UK General Discussion: Rishecession

[afleitch]

Interesting constitutional quirk in Scotland thanks to the separation of legal systems. Campaigners and Scot Gov want to pilot safe drug consumption rooms. Currently illegal and UK Gov won't devolve the law.

Lord Advocate issues statement stating such a room would not be prosecuted.

https://twitter.com/ProfChalmers/status/1701171236724699177

Effectively

https://twitter.com/ProfChalmers/status/1701172671063490810

[Zinneke]

Interesting constitutional quirk in Scotland thanks to the separation of legal systems. Campaigners and Scot Gov want to pilot safe drug consumption rooms. Currently illegal and UK Gov won't devolve the law.

Lord Advocate issues statement stating such a room would not be prosecuted.

https://twitter.com/ProfChalmers/status/1701171236724699177

Effectively

https://twitter.com/ProfChalmers/status/1701172671063490810

Outside the institutional/legal debate, I'd be wary of opening one or two up in one party of the region or country. In Belgium, Liège and Brussels both opened the first one and the result is many drug users congregated to those two cities and overwhelmed the shoot houses (and also turned many city dwellers off the idea because it was so poorly managed).

UK-wide health and safe drug usage services is far more preferable, even if you're a committed Scottish nationalist.

[NewYorkExpress]

Following an incident where an eleven year old girl was injured by a breed of American Bully Dog, Suella Braverman says she is seeking advice about banning the breed in question.

Britain's home secretary said Monday she is seeking “urgent advice” on banning a type of American Bully dog, highlighting an attack on a 11-year-old girl over the weekend.

Suella Braverman said she has commissioned advice on outlawing XL Bully dogs after police said they were investigating an incident in the central English city of Birmingham on Saturday, when a girl was injured by one of the dogs. Two men who intervened were also injured.

“This is appalling. The American XL Bully is a clear and lethal danger to our communities, particularly to children,” Braverman wrote on social media. ”We can't go on like this."

Police said the incident took place on a busy road after the dog broke free from its owner. The girl sustained serious injuries to her shoulders and forearms, and was recovering after hospital treatment. The animal was seized by officers and officials will consider what to do with the animal, police added.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The Westminster aide spying for China has been unmasked in the Times. It’s Chris Cash, the Director of the China Research Group.

The CRG is a working group set up by Security Minister Tom Tugendhat and spearheaded by Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Alicia Kearns. It’s supposed to provide policy insights to “tackle the rise of China”.

He’s also Kearns’ parliamentary researcher.

Which all seems… unfortunate.

I assume he's not a relative of Bill?

[Torrain]

I assume he's not a relative of Bill?

Doesn’t appear to be. Chris Cash is from a well-to-do Edinburgh family (son of a GP, local private school, etc), per the reporting I’ve seen.

He also did a few briefings for “Lib Dems Abroad” advocating a boost in international student arrivals to the UK a few years back, which I don’t think you’d risk if you were counting on patronage from the Member for Stone.

[CumbrianLefty]

"Inaction Man" - that's gotta sting a bit.

[Torrain]

Tobias Elwood has resigned as Chair of the Defence Committee - to avoid facing a no-confidence vote.

Apparently, if he’d been ousted, the remaining members had the right to pick a replacement chair from amongst their own members, and there was anxiety that Mark Francois might have gotten the job.

Wonder if we’ll see a repeat of the race to replace Tugendhat as Foreign Affairs Chair last year - with old hats like IDS and Liam Fox running, splitting the Tory vote and letting a less established, and less controversial MP win instead.

[Blair]

I see labour has lost the YIMBY twitter vote.

I do think there is a need to engage with the political world as it is; I’m pro building and want a lot more to be built but I do think you need to understand why people oppose developments and the environment is often just as likely to be a reason now.

[CumbrianLefty]

I see labour has lost the YIMBY twitter vote.

Which is, if anything, even smaller in the real world than the very online left Twitter vote.

[Torrain]

Holyrood silly season yesterday, during a vote on a motion over short-term letting rules.

5 SNP members voted against - 1 rebellion (Fergus Ewing, as per usual), and 4 who got confused and pressed the wrong voting button, including the Justice and Education Secretaries.

