They're carpet bombing Syria. Good times.

 

Are you saying its legal then? Or perhaps that bombs arent indiscriminate?

Thought not.

[Strontium]

you know what, you're right. They're carpet bombing Syria. Good times.

 

Bizarre, as I would have thought the one thing the Arabs probably have enough of is carpets.

[Anubis]

Quelle surprise?

 

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/f92c70a4-99df-11e5-987b-d6cdef1b205c,Authorised=false.html?siteedition=uk&_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Ff92c70a4-99df-11e5-987b-d6cdef1b205c.html%3Fsiteedition%3Duk&_i_referer=https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2F4ab0d60386fba6ec5ea78ba5acf190bc&classification=conditional_standard&iab=barrier-app

 

David Cameron has given up hope of a new membership deal for Britain at this month’s EU summit after European allies reacted with alarm to him stepping up demands for treaty changes to ban benefits for new migrant workers.

 

At a series of meetings this week the British prime minister told EU leaders he had “changed his mind” and now needed immediate treaty revisions enshrining a four-year benefit ban if he was to campaign to keep Britain in the EU.

 

But his push for a December deal was abandoned on Thursday during a call with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. Downing Street said “difficult issues” remained and that it was unrealistic to think they could all be settled before the meeting on December 17-18.

 

The prime minister is now focused on concluding a deal at a second summit in mid-February, leaving open the possibility of a British referendum in June.

 

His decision to ease the tempo was greeted with relief in European capitals. Some senior participants in the negotiations claimed Mr Cameron’s week of brinkmanship had made British exit from the union a more real prospect than ever before.

 

One EU diplomat privy to the conversation claims that on Sunday when Mr Cameron told Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister and close ally, of his revised treaty change strategy, Mr Rutte replied: “You cannot be serious, you cannot be serious, you cannot be serious.”

Mr Rutte’s spokesman said the account was untrue.

 

Mr Cameron’s aggressive new approach was being seen by some EU diplomats as simply an attempt to ensure that Britain’s demands were not overlooked at a summit where terrorism and the refugee crisis will dominate.

 

“We want to keep up the pace and make sure minds are focused on a solution,” said one British official. Another said it was never likely that Mr Cameron could get a deal in December.

 

Several EU leaders and their officials warned Mr Cameron his new demand for treaty change — outlined in a short protocol to be adopted in a fast track procedure — was legally and politically impossible.

 

François Hollande, French president, warned Mr Cameron against overplaying his hand, diplomats said. Frustrations are also rising in Berlin. The German government concluded Mr Cameron had missed his opportunity for a December deal and that the complex migration issues could not be addressed by a fudged political declaration.

 

“In Berlin senior officials are no longer sure that Cameron will campaign for In,” said Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform. “They are gloomy about the chances of preventing Brexit and emphasise that it will not be Germany’s fault if this happens.

 

“The Germans say it is up to the commission and Council in Brussels to try and clinch a deal with Britain, Germany is not managing this dossier.”

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Bizarre, as I would have thought the one thing the Arabs probably have enough of is carpets.

 

You'll be laughing on the other side of your face when you get hit upside the head with a Persian rug. 

[Denny Crane]

 

Tory mp adds death threat to email from constituent.

 

Lucy Allan, Conservative MP for Telford, has been caught out after adding a ‘death threat’ to the end of an email she received from a constituent.

 

Adam Waitling, 27, who was writing using the pseudonym ‘Rusty Shackleford’, emailed Mrs Allan regarding the vote to bomb Syria.

 

Mrs Allan posted an excerpt of the email to Facebook, but Shackleford claims that she deliberately doctored the post to include the words ‘unless you die’ at the end to make it appear as if he had sent her a death threat.

 

 

 

Lucy Allan Fake Death Threat

 

 

 

After being confronted online, Mrs Allan deleted the post and then hilariously claimed that the three extra words were from another email and the post was an ‘example’ of the comments she had received.

 

 

 

Lucy Allan Reply

 

Mr Waitling, in an interview with The Daily Mail, said ‘Despite changing my Facebook name, I am a genuine Telford constituent and I have lived here all my life.

 

‘And just because I emailed under a different name, why does that make it OK to add a death threat to my email?

 

‘I would never say the words she attributed to my initial email. I do not understand why she would take the comments she may or may not have received from someone else and add them to my email when she put it on her Facebook.

