The UK Politics and EU Referendum thread - merged

[titaniumbean]

Drone strike, targeted missile all have to 'lock onto' something somewhere, a gps signal position, or just a generic coordinate. both have intense collateral damage, the plane could occasionally crash or malfunction putting 1-2 pilots in enemy territory, but relatively, they are both pretty similar as they are so detached. if they had to send special forces in on the ground to make each of these highly targeted killings .... and they could only kill the people there with positive confirmation then we'd see pretty much zero raids as there would be such a high likelihood of failure with the poor intelligence and a real risk to the soldiers (who have families that vote). Drones are easy though, click a few buttons, see someone die, claim it's a baddie, pat each other on the back and move on.  Once that person is killed how do we benefit from what they know, from intelligence they held, that we could have tortured out of them... (lel). The dead end nature of that intelligence gathering option is a big failing of this method and is highly criticised by internal military reports.

There is a huge difference in the attitude of Cameron and Corbyn to the killing of Jihadi John

One says it was absolutely necessary and self defence

The other says its unacceptable and he should have been tried in a court of law

given the very low likelihood of the latter, how realistic is Corbyn's idealistic approach compared to the pragmatism of what has actually happened?

I really enjoy Corbyns honesty but he does seem to be a tad too hippy even for a liberal like me. He could do with some game theory lessons re Nukes at the very least.

pretty much anything Cameron says fills me with disgust because he is such a useless slimy and incompetent shit.

Innocent until proven guilty, court of law.... what are those if we just kill people from miles away 'hopefully', bearing in mind they cant prove they killed him, and many many times before the people they announce as having been killed then turn up at a later date and some random has been killed in their place and we never even knew because it was all done by remote control.  What about when we could arrest them, choose not to, but then execute them so we don't have to go through due process, dont have to open the curtains on all the other illegal intelligence activities we do for economic and private gain. How can we trust the higher ups to make these decisions when everything from big to small decisions show them as being incompetent and self serving??


the bold bit being especially pertinent with the recent release with no charges of Shaker Amer after THIRTEEN YEARS...... MURICA FUK YEH

[DaveShoelace]

given the very low likelihood of the latter, how realistic is Corbyn's idealistic approach compared to the pragmatism of what has actually happened?

Might be my biggest concern regarding Corbyn and it is the biggest limitation of the left. Idealism is nice, but nothing gets done.

Also I learned today that he thinks homeopathy works, which is my second biggest concern about him.

[titaniumbean]

given the very low likelihood of the latter, how realistic is Corbyn's idealistic approach compared to the pragmatism of what has actually happened?

Might be my biggest concern regarding Corbyn and it is the biggest limitation of the left. Idealism is nice, but nothing gets done.

Also I learned today that he thinks homeopathy works, which is my second biggest concern about him.

That's a really interesting point Dave as it used to really upset me that anyone could be that stupid. My best friend is a very very good GP and medical mind and I mentioned this to him and he said yes ofc it's utter bullshit, but it's illegal to prescribe a placebo to a patient, but he is allowed to suggest homeopathy..... and in some cases the placebo affect of 'doing something' will be enough for the patient. So whilst he feels having morons in charge of the NHS who want to destroy it and create whole homeopathy centres are clearly cretins, there is actually a place for the use of it. That doesn't mean to say I can respect anyone who suggests it has actual healing implications 

[TightEnd]

Drone strike, targeted missile all have to 'lock onto' something somewhere, a gps signal position, or just a generic coordinate. both have intense collateral damage, the plane could occasionally crash or malfunction putting 1-2 pilots in enemy territory, but relatively, they are both pretty similar as they are so detached. if they had to send special forces in on the ground to make each of these highly targeted killings .... and they could only kill the people there with positive confirmation then we'd see pretty much zero raids as there would be such a high likelihood of failure with the poor intelligence and a real risk to the soldiers (who have families that vote). Drones are easy though, click a few buttons, see someone die, claim it's a baddie, pat each other on the back and move on.  Once that person is killed how do we benefit from what they know, from intelligence they held, that we could have tortured out of them... (lel). The dead end nature of that intelligence gathering option is a big failing of this method and is highly criticised by internal military reports.

There is a huge difference in the attitude of Cameron and Corbyn to the killing of Jihadi John

One says it was absolutely necessary and self defence

The other says its unacceptable and he should have been tried in a court of law

given the very low likelihood of the latter, how realistic is Corbyn's idealistic approach compared to the pragmatism of what has actually happened?

