Catalan Election Spanish Police Again

[bovril]

On 10/5/2017 at 17:16, Webbo said:

 

Can somebody tell this bloke's hair dresser that John Lennon is dead and it's not 1964 any more.

"In an independent Catalonia, penis size will grow this much."

[GaelicFox]

Will Queen’s Road be the Catalan District for the East Midlands ! 

[Guest MattP]

10 hours ago, Sampson said:

I'm waiting for Corbyn to pipe up on the issue.

 

There's really no other option May could've taken. You cannot really say you support an illegal referendum (in which so many people abstained so it's clearly not a fairly representative result anyway) in a fellow Western country

Exactly, can you imagine if we had became the only country in the World today to support this? We would look ridiculous. 

[Dr The Singh]

32 minutes ago, MattP said:

Exactly, can you imagine if we had became the only country in the World today to support this? We would look ridiculous. 

We've supported freedom movements with less justification

[Strokes]

2 minutes ago, Dr The Singh said:

We've supported freedom movements with less justification

Not in democratic countries though, i dont think.

[Dr The Singh]

Just now, Strokes said:

Not in democratic countries though, i dont think.

That makes it right then? Russia is democratic.

 

Were just another useless whore who pimps ourselves as righteous when we see fit........it's all about power and the ££££££'s.

 

Every nation or people should have a right to self determination.  In this case, it's not in Britian interest, so we won't support it however eg Tibet we wholly support it because China is the enemy.  It's all bullshit politics

[The Doctor]

29 minutes ago, Dr The Singh said:

That makes it right then? Russia is democratic.

 

Were just another useless whore who pimps ourselves as righteous when we see fit........it's all about power and the ££££££'s.

 

Every nation or people should have a right to self determination.  In this case, it's not in Britian interest, so we won't support it however eg Tibet we wholly support it because China is the enemy.  It's all bullshit politics

But does a sham referendum boycotted by one side of the debate amount to "the will of the people^TM" and as a result a message of self-determination? Not really.

[Dr The Singh]

Just now, The Doctor said:

But does a sham referendum boycotted by one side of the debate amount to "the will of the people^TM" and as a result a message of self-determination? Not really.

I didn't say that, nor did I say the Catalan vote was legitimate.

 

The right thing to do is to use process to determine the rights of the people, we did it with Scotland, something Spain is not willing to do.

 

Our posture reflects the shit nature of politics

[The Doctor]

1 minute ago, Dr The Singh said:

I didn't say that, nor did I say the Catalan vote was legitimate.

 

The right thing to do is to use process to determine the rights of the people, we did it with Scotland, something Spain is not willing to do.

 

Our posture reflects the shit nature of politics

There's a difference between supporting their right to have a vote, and supporting the declaration off the recent vote, which is what was being talked about.

[Dr The Singh]

Just now, The Doctor said:

There's a difference between supporting their right to have a vote, and supporting the declaration off the recent vote, which is what was being talked about.

I know that, my initial point had nothing to do with that.  My point was quite clear we've supported freedom movements for less, and in this situation we've made a conscious decision to make a statement. 

 

We could have kept quite, we could have done other things....from a historical and neutral point of view the British government will back the Spanish stance of totally taking powers back from the Catalans, that for me stinks of  the shitty nature of politics.

[The Fox Covert]

It has come to this, if Catalonia can manage to govern itself, however legitimate or illegitimate in the eyes of the Madrid government, they are more than half way to getting what they want. If the Catalonian government can collect taxes, the police answer to them and the trains, buses, factories and hospitals continue to run Madrid will eventually be forced into accepting a fait accompli and they will just have to accept it. Can't see Madrid sending in the military and attempting to govern by force as it will probably cause escalation into full-scale civil war. 

[Sampson]

1 hour ago, Dr The Singh said:

Russia is democratic.

 If you consider one side controlling the country's entire media, only giving himself positive coverage and not the opposition and not allowing fair debate or equal coverage, then arresting or even poisoning any political opponents, democracy. Then yes, Russia is democracy and so is China and North Korea...

[Sampson]

1 hour ago, Dr The Singh said:

I know that, my initial point had nothing to do with that.  My point was quite clear we've supported freedom movements for less, and in this situation we've made a conscious decision to make a statement. 

 

We could have kept quite, we could have done other things....from a historical and neutral point of view the British government will back the Spanish stance of totally taking powers back from the Catalans, that for me stinks of  the shitty nature of politics.

Not at all.

 

We'd be opening Pandora's Box by not supporting Spain.

 

You're basically allowing free separatist movements to rise up based on a minority if this happens.

 

What happens now if say, a small proportion of Cornwall wanted independence. They'd just have to say they were having a vote, no one who wanted it would vote because it'd be illegal and still provide credence if it went through. So only the people who want out vote and then it goes through? So Cornwall now has to be independent? That's nonsense.

