“…in his 1884 address on ‘The General Statistics of the British Empire’, Sir Richard Temple set out that over half of the annual revenue of the British national government came from taxing the labour and resources of those within empire, beyond the national state. That is, over half of the income at the disposal of the government in Westminster came from the land, labour, and resources of those who, today, are deemed to have no historically based claims here.”
— Gurminder K. Bhambra,
Brexit, Empire, and Decolonization
imo it goes a lot further than that – as utsa patnaik clearly explains it was the trade surplus from colonies, primarily India, that effectively guaranteed the entire british banking and currency system which in turn formed the centre of the global economy pre-great depression
No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. That’s a letter written in 2018, talking about Brexit, and saying we should just walk out of the EU and that we’ll be ok if we do because we beat France in the Napoleonic wars.
I need Ameritumblr to understand that we’re all freaking out about some Cabinet resignations because the British system has a thing with no confidence votes having a direct and immediate effect and, well, in summary, we may literally not have a government this time tomorrow. no prime minister, no line of succession, nothing.
it wouldn’t be healthy to care about it as much as we do but a little freaking out in solidarity would be comforting. we do the same for you.
so in fact what I’ve learned from this is that in America, “the government” means “the whole civil service”, and in Britain, “the Government” means “the Government”.
Good news! The Government has been found in contempt of Parliament! That should clear up any remaining confusion!
HE MOVED THE MACE
THEY RECEIVED 48 LETTERS
The Government has reached its Post Limit of drama for the day
It sounds like “government” gets used about the same as “[current] administration” does in the U.S.?
In any case best of luck.
yes, “government” is the specific coalition currently agreed to be in charge. this sounds really weird if you’re used to “government” to refer to “the institution as a whole”.
If I understand correctly (and I might not), in practical terms, a Brit saying “there is no Government” is roughly analogous to an American saying “There is no President [but his ceremonial roles are still performed by the same unelected figurehead that they always are], Vice President, Cabinet, or Speaker of the House, and all of these positions can be filled when — and only when — the House manages to elect a new Speaker.” With the House electing a new Speaker being potentially made more complicated by the fact that there are more than two parties with non-trivial representation.
Yes? (Or is there something I’m missing?)
If the above is roughly correct, then what the Brits call “no government” is more like the Federal Government (specifically; lower-level governments being unaffected) being on autopilot than it is like the government not existing at all.
If it goes through (as a VONC on the Government as a whole) it triggers the Dissolution of Parliament, which happens every time there is a General Election and means that for 25 days, there is no Parliament – all the MPs get fired, basically.
Ministers (although possibly not the PM? gov.uk is unclear on this) actually stay in their jobs (otherwise we’d also have no equivalent to Secretary of State etc), but there are some formal and informal limits on what they can do – no big changes or anything. So there is still a line of succession.
All the civil servants also stick around and keep things running. The result of the VONC would not, as far as I can tell, be any different from what happens every time there’s an election.
So this is happening. Can someone explain this bit to me?
She said a successful challenge against her would inevitably lead to her successor being forced to delay or even stop Brexit.
“One of their first acts would have to be extending or rescinding Article 50, delaying or even stopping Brexit when people want us to get on with it,” she said.
I thought that the EU basically said “You set this train in motion, we’re going where the tracks lead” and there’s roughly zero chance for Britain to do shit about it now?
According to what I saw from UK posters, everything that’s been done so far is fully reversible – mainly because the further in the rearview mirror the Brexit vote is, the more people are realizing it was a REALLY BAD IDEA. So they’ve been waffling and plotdding along slowly because any serious move they make in either direction is gonna piss off a lot of people.
But they can’t just SAY that, because they made a big deal about how Brexit was the best possible thing for the UK and absolutely NOT about racism and xenophobia, so they’re left in the awkward position of pretending that it’s still popular even as popular opinion keeps them from moving on it.
The critical question I’m left asking is: I’ve never seen a vote of no confidence in a party leader before. If it passes, does government fall or pass to her 2IC?
Ok so to break this up a bit, since I used to study UK politics and well, I’ve lived in England all my life so I kinda know the answers for this
@janothar – what May’s said is related to a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice. That is the court which decides cases on EU law (it’s commonly believed that the European Court of Human Rights is an EU court too, but it’s separate).
Basically, after the Brexit referendum, the Supreme Court ruled that Parliament had to pass an act to invoke Article 50. The Tories wanted their government to be able to invoke it without Parliament, but we have a concept called parliamentary supremacy – basically that Parliament, not the Cabinet, are the ultimate rule makers in the UK.
