No I mean it's drivel (I accept many things as true even if I don't like them - it's my curse)

It's what I would call 'made up' and others like to call 'reasonable inference' if it suits their case.


That's a different argument (at least until you went into your putin material). I'd argue this is naked politics. Sure they're using the law (so did the nazis - to poke at your commie sillyness) but to say this is just a matter of law is an abdication of responsibility.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL.

Thanks for doing all my work for me, nothing proves my point with such precision as the link above.

OMFG that racist Labour party, with its racist Candidates to be Councillors. Jesus ****ing christ, anyone posting that as evidence does not have an intellectually honest bone in thier body, and is obviously consumed by partisan hysteria. Candidates to be councillors, not even councillors.

Meanwhile the candidate to be next leader of the Tory party has on record the most clearly racist statement I have seen presented in this whole "debate" and is steaming on a fully fledged MP with massive support and career opportunities. Obviously an equivalence with candidates to be who hell he who gives a **** councillors (who have all been removed). We dont even get to see what their antisemtic behaviour was in that article.

But of course this is all whataboutism, because the issue of racism must be purely parsed purely through the context of Labour.

I dunno. Corbyn definitely seems an ideologue first & I suspect he does indeed regard America as The Boogeyman& would oppose them by rote without viewing the context.

But it is just a matter of law as it's a violation of bail conditions & an extradition request for alleged rape is a matter of law as is another request regarding a conspiracy charge. The law courts sort these things out not the court of public opinion

As a matter of fact you are wrong. Gary McKinnon's extradition was blocked by the home secretary (Teresa May) after all the legal avenues had been pursued. I'd also say that she was 100% correct to block it and that political pressure played a part in that decision.

In addition in this case. There may be the option of extradition to Sweden instead which appears (not totally clear yet), if it arises to be a political decision not a legal one. 70 MPs/peers have already signed a letter urging that. I would too.

Other options may also emerge as the decision to extradite is clearly political and not merely the natural progress of the criminal justice system.

He should be extradited to Sweden to answer the rape charges there.

The hacking case is a little different to McKinnon's because the latter by all account suffered severely from Asperger's but in any case I regard the rape allegations as more serious.

Yes he should go to Sweden if that avenue reopens. He may well agree to go voluntarily if they reopen the cases as anything must be better than facing usa 'justice'

and all cases are different, that's not the point. The point is there is a political role as proved by the McKinnon case. So it's simply not the case that it's purely up to the courts.

I think it's going too far to describe as political the intervention of the government to prevent a known Asperger's sufferer who wasn't fully aware of the potential consequences of his actions from being extradited to the US where he doubtless would have ended up serving many years in jail, separated from his family.

I've no idea how you describe the intervention of the home secretary as anything but a political intervention.

It certainly wasn't the courts

Governments can intervene in legal process for a variety of different reasons, even humanitarian sometimes.

Indeed. Intervening for humanitarian reason is excellent politics.

If you want to make some fine distinction between government and politics then meh. Unless your'e claiming it was the courts who made the decision rather than a politician then we have no disagreement of any substance.

If you want to crowbar a humanitarian act into a room labelled Politics so that you can justify defending a racism-enabling "wrong-un" accused of rape, meh.

That makes no sense. He is not even facing extradition to the usa for sexual offenses.

It seems you've gone back down the silly path again.

Are you suggesting that he is legally insane, at least according to British law?

Here in the States, "not being fully aware of potential consequences" is not a criterion to determine if a genuinely mentally ill person is culpable for a crime.

And it would be a stretch in most situations to argue that someone on the mild end of the Autism spectrum is too impaired to understand right from wrong.

It was political in the sense that the decision was made by a politician, but it was made on human-rights or compassionate grounds in view of the subject's apparent suicide risk and the potentially heavy sentence he faced. Of course the Home Secretary can also order the release of a murderer serving a whole-life term if the murderer becomes gravely ill, which is why whole-life terms are still allowed under European human-rights rules.

Until 1907 there was no Court of Criminal Appeal (it was set up partly because of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work on the Edalji case, which was lately the subject of a Julian Barnes novel and a TV adaptation) and you could only appeal to the Home Secretary. Even in the 1950s, only the Home Secretary could commute a death sentence. The political role has diminished over the decades.