 

Everyone having the right to self-determimation was a UN law which referred to colonial times, it didn't mean regions of a country could just declare independence willy nilly, because a minority in that region wanted them to - when the polls clearly showed before the election that the majority wanted to remain part of Spain. That's just silly, They'd be chaos if that was allowed to happen.

 

We've supported freedom movements  for minority groups when totalitarian regimes were subjecting a minority to oppression, rightly or wrongly. Not to my knowledge when a fairly democratically elected government is not oppressing any minorities and a minority of that region just decide they want independence in an unfair vote. (And I mean before the vote, obviously the Spanish government's reaction to the vote with violence was horrible and should be condemned).

[Buce]

1 hour ago, Sampson said:

Not at all.

 

We'd be opening Pandora's Box by not supporting Spain.

 

You're basically allowing free separatist movements to rise up based on a minority if this happens.

 

What happens now if say, a small proportion of Cornwall wanted independence. They'd just have to say they were having a vote, no one who wanted it would vote because it'd be illegal and still provide credence if it went through. So only the people who want out vote and then it goes through? So Cornwall now has to be independent? That's nonsense.

 

Everyone having the right to self-determimation was a UN law which referred to colonial times, it didn't mean regions of a country could just declare independence willy nilly, because a minority in that region wanted them to - when the polls clearly showed before the election that the majority wanted to remain part of Spain. That's just silly, They'd be chaos if that was allowed to happen.

 

We've supported freedom movements  for minority groups when totalitarian regimes were subjecting a minority to oppression, rightly or wrongly. Not to my knowledge when a fairly democratically elected government is not oppressing any minorities and a minority of that region just decide they want independence in an unfair vote. (And I mean before the vote, obviously the Spanish government's reaction to the vote with violence was horrible and should be condemned).

 

We supported the separatist nations in the former Yugoslavia.

 

 

 

[Alf Bentley]

19 hours ago, Strokes said:

Identity and sovereignty is more important to some.

 

True. Same argument people make for Brexit.

 

But I wonder how keen on boosting identity and sovereignty through independence the Catalans would be if Catalonia was poorer than the rest of Spain and not richer?

Brexiteers point out that the UK is a net contributor to the EU and they don't want to subsidise the development of Greece, Slovakia or wherever. Some Catalans make the same point: that Catalonia is a net contributor to Spain. They want to take back their wealth and taxes for use in Catalonia, not subsidising under-developed rural regions like Andalusia or Extremadura or regions badly affected by deindustralisation like Asturias or the Basque Country. In part, it seems to be a reactionary, selfish kind of nationalism. Maybe one day London & the SE will take the same view and become an independent Anglia, incorporating the Kingdom of Kent? Maybe they won't want to lazy backward scroungers in Leicester, Mercia, Northumbria etc?

 

Also, what is the nature of this Catalan identity? Valencia, Mallorca and various places down the coast have essentially the same language (variants on Catalan) and have spent a lot of history tied together.

For that matter, before Spain was unified, for centuries Catalonia was part of the Kingdom of Aragon (which even incorporated Sardinia and parts of Italy and Greece). Yet there's no talk of involving Valencia, Mallorca or Aragon in this secession.

Anyway, surely distinctive identities can exist and be promoted within a larger entity - through greater devolution, be that within Spain or the EU?

 

There's obviously a trend towards nationalism of various kinds, with Brexit, Trump, Russia and nationalism in various European countries. I wonder if some of it is down to people feeling insecure in this daunting world where change happens so rapidly, so much has gone global and people or even democratic institutions exercise so little control. In view of the globalisation of economics, finance and realpolitik, facilitated by high-speed communications, nationalism just seems to me like someone shooting themselves in the foot so as to prove that they are independent and in control.

 

Throughout our mature capitalist world global corporations are growing, expanding and merging to gain in competitiveness, power and influence and to lose the excess cost of duplicated back-office functions.

In response, people and nations are acting to make themselves smaller and less powerful, less able to cut a good deal with those corporations, more likely to be played off against one another.

All over the world, nations are shouting: "Look at me! I've shot my foot off! That will show the Gods that I'm independent and in control!"

[Webbo]

23 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

 

Also, what is the nature of this Catalan identity? Valencia, Mallorca and various places down the coast have essentially the same language (variants on Catalan) and have spent a lot of history tied together.

For that matter, before Spain was unified, for centuries Catalonia was part of the Kingdom of Aragon (which even incorporated Sardinia and parts of Italy and Greece). Yet there's no talk of involving Valencia, Mallorca or Aragon in this secession.

 

I was in Barcelona a few days before the vote. There was a map in the window of the offices of some independence movement that included Valencia and the Balearics. Obviously I can't read Catalan so I don't know the context but it appeared like including them was the plan.

