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Ah. Got it. I think the rest of the cases that had been referred to the CPS have all been dealt with already. No prosecutions.
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
Strong and stable
My arse.
May's only hope is the polls being wrong ... looks like its Jezza all the way. I bet those Blairites will have to kiss some serious arse to get favour after the way they treated Corbyn, when their own bacon munching candidate with the big stone couldn't beat Cameron.
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
I can tell that you are in a societal mood. When I commented yesterday about how you were using a lot of "us/them" statements about the media, it's here again. The problem is that I don't speak for a group. I don't play in a band, I've given up team sports, I'm not even in a relationship. The principal group I'm involved with is this forum and it'd be batty for me to speak for them, so I can only speak about my reactions to their responses.
Corbyn's faced questions about the IRA for years. His support for them is questionable but if you're going to hold historical events as proof of unsuitability in the modern era, we'd never have peace in that region and Gerry Adams would be no more than a squeaky voice on the news. Other areas know the ambiguity of history versus modern needs. Reading about Menachem Begin last month (former terrorist leader who became Prime Minister of Israel) was a case in point. The moral and ethical fog around Corbyn and the IRA isn't much different to us selling weapons to the Saudis or perhaps Cameron visiting Egypt after the Arab Spring uprising hand in hand with weapons contractors.
Now Corbyn may offer you up replies that don't work for you. That's fair enough. That is his right to do so and your right to object. If you feel his replies are not good enough, then don't vote for him.
My response to May refusing interviews: it's bullshit. She is different because, unlike Corbyn, she sits in Downing Street with the hands on the tiller. She is different because she has distanced herself from decent scrutiny ever since the campaign began. From Cornwall to Bristol, there are reports of how she dropped into areas unannounced to give the same rhetoric to local Conservative group members. The Bristol Post gave an excellent account of her visit on May 3rd in which she took zero questions from locals and spoke to selected media in front of an audience of Conservative members and councillors who were only allowed in with photo ID. There's a huge world of difference between that approach and what I saw last August. That approachability aspect that Corbyn possessed that night is something he still has now. May does not and, if anything, keeps pushing the electorate further and further back. For someone who spoke about the dangers of the global elite last November, she's doing a fucking great job at maintaining a gap between herself and the rest of her party, let alone the great unwashed electorate.
They weren't agile enough because they had neither the time nor resources to do it. It's been detailed how the Conservative candidate lists hadn't been updated for months and so the snap election caused panic in some areas of CCHQ because they were short of people. Now if it's like that for the well funded ruling party, then you can be sure it's going to be fairly similar for the Lib Dems. They haven't got the money nor the resources to go from being a minority party to being in government, and the idea that people would flock to them in such huge numbers that we'd have a real chance of PM Farron was ludicrous weeks ago.
After all the political chicanery of the last two years, this has actually been quite a traditional two-party squabble.
A Lib Dem back door deal: Well...
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/22/lib-dems-no-coalition-tim-farron-general-election
The Clegg rollback on tuition fees damaged them. Farron rolling back on a coalition deal and joining up with Labour would damage them. If they joined up with the Conservatives, it could render them extinct.
I have seen people on this very forum intimate that they thought Corbyn should never be asked any questions about his tendency to fencesit when it comes to terrorism. That's my characterisation btw.
I see those same people bleating on about how May has no spine because she wont do every single interview that is asked of her.
Now maybe she's an elitist cunt who doesn't think she should have to speak to anyone. And maybe Corbyn shits gold bricks and gives them to one-legged flipper babies living in the ghettos of Tring.
I don't care about that right now.
I care about my perceived hypocrisy of people who turn every single fucking political discussion into a partisan discussion. I care about how politics in general have become a mudslinging game where evidence, substance, and information gets completely overlooked or shat upon in favour of team sports.
I am indeed in a societal mood, and a critical one. The discourse on Brexit, Trump, and now this election has driven me into a deep depression for the state of things - and the state of people who I consider my peers, because they're most often acting in rather extraordinary ways, and they don't even seem to care. That's why I blew up on Russell the other day, and that's why I get into so many fisticuffs with the patrons here. I dispair at the lack of critical thought and self reflection.
Now I'm off to critically think about washing my balls until I can see my own reflection in them.
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermondsey_by-election,_1983
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-21556184/tatchell-hughes-on-30-years-since-bermondsey-by-election
I do notice patterns of behaviour within the forum though. Sometimes I write replies to it. Most of the time I delete it because it's a waste of time and I'm not hugely confrontational now. There is plenty of hypocrisy around, no doubt. Calling people on it though in the online world is like trying to travel to the Moon using a unicycle: you can start but you'll never reach the end.
You hate the partisan approach, on that we entirely agree.
From my point, I don't criticise May for rejecting the odd interview. I criticise her for hiding. Cameron had some similar practices when he was out on the stump but nothing to this level of electorate micromanagement.
As I said before the biggest problem facing all the parties appears to be a talent pipeline problem for senior positions.
Admittedly Clegg did lose catastrophically, undoing all the good work of his predecessors, but it should have been obvious to him that there was no credible replacement.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Tuition fees fucked the Libs for a long time with regard to the young who were either going to uni imminently or those at uni. That was 7 years ago. Those 20 year olds then are now 27 and in jobs and starting families and shit and they know that their brats will be paying the fees that Clegg so opposed and then climbed down upon.
They have credible candidates, no question. If you go to a Lib Dem selection meeting, it's very different to a Labour one (and I'm speaking from experience this year as one of my friends is contemplating standing in 2022 for the Libs and has asked me if I'd be her election agent. Still mulling that one over...). Although I dislike stereotypes, I would describe the Lib Dem meeting as more garden party and social event than the Labour equivalent which is more boots n' all activism. That's where they differ in resources. Labour are streets ahead of the Liberals, in the quality of their teams, from doorsteppers to leaflets to phone bankers. There is no group within the Liberals who are up with modern media communications as Momentum for instance.
Two things people thought might happen haven't.
1) That the Brexit result would mean Labour losing tons of Leavers to the Conservatives or UKIP. It hasn't happened.
2) That the Brexit result would mean Labour and the Conservatives losing some Remainers to the Liberal Democrats. It hasn't happened.
Both of which mean that my supposition come to the time of the Stoke Central byelection, that Brexit wasn't seen as being a domestic issue and thus many people would return to traditional GE voting patterns, is being proven right going by the opinion polls so far.