CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
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Enders urged Britain’s politicians not to listen to “the Brexiteers’ madness which asserts that, because we have huge plants here, we will not move and we will always be here. They are wrong”.
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Brexit MP on Today said -
‘I don’t believe Airbus would leave UK’
‘Many of its workers voted leave’
‘Have to honour the wishes of the 17m’
That’s it.
iwrats: "No. A thousand times no. The UK has been stable precisely because its governance involves so little democracy."
Exactly. Informed choice requires effort. We don't have time or don't care enough to find out the facts before making a choice so we leave it to others. Our democracy is based on apathy.
^ Or maybe the recognition that most people just want to get on with their lives rather than getting involved in the detail of politics. This is why a represenative democracy is virtually the only kind you can realistically have in a large nation state.
We don't have time or don't care enough to find out the facts before making a choice
Sadly it's increasingly clear that this is also the case for a significant proportion of our elected representatives, which undermines the effectiveness of the system somewhat.
"a represenative democracy is virtually the only kind you can realistically have in a large nation state."
Clearly someone forgot to inform the Swiss of this universal truth. They have quite a lot of direct democracy, with referenda on numerous issues, local, regional, and national.
Even in the US of A, state governments/legislatures conduct referenda very regularly on so-called "propositions" on many issues.
Tony Benn was right when he called the UK an "elective dictatorship". Scottish parliament and Assemblies in Wales/Norn Iron have only partly addressed the very real democratic deficit.
with referenda on numerous issues, local, regional, and national..... for which the turnout is below 50%. They still rely on a representative democracy for most major decisions
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Hard Brexit will cost Ford $800m this year, carmaker warns
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https://news.sky.com/story/hard-brexit-will-cost-ford-800m-this-year-carmaker-warns-11616204
So, big business don’t like it.
Maybe parts of the Tory still want to be in a ‘business party’.
Maybe some Brown/Blair parts of Lab still want to be in a ‘business party’ too??
Some trade unionists like the idea of jobs too -
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After meeting the prime minister, Ms O'Grady said workers were worried about their jobs and needed reassurances about their future.
"We have a prime minister on a temporary contract - she cannot bind the hands of a future prime minister," the TUC general secretary said.
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@Stiltskin,
The Swiss model has a mixture of a direct and representative democracy as you say. However politician's can't just sit back for 4 years after an election and wait for the campaign trail to restart. Any action they take or law they pass can be brought before the masses with 50-100k signatures.
They have a smaller population than the UK though so it would be similar to us getting somewhere close to a million people behind a proposal.
A million people in the UK could do an awful lot of damage and there are plenty of candidates to make up that million
The million figure is simply to trigger a referendum rather than to approve it. The latter requires a majority of both the voters and the 26 cantons.
Their parliament is also setup so that one party will almost never have full control either.
File under 'You don't say?'
The fact this is being reported is in itself reasonably terrifying;
(re)build the wall!
If you wrote a novel where a political party called the Conservative and Unionists had as sole policy the creation of a state of utter chaos and the fragmentation of the country you'd never get it published.
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The UK will be unable to have frictionless, tariff-free trade under World Trade Organization rules for up to seven years in the event of a no-deal Brexit, according to two leading European Union law specialists.
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FakeNews - scaremongering by ‘experts’ (obviously...)
The UK of GB&NI now up in its loft sobbing and naked, repeatedly stabbing itself in the thigh with a pencil.
At last, the voice of reason - not:
How do people like this even get elected?
For you Tommy, the war is never over.
“No-deal Brexit 'to leave shelves empty' warn retailers”
Of course that could just be a useful excuse... -
For you Tommy, the war is never over.
Hahahaha. Global Britain will trade with South Africa, no hang on, China, no hang on Kenya, no hang on America no hang on Cyprus no hang on Malaysia no hang on Argentina, no hang on Peru. That's it. Peru. Never had a war with them.
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This afternoon, the health secrerary Matt Hancock told a Parliamentary committee that “medicines will be prioritised [over food] in the event of a no-deal Brexit”
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Tom Newton Dunn
(@tnewtondunn)
Boris appears to have had quite a ding dong with PM in the room. Kept yelling at her, “what do YOU want to do Prime Minister”, while she would only reply she’ll continue to “battle away”.
January 28, 2019
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IWRATS' proposal involves not paying any more tax, redrafting his chromosomes and past life and awarding himself the 1997 Nobel Prize for chemistry and a stage win in the 2002 Tour de France.
a stage win in the 2002 Tour de France.
I see your ambition is as modest as the current government. I didn't fight both world wars and the Falklands to be pushed around by Europe.
@steveo
I was distracted by the passionate affair I was having with Penelope Cruz at the time.
“IWRATS' proposal involves not paying any more tax”
Is that to appeal to the populist vote or those who are quite adept at avoiding tax?
Obviously not paying out £39bn (or any other made-up sum) has its attractions but I’ve never been clear how much of it would actually be stopped by a ‘hard brexit’.
Leaving with ‘no deal’ doesn’t remove any previous/current obligations/bills - unless of course the process is akin to bankruptcy.
Hardly the best position to be in when looking for investment or trade deals...
IF 39bn is savable, it would seem that the brexiters have failed to capitalise on this by suggesting what could be done with it.
Income tax cuts giving ‘ordinary’ people a bit of extra cash (even if it only pays for higher prices)? Infrastructure investment? (I’m not going to pretend that anyone would propose bicycle networks - too European.)
Even the fallback position of ‘give it all to the NHS’ doesn’t seem to be being suggested.
Maybe there is no free money.
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