And then, just to make the whole thing bipartisan, Labour’s deputy leader, who’s been voting via this system as an MSP since 1999, also got confused and voted *for* the motion.

[CumbrianLefty]

Persistent talk that the SNP will be taking the whip off Ewing any time now.

[Torrain]

Aye, from what I hear, the SNP group at Holyrood are meeting next Wednesday, where they’ll decide his sanction. Reportedly, a suspension would have to be put to a vote, with a 2/3 threshold. That’s all on background though, it’s all a bit opaque.

Some Scottish papers have suggested Ewing might only be out in the cold for a number of weeks, rather than months, and a permanent expulsion is off the cards. But given his penchant for the dramatic, I wouldn’t rule out some Angus MacNeil-style antics derailing matters.

Some of his fellow travellers are muttering warnings about suspending him, but given how rare rebellion is at Holyrood, I assume they’ll fall in line, rather than follow him out the door.

[Blair]

I see labour has lost the YIMBY twitter vote.

Which is, if anything, even smaller in the real world than the very online left Twitter vote.

The online twitter vote have at least voted Labour in the last 10 years...

[JimJamUK]

I see labour has lost the YIMBY twitter vote.

What’s happened?

[Silent Hunter]

I see labour has lost the YIMBY twitter vote.

What’s happened?

Voted down the government's proposed elimination of nutrient neutrality rules in the Lords.

[Coldstream]

Aye, from what I hear, the SNP group at Holyrood are meeting next Wednesday, where they’ll decide his sanction. Reportedly, a suspension would have to be put to a vote, with a 2/3 threshold. That’s all on background though, it’s all a bit opaque.

Some Scottish papers have suggested Ewing might only be out in the cold for a number of weeks, rather than months, and a permanent expulsion is off the cards. But given his penchant for the dramatic, I wouldn’t rule out some Angus MacNeil-style antics derailing matters.

Some of his fellow travellers are muttering warnings about suspending him, but given how rare rebellion is at Holyrood, I assume they’ll fall in line, rather than follow him out the door.

It says something about Alex Salmond’s failure as a politician that neither Ewing nor MacNeil are even suggested to be joining him.

[Torrain]

It says something about Alex Salmond’s failure as a politician that neither Ewing nor MacNeil are even suggested to be joining him.

Aye. His approvals are terrible (on par with Boris Johnson, who’s always polled terribly here), the party is tiny, and seems to be a vessel for his grievance more than anything else. There were a couple of polls (really just two) that put Alba at 5-6% on the regional list vote, enough to draw 2-4 seats at the next election. But most would agree those are outliers, and that they’re still stuck at the 1-2% they otherwise get.

Thing is, the proportional nature of Holyrood means you only need 2-6 seats to hold the balance of power in most parliaments - the Greens and Lib Dems could tell you that. Their central strategy of becoming the necessary partner for the SNP isn’t wholly terrible. But they don’t seem to have a logical plan to get there.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Rishi Sunak is about to be even less popular in South Wales than he was before, I see.

[CumbrianLefty]

Rishi Sunak is about to be even less popular in South Wales than he was before, I see.

Levelling up in action!

[afleitch]

The experiment in breeding and reintroducing a natural predator, but this time into people's homes and streets is thankfully at an end.

Absolutely shameful that lives have been lost and ruined to get to this decision.

[Gass3268]

https://twitter.com/AllezLesBoulez/status/1702762147065864371?s=20

This is basically the American reaction I've seen online.

[Silent Hunter]

A number of animal charities have come out against this - arguing that breed-based bans are ineffective.

[JimJamUK]

A number of animal charities have come out against this - arguing that breed-based bans are ineffective.

The problem is that the animal charities have decided which side they are on and no amount of evidence will persuade them otherwise.

[Gass3268]

https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1702762468806656032?s=46

[Wiswylfen]

https://twitter.com/AllezLesBoulez/status/1702762147065864371?s=20
This is basically the American reaction I've seen online.

Yes--a great number of online Americans delight in such performative displays, usually motivated more by reacting against their youthful television-based Anglophilia or emulating those who are than anything else, which in this latest instance has turned out to be finding any way to pick at the murder dog ban. It is pathetic.