1. Can we not use the Daily Mail to represent England or Britain? It's the fucking Daily 'everything causes muslim cancer' Mail.
Seriously. There are a whole sleuth of papers and news outlets with actual rational opinions and arguments better capable of representing Britain. The Guardian. The BBC. The Independent. The Telegraph.
Ah yes, let's take a look, shall we?
The Guardian's official cartoon, today
I didn't even "get" this cartoon, other than the apparent reference to Scots being supposedly incestuous.
The Guardian, 2013
"Do you agree that Scotland should go and fuck itself?"
Unfortunately all those sources you've listed only represent London, not Britain, but at least they're better at doing that job than the Daily Mail, I'll give you that. I'd rather read the Independent than most papers for one thing.
The first two panels are a direct response to Nicola Sturgeon's interview with a guardian reporter where she denied wishing to form a coalition with labour, only willing to form an 'arrangement' with them on a 'case by case basis' whilst simultaneously not voting for a Trident renewal and not making it a red line issue (when asked whether a coalition would be possible if the Milipede favoured Trident scrapping).
In the last panel the Guardian cartoonist isn't calling Scots incestuous folk dancers, it's a quote from Sir Thomas Beecham:
“Try everything once, except folk dancing and incest.”
In regards to Steve Bell's cartoon, that's polite by his standards. His cartoons are meant to offend and 'go fuck yourself' tends to be used too often to have an impact, compared to say, Netanyahu holding a Blair and Bush puppet to a field of missiles.
This one had people calling him a Nazi
A fair and accurate Godwin of Britonistan is assured
The Guardian, the Beeb, Independent, Times, Telegraph e.t.c. don't represent London, they're constant wherever you go from South East and West England up to the Midlands and the Norf. Also splash in the Sun and the Daily Mail (who maintain the largest physical paper presence), if you're generous on what counts as news. The Metro (first free London paper, ubiquitous on the tube), the City A.M. (central, eastern financial districts get these with metros) and the Evening Standard (distributed in the afternoon as opposed to the Metro's morning) better represent London (though the quality of the three is of an average quality compared to certain, much more famous alternatives). The Big Issue also gets an honourable mention, though not specific to London, it was birthed in London. There's also local papers, with the biggest local paper probably being Canary Wharf's the Wharf. I myself have got a local paper that seems to delight in telling me just how many horrors have occurred in the vicinity. Pleasant folk.
This is an issue of fairness. England already gets the least funds out of the UK allocated per capita than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The reason why the other regions of the UK get more per capita than England is because (I believe) per head they contribute more in their own right than England. I can't quite remember the figures, but while England contributes the most "as a whole", Scotland contributed something like 9.9% of UK tax take with a very tiny share of the population (compare 5 million with 50 million+) but only gets 9.3% of UK tax spending. As you can tell it's been a while since we debated these issues and I'm unwell so I don't quite understand it all anymore but you can surely see where I'm coming from with this.
And yet... I'm not quite convinced of this. Isn't it the case that Wales is really getting shafted through Barnett? I've often heard that if Wales was a part of England they'd get more out of Barnett than if they were a separate region of the UK.
In 2012/2013 Scotland paid £47.6bn in taxes, include Scottish natural gas and it's up to £53bn. That's £10,000 tax paid per head in Scotland, £9,200 tax paid per head in the rest of the UK.
In 2012/13 total public spending in Scotland was estimated to be £65.2bn, so Scotland raised £53.1bn in 2012/13 and spent £65.2bn, leaving the country £12.1bn short.
£12,300 spent per head in Scotland, £11,000 spent per head in the rest of the UK.
Of course it's no longer 2012, 2013 or 2014 - it's the joyous world of 2015 where everyone's life expectancies are shorter, and when Ruskies aren't annexing and Jihadis aren't terrorizing oil prices are plummeting. In today's Britain this leaves an £18bn hole and Westminster is the entity plugging it up.
In regards to Wales being shafted:
They're also getting more from England.
With devomax another issue comes about:
English MPs will not be able to vote on issues that only affect Scotland. Fair enough. Yet Scottish MPs will continue to be able to vote on issues that only affect England.