I really enjoy Corbyns honesty but he does seem to be a tad too hippy even for a liberal like me. He could do with some game theory lessons re Nukes at the very least.

pretty much anything Cameron says fills me with disgust because he is such a useless slimy and incompetent shit.

Innocent until proven guilty, court of law.... what are those if we just kill people from miles away 'hopefully', bearing in mind they cant prove they killed him, and many many times before the people they announce as having been killed then turn up at a later date and some random has been killed in their place and we never even knew because it was all done by remote control.  What about when we could arrest them, choose not to, but then execute them so we don't have to go through due process, dont have to open the curtains on all the other illegal intelligence activities we do for economic and private gain. How can we trust the higher ups to make these decisions when everything from big to small decisions show them as being incompetent and self serving??


the bold bit being especially pertinent with the recent release with no charges of Shaker Amer after THIRTEEN YEARS...... MURICA FUK YEH

i understand the concerns but its pretty unlikely that Jihadi John would have been brought to a court of law. How eaxctly could he have been brought to trial? and how many people would he have been directly or indirectly be involved in killing in the meantime?

i don't look to defend western policy surrounding ISIS particularly. mistakes in policy in both Iraq wars leave us where we are now and i don't particularly see how solutions are found. ground troops? no. etc etc

I do find, within this context, the left's idealism quite naive and struggle to see how it could possibly be applied in power.

[DaveShoelace]

given the very low likelihood of the latter, how realistic is Corbyn's idealistic approach compared to the pragmatism of what has actually happened?

Might be my biggest concern regarding Corbyn and it is the biggest limitation of the left. Idealism is nice, but nothing gets done.

Also I learned today that he thinks homeopathy works, which is my second biggest concern about him.

That's a really interesting point Dave as it used to really upset me that anyone could be that stupid. My best friend is a very very good GP and medical mind and I mentioned this to him and he said yes ofc it's utter bullshit, but it's illegal to prescribe a placebo to a patient, but he is allowed to suggest homeopathy..... and in some cases the placebo affect of 'doing something' will be enough for the patient. So whilst he feels having morons in charge of the NHS who want to destroy it and create whole homeopathy centres are clearly cretins, there is actually a place for the use of it. That doesn't mean to say I can respect anyone who suggests it has actual healing implications 

Didn't know a doctor couldn't prescribe a placebo.

I have no moral objection to placebos like homeopathy being prescribed if the doctor thinks it would work, whatever helps is good by me. I would have a huge objection if taxpayer money significantly went into it, or if the homeopathy nuts had any kind of influence on the NHS.

[DaveShoelace]

I do find, within this context, the left's idealism quite naive and struggle to see how it could possibly be applied in power.

Yep, this is where the far left eats itself really. Send in ground troops to arrest him, get them killed, more people die in the name of idealism.

[titaniumbean]

Drone strike, targeted missile all have to 'lock onto' something somewhere, a gps signal position, or just a generic coordinate. both have intense collateral damage, the plane could occasionally crash or malfunction putting 1-2 pilots in enemy territory, but relatively, they are both pretty similar as they are so detached. if they had to send special forces in on the ground to make each of these highly targeted killings .... and they could only kill the people there with positive confirmation then we'd see pretty much zero raids as there would be such a high likelihood of failure with the poor intelligence and a real risk to the soldiers (who have families that vote). Drones are easy though, click a few buttons, see someone die, claim it's a baddie, pat each other on the back and move on.  Once that person is killed how do we benefit from what they know, from intelligence they held, that we could have tortured out of them... (lel). The dead end nature of that intelligence gathering option is a big failing of this method and is highly criticised by internal military reports.

There is a huge difference in the attitude of Cameron and Corbyn to the killing of Jihadi John

One says it was absolutely necessary and self defence

The other says its unacceptable and he should have been tried in a court of law

given the very low likelihood of the latter, how realistic is Corbyn's idealistic approach compared to the pragmatism of what has actually happened?

I really enjoy Corbyns honesty but he does seem to be a tad too hippy even for a liberal like me. He could do with some game theory lessons re Nukes at the very least.

pretty much anything Cameron says fills me with disgust because he is such a useless slimy and incompetent shit.

