Current Affairs EU In or Out

[Goat]

Urm .....you joined in with them......

Give me names Joey, I will deal with them for you.

 

[Jebus_lives]

Ok, new rule, nobody is allowed to make jokes concerning salt.

Can we get the word added to the swear filter please, peoples feelings are getting hurt.

Getting beyond a joke. People rubbing salt into the wound.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

schoolyard bullies, one starts it, the rest pile in. and try and hide behind some 'witty' comments

its ok though, they are lefties

Are we okay to disguise humour as blind anger?

 

[larrygobfiend]

schoolyard bullies, one starts it, the rest pile in. and try and hide behind some 'witty' comments

its ok though, they are lefties

Nob head

 

[Moomin]

schoolyard bullies, one starts it, the rest pile in. and try and hide behind some 'witty' comments

its ok though, they are lefties

Like your mum on a Friday night.

 

[Armel]

If it helps. Verhofstadt* still believes in a Brexit breakthrough this week. He's banking on a break-through for the customs-union option; on Monday or Wednesday. If that were to be the case, he still believes in a timely Brexit (well the extended timelines). He phrased it as: "The best thing that could befall us". He's also not a fan of a long delay; since well he's also fed up.

*He's usually an optimist though.

 

[Jebus_lives]

 

[peteblue]

......

 

[Joey66]

Are we okay to disguise humour as blind anger?

Humour in bullying Bruce? Thought you were against that sort of thing?
I can take a minute me but not ridicule on this scale ok Mr mod not!

 

[Jebus_lives]

......

Welcome back Pete.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

https://www.afp.com/en/news/826/five-things-eu-does-environment-doc-1f78gt1

No mention of banning table salt, but still.

 

[zzr45]

https://www.afp.com/en/news/826/five-things-eu-does-environment-doc-1f78gt1

No mention of banning table salt, but still.

Google that link did you? Not commit it to memory? Sickening.

 

[jackyboy]

Who won the battle of the marches then?

 

[Jebus_lives]

Who won the battle of the marches then?

The remain March clearly had more people..

The leave March pipped it in terms of oddballs though. Seemingly a heady mix of leave means leave types, people disgraced that MPs can't magically translate the will of 17.4m people into a single unifying outcome, head cases, some obvious stranger dangers and football hooligan types who descend into to fighting press, police and ultimately each other at the end. Oh and a few white supremacists and racists as well.

 

[orchard]

Ripped from Reddit :

A history of the BBC's abject failure to report on Vote Leave's cheating during the referendum campaign [Thread]
u/chowieuk
This week Vote Leave finally dropped their appeal against the Electoral Commission's findings that they committed the largest breach of electoral law in British political history. A breach so serious and unforeseen that our own electoral law doesn't make adequate provision for it, and one that has exposed the serious weakness of our own electoral regulator's ability to uphold our democratic functions.
Throughout the process the BBC have failed to accurately report on the issue and have provided an almost uncontested platform for those responsible to spread falsehoods and misinformation about the nature and egregiousness of the illegality. Most recently on Marr yesterday morning, where Gisele Stuart (chair of the campaign) was allowed to repeatedly state outright lies absolving herself and the campaign of responsibility. A particular highlight was her claim that they can't defend themselves 'because they destroyed all the data', or alternatively because they destroyed all the evidence.
They were of course initially found to be fully compliant, before numerous whistleblowers came forward with reams of (allegedly destroyed) data, and the 'good law project' - headed by Jolyon Maugham - launched a legal challenge.
The following thread by Jo Maugham highlights the gross failure of the 'impartial' state broadcaster to cover the story.
Threadreader / Twitter

• It begins here, when @GoodLawProject began judicial review proceedings against the Electoral Commission. A balanced piece of coverage (by Brian Wheeler.) /1

Watchdog attacked over Vote Leave ruling - Electoral Commission faces possible legal action over dropping a probe into Brexit campaign spending.

• Next. The Electoral Commission having vigorously denied the allegations before @GoodLawProject issues proceedings it then agrees to reopen the investigation when we do. Again, fair reporting (by Brian Wheeler).

Watchdog reopens Vote Leave probe - Electoral Commission investigates why group gave £625,000 to a student just before the EU referendum.

• Next. It becomes clear to Vote Leave the Electoral Commission is going to find against it. The BBC agrees to carry a story from Matthew Elliott on the day after the England World Cup match. Look at the sequencing (and the summary "refuting the findings").