That's already the case regardless of the white elephant of "devo-max" coming into play. Full fiscal autonomy/devo max is miles and miles away, but there's still an unpleasant scenario in Westminster right now where unaccountable Scottish (and Welsh and Northern Irish) MPs hold influence over English matters. The "West Lothian Question", as it is known - the great oddity created as a result of a system of devolution that neglected England.
Concurred. Granted, devolution is still very recent. It's not like there's a want for time nor a long standing issue, not long standing in the scale of decades.
Traditionally the SNP haven't voted in Westminster on English matters. Now that they could potentially prop up a desperate labour, they're much more willing to vote on issues like the NHS in England.
The official reason why they're willing to vote on issues like the NHS in England though is because they believe it will have a direct effect on the state of the Scottish NHS - something Ed Miliband was arguing yesterday, much to the amusement of the SNP.
I don't know whether it will have an affect on the Scottish NHS, it'll definitely have an affect on the English NHS. This is also a rather recent argument though, I suppose we'll have to wait until the various MPs begin to properly butt heads. Though really, I'm not sure what there is to butt heads over. If an MP up and said 'I want to cut the NHS' the only person who'd get cut is them, by a very angry public. Who'd poke them full of holes with pitchforks. Political suicide. Presumably it's about privatisation of NHS services, which is also a highly complicated issue.
In England championing privatising the NHS is beyond suicide, it's catastrophic spontaneous self immolation. The privatisation debate tends to revolve around private operators working under government contracts within the NHS, which is either an attempt at boosting the quality of certain NHS hospitals which are frankly, shit, or an attempt at sneaking in privatised NHS hospitals without self immolation. Add to that the issue of private social care, social care and the NHS integrating just to muddle things even more, put in a dash of Oxbridgies, Scots and you've got yourself something truly wonderful.
Hence why William Hague wants to set up an English parliament for England, separate from the British parliament for the UK.
I haven't yet formed an opinion on the matter, but I'll look into it later.
Has Hague definitely stated his support for an English parliament? That's absolutely fantastic if so, I thought they were just pursuing the idea of Westminster being the English parliament where non-English MPs couldn't vote on English matters.
Checked it, I was wrong on that. He wants English MPs to have a veto on English-only issues. Cameron would also include the veto to sometimes include Welsh MPs.
That's much less interesting.
It's kinda funny actually, reading a 1999 Beeb article about William Hague supporting EVEI, the guy's nothing if not consistent. I don't like how he's drowned out poor Clegg in the media, though that's a political niggle.
Hopefully the threat of Scots ruling England will make those English faces be more welcome to the idea of Scottish independence.
I hope so too. I welcome the flurry of anti-SNP/Scottish stuff that's coming out of a lot of sectors in the London press - not only will it encourage the English to think more independently about how their country is ruled, it will also remind Scots that they're not really valued as partners in decision-making at a UK level.
God damn pesky Ruskies trying to confound British politics!
Jokes aside, in the run up to the elections loadsa Tories were welcoming the idea of Scottish independence essentially meaning no more Labour rule in England for... A long time into the foreseeable future. One of the hardest people I had to convince that the UK was better with Scotland was a libdem friend of mine, oddly enough.
I'd be interested to hear what our Russian compatriots think about that. Personally, yeah, it does sound a bit too convenient, with all of them being "other" Russians aka Chechens. Also something something about Muhammad caricatures that Nemetsov supported or something and they being all Muslims... dunno, too professional for some random religious extremism related crime.
Keep in mind religious extremism is no longer as random as it once was, it's a lot more coordinated now. The list of suspect must grow, even if Putin cannot be let off the suspect list.
Considering that Stalin started from a country torn by 4+ year long civil war and without any significant industrialization, while Hitler started from a country that was already industrialized and which territory was never really invaded in decades, Stalin showed a much better understanding of mechanisms of history that Hitler.
u wot
2 the /AGG/ with you
serrgar: why is 80% of russia behind the purposeful destabilization of a formerly peaceful neighbor?
That sounds almost like 80% of russia openly condones briggandry.
They're not in favour of destabilizing countries for shits and giggles, they're in favour of real politik: Russia's safety first. Privateering or pirating. Victors writing the history books and all that.
Putin literally deciding what's in the history books shouldn't hurt either. Russia stronk indeed, it certainly has hard power in former soviet bucketfulls, and everything the West does, action or inaction, will further validate Putin's claims that Murrica or Yurop is out to get Russia.
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