Concrete Achievements

Tag: referendums

  • While I don’t think fair elections can be called undemocratic, it’s clear that the…

    While I don’t think fair elections can be called undemocratic, it’s clear that the Chilean constitutional assembly didn’t work. A sortition-based process + referendum could be a better alternative, with strong anti-gaming and anti-corruption measures. twitter.com/ClaudiaChwalis…

    It would certainly be an interesting facilitation task – though having facilitated a good number of CAs, I suspect you might get the long list of social rights again (though perhaps the process would be less open to attack from the right as being a leftist wish list).

    In general, the big principles are well suited to deliberative exercises if validated by referendum – the fine controversial detail perhaps less so.

  • Great piece by @samfr in by @jburnmurdoch but Brexit didn’t make the UK a more tolerant…

    Great piece by @samfr in thread by @jburnmurdoch but Brexit didn’t make the UK a more tolerant nation, it was already becoming one. If Brexit vote were today it would fail. This is why Cameron’s self-serving narrative about having to call the referendum is nonsense. twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/s…

    He could have held out and attitudes would have shifted. Perhaps not as much, perhaps not as fast, but it was moving in the right direction.

    Admittedly, while Brexit is terrible for the UK and personally very painful, I also think that for European unity, it has not been a universally bad thing. It’s certainly opening up possibilities that UK would have blocked.

  • Reminded (by a conversation) of this piece of classic British satire from *cough* 35…

    Reminded (by a conversation) of this piece of classic British satire from *cough* 35 years ago. One for the more mature politics geek. dailymotion.com/video/x2ohhib

    And I don’t think it’s me being a stereotypical “better in my day” type to say that I don’t think modern political satire really does the job this well.

    I had remembered Ted Heath as the old man who refuses to join in, but had forgotten James Goldsmith joining in with “the morning will come when the world is mine”. Which, as founder of the Referendum Party, it rather did.

  • Woke up to the trailer on @lapremiere: « Remember David Cameron?

    Woke up to the trailer on @lapremiere: « Remember David Cameron? The former British prime minister who launched the Brexit referendum because he was sure he would win? He’s back in the news because of a lobbying scandal – find out what happened to him at 0720 ». Can’t wait 😐

    Ten minutes of having David Cameron’s greatest hits played back to me by Belgian radio and I’m quite glad they’ve moved on to reviewing the latest Lucky Luke comic book.

    From Dodgy Dave to Lucky Luke (they didn’t say)

  • This is a good article but it’s not “squeaky bum time” or any other matey football…

    This is a good article but it’s not “squeaky bum time” or any other matey football metaphor. It is a serious supply chain crisis that is the deliberate consequence of the Government’s choices, and which voters in the referendum were told would not happen. twitter.com/Joe_Mayes/stat…

    The fact that the Government was elected and its leading members won a referendum makes it worse not better because the prospectus they sold was clearly false. The next few months are an accountability moment – and the UK political/media system needs to step up to it.

    As we’re seeing in the US, Hungary and Poland, political systems are not broken by individual actions, they are broken when systems don’t defend themselves by delivering accountability for damaging actions.

  • Links from the week of 24 August 2020

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Links from the week of 7 October 2019

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Links from the week of 7 October 2019

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Where to start with this idiocy?

    Where to start with this idiocy?
    1. The EU has taken Ireland’s side from day one and their unity has been impressive
    2. The Irish public are overwhelmingly behind the common position
    3. A hard border would be the consequence of the UK’s failure to uphold GFA twitter.com/JohnRentoul/st…

    4. The border would exist because of a campaign led by Johnson that lied about or ignored consequences for Ireland and UK
    5. Johnson could, today, abandon UK’s discretionary red lines and end the prospect of a hard border, but chooses not to

    6.The WA removes the prospect of a hard border but UK negotiated it then refused to sign it, in a campaign led by Johnson and Davis
    7. Ireland has no duty to save the UK from the consequences of its bad policies, and understandably low trust in its promises (see 6)

    8. After a no-deal, the ending of a hard border (and money and citizens rights) would be the opening demands before any negotiation on an FTA starts, so a hard border won’t be forever

    9. Even if, implausibly, the UK still refused to nego;tiate, a unification referendum and/or state collapse in the UK would take away a hard border by other means.

  • Where to start with this idiocy?

    Where to start with this idiocy?
    1. The EU has taken Ireland’s side from day one and their unity has been impressive
    2. The Irish public are overwhelmingly behind the common position
    3. A hard border would be the consequence of the UK’s failure to uphold GFA twitter.com/JohnRentoul/st…

    4. The border would exist because of a campaign led by Johnson that lied about or ignored consequences for Ireland and UK
    5. Johnson could, today, abandon UK’s discretionary red lines and end the prospect of a hard border, but chooses not to

    6.The WA removes the prospect of a hard border but UK negotiated it then refused to sign it, in a campaign led by Johnson and Davis
    7. Ireland has no duty to save the UK from the consequences of its bad policies, and understandably low trust in its promises (see 6)

    8. After a no-deal, the ending of a hard border (and money and citizens rights) would be the opening demands before any negotiation on an FTA starts, so a hard border won’t be forever

    9. Even if, implausibly, the UK still refused to nego;tiate, a unification referendum and/or state collapse in the UK would take away a hard border by other means.