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A Political Thread pt. 2

Tallshort said:
Wonder if she takes her own life...
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Well, seems like the women in this always ultimately take the fall in these cases where couples are involved. If you look at Fred West who also took his own life, but Rose West is still banged up for life to this day as an example.
 
Spare a thought for Hong Kong. It was to be governed as a distinct entity until 2047 as part of the handover from the UK empire. However, democracy and liberty can now officially be considered dead this month in HK, 26 years ahead of schedule. Beijing hand picked candidates for the recent election and banned alternative candidates. Turnout was reported at around 30% and the low turnout was officially presented as citizens being so happy with life in HK that they didn't feel the need to vote.

Independent media outlets being shut down daily, any public acknowledgment of Tianeman Square or fraudulent elections is imprisonable. China has also resumed the practice of parading alleged 'criminals' through the streets to shame them publicly.

China under the previous presidents Hu and Zemin was just about tolerable but under Xi it is heading in a very dark direction. If I lived in HK and had options to relocate I'd be considering them very seriously. There is zero response from other world powers in terms of sanctions or anything. The Beijing dictatorship has snuffed out a democracy of 5 million people without consequence. You might call it appeasement.

I would not rule out an attack on Taiwan in the next couple of years if China perfects its hypersonic missile technology. May we live in interesting times...
 
From family and friends from HK they have an exit strategy (UK, Canada and Australia are main ones) but many choose to remain or returned to HK after they emigrated after the British handed over in 1997.
 
Bruce_ma_goosevili said:
Spare a thought for Hong Kong. It was to be governed as a distinct entity until 2047 as part of the handover from the UK empire. However, democracy and liberty can now officially be considered dead this month in HK, 26 years ahead of schedule. Beijing hand picked candidates for the recent election and banned alternative candidates. Turnout was reported at around 30% and the low turnout was officially presented as citizens being so happy with life in HK that they didn't feel the need to vote.

Independent media outlets being shut down daily, any public acknowledgment of Tianeman Square or fraudulent elections is imprisonable. China has also resumed the practice of parading alleged 'criminals' through the streets to shame them publicly.

China under the previous presidents Hu and Zemin was just about tolerable but under Xi it is heading in a very dark direction. If I lived in HK and had options to relocate I'd be considering them very seriously. There is zero response from other world powers in terms of sanctions or anything. The Beijing dictatorship has snuffed out a democracy of 5 million people without consequence. You might call it appeasement.

I would not rule out an attack on Taiwan in the next couple of years if China perfects its hypersonic missile technology. May we live in interesting times...
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Freedom by Nathan Law is worth a read to anyone with even a passing interest or who wants to understand.

He is a friend of Joshua Wong who is now imprisoned by Beijing but Nathan managed to get to the UK.
 
The_Blindside said:
Well, seems like the women in this always ultimately take the fall in these cases where couples are involved. If you look at Fred West who also took his own life, but Rose West is still banged up for life to this day as an example.
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Sounds like there will be an appeal.

Interesting that she chose not to testify on the grounds that the prosecution case was weak. Clearly a dozen people thought otherwise. Maybe her team thought that putting her on the stand could only make things worse.

None of her former friends will touch her with a barge pole now. If she has nothing to lose then every chance she'll sing like a canary……
 

What the UK and hauliers can expect from long-delayed Brexit controls | Brexit | The Guardian

From 1 January checks and paperwork will finally begin and EU exporters face a rude awakening
amp.theguardian.com amp.theguardian.com

EU exporters of cheese, car parts and other goods are facing a mountain of red tape to continue sales to Britain after 1 January once thrice-delayed post-Brexit checks and controls are finally implemented.

They had been due to come into force on 1 January 2021 but were pushed back to July, then to October and finally to January 2022, with a further set of controls due six months later in the coming July.

Will it all go smoothly?

