Yes. There was a documentary shown during Obama’s last days which included fly-on-the-wall Whitehouse footage snapped throughout the presidency. It showed the ridiculous amount of wheeling and dealing and pressure and tragic compromise needed to get anything at all through the hill. Even Obama was surprised to learn that quite early on in the presidency the Republicans simply decided that there was going to be no co-operation whatsoever. Every effort would be made to resist every single thing, no matter what, that he proposed. Of course the documentary was made with his people, and they must have shaped much of it. But there were occasional interviews with Republican senators and congressmen and they seemed happy to agree that the party line was extremely negative.
In a sense we’re lucky with the system we have. It breaks quite a few of the principles of what a ‘good’ constitution should look like. But over the years we have worked out checks and balances to protect ourselves from the worst consequences and we’ve ended up with a system which does allow a government to get its policies through, whether we like them or not. I like that. It means our politicians know they have no procedural excuses for non-delivery.
is what I’m sure you were trying to type but wrote ‘n’ instead of ‘cking grim if we allowed a bunch of racist pricks to post here’. Fucking autocorrect eh? It is a pain in the bollocks.
Much of which comes from the Lords, the irony of which, a growing section of society wants to abolish because it’s “undemocratic”. Perhaps they should rebrand to “Your elders and betters”
Yeah, I both love and hate the Lords in almost perfectly equal measure. I have a long-running internal debate going as to what one could replace the Lords in that would retain their good points and remove some of the negatives (mostly the hereditory and religious inclusions). I’m still not there yet!
Have you suggested to the government that in return for a contribution towards the hosting fees you would be prepared to replace the House of Lords with a sub-forum on here ? Surely we’re a representative slice of the right-thinking part of the population aren’t we ? The technology can handle polls. We’re open all hours. The mods could take it in turns to be Speaker (hell, we know enough about speakers !). What’s not to like ?
I’d have been amused to see how Corbyn engaged with Trump. But there’d need to have been a general election since the Brexit vote for there to have been any chance of that. It is interesting to see just how many of Ed Milliband’s doomed policies Queen Theresa has pinched though. Andrew Neil was saying probably 4 so far.
From what I’ve seen of him in his role as speaker he seems reasonably good at it, but I didn’t much rate him as an MP. He’s certainly correct when it comes to DT though, even if it is possibly a monkeys and typewriters moment.
