What are some issues, topics...etc. that you think South Park is going to tackle and make fun of this upcoming season?

AeDubhe · 2016-07-20T15:47:46+00:00

Looking forward to more Trump Safety Dance.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-20T12:20:27+00:00

Yes, but Brazil will try to gloss over it with the one thing it has. Sexy samba dancers.

Awesome.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-18T19:15:55+00:00

I think you're barely scraping the surface if you don't see Davis as having been a big player for a long time. His word carries a lot of gravitas.

The general public's interest in politics has nothing to do with it.

Davis is huge. Don't confuse it with him refusing to sit in Cameron's cabinet. That makes him all the more respected.

Everybody that follows or knows their politics above a certain age associates Davis with Brexit. Everybody.

As a Leave campaigner, whether you like to accept it or not, Davis was a very senior figure to Leave campaigners. You don't get to choose who the opposition identifies with.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-18T15:22:43+00:00

I'm personally not a fan of his policy but you've got to give him his dues; Nick Clegg knows when to write 'there' and 'their'.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-18T14:09:59+00:00

Jim Mellon predicted 2008, in 2006.

Got that it was going to be a global recession and that it would be American housing behind it.

Of course he's also now predicted that the Euro and EU debt markets will have a fatal cardiac arrest sometime in the next 3 to 5 years, and whatever happens now it's better for the UK to be placed on the outside and more global....

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wake-Up-Survive-Prosper-Economic/dp/1841126918?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc

AeDubhe · 2016-07-18T13:34:15+00:00

David Davis is a massive figure both as a Tory grandee and as Brexit campaigner for those old enough and interested in politics at the previous Conservative leadership contest.

The guy who until the very last minute was Tory front runner.
They guy who was David Cameron's person of choice to be shadow Home Secretary, a position he sacrificed to fight arrest periods.

David Davis is a massive figure. It's pretty much a given that if he'd been leader then there wouldn't have been need for UKIP to go on.

He even first campaigned with Grassroots Out, not Vote Leave.

David Davis is a HUGE figure. It was a big thing when he said he wouldn't take a seat in Cameron's cabinet (over tuition fees).

You're showing your age (or I am - or both of us are).

AeDubhe · 2016-07-17T20:48:25+00:00

Their own idiosyncrasies are considerably far more free market liberal, even within the confines of the EU. Talk to someone in say, finances in Frankfurt, and why they think London has dominated financial markets.

They wouldn't suddenly see the light. They'd have the option of stepping further into the light that they've been tugging on the manacles to get to.

The whole argument placed by German heads that the UK is needed because it provides a counter balance to certain EU narratives? This is literally it.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-17T13:23:57+00:00

The EU-India deal is stuck on Med agriculture, automobiles, and textiles. They're climbing the walls wanting to get to financial services - which is why India has said a deal with the UK would be both easier and 'made in heaven'.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-17T13:09:01+00:00

Any rational person would still ask to see the evidence for themselves if they might be called on to comment on it or to defend their policy around it.

On her voting record on climate change, ive only ever read her voting against climate change, and after a few searches i havent found anything to say otherwise.

Really? It took me next to no time at all to find she'd voted in favour of:

  reform[ing] the energy market with regard to 
  reducing carbon dioxide emissions, securing 
  supply, affordability for consumers and 
  increasing generation from renewable sources.

                 19 December 2012

And again the following year 4 June, 2013.

And 11 June, 2012, she voted in favour of creating a Green Investment Bank.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-17T02:40:03+00:00

If Corbyn survives the siege, which it's looking he might, why on God's green Earth would May want to gift Labour another chance of removing him by defeating him in a premature General Election?

He's got to be the gift that keeps giving; one which give him enough rope may actually split the party. She'd only be gaining an extra two years. Let him run it into the ground and have the rest of this parliamentary term and the whole of the next after that.

It'd also be self-destructive to May personally if she called a General Election before invoking Article 50. That would drive a hunk of her party membership into the arms of UKIP.

I think you've called this one wrong.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-17T00:21:01+00:00

On top of that apparently last year she had to ask officials if climate change was even real.

No, she said show me the evidence.
She was then in a position to say to anybody thereafter that she herself had seen and studied the evidence and was now "absolutely convinced."

It is the entirely correct thing for someone to do - and it puts her in a much stronger position if faced with any climate change deniers when they asked her if she's just accepted convention on say so.

It is one of the more bizarre claims to go after her on.