[Alf Bentley]

8 minutes ago, Webbo said:

I was in Barcelona a few days before the vote. There was a map in the window of the offices of some independence movement that included Valencia and the Balearics. Obviously I can't read Catalan so I don't know the context but it appeared like including them was the plan.

 

That's interesting. But I assume that it must have been a particular faction as the referendum didn't include Valencia or the Balearics and the independence declaration related only to Catalonia, as I understand it.

[Dr The Singh]

4 hours ago, Sampson said:

 If you consider one side controlling the country's entire media, only giving himself positive coverage and not the opposition and not allowing fair debate or equal coverage, then arresting or even poisoning any political opponents, democracy. Then yes, Russia is democracy and so is China and North Korea...

Mate a large proportion of nations are the same, that includes the likes of India, Pakistan but UN and the world considers them democracies, so I'm not disagreeing just stating a universe agreed fact

[Sampson]

2 hours ago, Buce said:

 

We supported the separatist nations in the former Yugoslavia.

 

 

 

Which was a totatilitarian Communist state. Not sure how that refers to a modern Western democracy.

[Dr The Singh]

6 hours ago, Sampson said:

Not at all.

 

We'd be opening Pandora's Box by not supporting Spain.

 

You're basically allowing free separatist movements to rise up based on a minority if this happens.

 

What happens now if say, a small proportion of Cornwall wanted independence. They'd just have to say they were having a vote, no one who wanted it would vote because it'd be illegal and still provide credence if it went through. So only the people who want out vote and then it goes through? So Cornwall now has to be independent? That's nonsense.

 

Everyone having the right to self-determimation was a UN law which referred to colonial times, it didn't mean regions of a country could just declare independence willy nilly, because a minority in that region wanted them to - when the polls clearly showed before the election that the majority wanted to remain part of Spain. That's just silly, They'd be chaos if that was allowed to happen.

 

We've supported freedom movements  for minority groups when totalitarian regimes were subjecting a minority to oppression, rightly or wrongly. Not to my knowledge when a fairly democratically elected government is not oppressing any minorities and a minority of that region just decide they want independence in an unfair vote. (And I mean before the vote, obviously the Spanish government's reaction to the vote with violence was horrible and should be condemned).

Bullshit, your imagining things, there are for eg in India 13 separatist movements.  No fookers is comparing the Catalonian movement to anything else.  Everybody or nation should have the the right to self determination.....this is the right thing to do, so if a minority has a vote they will lose

[Sampson]

7 hours ago, Dr The Singh said:

Bullshit, your imagining things, there are for eg in India 13 separatist movements.  No fookers is comparing the Catalonian movement to anything else.  Everybody or nation should have the the right to self determination.....this is the right thing to do, so if a minority has a vote they will lose

Yes of course for nations it is, but Catalonia hasn't been a nation for about 900 years. It's a region of Spain and was part of Aragon before that. It absolutely is comparable to Cornwall or Texas or someone starting a seperatist referendum without government permission.

 

 You're agreeing with me then with the amount of seperatost movements - But does anyone recognise those 13 separatist movements? No of course they don't.

 

It's not the right thing to just allow regions to seperate as soon as the get 50.00001% of the voting population on their side at all - else countries would be separating all the time as the natural ebb and flow of opinion takes place -to take it to a logical extreme - my cul-de-sac has 10 houses on it - if we managed to get 6 of those households to create autonomy could we declare ourself a seperate nation? How do we define the borders of these votes at any rate anyway? Isn't there also insane potential for gerrymandering in these votes?

 

And how often do you vote? Elections aren't free - they're expensive to run. Who decides when elections should take place and how often?

 

And even if it were - the polls before the election in which the pro-union side boycotted showed a very mixed bag probably overall suggesting the majority of Catalonia wanted to remain as part of Spain - so how does that even support your argument? Not to mention there's incredible risks with regards to nutty nationalists forcing and intimidating people pressuring others just to get to 50.00001% of the vote.

 

Absolutely no country in the world will recognise Catalonia as a seperate nation and rightly so - they haven't earnt the right to self-determination at all as the majority of Catalans boycotted the vote and we absolutely should be supporting Spain in this instance - just as every other country will be.

[Harry - LCFC]

4 minutes ago, Sampson said:

Yes of course for nations it is, but Catalonia hasn't been a nation for about 900 years. It's a region of Spain and was part of Aragon before that.

 

 You're agreeing with me then with the amount of seperatost movements - But does anyone recognise those 13 separatist movements? No of course they don't.

 

It's not the right thing to just allow regions to seperate as soon as the get 50.00001% of the voting population on their side at all - else countries would be separating all the time as the natural ebb and flow of opinion takes place -to take it to a logical extreme - my cul-de-sac has 10 houses on it - if we managed to get 6 of those households to create autonomy could we declare ourself a seperate nation? How do we define the borders of these votes at any rate anyway? Isn't there also insane potential for gerrymandering in these votes?

