Who elected this clown ?

[A fool and his money.....]

1 minute ago, Gladys said:

I already have an Irish passport, one of the few advantages of being born in the island of Ireland.  Never used it though.

The protection of the Crown is the request on the first page of the passport.  You may be dismissive, but in extreme circumstances, it also gives a possible route to a higher authority and intervention  should our government completely lose the plot.  Never been done to our benefit, I think, but hypothetically it is there. 

Should the Government that we democratically elect lose the plot? And what happens if the Crown (of whom we have no democratic discretion whatsoever) lose the plot and decide to exert their power over us? What do we do then?

[A fool and his money.....]

3 minutes ago, Gladys said:

I already have an Irish passport, one of the few advantages of being born in the island of Ireland.  Never used it though.

The protection of the Crown is the request on the first page of the passport.  You may be dismissive, but in extreme circumstances, it also gives a possible route to a higher authority and intervention  should our government completely lose the plot.  Never been done to our benefit, I think, but hypothetically it is there. 

I'm dismissive of it because it's completely undemocratic and condescending. The idea that we are incapble of running our own affairs in a 21st century democracy and need the oversight of the Crown is the sort of colonial bollocks we should have left behind at least a century ago. 

The crown has a much bigger negative effect on our democracy than it ever will positive. 

[A fool and his money.....]

7 minutes ago, Gladys said:

I already have an Irish passport, one of the few advantages of being born in the island of Ireland.  Never used it though.

 

If you were born in Ireland you should be acutely aware of some of the atrocities the UK defence budget has been spent on. You may like to condone that sort of behaviour with your taxes, I certainly don't.

[Gladys]

1 minute ago, A fool and his money..... said:

Should the Government that we democratically elect lose the plot? And what happens if the Crown (of whom we have no democratic discretion whatsoever) lose the plot and decide to exert their power over us? What do we do then?

Theoretically, the Crown is not an entirely democratic thing, so we are no worse off than the UK. Also, there is a theoretical power to intervene if the government becomes unable to effectively govern.  Some would say some of the shenanigans during covid pushed our guys close.  The UK did it, with the Turks & Caicos quite recently I think, where they were put on a kind of 'watch list. 

[A fool and his money.....]

2 minutes ago, Gladys said:

Theoretically, the Crown is not an entirely democratic thing, so we are no worse off than the UK. Also, there is a theoretical power to intervene if the government becomes unable to effectively govern.  Some would say some of the shenanigans during covid pushed our guys close.  The UK did it, with the Turks & Caicos quite recently I think, where they were put on a kind of 'watch list. 

What a load of condescending shite. The empire is dead, get over it!

[quilp]

[Gladys]

3 minutes ago, A fool and his money..... said:

If you were born in Ireland you should be acutely aware of some of the atrocities the UK defence budget has been spent on. You may like to condone that sort of behaviour with your taxes, I certainly don't.

No, I am not acutely aware, just because I was born there does not programme my mind on the historic atrocities.  The more recent atrocities happened after my family left and I don't condone them, but nor do I have first hand experience of them. 

I think that it is shameful that the Bloody Sunday massacre has never been subject to a proper judicial review of the British army's actions.  But I also think it is shameful that the Irish government has no appetite to investigate the actions of Irish nuns in how they dealt with women who gave birth to children out of wedlock and in 'their care' and the death of some of those children.  

But that is irrelevant to this discussion, which has two aspects; use of 'our' airspace by the RAF to train Saudi pilots and the defence contribution.  I am not sure the two are directly linked  

 

[A fool and his money.....]

1 minute ago, Manx17 said:

Mentioning passports, I’m sure when the Uk changed the  immigration rules in 2012, and the island followed, the Manx were actually discriminated against. As the Manx never had the free movement to work or live in Europe like the Uk British. So when they put the new rule of the amount of money they needed to bring visa required family member to live with them. They had a loop hole  to move to a European country for three months ( including Ireland ) they could actually bring a visa requiring person back to the Uk needing nothing but showing them they lived in Europe. That might of changed now because of brexit. But a complete farce. 

What certainly has changed because of Brexit is our ability to visit the EU for longer than three months without a visa. A huge backwards step without any democratic input from ourselves. 