News Daily: England's World Cup win and Vote Leave 'broke electoral law'

• I make this point - remember the BBC can carry this story whenever it wants - and the BBC's Editor, Live Political Programmes smears me (not for the first or last time) as a conspiracy theorist.

Gyazo

gyazo.com

• Now at this point in time, only two groups have seen the draft report: the Electoral Commission (who can't talk) and Vote Leave. No one can second guess what Matthew Elliott says about the draft report. At this stage the coverage is taken up by the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg.
• And here's what she reports. This is the softening up article on 21 June.
• She allows Vote Leave to mark its own homework. She doesn't come to @goodlawproject for a quote. She treats the offender's word as being of the same value as the regulator's.

Watchdog expected to find Vote Leave broke rules

• And then the notorious 4 July article. Again by Laura Kuenssberg. No one else has seen the report at this stage. She doesn't come to @GoodLawProject for comment. She gives Matthew Elliot free reign. An extraordinary piece of reporting from the BBC.

Vote Leave campaign 'broke electoral law'

• The BBC also, separately, carries this interview between Laura Kuenssberg and Matthew Elliott in which he is given free reign to undermine the findings of the Electoral Commission.

Vote Leave chief Matthew Elliott defends his group following an Electoral Commission investigation.

• At this stage the damage is done. The hugely dominant BBC has allowed itself to be used completely to undermine the findings of the Electoral Commission that Vote Leave cheated at a time when no one else could respond.
• Here is the article the BBC publishes on the day the findings come out. No quote from @GoodLawProject. No by-line.

The Brexit campaign group is referred to the police by the Electoral Commission and fined £61,000.

• Then in September comes the judicial review finding in which the High Court also finds Vote Leave cheated. The BBC initially prints a highly inaccurate story and I am furious about it on twitter. Brian Wheeler eventually comes to me and amends his story.

this one is huge. Almost every brexiter I've encountered thinks the high Court found VL innocent, but it actually found they broke the law independently of the EC advice and in fact broke it in a whole new way

Brexit vote watchdog 'got law wrong'

• The BBC nevertheless carries this lengthy quote from Matthew Elliott which is simply and demonstrably false. The BBC makes no effort to interrogate the falsehoods it is producing.
• There then follows a lengthy period in which the BBC carries more broadcast interviews with Leave campaigners smearing the Electoral Commission's findings. My only appearance on the BBC is back in June 2018, when I have not seen the findings and before the court judgment.
• Finally yesterday, Vote Leave admit the inevitable and throw the towel in. The BBC carries a short piece with a lengthy self-serving quote from Vote Leave. No real comparison with Vote Leave's original bluster. Again, no quote from @GoodLawProject.

Vote Leave drops appeal against fine

• The real penalty for cheating is political. It undermines the validity of the result - a fact acknowledged even by Matthew Elliott.
• This is why the BBC's failures matter. The BBC allowed itself to be used to reduce or extinguish all political penalty.
• Lots of "what to do" questions, understandably. But nothing good can happen at the BBC for so long as its Head behaves like this

And this is just from the perspective of the legal challengers. Shahmir Sahni, the main whistleblower (there were several) has been repeatedly ignored by the media and refused airtime. In that time he's been smeared and outed as gay (he comes from a religious pakistani family) by the prime minister's own office to try and paint this as some sort of lover's tiff. He was also summarily sacked by the taxpayer's alliance (run by Matthew elliot) for seemingly turning against his Tufton Street, pro-brexit funders.
And all the while the likes of Darren Grimes (also given a cushy Tufton Street job with the IEA despite having no qualifications) who were entirely complicit have launched crowd funders against the 'biased electoral commission' and undermined the very foundations of our democracy. Almost nothing that they have said in the media bears any resemblance to reality.
E: don't even get me started on other water-muddying tactics such as Priti Patel's 'remain dossier' that supposedly proved the remain campaign had also broken the law. It was a media stunt and a joke, containing nothing but publicly available information already in the possession of the electoral commission. The EC's response to it is an amusing read

Reminder that the government themselves acknowledge on record in a court of law that it meets the threshold for annulment, were such a threshold to exist.

James Eadie QC, representing Theresa May. Without challenge, Eadie conceded that the referendum had met the threshold for illegality. Furthermore, had the referendum been binding, which it was not, on both the government and parliament, it would have a statutory, legal mechanism by which it would be annulled. As it stands, as an advisory referendum, it does not have that force of law.