Since the McKinnon case the Home Secretary's role in extradition cases has shrunk further and even the human-rights aspects are dealt with by the courts. In theory the Home Secretary still has ultimate discretion, but with very little scope.

He should be extradited to Sweden and then I honestly don't care if he's sent to the US given the nonsense he's been involved in. His unedited dump of files involved naming homosexuals etc in Saudi Arabia and Turkey and other backwards countries.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics...nd-corbyn/amp/

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics...-voters-brexit

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-a8866431.html

I feel like a lot of people are soon going to regret the will of the people. Also I feel a lot of those three articles contradict one a other. Pololing amirite

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-politics-47907350

Included so I could use this emoji

This week has been pretty glorious for fans of schadenfreude. Makes me wonder where we would be if either or both major party didn't have the worst leaders they have had in the best part of a century.

This is an actual Scottish minister (Justice minister, ex transport minister) posting this nonsense (about receiving his free baby box which currently costs about £9m per year)



Unbelievable.

I did ask if they would do away with means tested housing benefit, council tax benefit and universal credit etc but he hasn't responded

No I'm not as it was blocked on political grounds solely not on legal grounds wrt valid errors. I also happen to agree with the denial as I considered the sentence he was facing as far to disproportionate. But if it hadn't been blocked on purely political grounds McKinnon would be in a US prison right now as there was nothing legally flawed about the extradition request itself.

Why?He's facing rape charges which is in no way political. So why oppose it? Is Assange above rape due to his status?

Not necessarily re the US as he's facing a conspiracy charge which is a legal criminal matter & not regarding Sweden as again it's a rape allegation which is certainly a legal criminal matter& nothing to do with politics.

First time I saw this I genuinely thought the guy at the bottom was the one you were criticizing.

The Scottish minister said absolutely nothing controversial. He didn't even tweet support of universal benefits but he would be 100% correct to do so.

Means testing essential benefits is not only anti-progressive it's illogical. The administration costs of means testing and the associated political costs of reviewing, setting and changing this all when there is a change of government largely outweighs any so called saving.

This is why universal income is so awesome. Administration of it will be a fraction of a percent depending how wide and deep you set eligibility. I haven't seen the numbers for the UK but I have seen universal income models that show it could pay for itself by also removing the administration costs of everything it replaces in Finland.

Btw the Finnish trial was an overwhelming success. People just completely missed the ****ing point.

I would happily do away with those three benefits you named and replace them with universal income. I suspect the Scottish minister also is as they are drawing up plans for a universal income test scheme. This is not controversial.

No I'm not, because this isn't the USA.

There exists the concept of diminished capacity that would probably apply to McKinnon.

So if it was blocked on politcal grounds, it wasn't just a matter for the law and courts. Which is what I said. There will also be all legal efforts to both progress and stop the extradition.

We seem to be agreeing on this so hopefully we can move on.

I fully support his extradition to Sweden to face rape charges. The political aspect may be (not certain) in deciding which extradition takes precedent.

It's quite possible that the decision taken in the USA was in part political. That politics isn't necessarily over. and any political pressure from the usa will be bad for JA as the USA will want their extradition to take precedence. It's part of the reason it's important to put domestic political pressure (as per the letter I mentioned) on the home secretary.

I prefer wealth redistribution and targetted policies rather than universality. The baby box scheme is failry minor but it's money that could be better spent. Initially the scheme was supposedly about using the box for babies to sleep in and this was supposed to reduce child mortality. It was based on an old scheme in Finland but Scot Gov failed to point out that in Finland the box came with the requirement of a lot of support and it was this that made the difference. Incidentally a couple of charities have come out and said the box isn't safe for sleeping in but they continue with the scheme and just load it up with things that many people who receive it could easily afford to pay for themselves.

Also, with regards to universality my major bug bear with it is in regard to higher education. In Scotland 'free' higher education basically means poorer students are funding free education for those from wealthy backgrounds. I can go into this a lot more if required but I'll leave it at this for the moment.

Re the bold, what criteria are you using to judge it was an overwhelming success? I'll need to search out the articles I read about it at the time but I don't remember that being the outcome I read about.