So technically all we have to do to extend the deadline or stop Brexit is for Parliament to pass another act revoking the previous act.
And @wetwareproblem – votes of no confidence are two separate things which annoyingly have the same name. The first type, which is fairly rare and hasn’t happened since the Labour government of the 1970s, is parliament passing a vote of no confidence against the Cabinet. If it passes, that causes a general election. Which is kinda complicated, I imagine, by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act (2011) passed by David Cameron’s government. But not as complicated as the Tories calling their own election, as a new general election requires Parliament’s approval – and I imagine a vote of no confidence counts as exactly that.
There’s not really a concept of second in commander for political parties over here – the closest you have is the party chairperson, but that’s it. So what will happen if Theresa May loses? The Tory party will have a leadership election, which is decided by Tory MPs. This is, terrifyingly, actually good – Leave voters actually see Jacob Rees-Mogg as their preferred PM, with Boris Johnson in second place.
Here’s two good articles from the New Statesman on potential Tory leaders – this article, from August, suggests that Johnson is unlikely as is Rees-Mogg, simply because most Tory MPs don’t want a hard Brexit. And this article published today has a profile on all of the most likely candidates if this does go to a leadership election.
Thanks for the info. I was aware of votes of no confidence against the government (we had one of those in 2011), I’ve just never seen one internal to a party before and wasn’t sure what happens if the PM is suddenly no longer the head of the majority party.
Not that it matters, she’ll probably scrape through by the skin of her teeth.
Although I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited at the prospect of Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister and everyone in Scotland going ‘Nope!’ and voting for independence.
On the other hand, Theresa May being trapped in her own personal hell is equally funny.
Catastrofuckpocalypse.
Imagine if the Scottish Government announced an Indy referendum today. I think the UK would implode.
I refuse to believe a child messaged “Holy mackerel, good luck with your vote mama, I’m rooting for Big Dog Theresa”.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahaha.
Theresa May survives but 117 vote against her. That’s awful.
Tumblr is self-destructing and the entire conservative government just got found to be in contempt of parliament for the first time in HISTORY this is the greatest 24h of my life
What did I miss?!
Oh man. This is absolutely golden.
So first off. What’s contempt of parliament? In short, obstructing parliament from its duties. In the UK that extends to publication of reports and papers that would be necessary for parliament to, well, parliament. Normally this extends to an individual person being especially obstructive.
Now. The Conservative government obtained legal advice for the Brexit shitshow. But they refused to publish it in full which means parliament (which includes, y’know, opposition parties and non-conservatives in general) can’t parliament.
What reason could they possibly have to refuse to publish legal advice on something that effects the whole country? I wonder. Hmm. Thinking emoji.
Anyway. Today the entire Conservative government have been found to be in contempt of Parliament. The entire government have been found to be obstructing the proper running of the country. We hold votes on that sort of thing, and the general consensus (18-vote majority) was “the Tories are obstructive little pigshits”
Also they have to publish that legal advice. In full. Tomorrow.
No word yet on whether the entire government is going to be sent to the Elizabeth Tower yet. We haven’t done that since the 1880s but I’m willing to bring it back.
Glorious!
Readers from other countries: you have to understand that, so far, Brexit has been about three years of nothing happening and still somehow dominating the news cycle. A random MP from Croydon will say that they don’t think Theresa May is doing well and it’ll make headline news. Like, that’s not news, that’s rolling above a nat 1 on perception. The ‘nothing happens’ is occasionally broken by Something happening, except it’s always terrible. At this stage, people keep arguing about whether to accept a shitty deal or no deal, because nobody took Critical Thinking at AS Level and the concept of a false dilemma is somehow unthinkable to them.
Meanwhile a good portion of the Labour party really do not want Brexit to happen, except the leader (Jeremy Corbyn, and I would require a whole other post to talk about him) who is like ‘Brexit is okay but ONLY if we do it.’
Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats are like ‘we’ll cancel Brexit! And we’ll legalise weed!’, but nobody’s forgiven them for double-crossing us on tuition fees and they keep accidentally electing bigots, so the twelve voters who support them can’t really do all that much.
The Green party do technically exist, and that’s all I can really say on them.
UKIP, the nationalist bastards who got us into this mess in the first place, haemorrhaged membership back to the Tories in the most recent election (shocking. i know). General cretin Nigel Farage quit as party leader when Brexit got voted for, claiming he’d done his job, and recently he just left the party altogether because he doesn’t like where it’s going. something something moral backbone of a chocolate eclair something
Also the Leave campaign were found to have lied, accepted dodgy donations and pulled some VERY shifty things, meaning that a lot of people who voted for Brexit now feel they made a mistake.
