Seriously, though, what is that on Nicola Sturgeon's head?

[Berni]

It can't be her actual hair, can it?

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/10/15/1413384789016_Image_galleryImage_Nicola_Sturgeon_d eputy_Fi.JPG

[Classic Jorge]

"Ach, Frau Sturgeon did not vash ziz, it smells of ze Buckfast unt ze Deep Fried Kebab"

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K5J_Dyyq2sg/TlQaXPb54VI/AAAAAAAAA94/ysNKRTnFlz0/s1600/183771d1291976733-lustige-bilder-videos-fotos-witze-angela-merkel.jpg

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

Penny, Monroe, Sturgeon with Harperson clinging to her place by her fingernails. Toynbee's right out, she's gone a bit sour-faced.

[Classic Jorge]

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

Your mum has experience at the back.

[Classic Jorge]

Prince tried that and all he got was a bad back

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

I'm no appeaser.

[Classic Jorge]

Obviously that's worse

[Berni]

with the SNP. Can he not see it would not only destroy the union at a stroke, but would be to the utter ruination of his party for decades?

[Berni]

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

Particularly the Union. Why would a bitter, UK-hating Marxist care for the Union?

He'll do a deal with the SNP if it gives him a shot at power. He'll consider that once he's in, they can do some more tweaking of electoral boundaries and steal even more money with which to bribe the feckless. Once the baying mob have been sated with the blood of 'the rich', he'll count on them being his forever.

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

[Berni]

could survive any length of time.

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

And the sitting government is going to choose who chairs the committees which interpret, and so on.

We're in the **** up to our armpits. I've been saying it for months.

[Berni]

Indeed, every attempt by government to control it would make it immeasurably worse. I think you would see genuine civil disobedience and unrest from people who actually matter in such a case.

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

We've suffered that situation for years. No one cares.

[Classic Jorge]

Rather than a fat envelope of contradictory parchments tied together with string in a netto carrier bag

[Berni]

An avowedly nationalist, separatist party dictating laws over those from whom it both wishes to be - and legally is - separate would be intolerable.

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

It's true that it's a great system for those of a more reactionary bent.

[Berni]

Constitutions are, by nature, mutable. Writing down a set of rules in 2015 doesn't mean it will still apply sensibly in 2055, let alone 2115. They are all just messes of fudge and compromise.

[Classic Jorge]

I mean, it's only 400 years since Hobbes laid this sort of thing out in the first place

[Classic Jorge]

We need one, especially if we're going to leave the EU. If we're staying in, not so much.

[Berni]

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

What sort of argument is that? 'Hobbes said so'. f**k Hobbes, f**k him and Calvin.

We have a perfectly adequate contract between us, as subjects, and Her Majesty, embodying the state. We do as we're told and she generally leaves us alone to get on with it.

It works just fine.

[Berni]

Let's not forget that the Volstead Act imposed an amendment banning the sale and consumption of alcohol in the US - a gross infringement of civil liberties with ruinous consequences. The constitution did absolutely nothing to prevent it.

[Classic Jorge]

[Classic Jorge]

I dont understand why everybody is so scared of people having righ......oh yes I do, sorry

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

or little tinpot states like Ireland might need such fripperies because they are insecure and childlike.

We have Her Majesty, anointed by God, to protect and govern us wisely. :thumbup:

[Berni]

How am I doing that without a codified constitution? Am I a magic man?

[Classic Jorge]

If we had proper constitutional rights do you think it'd be so easy to introduce secret trials without juries where the defendant doesn't even get to know what they are charged with, let alone be able to attend their own trial?

We need to do some basic setting out of our rights as citizens. We need fundamentals enshrined.

[Classic Jorge]

She only gets involved when its her own interests at stake, then she just vetoes what she wants and doesn't even have to tell us. They're busy fighting to keep any of that stuff out of the public eye by precluding the royals from any FOI responsibilities, for instance.

Do we not have a right to know? Should we not have a right to know?

