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Labour leadership

ViolentPanda said:
And what is the generally-acknowledged description of a lawyer? In the three dictionaries (Concise Oxford English, Chambers English and Collins English) I own, all reference the fact of "legal professional",and don't mention legislators at all.
So unless you're arguing for a technical academic or professional use of the term - i.e. one that isn't generally understood as the acknowledged description of the word, then you are talking out of your arse.
Again.
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i fear he isn't talking out of his arse but saying what he believes to be the case
 
Diamond said:
I would consider someone who is constituting a new constitution to be a lawyer, to be frank. As in they are laying down the laws.
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humpty.png
 
ViolentPanda said:
First thing we do is, let's kill all the lawyers.
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That's so 16th century. Problem now is the spads, who should be humanely reassigned to a think tank to debate blue sky solutions until the crack of doom.
ViolentPanda said:
Legislatures elected under any party-based system cannot be (or even approach being) independent.
I'd replace both Houses of Parliament with fixed-term appointees. The appointees would be chosen by lot in each "constituency" area, and would only function as representatives for the majority solicited opinion of the people in that constituency, and only on national issues. I'd have local and regional governance through a similar system.
Before you whine about how appointees wouldn't know what they're doing, I'd use the tried and trusted system of having a "clerk" or clerks to guide representatives on points of law and protocol - something that's been successfully done in Magistrate's Courts for several hundred years.
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I've no interest in "whining" about government-by-jury, it's a perfectly sensible system, that worked well enough in ancient Athens.

Problem is that political parties inevitably arise, since people have vested and competing interests. Government-by-jury would either have to screen its members for political bias, which would be near-impossible, and lead to some extremely unrepresentative representatives, or leave it up to chance, which could skew party power as badly as FPTP.

Better surely to include parties under a proportional system, with the power to trigger binding referenda, as Switzerland's done effectively for a century.
The fact of a parlous volume of proof that debate does influence the majority of bills may not be evidence per se, but one can reasonably conclude, in the absence of any effective argument against the ineffectiveness, that it is so.
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I agree that we can reasonably infer that Commons' debates are, in the majority of cases, ineffective; I just disagree with the accepting the claim that they're wholly ineffective at face value.
 
Diamond said:
First point, there were calls for involvement when the Yazidis took the hit first time around - we dropped supplies and our allies defended them.

Second, correspondingly that argument in favour of supporting the Yazidis was definitely not adduced for the first time last night.

Third, I do not actually support the bombing campaign but those who do argue a multifarious number of reasons - I was simply explaining why I thought Benn's speech was so moving... It's not difficult stuff to understand
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You do know the bulk of the Yazidi community (and where those massacres took place) is in Iraq, right?
 
Azrael said:
I've no interest in "whining" about government-by-jury, it's a perfectly sensible system, that worked well enough in ancient Athens.
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It was a terrible system and it - combined with what their definition of democracy was - led to disasters on a massive scale, that ultimately relegated Athens from being one of the two most important states in classical Greece to approaching something like a second-rate university town.
 
agricola said:
It was a terrible system and it - combined with what their definition of democracy was - led to disasters on a massive scale, that ultimately relegated Athens from being one of the two most important states in classical Greece to approaching something like a second-rate university town.
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Well, that's three votes against already, VP! :D

(I'll concede the Athens point arguendo, since this one's been debated for over 2,000 years, and could be easily debated for another 2,000.)
 
agricola said:
It was a terrible system and it - combined with what their definition of democracy was - led to disasters on a massive scale, that ultimately relegated Athens from being one of the two most important states in classical Greece to approaching something like a second-rate university town.
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yes but the athenian franchise wasn't universal was it? no slaves, no women, no men under a certain age?
 
Diamond is remarkably always like 6 months+ behind in everything, then brings up a subject and remonstrates with everyone about why they aren't fervently discussing something that was extensively discussed ages ago.
 
J Ed said:
Diamond is remarkably always like 6 months+ behind in everything, then brings up a subject and remonstrates with everyone about why they aren't fervently discussing something that was extensively discussed ages ago.
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he's a bit like dr who only he's dr wtf
 
Diamond said:
Anyway, whichever view you take on the political spectrum, that was a fantastic speech from Benn - one of the greatest that I have ever seen and I've already watched it several times already today.

I'm not necessarily persuaded. It is fundamentally a speech for some kind of total war and that is, obviously, a very big deal and the idea that air strikes in addition to the US, France, Jordan, the UAE etc might make a material difference is not convincing at all.

But what it does do is frame the situation in a manner that has not been commonly understood. My opinion is that the threat of ISIS has mainly been understood through the lazy and gratuitous viewing of their videos showing all the things that they want us to see but Benn has got to the heart of the matter now.

They hold us in contempt - that was his argument.

They are fascists - that was his argument.

We stand up to fascists who hold us in contempt - that was his argument.
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Christ, your easily pleased,It was gut churning hypocrisy from someone who has sniffed the wind of populist opinion and has trimmed his sails accordingly.
 
redcogs said:
Corby knew that the blairite nobs wouldn't tolerate Party policy and they voted accordingly. he should have whipped em, then sacked the fuckers for being contemptuous of basic democracy and the party membership.

Best to go down fighting.
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Not that I am a fan of his but that is what Blunkett said the other week. Call them out.
 
Apparently (according to the Papers bit on BBC News 24) there is a story in tomorrow's Telegraph, where a Shadow Minister is claiming that Corbyn is increasing the risk of terror attacks on rebel MPs.

:facepalm:
 
andysays said:
The contemporary equivalent of all the king's horses and all the king's men are currently on their way to Syria, so there really will be no one to put Humpty together again :(
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There may be no king's men around, but that's a result of efficiency savings. As to Syria a couple of the king's biplanes and an Argos drone are being sent out as a token gesture of solidarity.
 
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