Innocent until proven guilty, court of law.... what are those if we just kill people from miles away 'hopefully', bearing in mind they cant prove they killed him, and many many times before the people they announce as having been killed then turn up at a later date and some random has been killed in their place and we never even knew because it was all done by remote control.  What about when we could arrest them, choose not to, but then execute them so we don't have to go through due process, dont have to open the curtains on all the other illegal intelligence activities we do for economic and private gain. How can we trust the higher ups to make these decisions when everything from big to small decisions show them as being incompetent and self serving??


the bold bit being especially pertinent with the recent release with no charges of Shaker Amer after THIRTEEN YEARS...... MURICA FUK YEH

i understand the concerns but its pretty unlikely that Jihadi John would have been brought to a court of law. How eaxctly could he have been brought to trial? and how many people would he have been directly or indirectly be involved in killing in the meantime?

i don't look to defend western policy surrounding ISIS particularly. mistakes in policy in both Iraq wars leave us where we are now and i don't particularly see how solutions are found. ground troops? no. etc etc

I do find, within this context, the left's idealism quite naive and struggle to see how it could possibly be applied in power.

not a clue, definitely not ground troops alone, we seem to have lost what the concept of a war is, war on terror, war on drugs, war on logical thought....  


I can understand the technology aspects and am interested in the intelligence/military aspects but I have no great education or knowledge of many of the regions or historical situations so I just listen and read stuff regarding that. everything is always so complicated and a combination of so many factors over many decades. All I know is that what we currently have competing against this idealism is a pervading sense of fuck the people, up the rich and we can do no wrong from a bunch of incompetents. I hardly find that very appealing. All I know for sure is I absolutely do not trust those in power to make good/fair/reasonable/sensible/well intentioned any kind of descriptive word that means 'ok' in terms of their decisions. They seem to love to hide behind the we know stuff you never will motto...

I'm currently reading the Wikileaks Files book, a discussion of the releases as they pertain to different parts of the world. It's disgusting, and frustrating and very very interesting to read what is said in private and compare it to that which is said in public, which we are forced to eat by the institution friendly media. I've just finished the chapter on Syria, and it's grim grim reading, essentially to paraphrase in true bitchy beaneh fashion, USA decided that they wanted to fuck up the government on the sly, so they decided that stirring up sectarian violence by funding the groups and then trying to turn them against each other, then use that as a reason to say the government are out of control we better send in troops and make sure the resources are safe lel was the nut strategy for US interests.  Then when violence ravages the country they look around at each other and are like shit what do we do now there's this thing called ISIS...... it's pathetic and self centred and absolutely nothing to do with preventing terrorism (the basis on which we are forced to accept all this new surveillance and war method shit).


Our political system is fucked, in the sense that daily we get 'leaks' from government insiders and 'sources who wish to not be named' to defend, promote and witch hunt for the governments benefit. When we then have a leak that shows them up to be lying/incompetent/money and power hungry scummers they try to change laws, they try to destroy these peoples lifes, whilst then hosting a news conference saying, isn't having a discussion about this great.....

how on earth is the UK going harder on 'terrorist catching' spy powers (which have never caught a terrorist and likely never will catch one of any gravitas) than the fking Americans who invented abusing their populace for awful reasons.

Reading the US press regarding some of these 'brilliant intelligence agency stings' to catch the dirty muslims who all want to do the US harm is asinine. They find a mentally challenged person, put a FBI informant into their life, suggest them a plot, provide the materials money and instructions for what to do, these people are so special they can barely manage to get to the location with the backpack they are given, then the FBI swoop in and the friendly news media happen to be with them and they all pat each other on the back for defending murica from them dirty terrorists then turn around and say SEE we have to keep defending you, fund us more and more via the black budget and well squander it on more appalling injustices.


With regards to Daves last line of his last post, EXACTLY. We had an MP who wanted to promote and invest in homeopathy, the US have people on their climate committee who don't believe in climate change, the security councils are lied to by the intelligence agencys so they cant even regulate them. It'd be really great if we could stop having so many utterly incompetent morons in charge of such important things. Wouldn't it be lovely if MPs had to respect science and not use personal prejudices as their main driving forces....

[DaveShoelace]

What did Corbyn actually say and where btw? Everything I have seen has been second hand with no source quoted.