 

Lucy Allan Real Email

Mr Waitling provided the original email as proof.

‘I just don’t understand why that gives her the right to add three words to my email. This is not selective editing, this is adding things I did not say’.

 

Mr Waitling, an audio producer from Telford, also called for Mrs Allan to ‘resign’, adding ‘it is a serious thing for an MP to do to someone, to misrepresent an email from a constituent so grossly’.

 

Just imagine the outcry if this was Corbyn slandering one of his constituents!

 

We await the mainstream media also calling for Mrs Allan’s resignation.

 

Not bloody likely.

http://evolvepolitics.com/tory-mp-should-resign-after-faking-death-threat-email-from-constituent/

[Guest Pistonbroke]

He should take the slut to court. 

[Jairzinho]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkjgnjJqR0E

[Jairzinho]

I'd swerve the comments section. I've just noticed that it was that UKIP supporting gimp that put the video up.

[Hooch]

Really like Galloway, me.

 

What's your thoughts on him Jairz? Know he's done some controversial things, but such a great speaker.

[Anubis]

It comes to something when The Telegraph, of all papers, is a schooling MPs on growing a backbone.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12036977/MPs-should-stop-whining-about-abuse-from-online-trolls-and-celebrate-free-speech.html

 

 

11:35AM GMT 07 Dec 2015

 

So, now we know what MPs really think of their constituents, and of the public more broadly: that we are insufferable trolls whose political anger has no place in public life.

 

That’s the take-home message of the bizarre moral panic over the trolling of MPs following the Commons vote on bombing Syria.

 

MPs who voted in favour of bombing have faced what they call “online trolling”: irate and abusive messages on Twitter and Facebook from anti-war people.

 

And like overgrown school telltales — those kids who'd run to teacher if someone so much as cracked a blue joke in their presence — they’re complaining about being “bullied”.

Look, it is not okay to send death threats to your MP, or anybody else. That is ugly and also illegal. Any of the angry-about-Syria folks who have done that need to get a grip, or a slap.

 

A 23-year-old man has been charged with sending a “malicious message” via Facebook, reportedly a death threat, to an MP who voted for bombing. If that’s true, then the guy’s an idiot.

 

But a lot of what is being splashed across the papers as “abuse and intimidation” is not death threats: it’s just colourful, furious political criticism.

 

It’s the kind of scabrous, leader-mocking commentary that has been a key, brilliant feature of British political life for centuries, from when the radical 18th-century hack John Wilkes stirred up the democracy-yearning mob with tales of sexually depraved priests and politicians to the recent re-imagination of David Cameron as a fornicator with pigs.

 

Some MPs have been sent photos of injured or dead children from warzones, with messages like, “Remember this image”. That might not be big or clever, but it is a political comment — a visceral one.

 

Other examples of so-called trolling have included pro-bombing Labour MPs being branded “traitors” and “warmongers”.

 

Labour MPs have complained about receiving messages calling them “Red Tories”, “baby killers” and “mass murderers”.

 

None of those insults is a well-thought-through critique of Western interventionism in the Middle East, no. But they all fall into the category of political fury, political speech.

 

The insanity of the trolling panic is captured by this line in a newspaper report about the alleged horrors faced by Labour MPs: “Far-left campaigners have labelled them ‘warmongers’.”

 

I’m sorry, but if you think being called a “warmonger” is bullying, then you probably aren’t cut out for the rough, tumble and occasional madness of political life.

 

In the late 1960s, anti-Vietnam War protesters chanted about US President Lyndon B Johnson: “Hey, hey, LBJ / How many kids did you kill today?”

 

They were branding Johnson a kid-killer, calling him a murderer. Trolling? Abuse? Or just political fire?

 

The extent to which the trolling-of-MPs thing has been a moral panic is clear from how much myth and misinformation built up in a matter of days.

 

Media reports told us that anti-war protesters gathered at the home of Labour MP Stella Creasy. They didn’t.

 

Conservative MP Lucy Allan caused a stir when she revealed she received an email from a constituent angry about her support for action in Syria, which ended with the lines, “[T]here is no hope. Until you die.”

 

But it turns out the emailer never said, “Until you die”. Allan added that bit. To my mind, such dishonesty from an elected parliamentarian is infinitely more worrying than the fact that some members of the public say maddening things online.

