Off Topic News & Current affairs

All good knockabout fun on Question Tme last night.

The first question was about Politicians behaving themselves, which the whole panel agreed was essential.
Then about 20 minutes later the Conservative panelist David Davies told fellow panelist Labour's Bridget Phillipson that she was a disgrace.
Hey ho

This could have gone in the TV thread I suppose, but it is current affairs too.

 

Stopped watching it when Sir Robin left.

 

Fiona did her best last night.
She told Davies not to speak to another panelist that way.

Things are bound to get more testy as the GE gets closer.
The audience (which the BBC always stresses is a balanced sample across the electorate) were pretty hostile to Davies.
And that's been the general mood for a year or more wherever the show fetches up.
A bloke from Reform UK was on the programme as well, but he got very little stick. Phillipson and the Green Party woman got off lightly too.

They had a show of audience hands on the Rwanda policy at one point.
A single person supported it, while 80% maybe raised a hand to oppose it.
Of all the panelists the Reform UK guy trashed it the most.

Some audience members were very unhappy too with what's happening to Angela Rayner.
The show this week was from Derbyshire, and some identified with her as a Northern working class woman, being picked on.
Time will tell if there is anything in the allegations against her.

 

At least Rishi is on a moral mission. What a fine upstanding billionaire he is.

 

Telling the apparently work-shy to get off their arses after the Pandemic.
Good hearty Tory fare.
"Work should always pay" or something like that.
Perhaps on Planet Rishi. But not in the gig economy methinks.

 

Does anyone actually believe Sunak when he says he's on a moral crusade? He might be sure he'll never need the safety net, but illness could strike any one of us at any time and turn your world upside down, and then you need medical support, not some bureaucrat whose job it is to stop you getting that support.

 

Indeed. And it's not only illness that can strike the well-to-do toff or the poorest beggar.

Dubai has just been ravaged by terrible storms and massive rainfall.
Poetic justice some might think, as much of the World's oil comes from that region.
If it became uninhabitable there, somehow I cannot imagine Rishi Sunak stood behind a lectern with the slogan 'Stop the Yachts' stuck to it.

 

I can't listen to the bloke with his patronising listen-with-mother voice. Someone with his vast wealth gunning for the people who are living on a pittance is difficult to stomach. The only redeeming feature is that there isn't enough time to put it into practice and he knows it. It's purely an election gimmick.

 

Think we’ve had this discussion before but the audience on Question Time is NOT selected in a way that makes it representative of the electorate. It is influenced by the politics of its researchers, which being BBC staff are mostly raving lefties.

 

Yes, and when we had the conversation I informed you that the BBC doesn't choose the audience, it is left to an independent company. Do youhave evidence to the contrary? You can google it.

 

Audience selection is decided by the producers. As are the questions. As is the editing. As are the camera shots. And the whole broadcast is controlled by a BBC employee acting as chair, being directed by a BBC employee as director.
It is not independent.

 

Yes you're right. It must have changed since Dimbleby stated that it was contracted to an independent company. I still think the program went down the pan when Sir Robin left. Inever missed it then and was in the audience once.

 

This really does boil my piss. Our Police have completely lost their ability to understand the law.

This failure doesn’t seem to just apply to the Jewish/Palestinian situation, they just don’t understand.

If a person is acting in a way which is perfectly legal then they CANNOT be committing a breach of the peace just because someone else (or even a large crowd of other people) object to that first persons’ presence.

It is stated fact. There are legal precedents. And yet time and time again the Police arrest people for “breach of the peace” knowing full well that they will never charge that person because THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF THE OFFENCE.
.

It happened during BLM marches and it happened in full public view during the marches on Remembrance Sunday. Scores of people arrested who wanted to protect the Cenotaph and then quietly let go after the March had finished.

Those people were not (generally) committing a breach of the peace. Yes some did, after they were unlawfully prevented from lawfully doing what they wanted.

But if someone is going to attack someone else then it is the attacker who can be arrested to prevent a breach of the peace if it is IMMINENT, but the possible victim (if they are acting lawfully) CANNOT.

