Shock, awe: British government agrees that copyright has gone too far
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
The sad fact is that the British parliament could pass a law, which can then be overturned in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland leaving England screwed. Furthermore, MPs from those countries all get to vote in the British parliament, then their devolved equivalents can vote against it locally (except in England as there's no English parliament). This happened most recently with tuition fees but can apply to almost anything.
As a United States citizen I won't even try to summarize that. (The author is... err... somewhere in there, so I'll defer to him.)
There's tons of little loopholes all over the place. For example, the Isles of Scilly have a slightly strange legal status, and if they're not explicitly mentioned in a law, it doesn't apply to them (I was told this by someone at the council in St. Mary's but didn't ask for the specific statute).
To be honest, if a law is contentious enough for the scots to vote against it, then the devolved parliaments are just as likely push for their national reps to vote against it on the principle that it overrules them.
Problems with great grandparent:
-Campaign finance is heavily regulated in the UK and about half of it comes from the state.
-UK media is less of a political frenzy. They have other things to talk about, like the premier league, or human affairs.
-The closest thing to US liberals language-wise are the Liberal Democrats, who are part of government. The closest thing to US liberals politically are the Conservatives (e.g., combating climate change is high on the conservative agenda)
-Liberals aren't gaining any seats in polls
That's a few too many errors for sarcasm to work.
This is true, in that there are limits both locally and nationality to how much candidates can spend on election campaigns.
> and about half of it comes from the state
AIUI this is not true; political parties have to raise their own money not get it from the state. There is funding of political parties, (see Short Money http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Money ), but it isn't for the running of campaigns.
We already bought off the Labour party to get the Digital Economy Act passed so we're a bit short at the moment. Just to be clear we're not happy with those rascally LibDems one jot - liberal policies? In my government?
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