This is why investigating the Irish route towards consular assistance is even more worth investigating. Their passport is stronger in world terms than a British one, they are well represented throughout the globe with embassies and consulates and we wouldn't have to pay for the illusion of defence from imaginary enemies into the bargain so it would no doubt save us a packet.

The idea that the place would descend into a lawless free for all without oversight from an hereditary monarch in a far away land who lives in a palace with horse guards and rides in gold plated horse drawn carriages is as much of a fairy tale as it sounds. Think of the money we'd save without the Governor.

[Gladys]

11 minutes ago, A fool and his money..... said:

What a load of condescending shite. The empire is dead, get over it!

The empire may be dead but our constitutional relationship with the UK isn't,  get over it. 

[A fool and his money.....]

1 minute ago, Gladys said:

No, I am not acutely aware, just because I was born there does not programme my mind on the historic atrocities.  The more recent atrocities happened after my family left and I don't condone them, but nor do I have first hand experience of them. 

I think that it is shameful that the Bloody Sunday massacre has never been subject to a proper judicial review of the British army's actions.  But I also think it is shameful that the Irish government has no appetite to investigate the actions of Irish nuns in how they dealt with women who gave birth to children out of wedlock and in 'their care' and the death of some of those children.  

But that is irrelevant to this discussion, which has two aspects; use of 'our' airspace by the RAF to train Saudi pilots and the defence contribution.  I am not sure the two are directly linked  

 

The two are very much directly linked. Allowing our airspace to be used to train Saudi pilots is no better or worse than our taxes being used to bomb Syrian targets, without any possibility of democratic intervention at all. Both are wrong, both are undemocratic and both would be stopped if our senior politicians could only grow a pair.

[Gladys]

14 minutes ago, Manx17 said:

Mentioning passports, I’m sure when the Uk changed the  immigration rules in 2012, and the island followed, the Manx were actually discriminated against. As the Manx never had the free movement to work or live in Europe like the Uk British. So when they put the new rule of the amount of money they needed to bring visa required family member to live with them. They had a loop hole  to move to a European country for three months ( including Ireland ) they could actually bring a visa requiring person back to the Uk needing nothing but showing them they lived in Europe. That might of changed now because of brexit. But a complete farce. 

Wasn't the IOM 's status more to do with its relationship with the EU, ie not a full member? 

Britain did much the same in the 80s when it stopped issuing British passports automatically  to residents of Commonwealth countries. 

[A fool and his money.....]

2 minutes ago, Gladys said:

The empire may be dead but our constitutional relationship with the UK isn't,  get over it. 

Why get over it? It's the biggest affront to our democracy we have. Does having a constitutional relationship mean that it can never be questioned, never be reviewed, never be modernised to reflect a 21st century democracy?

 

[Gladys]

1 minute ago, A fool and his money..... said:

Why get over it? It's the biggest affront to our democracy we have. Does having a constitutional relationship mean that it can never be questioned, never be reviewed, never be modernised to reflect a 21st century democracy?

 

No, but it has to be done intelligently and with an understanding of what the relationship you want to change actually is. 

[Derek Flint]

Back on topic....

Some of this is embedded in the massive Al Yamamah arms deal with Saudi. If we want to be really picky, there will be bits in the Jets that are now being flown on the alleged Yemen missions that were made in the Isle of Man. Did we not interject at the time this was happening as we seem to have gone all moralistic. After all, I’m sure there is no bent money washing around on the Island so we are in a good position to start to wave this flag.

the RAF also take exchange pilots from around the world. I’m suspecting most of this alleged use of Ronaldsway is to do with diversion practice, nothing more.

maybe a bigger fuss needs to be made about the area off the North East point of Jurby and the air combat practice that Valley pilots regularly undertake. Can’t have that on our doorstep. What if they have Saudis on board.

Military jet noise was once described to me as ‘the sound of freedom’. We could do well to remember that. The world is a bad place, and regrettably if you only deal with nice people you rapidly run out of cash.

[TheTeapot]

7 minutes ago, Derek Flint said:

 the alleged Yemen missions

What is this?