To be fair, the monarch in the UK is mostly a figurehead. To his credit (and I am far from a monarchist), Charles has been advocating for environmental causes for a very long time. Sometimes stupidly, but he does actually give a shit. I just don’t know that he has the power to do anything about it and the Tories certainly don’t care.
I don’t think he can dictate laws, but he can unilaterally dissolve parliament and force an election (same as other commonwealth countries, the queen did that to Australia back in 1975). So if it’s a big enough issue, he technically could use that as a threat, though it would be a pretty nuclear option.
I don’t know that this particular event, as heinous as it may be, warrants such an action. That should be reserved for, for example, parliament trying to side with Putin on Ukraine.
Yeah, the 1975 incident was because the Tories allowed the government to shut down because they refused to pass a budget. The speaker kicked out the PM, appointed a temporary one, passed the budget, then dissolved parliament entirely. However, the mere threat can sometimes be enough.
I’m talking about Charles, not Elizabeth. Charles has famously worked for environmental causes for a very long time. He’s often an idiot about it and supports misguided causes, but he’s not in favor of this sort of pollution. He does have to pay fealty to Sunak’s government though. He’s not going to go against any of their major policy initiatives even if he doesn’t agree with them.
Also, that link doesn’t say anything about environmental laws as far as I can tell.
There are two ways to think about rights: there are legal rights and then there are human rights. Legal rights are conferred by some piece of legal document (legislation, constitution or common law) that a person is able to seek legal redress if their right has been revoked or diminished. Then there are human rights - what we as individual humans believe that each humans should expect as a basic right. The two are not always aligned, predominately because human rights vary greatly from one person’s interpretation to the next.
I think what the company is probably (accurately) arguing is that there is no legal right to swim in the UK, as no specific document states this with any specificity, so the complainant isn’t due compensation or redress of behaviour under the law. This is what the courts will examine as they are the interpreters of law but not the creators of law.
Now, does she have a human right to swim there free of sewage? I damn well think so, and I don’t think that would be a controversial opinion either. The problem is that what we think the law should be and what it is are often different, because legislation can’t represent every view simultaneously. There’s no law that could be drafted that makes forced birthers and pro choice people agree - someone will always lose out.
All of this is to say that while fighting this in court is a shitty thing to do (pun very much intended), it makes sense based upon the way our legal system is set up. There is no incentive for private business to respect rights that are not legally conferred, but there is a financial incentive to do the ‘cheaper and technically legal’ thing. Until we overhaul our legal systems to be inherently protective rather than inherently exploitative, this behaviour will continue.
There’s no legal document because nobody was dumb enough to think that in the first place. If you have to write a law for everything people are allowed to do because some twat wants to argue in bad faith, then the legal system has no basis in reality. In fact, if that were the case, then there is a chicken/egg problem with laws in the first place.
That used to be the case, mostly because the EU had rules about that. Then Brexit happened and dumping of sewage prohibitions were one of the first to be tossed on the bonfire of rules. And joy was in the corprate greedy shriveled heart.
Does Washington have that law as well? That would mean that we protected the entire west coast of the main 48. I somehow suspect that neither AK or HI have such laws.
If I remember correctly yes with one exception for a beach just north of picnic point. That beach is to my knowledge the only privately owned beach in Washington because it used to be a ship salvage yard and several boats are still on the beach.
Yeah that seems to be the mod style here. Violence can be done to people in real life, but talking about how violence should be done back is unacceptable.
In cases like this, I favour the kind of poetic justice that only irony can deliver - leaving them strapped down to be waterboarded by one of their sewage outlets seems like a good option.
I respect where you’re coming from but you’ve got to remember that the lobby is on private property so you will get fucked to the full extent of the law.
England is becoming an autocratic hellhole. The massive amount of poverty that has befallen the country leaves only room for more corruption.
And as you see, the common man has to step aside so that daddy Warbucks can abuse natural resources in “this green and pleasant land”… which it won’t be for long…
…it’s the fucking Tories. I know you’re being sarcastic, but still.
That labour is unelectable is because they need a reform to fit the new situation rather than believing they still live in 2001. But between the two? The Tories are the ones who threw England into the gutter. Undeniably.
Labour will blame the Tories, the Tories will blame immigrant workers, sectors will fall, people become poorer and the Tories slap a big ol’ “mission accomplished” banner up.
Eh, no. It’s the Tories and their stupid, corrupt plan.
It’s the “liberal market” gone wild (extra heavy quotations around “liberal”), via the trojan horse that was their brand of nationalistic, xenophobic protectionism, which tanked many businesses because they suffered massive brain drain and gave allowances to special friends of MP’s b’cus br’ih’ish, proving this horse called BREXIT was really just a way to avoid EU regulation, to gams UK economy by giving sharks and rat faced bastards the keys to the economy, which really just resulted in making every sector of industry in England alone a rechid hive of scum and villainy. No lie, throw a rock at any given UK market, and you just threw a rock into a shit tornado. The big idea? The OG intent? Usurp Switzerland as the new tax haven, to make London City great again - but instead, they just ground pounded British economy.
Like to underline the severity, I don’t think this is applicable everywhere, but England needs to decomodify a whole crapton of properties, because having blocks upon blocks standing empty for over decades due to “investors” sitting on it for its overpriced, projected liquidity, while homelessness is on the rise, is not a good look. We might see the return of hobbles and urchins in our lifetime. Crime will increase with poverty, and England itself might slowly turn into Victorian cyber dystopia when they finally have to “DEAL WITH THE CRIME RATES”. Can’t wait for that little smorgus board of human rights violations.
Additionally, judging by the various other "monarchies* in the world, including Norway, Sweden and Denmark, which are constitutional monarchies, they sure do cost a fair deal of money, but think of them more as the nations top soap opera. It’s basically state sanctioned idols, and unless they’ve got a lot of power, is as harmless as The Kardasian’s… who are just privatised royalty if you ask me.
That is to say, we have exceptions, like the Franco’s, the Philippino and Thai monarchies, the various African monarchies (tho not all? Not sure here), etc. But again, it’s not the hard and fast rule you think it is.
Here’s where my concern lies: if you get angry when you hear “monarchy”, ambivalent when you hear “aristocracy” and go “huh” like that meme cat when you hear “the clergy”, I think you might need to rethink your perception of governance and power structures.
In this case, the British people have to finally kill off their aristocracy and be aware that the Tories are literally enabling an oligarchy run by a bunch of pinheads and needledicks who think they can “save the kingdom”, if only you cut more taxes and threw out more immigrant labour… WHICH IS WHAT CAUSED THE FUCKING PROBLEM TO BEGIN WITH!!!
Tories are trash, human garbage, and I don’t care who has to hear it.
Nooooo, trust me, you don’t need regulations, haha. We’re good people who would never do anything bad, promise. Why do we want those regulations gone? Just because you don’t need them, that’s all, I promise.
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