[Berni]

Lincoln first suspended Habeas Corpus during the Civil War - regardless of the constitution. US citizens of Japanese origin were interned without trial in WWII - the constitution did nothing.

Extraordinary measures are always available to the executive in a time of war, threat or crisis. Constitutions are just a fig leaf, masking the large and prickly genitals of the state.

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

She leaves you alone. Indeed, they way things are going, we probably need a bill of rights for Her Majesty to protect her from the likes of you, rather than the other way around.

[Classic Jorge]

It's nonsense, dangerous undemocratic nonsense. It's almost as if there's some doctrine of constant war in order to justify this sort of thing.

[Classic Jorge]

She has that right already, anything that goes against her interests or those of her family can be vetoed by her without any form of accountability or explanation.

It's not right, it's not fair and it wouldn't happen in a proper democracy.

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

Sorry... but :hehe:

You're living in one of the wealthiest, most free, liberal, successful, benign societies which has ever existed. It's not perfect, but it's pretty bloody amazing.

Some silly constitution, (the contents of which you wouldn't agree with anyway) won't change anything.

[Classic Jorge]

[redgunamo]

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

You risk chucking away the baby with the bathwater if you can't see that said bathwater is pretty bloody marvellous.

[Berni]

those things we are spectacularly lucky to have, like domestic peace, stability, prosperity, recourse to law, etc, etc. None of that just stays where it is without effort, you know? We are in a perpetual struggle to maintain those things in the face of those who would wish us to be without them.

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

:-(

[Classic Jorge]

The average man or woman in the street is, if anything, less well represented than he/she was thirty or forty years ago. There's less provision of social infrastructure, less security and less opportunity - by all measures of social mobility this is true.

So I'd have to argue that we've in fact had it better.

[Classic Jorge]

We should just impose martial law and be done with it.

[Classic Jorge]

[Berni]

and freedoms have limits and that there are points at which those rights become impracticable because of larger and wider threats to the society at large.

Ultimately, though, all law is martial anyway, since it is only applicable by the implicit or explicit threat or use of the state's force. Nothing - no law, right or custom - is 'inalienable' without such force. To believe that a piece of paper keeps you safe is just childish.

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

There are issues in the detail. Overall, compared to any other system or period of history, we're living like pigs in ****. And we should acknowledge just how lucky we are to be doing so, and have some respect for our condition and the responsibilities we all have for maintaining it.

[Classic Jorge]

...society.

There is too much intrenched privilege and discrimination in this country.

[Classic Jorge]

You might be living like pigs in **** but the evidence would suggest fewer and fewer people are.

[Berni]

No discrimination or entrenched privilege there, is there?

The point is that a democratic constitution can only reflect the society and people who write it and whom it governs. Trying to impose a constitution on people that doesn't suit them won't work because they will simply vote to change it until it does. Alternatively, those people with enough money will use that money to pay for lawyers who can get it changed.

What I'm saying is that constitutions don't mould societies. Societies mould constitutions.

[Berni]

that doesn't mean the bottom are in any global sense poor.

[Classic Jorge]

And if societies mould constitutions how come we've not moulded ours, bar some fiddling around the edges of parliamentary terms and royal succession?

[Classic Jorge]

[Berni]

more egalitarian societies.

As to the UK, we have changed our constitution radically over many centuries, but simply not in the way you would have liked. One must therefore conclude that that is because we didn't really fancy it.

[Berni]

The average lower middle class family now has infinitely more disposable income, more consumer goods, more access to an affordable variety of food and drink, more foreign travel, better cars and any number of other things than their equivalent in the late 70s when I was a kid. From this, I'm going to conclude that they are better off than my family was when I was a kid.

[Classic Jorge]

Though given the last bill of rights we had enshrines the rights of only protestants to bear weapons sufficient for their class you'd have to say it could do with a little bit updating.

[Classic Jorge]

At best that's heavily qualified progress.

[Luis Anaconda]

Beauty of that metaphor, b

[Berni]

[2 Strikers?]

c**t that he is