 

And how often do you vote? Elections aren't free - they're expensive to run. Who decides when elections should take place and how often?

 

And even if it were - the polls before the election in which the pro-union side boycotted showed the majority of Catalonia wanted to remain as part of Spain - so how does that even support your argument? Not to mention there's incredible risks with regards to nutty nationalists forcing and intimidating people pressuring others just to get to 50.00001% of the vote.

 

Absolutely no country in the world will recognise Catalonia as a seperate nation and rightly so - they haven't earnt the right to self-determination at all as the majority of Catalans don't want it and we absolutely should be supporting Spain in this instance - just as every other country will be.

The reason why your cul-de-sac shouldn't be allowed to declare independence is because it isn't a 'natural' political unit.

 

A city can be thought of a self-contained community. Creating a border through a city would harm the many links that exist within it. There are cases of this happening in the real world, for example, in Jerusalem and also in towns on the Benin-Nigeria border and in both cases you have divided, less free communities. The Jerusalem border is probably a necessity but we would hardly consider it the ideal situation. So trying to break settlements down into different states is a bad idea for that reason.

 

Also, states have to be of a certain size in order to function properly. Your cul-de-sac wouldn't be able to carry out basic government duties like criminal justice, road maintenance, foreign policy etc. Indeed it would be relying on the services provided by Leicester City Council. The smallest possible political unit in our neck of the woods is the city of Leicester itself (although the county of Leicestershire probably works better). Attempting to divide into smaller units would be unworkable as the government wouldn't have the resources to operate.

 

To be clear, I don't recognise the recent referendum in Catalonia as a mandate for independence. It was illegal, it was disrupted, and it was considered illegitimate by a large proportion of voters. What is needed is a proper referendum to find out if a majority of Catalans support independence or not.

 

[Guest MattP]

Hard to think they would actually win a referendum, the Spanish should give them one looking at this. (I confess I hadn't looked at the results properly) - Over 3 million didn't vote and you expect the vast, vast majority of those to be "no" voters.

 

Results

	Votes	%
Yes	2,044,038	92.01%
No	177,547	7.99%
Valid votes	2,221,585	97.17%
Invalid or blank votes	64,632	2.83%
Total votes	2,286,217	100.00%
Registered voters/turnout	5,313,564	43.03%

[Finnegan]

1 hour ago, MattP said:

Hard to think they would actually win a referendum, the Spanish should give them one looking at this. (I confess I hadn't looked at the results properly) - Over 3 million didn't vote and you expect the vast, vast majority of those to be "no" voters.

 

Results

	Votes	%
Yes	2,044,038	92.01%
No	177,547	7.99%
Valid votes	2,221,585	97.17%
Invalid or blank votes	64,632	2.83%
Total votes	2,286,217	100.00%
Registered voters/turnout	5,313,564	43.03%

 

The Spanish enormously cocked up from start to finish. 

 

Almost every action they've taken has been an enormous faux pas to give Catatonia more of an edge. 

 

Declaring their vote illegal, sending in the police to kick the shit out of everyone, cancelling their autonomy, taking control. 

 

Jesus. It's an actual clusterfvck of "how NOT  to avoid mass rebellion."

 

Should have just given them a legal referendum in the first place, had faith in it failing and then gone "ah well, diddums" like we did with the Scotch. 

 

It's almost like Spain WANTS Catalonia to leave for Christ sakes. 

[Guest MattP]

I think cock up is an understatement, the way they reacted to it was mental.

 

I can see why the Spanish are pissed off, for years Catalonia (partly because of the supression under Franco) has seen huge amounts of investment from the government coupled with massively discounted food and now they are reaping the benefits of this some of them want to leave, it's not going to get any better mind, Puigdemont is probably going to be going to jail as well assuming he comes back from Belgium, although that's looking more and more unlikely if the stories are true that the Flemish MP's want to give him some sort of asylum.

 

Despite all this support for Indy seems to be dropping, I also thought it would go the other way, El Mundo yesterday did it's first polling for the December elections and it predicts only 42.5% of seats to be won by pro-Indy parties (down from 47% in 15') and 43.4% to  to the Unionists ( https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-politics-catalonia-poll/hundreds-of-thousands-march-for-unified-spain-poll-shows-depths-of-division-idUSKBN1CY072 ), so now we have the ridiculous notion that the seperatists could boycott these elections

 

A complete and utter mess. Even as a keen Brexiteer I've got to say issues that divide a nation so closely probably shouldn't be sent to national referendums anymore, they just cause an rift with such strong feelings they will take generations to heal, the EU was probably always going to implode eventually.