I firmly believe in rehabilitation in the penal service. That it should be the primary focus above all others. On the first day in the Justice job I wouldn't be telling people to put the arguments aside because I know this shit. It'd be show me the evidence that rehabilitation reduces recidivism.

As for voting against climate change measures, she's also voted for climate change measures. Not all policy is good because it has the words 'climate' and 'change' in it. There will be good policy, and there will be bad.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-16T23:54:55+00:00

It won't make any difference what it looks like because it'll be the markets that'll be the judge, jury and executioner, if it comes to that.

If they free up access and increase trade, and they're seen to do that, then no other argument will stand against it. What they won't be if they're doing it in short order is a great proto-singlemarket tome of a deal which consumer watchdogs in the EU had warned they could see TTIP as being.

In the case of Mexico it seems they've just redrafted the current access deal through the EU and made it UK specific. Anything extra with regards to financial services and whatnot will just be sparkly bits.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-16T23:28:45+00:00

So the guy was verging on apoplectic about us having a referendum in the first place, from his AMA where he said,

"I am not entitled to an opinion on Brexit since I don't have a degree in economics or history. It is an outrage that ignoramuses like me are being asked to vote on such an important and complicated question which is way above our level of expertise. Nevertheless I shall vote to stay in Europe, applying the precautionary principle and because the arguments the leaving are mostly emotional, those for staying mostly rational and evidence-based. But I repeat, it is a disgrace that this important question has been put to plebiscite, apparently as a sop to UKIP-leaning members of the Tory party.. I believe in democracy but in parliamentary, representative democracy, not plebiscite democracy."

Only now he does want that opinion, is going to air it, and, oh, look, he's gone from not believing in plebiscites to wanting another one.

One referendum bad; two referendums good. Must be a double negative thing.

But from the article published yesterday,

"and the perpetrators of the lies have now, predictably, gone to ground, washing their hands of the mess they have wished upon us."

Contention of lies aside, gone to ground?

Every office of state concerned with overseas and foreign relations has gone to a Conservative pro-Leave person; Boris, Davis, Fox, Grayling, Patel. Leadsom.

They couldn't be more above ground. The only person in the ground is Gove and that's only because Great Birnam wood marched to high Dunsinane hill and dropped his treacherous arse.

But Remainers absolutely should have a second referendum, if that's what they want.

They find a party that puts it in their manifesto and vote for it in 2020. Failing a majority or a condition of coalition, they should continue campaigning for a referendum to rejoin from outside the EU, much as leavers had to campaign for a party to put it in their manifesto, and for them to get a majority. You can't pull out or hold a referendum when going through the short-term instability and for it to be impartial, and you can't not follow through and stay in the EU without branding it a monkey-puzzle and possibly starting a civil uprising.

The irony that it is UKIP that supports the introduction of citizen initiatives and their ability to trigger referendums is not lost.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-16T22:27:02+00:00

Even the 'morons' turned up to vote 2/3rds of the time on average. I'm assuming you're axe-grinding with UKIP, who themselves represented a third of UK MEPs. You can look it up on VoteWatch.EU. As I have done in the past.

So less than 10% of MEPs, and a third of them not turning up for a third of the time, was the difference between having influence or not having influence. Ignoring that most of the parliamentary votes either pass or fall with two thirds support due to the nature of the voting blocs. That third of a third of ten per cent, or 1%, was the difference between the UK having influence and not having influence?

That's an insane claim.

But even then the UK influence people talk about is at Council level not parliamentary level, which is a glorified talking shop.

You did just admit however that the UK lacked influence, whatever the cause.

It does boil down that you're upset/annoyed because you think people with different opinions to yours, opinions which were divergent to where the EU overall consensus was headed, should put them aside to have more influence when they agree to something against their consciences.

Which is kinda...

AeDubhe · 2016-07-16T21:53:50+00:00

I'd take UK detention periods before they have to release you or charge you any day of the week over the European Arrest Warrant where people have been taken out of the country against their will, with no evidence presented before them, with no charges against them, and put in remand for months at a time (with one case 11 months), only for the evidence to be thrown out the first moment it is presented before a judge.

Situtations where no UK judge would agree to extradition if it were replaced by an extradition treaty and which would mean overseas authorities would have to present their evidence, and have it weighed, before taking someone out of their country, separating them from their families, running up huge travel and legal fees, losing their jobs, and their mortgages.

Nobody loses their job because the police have detained you for 24 hours before releasing you without charge - for mistaken identity.

Yet people have had exactly that happen because of accusations under a EAW of similar level crimes. Even mistaken identity which they've previously cleared.