Edit - sorry I forgot the link…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68856360

 

I’m not sure when it changed tbh. Like you I enjoyed it when Sir Robin ran it with an iron fist, but since then it has been a party political broadcast, dressed up as an impartial, fair show.

Like the Rwanda policy or not, does anyone truly believe that the sort of percentage that Lardi describes as being against it in the show last night, is reflective of the general electorate ?

 

Such audience polls are of course problematical for several reasons.
It may well be that more than one person in 300 (a rough guess at the size of the audience) would approve of the Rwanda policy as an idea.
But three of the panel had just spent some time savaging the policy because

A) the Government's severe lack of progress in implementing it

B) the money spent so far; roughly £500m - which looks like money wasted because of the fact not one migrant has been flown anywhere yet.

C) the fact that almost all of the 30% reduction in small boat crossings last year has been wiped out already this year, strongly suggesting the drop last year was down to the weather, not a deterrent effect of the policy itself.

So this poll was taken 'in the heat of the moment' just after some spiky debate on the subject. Never a good time to make a cool-headed decision.

Also, perhaps the audience was voting on their opinion of
the fiasco if the implementation of the policy
rather than
the policy itself as a concept.

Having said that, I think it is widely felt that for a Government to have to pass a Bill stating that Rwanda is a safe country in order to circumvent a Court judgment that deporting people there it illegal, is bringing Parliament itself into disrepute.

That Court ruling would have been based on evidence.
An act of Parliament which denies that evidence, allowing the Government to proceed as though that evidence does not exist, is in effect an Act which seeks to change reality in order to suit a political purpose.
Changing reality to fit a political agenda is the way that Dictatorships such as Putin's Russia, or Communist China & North Korea behave.
Countries which have no independent Courts.
Countries where judges and entire legal establishments are slaves and puppets of the ruling regime.

Any claim that Court rulings against the legality of the Rwanda policy are due to biased Courts, making judgments that are politically motivated rather than evidence based, undermines public confidence in the British or European Court systems.
Seeking to withdraw from the European Convention on Human rights for instance - which our current Government has apparently seriously considered, egged on by certain newspapers - sends out very dubious messages regarding respect for the Law.

Even in the USA, generally seen as a beacon of democratic freedom until recent times, their Supreme Court has had is independence compromised by the blatantly partisan appointments by successive Presidents, of new members of it's nine Judge panel. Six of the nine judges are now conservative in nature, far more inclined to support a Republican viewpoint. And even likely to rule in favour of ex-President Trump should his legal entanglements ever get as far as needing a decision from them.
Favour based on politics, not evidence. Or at the very least, favour laid wide open to the accusation of political bias.

Politics and the Judiciary should never be allowed to influence each other.
For all the faults of our Justice system in the UK - silly old buffer judges in horsehair wigs, and Juries sometimes voting on their consciences rather than on the evidence laid out before them - I believe the British Justice system is one of the very few fundamentally independent (of State control) systems among major Nations anywhere in the World.

And any Government bill drafted with the purpose of 'getting around' the rulings of our independent Justice system should rightly be treated with great scepticism.

It is in the nature of any UK Government to seek to influence areas where it should tread very carefully;
Influence over the Courts.
Influence over the Police and the way they enforce the Law.
Influence over the BBC, our State funded but NOT State controlled broadcaster.
I'm sure our next Government will be tempted to exert influence in those areas itself, once their initial idealism begins to have he shine taken off it by events.
But it is important that those attempts to influence always be challenged by people who believe in the principles of independence, and our precious right in this Country to be able to speak truth to power without fearing for our personal safety.

 

If it wasn’t in their manifesto the government shouldn’t be claiming it's the "will of the people". Personally I don’t know anyone who is in favour óf it, but maybe that's the people I mix with. The government is extremely unpopular, and that's not the fault ófthe BBC. I believe they try their best to be impartial, but it'sa bit like a football match where surveys show that about 90% óf fans think the referee favours the other side.
Sir Robin ran it not only with an iron fist but also with humour.

 

A bit sad that I’m replying to my own reply, but this doesn’t look as though it’s going away. Calls for the Commissioner to resign now.

