UK Politics Thread

[Hot Heart]

[deanb]

[TheFlyingGerbil]

from the poke. I wonder if anyone believes all the road tax money actually goes on roads?

[deanb]

Well not all of it goes on the roads (I'm sure if all the money went on the roads it'd get rather mushy fast), but I'd say it's fair to expect at least some of it to go towards roads repair n such.

[deanb]

http://www.guardian....i-gay-ads-buses

 

They're using Stonewalls ad slogan and style too :/

 

The problem of course will be it's an advert, which comes with some fairly strict rules on what you can and cannot advertise.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

because her group adheres to scripture that all fornication outside marriage is prohibited, it believes that homosexuals are "not being fully the people God intended us to be".

 

This really annoys me. It's sinful to fornicate outside marriage, but they don't want to allow gay people to get married, so they are deliberately setting gay people up to feel wrong, sinful and excluded. That's one of the main reasons I think Christians don't want gay marriage, as it takes away one of the main ways that homosexuality is sinful according to the bible.

[Hot Heart]

Did I read that it was Christian leaders who were worried about religion going extinct? It would probably help if they all stopped acting like fucking dinosaurs.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

maybe it's God's will that religion dies out. Maybe he isn't such an arsehole after all.

[deanb]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/12/anti-gay-adverts-boris-johnson

 

Boris has stepped in.

 

For the non-brits:

He's the London Mayor, the guy that popped up at the end of the Beijing Olympics to declare Ping-pong is coming home.

[Thursday Next]

A good call by Boris. Some people are calling it censorship, I don't agree. No one is stopping the group from hanging a similar sign on their own property, or sticking it to the side of their own cars. The Mayor of London is simply not allowing a message of bigotry and ignorance to appear on his buses.

[TheMightyEthan]

cen·sor·ship/ˈsensərˌSHip/

 

Noun:

The practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts.

 

It is censorship.

 

Whether that censorship is bad is an entirely different question...

Edited April 13, 2012 by TheMightyEthan

[deanb]

But they're free to post their message other places. Just not as adverts on the public buses.

[TheMightyEthan]

Maybe this is an English v. English thing, but at least in common usage over here "censor" doesn't mean "totally ban", it just means ban or edit in a given context. Movies will be censored when they air on TV, but you can still get the unedited version on DVD.

[Thursday Next]

Well there's censorship and Censorship. What Boris did is say "I own that advertising space, and you cannot use it." That's definitely little c censorship.

[deanb]

So Russell Brand was at the MP enquiry thing on drug use/decriminalization/reclassification thingy.

Something happened today at the Leveson Enquiry, but I'm not entirely sure what, I've not really been following along with that one. Something about the culture secretary, and someone also made a comment earlier about James Murdoch having alzhiemers (Which I'll take to assume he's "forgetting" a lot of details).

[Yantelope V2]

He makes the point in his speech that it's about love and compassion. This is the part I don't fully understand. It seems a lot of liberals want the government to begin to replace the traditional role of the church in society by showing love and compassion and caring for their fellow man. At the same time the state is supposed to be steadfastly neutral in it's approach to religion and additionally you're trying to remain just. It's possible for an individual or a religious institution to show compassion and forgiveness but is that what we want the state to be doing as well? The whole idea of replacing traditional religious and individual moral responsibilities with government bureaucracies is both inefficient and debilitating to society. Anyway, it's a bit of a rant and I'm not against the state requiring some form of rehabilitation programs rather than simply incarceration but it is strange to hear people talking about the government providing love and compassion while simultaneously saying it should be religiously neutral. I'm not sure the two can be mutually exclusive.

[TheMightyEthan]

I don't see how love and compassion is an inherently religious concept.

[Yantelope V2]

Well, I mean, can you even pay someone to provide love and compassion? Is it still compassion at that point?

 

Wiktionary's definition of compassion is actually a bit interesting. "Deep awareness of the suffering of another, coupled with the wish to relieve it"

[TheMightyEthan]

Well putting aside the government aspect, I don't think you have to be a religious person in order to feel compassion/be compassionate, so compassion isn't an inherently religious concept/emotion. That's really what I was getting at.

 

Back to the government: if you want to be super technical you can pay someone to act in a manner that would appear to indicate/be consistent with them feeling compassion. Also, while policies/programs are inanimate and abstract, and therefore obviously can't actually feel compassion, they can be created or implemented by people who do so because of their own compassion.

[deanb]

Yante, UK Politics thread not US. We don't really have the separation of church n state, so that's not really applicable. Yes UK is fairly secular these days, but if you wanted to vote on certain laws this way or that because the bible says so, then you're within your right to do that. Just...don't tell anyone.

 

And when he's saying to show compassion I don't think he's specifically meaning he wants Cameron himself to be hugging drug addicts(unless they're wearing hoodies) and telling them he loves them, but to treat and help drug addicts instead of treating them as criminals. i.e through NHS and social services.

 

And I'm with Ethan too, love and compassion don't really require religion. Nor are government institutions disallowed to show compassion. It's not like care homes are soulless places full of helpers in black suits. The aim is in the name.

 

(Also US Politics thread Liberal and UK Politics thread Liberal are slightly different things)

[TheMightyEthan]

Yes UK is fairly secular these days, but if you wanted to vote on certain laws this way or that because the bible says so, then you're within your right to do that.

 

You can do that in the US too, it's not a [legal] problem.

[Yantelope V2]

Lets go back to the drug issue. What is his suggested solution? Maybe you can summarize better for me what he's proposing because I'm genuinely confused.

[deanb]

He's not suggesting a solution, that's not his purpose there. In fact he went out of his way to specifically mention he's not advocating any "say no to drugs" or decriminalization, as he said that's for other people to discuss. He's just a ..witness I guess is the right term(Thursday can probably correct that one). It's a hearing at a committee on the discussion, Brand was a heroin addict. At most as far as giving solutions go, he did say that treating it as a criminal matter isn't a solution.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17823551 - I dunno if you can access this video but here's a longer segment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17823272 - and a bigger article (With a different video)

[Yantelope V2]

So if you don't treat it as a criminal matter what do you do?

[deanb]

Treat it as a health matter, offer compassion and support. Instead of going "this person is shooting up heroin, he is a criminal" go "this person is shooting up heroin, he is ill", and react as such.

 

I don't know how drug use and addiction is treated(not in the medical sense, but attitude) and reacted to in the US so I think there's a bit of lost in translation going on here that'd require some kind of direct implant of britishness to fully comprehend I guess.