Interesting Links for 20-10-2017

[andrewducker]

Smacking to be banned in Scotland (tags: children violence Scotland GoodNews ) Theresa May says 'being trans is not an illness' and pledges to reform Gender Recognition Act (tags: uk transgender lgbt Conservatives ) Dogs are trying to communicate with us, even if we don't know it (tags: dogs communication ) Why I keep being concerned about the

Comments

[gonzo21]

I honestly thought smacking was already banned in Scotland.

And yeah, I don't understand the mentality of people who say 'We need to have the EU believe we will walk away without a deal because they need to take us seriously'. Of course they don't take 'no deal' as a serious threat, it's the equivalent of a toddler throwing a temper tantrum in a supermarket, it's just embaressing to threaten that we'll all blow our own heads off with a shotgun if we don't get our way.

But hey. That's Brexit eh.

[kalimac]

But it is a serious threat. If things don't change, and change fast - which would probably require a change of government, and that's not going to happen that soon - exit without a deal is exactly what's going to happen.

The difference is, it's not a threat to the EU. If the UK wants to blow its own head off, the EU won't suffer that much, and it will have the supreme compensating advantage of discouraging anyone else from trying the same thing. They're not going to stop the UK from doing something stupid if it really wants to, and they've made that clear, and the UK really wants to.

[gonzo21]

I'm starting to wonder the extent to which hard brexiteers are being backed by Russian/Chinese/American money.

There seems to have been a lot of dirty money being spent by them during the campaign. And... it's increasingly to me looking like a foreign intelligence operation to wreck the UK and damage the EU.

[skington]

I've read that the sort of people who make money by swooping into a country that's on its uppers and making off with infrastructure cheap are backing hard Brexit.