 

Labour MPs have said that abuse has “no place in politics”. But this is categorically untrue. Abuse, insults, barbs — they've been the lifeblood of politics for centuries.

 

Benjamin Disraeli said of William Gladstone: “If he fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune. If anybody pulled him out, that, I suppose, would be a calamity.” Death threat? Or just biting commentary? It really isn’t very different to what some of the angry-about-Syria people have been saying to MPs.

 

Asked about his regrets, the seventh President of the US, Andrew Jackson, said “that I didn’t hang John C Calhoun” (his vice president). He’d be arrested today.

 

Churchill called politicians ugly. Michael Foot called Norman Tebbit a “semi-trained polecat”. Ken Livingstone said Thatcher was scarier than a serial killer. Tory MP Alan Clark wondered if Douglas Hurd might have a “corn cob up his arse”. Slings, attacks, cusses: the stuff of politics.

 

It is thought — but not proven — that the “abuse” of Labour MPs who voted for bombing has been orchestrated by Momentum, Jeremy Corbyn’s campaigning arm. Corbyn’s deputy Tom Watson branded these people a “rabble”.

 

There. That R-word sums up what is motoring the hissy fit over ugly tweets: a fear of the rabble, the blob, the little people with their coarse tongues.

 

The political fear of trolls is indistinguishable from when those 18th-century MPs looked out their windows at the pro-Wilkes mob demanding democratic rights and almost puked into their teacups.

 

The redefinition of political anger as trolling, and messaging MPs as bullying, is utterly unacceptable. It is a stab at sanitising political life. It’s about ringfencing our leaders from the plebs. No way. Democracy doesn’t just mean putting an X in a box once every four years — it also means allowing everyone to express their opinion, however rough and ugly it might be.

[Gnasher]

slightly off topic but why don't we hear protest songs against governments anymore. We always had a bit of Dylan, the specials, the jam etc now there's nothing.

 

My personal protest song favourite was this easy listening number by a folk band with flowers in their hair from the eighties.

 

 

https://youtu.be/EwnkFlVRCZc

[Jairzinho]

Really like Galloway, me.

 

What's your thoughts on him Jairz? Know he's done some controversial things, but such a great speaker.

He's a phenomenal orator.

 

I like him generally. I don't agree with everything he says, and I think he is quite narcissistic. Some of the slightly more questionable stuff he says I think is often a reaction to the shit that gets flung his way.

 

Be nice to live in a slightly more balanced society with a range of political and economic views in the mainstream so that people like Galloway weren't seen as "extreme" or "radical".

[Hooch]

He's a phenomenal orator.

I like him generally. I don't agree with everything he says, and I think he is quite narcissistic. Some of the slightly more questionable stuff he says I think is often a reaction to the shit that gets flung his way.

Be nice to live in a slightly more balanced society with a range of political and economic views in the mainstream so that people like Galloway weren't seen as "extreme" or "radical".

Agreed, but I've not heard anything he's said that I disagreed with to be honest. Not sure what he was thinking with that Bradford election madness though. Think he looks boss in that hat, bit of narcissism is good.

[Jairzinho]

Agreed, but I've not heard anything he's said that I disagreed with to be honest. Not sure what he was thinking with that Bradford election madness though. Think he looks boss in that hat, bit of narcissism is good.

 

It's more just an occasional lack of tact. Same with Ken Livingstone. You just think "Nah, don't say that, you know you'll get savaged".

 

It's about not allowing the press to frame your argument in a way that persuades the lobotomised public into thinking you're a cunt.

 

Although, as we've seen with Corbyn, even having other worldly patience and tolerance for constant attacks, smears and attempts to ridicule, still doesn't stop it.

 

Love watching him on QT or being interviewed on the news, etc. People very rarely get the better of him because he's knowledgeable, tough and eloquent. Few people can combine all three. 

 

You have to watch him v the US senate if you haven't already. I'm looking forward to his documentary on Blair.

[Guest Pistonbroke]

It must rile the media and those Tory bastards that he keeps his cool despite the provocation and outright lies. 

[mattyq]

I think Galloway is probably the best orator currently in British politics. Some of his talks against the Scots Nats were superb...he tore them a new one in such a way that you almost felt sorry for them

He is also, however, a terrible  narcisist with more than a hint of a bad messiah complex and comrade dictator for life thing going on

Complex character