-TSS-

Manageable. The latest results give the Tories 318/650 which is 8 seats short of majority but as there were once again 7 Sinn Fein MPs elected and they always refuse to take the seats as that requires swearing the oath of allegiance to the Queen. Therefore and absolute majority is 322 seats.

Despite attempts to make the election a Brexit-vote 2.0 that failed as the Liberal Democrats, the most vehement anti-Brexiteers, did not perform too well. Had this been the end of a normal 5-year election term the result wouldnt be too bad for May. However, as she foolishly and greedily called this unnecessarily early election the outcome was a disaster. This election was winnerless. Why does the media portray the Labour-party as some sort of a winner? Yes, they performed better than expected but still finished second.

I guess that despite N-Ireland being part of the UK for the vast majority of "mainland" British people N-Ireland appears just as foreign as the Republic of Ireland does.

All this hassle only because May wanted a mandate of her own even though she had three years to do as she would have wanted. In the UK you dont need to win elections to become PM. You only need to be the leader of the largest party and the largest party can change its leader and therefore PM every week if it wishes to do so.

The result is totally inconclusive; no thinkable combination to form a majority. Therefore May caused a lot of harm by creating a situation of political instability when there was no need to even have an election for three years. I wouldn't be surprised if she drew the conclusions and quit. However, who is there to replace her?

The Tories will remain in power but weakened by losing their majority. If May had succeeded in her attempt to increase the majority she would be seen as a shrewd tactician but now she appears like a fool who has needlessly squandered a valuable majority. Despite theTories remaining in power the PM could be forced out. May may have to go. The newspapers will be having fun inventing headlines. May be, May be not.

According to the earliest exit-polls the Tories remain the largest party but lose their absolute majority. Therefore PM May's gamble has failed. She couldn't increase the majority and crush the Labour-party. A deserved setback for calling a totally unnecessarily early election.

About 60% of the population Qatar are foreign workers, basically slaves, from countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh for whom a large source of national income is remittances sent home from their citizens working abroad, in Qatar for example. If that money-flow is frozen those countries can have serious economic setbacks.

Where are all the world leaders now expressing shock, horror and condemnation? Where are all the facebook-profiles decorated with the flags of Iran?

Probably related to the crisis in the nearby Qatar.

If I'm not mistaken, please correct me if I'm wrong, this is not a serious issue in Canada. In Australia it is most definitely a serious issue and they even had a referendum on it and though the republic lost the referendum the issue has not died away. While in New Zealand there has never been any real republican-movement. Don't know really about some other Commonwealth-members as Jamaica or some of those other small Caribbean countries.

It appears that the perpetrators of the London attack were being watched by the security services and with the benefit of hindsight we could say that their attack should have been prevented. However, we must bear in mind that the number of people being watched is about 3,500 or thereabouts so it is difficult to prioritise which ones should be watched more. Let's remember that for any attack carried out several more are being regularly foiled by the authorities. There is really no other way to reduce the number of attacks than to intern all those people who are considered a threat and potential terrorists but that is not a realistic option unless a permanent martial-law is being declared , we must understand that.

The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan is the latest person to have a quarrel with Trump over Trump's tweets concerning the terrorist-attack in London.

In the wake of these recent terrorist-attacks and in the forthcoming election the most powerful weapon labour has against the Tories is to remind the voters how Theresa May when she was Home Secretary she sacked 20000 policemen. It has been said that as there are about 3500 radical jihadists under 24/7-surveillance it takes about 20-30 policemen to carry out that surveillance. Do the maths how many terrorists could be monitored with 20000 policemen. 20000 policemen is a considerable number of policemen even in a country the size of Britain.

It is ramadan-time and there is an election coming up in the UK. Both factors explain the current wave of terror-attacks.

If Corbyn were PM last night's terrorist-attack in London wouldn't have ended by the terrorists being shot as Corbyn has said he wouldn't allow it.

Islamophobia is a wrong term to begin with as phobia means fear. Islamonausea should the correct term; people are fed up with the nonsense of the medieval cult belonging to a desert just like another medieval cult we have just freed ourselves of in the western world.

See, even though the purpose of this thread was to be some "we are all the same, kumbaya dance around the bonfire together" yet even Canadians, which I suspect most posters of this thread are with the exception of myself, turn the thread into a vitriolic debate. If Canadians of all people, the most peace-loving people imaginable, can't have a civilised conversation about kumbaya dancing together around the bonfire how can you expect the same from anyone else..

If I were British, Danish, Dutch etc I just might support constitutional monarchy. There are very good arguments in its favour. For example the classic if it ain't broken don't fix it or the more important argument that monarchy stops politicians from becoming too powerful. Or I might not support such a system as it is hopelessly antiquated but I would still understand the views of those people who do support it if I were from a European country with a system of monarchy. The thing which I don't understand is that how could people in countries such as Canada, Australia or New Zealand accept a foreigner as their head of state. After all, you do regard the UK as a foreign country, don't you? Don't you? If we in Finland had the king of Sweden as our head of state and our army and the policemen had to swear an oath of allegiance to him I don't think that would go down too well. The funniest argument in this thread, but probably not at all uncommon in Canada, was the one about the foreign queen being the head of state stopping any idea of a military coup. If Canada were a country where milirary-coups happen every once in a while I don't think swearing an oath of allegiance to a foreigner would stop that from happening.

The way I see it the reason you have kept the present system is because there would be too much hassle to change it especially when there are many people in Canada who would oppose any change. Another reason is that the present arrangement of constitutional monarchy and Canada as a Commonwealth-member sets it apart from its giant neighbour and Canada is yearning for anything to make it a distinctly different country.

Two terms for one party in the government is the standard in your anglosphere countries. After two terms winning a third term requires that the alternative must be really lousy. Otherwise people have grown tired after two terms and let the pendulum swing again.

Actually it would be fun to see an old deluded socialist like Corbyn as PM in the UK. Those people who hate Trump are consoling themselves by saying that watching Trump as President is the best comedy ever. Corbyn as PM would not be far behind in terms of comedy-value.

I kind of agree with you; if monarchy didn't exist nobody today would want to invent such a system. On the other hand, in all the European countries where the monarchy still exists it is a very popular system, far more popular than any suggestions to move into a republic. If they are fine with it then who are we to judge? I personally think that as it is a medieval institution from time when people seriously believed that monarchs were chosen by God to reign over them and that gave them their authority. Nowadays when nobody believes such claptrap the whole institution is a joke and the insistence with which people want to cling onto it is somewhat amusing.

On the average conservative parties win elections in various countries because they have a better reputation of maintaining good economic policy than their rivals. In some countries that reputation is deserved while in others it is not. However, people tend to dislike conservatives when they start intruding people's private lives. For some people that intrusion is enough to make conservatives lose elections. For others, conservatives still win elections despite poking their noses where it does not belong, not because of it. I don't think conservatives have ever lost elections because people would be thinking that they haven't poked their noses enough into people's private lives.

For Puerto Ricans keeping things as they are is still the better alternative than the other two; becoming a sovereign country or becoming a full US-state.