[TightEnd]

What did Corbyn actually say and where btw? Everything I have seen has been second hand with no source quoted.

https://www.politicshome.com/foreign-and-defence/articles/story/jeremy-corbyn-better-have-brought-jihadi-john-trial

[titaniumbean]

then you get a quote from Tony Blair ..... 


This is a really interesting article talking about what happens to those who show the government up by whistleblowing-

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/information-isnt-free-how-whistleblowers-suffer-for-the-truth

[horseplayer]

Click to see full-size image.

[AlunB]

Drone strike, targeted missile all have to 'lock onto' something somewhere, a gps signal position, or just a generic coordinate. both have intense collateral damage, the plane could occasionally crash or malfunction putting 1-2 pilots in enemy territory, but relatively, they are both pretty similar as they are so detached. if they had to send special forces in on the ground to make each of these highly targeted killings .... and they could only kill the people there with positive confirmation then we'd see pretty much zero raids as there would be such a high likelihood of failure with the poor intelligence and a real risk to the soldiers (who have families that vote). Drones are easy though, click a few buttons, see someone die, claim it's a baddie, pat each other on the back and move on.  Once that person is killed how do we benefit from what they know, from intelligence they held, that we could have tortured out of them... (lel). The dead end nature of that intelligence gathering option is a big failing of this method and is highly criticised by internal military reports.

There is a huge difference in the attitude of Cameron and Corbyn to the killing of Jihadi John

One says it was absolutely necessary and self defence

The other says its unacceptable and he should have been tried in a court of law

given the very low likelihood of the latter, how realistic is Corbyn's idealistic approach compared to the pragmatism of what has actually happened?

I really enjoy Corbyns honesty but he does seem to be a tad too hippy even for a liberal like me. He could do with some game theory lessons re Nukes at the very least.

pretty much anything Cameron says fills me with disgust because he is such a useless slimy and incompetent shit.

Innocent until proven guilty, court of law.... what are those if we just kill people from miles away 'hopefully', bearing in mind they cant prove they killed him, and many many times before the people they announce as having been killed then turn up at a later date and some random has been killed in their place and we never even knew because it was all done by remote control.  What about when we could arrest them, choose not to, but then execute them so we don't have to go through due process, dont have to open the curtains on all the other illegal intelligence activities we do for economic and private gain. How can we trust the higher ups to make these decisions when everything from big to small decisions show them as being incompetent and self serving??


the bold bit being especially pertinent with the recent release with no charges of Shaker Amer after THIRTEEN YEARS...... MURICA FUK YEH

i understand the concerns but its pretty unlikely that Jihadi John would have been brought to a court of law. How eaxctly could he have been brought to trial? and how many people would he have been directly or indirectly be involved in killing in the meantime?

i don't look to defend western policy surrounding ISIS particularly. mistakes in policy in both Iraq wars leave us where we are now and i don't particularly see how solutions are found. ground troops? no. etc etc

I do find, within this context, the left's idealism quite naive and struggle to see how it could possibly be applied in power.

not a clue, definitely not ground troops alone, we seem to have lost what the concept of a war is, war on terror, war on drugs, war on logical thought....  


I can understand the technology aspects and am interested in the intelligence/military aspects but I have no great education or knowledge of many of the regions or historical situations so I just listen and read stuff regarding that. everything is always so complicated and a combination of so many factors over many decades. All I know is that what we currently have competing against this idealism is a pervading sense of fuck the people, up the rich and we can do no wrong from a bunch of incompetents. I hardly find that very appealing. All I know for sure is I absolutely do not trust those in power to make good/fair/reasonable/sensible/well intentioned any kind of descriptive word that means 'ok' in terms of their decisions. They seem to love to hide behind the we know stuff you never will motto...

I'm currently reading the Wikileaks Files book, a discussion of the releases as they pertain to different parts of the world. It's disgusting, and frustrating and very very interesting to read what is said in private and compare it to that which is said in public, which we are forced to eat by the institution friendly media. I've just finished the chapter on Syria, and it's grim grim reading, essentially to paraphrase in true bitchy beaneh fashion, USA decided that they wanted to fuck up the government on the sly, so they decided that stirring up sectarian violence by funding the groups and then trying to turn them against each other, then use that as a reason to say the government are out of control we better send in troops and make sure the resources are safe lel was the nut strategy for US interests.  Then when violence ravages the country they look around at each other and are like shit what do we do now there's this thing called ISIS...... it's pathetic and self centred and absolutely nothing to do with preventing terrorism (the basis on which we are forced to accept all this new surveillance and war method shit).