So the people have been trying to demand a second vote on Brexit, or to at least have some say on the conditions of the leave agreement (did I mention everything we’ve done so far is fully reversible?), but TMay just keeps repeating things like ‘will of the people’ and ‘Brexit means Brexit’ and then going home to relax by killing a few disabled people after dinner. You know how it is.
But then the actual Brexit agreement is released and ministers start dropping like flies. The guy who wrote it quits IMMEDIATELY after it’s published because he Doesn’t Like It. Cue the tiniest violin in the world. People are squabbling over the right way to do Brexit and keep mentioning just leaving without a deal, which is like quitting your cushy job by taking a shit on the counter and just hoping things will work out for you.
So, essentially, I’ve given up hope on this not becoming a complete clusterfuck. It already is a clusterfuck. My only hope is that it will be an entertaining one, as it’s been so astonishingly dull, and this has very much met my hopes. They fucked up so badly that the whole government is on the naughty step. The fucktangular omnishambles continue, and I for one say throw them all in the tower, vote them out of government one-by-one like Big Brother, and televise it to make money for the BBC.
Yesssssss
So… from the little I know about parliamentary systems of government…
Does “contempt of parliament” also mean “vote of no confidence”? Are y’all about to have another election?
As far as I understand it, contempt of parliament is like, ‘stop that right now! Stop it!We can’t govern unless you stop.’ and it can apply to one MP or a parliamentary group or in this case, a whole party.
Vote of no confidence is, ‘you’re all fucking incompetent, I have no confidence that you can run a foot race, let alone a government’.
If a vote of no confidence is successful then a general election has to be held, but people won’t vote against their party so it’s super rare.
But if they can’t govern, that would mean they’re fucking incompetent, and therefore a new election should be held? That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Does this mean a vote of no confidence is going to be held, and then another election? (Because at least in Canada there are certain things that automatically trigger a vote of no confidence, like not being able to pass a budget. I was wondering if this is one of those things as well.) Or can you folks not recall the bastards who did this bullshit? (That’s one of the things I always liked about the parliamentary system… if the gov’t can’t run, y’all have an election, like pronto. Wish our system was like that.)
The Home Office unlawfully removed a child asylum seeker from the UK and has been ordered to arrange his return in a landmark High Court ruling. An Afghan boy, who cannot be named and has been described by his lawyers as “exceptionally vulnerable”, was removed to Germany in April 2017 despite the fact he was underage and had been living with his uncle and other relatives.
In response to the NSFW ban being enacted by Tumblr Staff, on December 17th 2018 I propose that we all log off of our Tumblr accounts for 24 hours.
The lack of respect and communication between staff and users is stark. Users have been begging staff to delete the porn bot outbreak, which has plagued the website for well over a year. The porn bots oftentimes send people asks and messages, trying to get them to go to a website full of viruses. They also spam advertisements on others posts.
Users have also begged that Tumblr ban neo-nazis, child porn, and pedophiles, all which run rampant on the site. The site/app got so bad that it was taken off the app store.
However, instead of answering the users, Tumblr has instead taken the liberty to ban all NSFW content, regardless of age. But users have already run into issues of their SFW content being marked as sensitive and being flagged as NSFW, not allowing them to share their work.
Not only does this discriminate again content creators, but it also discriminates against sex workers. Disgustingly, the ban will be enacted on December 17 which is also International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.
This ban is disgusting, and while I (and plenty of others) welcome porn bots and child porn being banned, the Tumblr filtration system is broken. It tags artistic work’s nipples as NSFW (when it is art), it tags SFW art as NSFW (when it is not), and does not stop the porn bots, neo-nazis and dozens of other issues.
This ban is discriminatory. This ban is ineffective. This ban is unacceptable.
To protest, log off of your Tumblr account for the entirety of November 17th. Log off at 12 am EST or 9PM PST and stay off for 24 hours. Don’t post. Don’t log on. Don’t even visit the website. Don’t give them that sweet ad revenue.
Tumblr’s stock has already taken a hard hit. Let’s make it tank. Maybe then they will listen to the users.
I know there’s a lot of tension after Tumblr’s new policy annouced for December 17th, but reblog this if you aren’t leaving Tumblr so that other blogs can know they aren’t going to be completely alone!
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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