By HMRC's own calcuations, the number of customs declarations needing to be processed will rise from an estimated 48m a year to 250m now that they are required on goods arriving from all 27 EU states.
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Not Mike Brown's Sock said:
Freedom by Nathan Law is worth a read to anyone with even a passing interest or who wants to understand.

He is a friend of Joshua Wong who is now imprisoned by Beijing but Nathan managed to get to the UK.
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The reality is the "dissidents" and those who can afford to will emigrate if it gets so bad, but there's a big gulf in HK society between rich and poor - if you think UK is bad then HK is twice as bad. I have an Aunt who regularly holds two jobs to pay bills. No social security there. The bankers/lawyers who live in Central will go along with it all to keep paying their 17% flat rate tax.

7.5m crammed onto 3 main parts of HK territory. Majority of HK peeps will have to suck it up. China already totally dominates HK's economy and this is just an acceleration of total domination politically since 1997. In HK money talks louder than anything else. And yes as Bruce says sweet FA the west including America will do.

Taiwan. Maybe where this whole US-China Cold War will play out.
 
The_Blindside said:
Well, seems like the women in this always ultimately take the fall in these cases where couples are involved. If you look at Fred West who also took his own life, but Rose West is still banged up for life to this day as an example.
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Ok should have said: will she get opped off like her boyfriend
 
Late candidate for "worst article of the year", in defence of Maxwell/Epstein (or Andrew Windsor, at least)



Daily Heil, of course.
 
I'm not sure if anyone want to get into the specifics of it but as its floating around the discourse and I've only seen it barely mentioned its worth reading the basic legal arguments the defence put forward for the colston statue taken down.

 
TRF_Olyy said:
I dunno, the Royal Family loving/rewarding a guy responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of foreigners in the (ex-)colonies sounds about right
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Apparently the petition is irrelevant as it's been awarded directly through the queen and not political honours list, so the committee that oversees honours can't remove it even if they wanted to.
 
TRF_Olyy said:
I dunno, the Royal Family loving/rewarding a guy responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of foreigners in the (ex-)colonies sounds about right
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I think holding him reponsible is a tad to far the US was going to carpet bomb Iraq regardless. We shouldn't of got involved but its hard to think of any other PM who wouldn't have.
Reiser99 said:
Apparently the petition is irrelevant as it's been awarded directly through the queen and not political honours list, so the committee that oversees honours can't remove it even if they wanted to.
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Yup and its pretty common one for her to dole out to a former PM its actually taken Blair longer than the 2 previous, Major (8 years), Thatcher (5 years)

The only two of her PM's she didn't award it to were Macmillan (who she made an Earl) and Douglas-Home (who was in charge for 364 days) and was a hereditary peer.

It really is nothing to get excited about.
 
ncurd said:
I think holding him reponsible is a tad to far the US was going to carpet bomb Iraq regardless. We shouldn't of got involved but its hard to think of any other PM who wouldn't have.
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Blair wasn't a meek follower, it turns out Britain was very active in pushing for conflict.

However as you say, this thing is a formality more than anything else.
 
Ragey Erasmus said:
Blair wasn't a meek follower, it turns out Britain was very active in pushing for conflict.

However as you say, this thing is a formality more than anything else.
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Its a complex question Britain was active in the sense they had to convince the US to go through the UN, which fell apart when the French said they'd veto anything. That meant we worked with US to build the ultimately flawed case for war as we committed to support them. Philosophically Blair saw Britain as the bridge between US and the EU and at the time thought to not support the US would cause irrepable political harm. Add in Hussein literally committing genocide totalling in 250,000 deaths and the fact the intelligence community thought he had WMD (flawed intelligence of a huge magitude but they genuinely thought theyd find it) the case for his removal wasn't high. The complete **** up was post invasion planning more than anything else.

I just have an issue with an idea Blair was warmonger who deliberately went to out to kill arabs rather than a guy who made an awful set of decisions with good intent that any other PM would not of made. He wasn't a saint either as he could of taken the French approach. But its a middle ground between the two rather than "should locked up in the hague", "only made a minor mistake".
 

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