Our political system is fucked, in the sense that daily we get 'leaks' from government insiders and 'sources who wish to not be named' to defend, promote and witch hunt for the governments benefit. When we then have a leak that shows them up to be lying/incompetent/money and power hungry scummers they try to change laws, they try to destroy these peoples lifes, whilst then hosting a news conference saying, isn't having a discussion about this great.....

how on earth is the UK going harder on 'terrorist catching' spy powers (which have never caught a terrorist and likely never will catch one of any gravitas) than the fking Americans who invented abusing their populace for awful reasons.

Reading the US press regarding some of these 'brilliant intelligence agency stings' to catch the dirty muslims who all want to do the US harm is asinine. They find a mentally challenged person, put a FBI informant into their life, suggest them a plot, provide the materials money and instructions for what to do, these people are so special they can barely manage to get to the location with the backpack they are given, then the FBI swoop in and the friendly news media happen to be with them and they all pat each other on the back for defending murica from them dirty terrorists then turn around and say SEE we have to keep defending you, fund us more and more via the black budget and well squander it on more appalling injustices.


With regards to Daves last line of his last post, EXACTLY. We had an MP who wanted to promote and invest in homeopathy, the US have people on their climate committee who don't believe in climate change, the security councils are lied to by the intelligence agencys so they cant even regulate them. It'd be really great if we could stop having so many utterly incompetent morons in charge of such important things. Wouldn't it be lovely if MPs had to respect science and not use personal prejudices as their main driving forces....

Really good post.

Just to add from a personal professional perspective, it's embarrassing how easily journalists roll over in return for a tiny bit of "exclusive" leaked information. It's totally understandable as that's essentially what you spend all your time looking for so it takes huge self-control to turn it down. But once you accept you're basically in bed with someone and whether you mean to or not you start listening to their points more closely and paying more attention to them as they always "do you a favour". You see sometimes when journalists turn on long-held sources and boy does it get ugly. Think the last days of new labour.

[AndrewT]

A modern political leader has to be a pragmatist - it's all very well coming up with a political philosophy sitting around with like-minded people in think-tanks and the echo chamber of party politics, where everything is clear cut and theoretical and there's always a right decision and a best thing to do, but real life is messy and sometimes there are no good answers, just degrees of bad ones.

Getting Jihadi John in a court was obviously something that was runner-runner-runner-runner unlikely so icing him with a drone was obviously a better thing to do than not take the shot.

This is something that has always been the problem with the Left more than the Right. A centre-right party like the Tories tend to be more results-driven (with the drive generally being 'how can we get more money for people like us') so will have flexible morals. Far Left and Right (North Korea, Nazis) can be idealists because authoritarian regimes can bend the political environment to their will through force.

It's this kinda shit (like the no nukes thing) that will ultimately do for Corbyn - playing poker with your cards face up is not a good idea.

[titaniumbean]

A modern political leader has to be a pragmatist - it's all very well coming up with a political philosophy sitting around with like-minded people in think-tanks and the echo chamber of party politics, where everything is clear cut and theoretical and there's always a right decision and a best thing to do, but real life is messy and sometimes there are no good answers, just degrees of bad ones.

Getting Jihadi John in a court was obviously something that was runner-runner-runner-runner unlikely so icing him with a drone was obviously a better thing to do than not take the shot.

This is something that has always been the problem with the Left more than the Right. A centre-right party like the Tories tend to be more results-driven (with the drive generally being 'how can we get more money for people like us') so will have flexible morals. Far Left and Right (North Korea, Nazis) can be idealists because authoritarian regimes can bend the political environment to their will through force.

It's this kinda shit (like the no nukes thing) that will ultimately do for Corbyn - playing poker with your cards face up is not a good idea.

very much this.

It's frustrating to then think that by default the best person to vote for is a turd like Cameron.


saw this tweeted regarding internet security thought it was an excellent analogy.


"researchers like to solve chess problems but we're hit by poker problems. Play the man not the game"


I wish we had a Bernie Sanders or someone who we could at least feel confident in voting for. Anyone who professed respect for science and reason would instantly get my vote.


oh and lets not get started on the TPP.   

[titaniumbean]

15 years old and in his pants in his bedroom.

well played home office. we can sure trust you with anything ever.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p037ymf7