Glad this is being highlighted again, but everyone seems to be missing the point that legally, Gideon Falter CANNOT commit a breach of the peace in these circumstances, simply by being at a place he is perfectly entitled to be at.

If someone from the March attacked him, then it is they who are committing the breach of the peace (and probably other offences as well) not him.

I’m not so much concerned about the racist/religious angle here, it’s the fact that the Police don’t understand what the law says.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4n19j892neo

And now Rishi is “appalled” as well…..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd130lp70x5o

I generally support the Police but they are totally losing their way over these protest marches.

Enforce the law and stop favouring one side over another just because there’s more of them. That’s not your job. That’s mob rule.

Jesus, how wrong is this comment from a Police Officer (quoted from The Guardian) - In the clip another officer said to him: “There’s a unit of people here now. You will be escorted out of this area so you can go about your business, go where you want freely – or if you choose to remain here, because you are causing a breach of peace with all these other people, you will be arrested.”

 

I'm guessing the tension at the march site was high.
The Police officer involved allowed his fears that violence might occur to cloud his judgment, and in doing so infringed the rights of Mr Falter.
I don't envy the Police, who are trying to keep the peace in a situation that is growing ever more hostile.

A good man will be forced to resign or be sacked because of the misjudgement of that officer.
Unlike Suella Braverman, Rishi Sunak and other politicians who are making political capital out of this incident to advance their own agendas, the Police cannot afford the luxury of taking sides.

The Commissioner's career is over, because one of his men slipped off the tightrope of impartiality in a volatile situation.
Neutrality is the hardest position to maintain, when hate is raining down from both sides.
I hope the newspapers don't get what they really want;
To provoke mass violence on the Streets of this Country, so that they can revel in the salacious pleasure of reporting every blood-spattered detail.

With the state our Politics and our politicians have descended to, I would not want to join the Police force.
They are being used and abused more blatantly than ever before.
Rishi Sunak is too much of a coward to just ban the pro-Palestinian marches, which is obviously what he wants to do.

 

I think it’s a lot more simple than that. The officer just doesn’t understand the law. Which considering that he was a Sergeant, is completely unacceptable.

Should the Commissioner resign over this ?

No, he cannot control every individual officer, despite the man at the top having some responsibility for those he leads.

But should he be allowing these protests to go ahead with all the disruption they cause to Londoners ? No.

 

The Police have no power to ban peaceful protests.
I'm sure the Home secretary and the Prime Minister want them banned for their own political purposes, and they do have the power to do it.
But they lack the spine to do it themselves.
They'd rather hide behind a decision taken by a fall guy in a blue uniform, who will be damned for any consequences whatever he does or does not do.

Banning protests simply for the disruption they incidentally cause is a reason that could be applied to stop any and all protests.
Only protests that use deliberately disruptive tactics (like those employed by XR or Just Stop Oil) should be banned.
Or protests that intimidate children, or vulnerable people trying to access legal medical procedures.

I'm pretty sure that officer understands the Law. But he made a bad call in a tense situation.
Similar incidents occurred when people were arrested on suspicion that they were going to disrupt the King's Coronation parade.
Nothing at all was made of those arrests, in the newspapers which are now vilifying the Police and calling for the Commissioner's head.

In my opinion both of those incidents were wrong.
The threatened arrest of Mr Falter and the arrests of some passers-by before the Coronation parade, who turned out to be nothing to do with any plans for disrupting it.
The difference in the way that these incidents were reported, and reacted to in Government circles, appears to be entirely political in nature.
One event was a symbol of Royalty and patriotism, supposedly popular with everyone.
The other is a protest against the killing of civilians during military action being taken by a strategic ally of the UK.
The first had the stamp of Government approval, while the current one certainly does not enjoy that status.

That of course is why the Commissioner will have to pay with his job.
We all know that the longer he remains in office, the more frenzied will be the newspaper calls for him to be removed.
He will be forced to quit just to limit the damage being done to the Force he commands.
The officer on the ground will probably pay with his job as well.
His judgment was clouded by the situation of the moment, and now he hand his boss will have to pay the full price for that mistake.
Such is the political pressure they are under.