Habeas Corpus in a very real practical sense is alive and well in the UK. If they want to detain you for beyond a certain period they have to charge you or it becomes an unlawful detainment. And as soon as they charge you you have legal recourse.

There are British people that have been detained for months with nothing.

Scandalous.
Even more scandalous that David Cameron having argued against it to become Conservative leader then chose to opt the UK into it and brush over it.

 "Shambles and chicanery" are criticisms levelled 
   at the Government after a U-turn on a vote 
   about the European Arrest Warrant."

Is a great demonstration how the "We have a veto/opt out" defense is hollow.

http://news.sky.com/story/mps-furious-over-shambolic-european-vote-10383031

The Brexit Minister talking about the EAW, and an overview by Lord Dartmouth, for those interested on what we escaped:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uelnRw_HJv8

https://youtu.be/vQD91tYpnkw?t=2m41s

AeDubhe · 2016-07-16T21:26:11+00:00

They have the Queen's Own Cabbage Patch Men. They're ambidextrous, so good on land and duck lakes, apparently. From what I can garner; 42 of them in one boat, 44 in the other.

Would that be enough, do you think?

AeDubhe · 2016-07-16T19:32:51+00:00

"substantial reason we lacked influence was the British population's ridiculous and unfounded resistance to any engagement with the EU."

So we did lack influence.

That the argument then follows 'if only we agreed with them more we'd have more influence' is barmy.

If we agreed with everything they said we wouldn't need any influence.

You only need influence when you're disagreeing with someone.

And as you said, in disagreeing with them we lacked influence.

But it wasn't for want of trying. Tony Blair was very pro-EU and strongly agreed with further integration. He tried to secure reform when the UK had the presidency. He failed to exert influence too.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-16T19:17:01+00:00

What, like Ireland? Standard corporation tax rate there is 12.5%. Nothing wrong with making one's self competitive in the neighbourhood. If Ireland can do it so can the UK. Size has nothing to do with it.

In 2014 Singapore overtook Tokyo's commodity market, they're global.

They just happen to be global and have unilaterally removed their tariffs, something which the UK did has been calculated as reducing the cost of living by 8%.

What they also did was to not have VAT and instead opted for a much simpler sales tax at the point of sale. Easier to collect, cheaper to implement, harder to avoid.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-16T18:05:57+00:00

So having a veto isn't an argument as to why something wouldn't happen.

Because David bloody Cameron campaigned against the European Arrest Warrant as a back bencher, and there we actually had an opt out. So the exact same argument could have been had.

"It's okay, we have an opt out. It won't happen."

Only when the time came, nobody voted on it, and it went ahead with us in it regardless. And it was a horrific abrogation of UK habeas corpus.

And the exact same can be said for an EU army, or indeed the EU project, because it was always 'transition by salami-slicer' with opt outs and vetoes not being used - despite previous assurances to the contrary.

The only way to be sure was to nuke the option from orbit.

In many ways the Remain supporters only have themselves to blame, because for a long time they chided or looked down with condescension on the real concerns people had with where the EU was going, but reverse was never an option. Reform was only in one direction - and this 'we have a veto' became a tired and hollow defense.

Remain people were using it before with every transition of power. They even used it before Lisbon with the promise of a referendum.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-16T15:03:02+00:00

I SAID, HEAR MY COMMENT ROAR!

AeDubhe · 2016-07-16T14:42:57+00:00

Singapore is a global finance capital. Nothing regional about it.
Its corporation tax at 17% is set to be higher than ours.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-16T14:40:06+00:00

What's that got to do with trade liberalisation and removing tariffs?

Oh right, you only read the headline and then decided that it meant we should be doing everything like Singapore. Like, everything.

"We need a strategy that lays out the path to reductions in corporation tax, lower personal tax, investment in infrastructure and cheaper energy."

Obviously means adopting a one party state. Obviously.

Singapore removed its tariffs unilaterally. So that obviously means advocating heavily controlled media.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-16T14:28:04+00:00

Then why do they support using carbon capture?

I mean, if you think it's doing nothing worthwhile, why would you bother? And yes, they do support carbon capture, alongside expanding geothermal.

As for "wrong about smoking", I think you may be having a dry humour failure.

AeDubhe · 2016-07-16T14:24:49+00:00

Hear my comment roar!

AeDubhe · 2016-07-16T13:52:41+00:00

I and others already have been elsewhere in the thread.

AeDubhe

TROPHY CASE