Queen of Australia
While I'm no great fan of Betty Mk II, the thought of that slug of a man meeting her is too much.
(Small) Hands off !!
Proving that democracy is just fine in the internet era, a petition demanding that Donald Trump should be invited to make a state visit to the UK has passed 100,000 signatures – passing the threshold to be "considered" for a Parliamentary debate. The petition was set up in response to a much more popular one demanding that …
I'm signing it because of the utter hypocrisy of most of those who oppose Trump never saying a word against the bigoted states on that list. Lets be honest, how many of us would actually want to live under an Islamic theocracy Iran style ? It was also Obama who singled out these states as having a terrorist problem. So yes a temporary ban to improve vetting is ok. Meanwhile the genocide against religious minorities (and atheists) continues in many of those states on the list and yet no one protests against them. Utter hypocrisy.
The issue is much more complex than many people seem to understand (Obvs not reg commentards - we all understand it perfectly :) ) .
Its clear that Trump is a polarising person, the marmite of politicians if you will, but on the scale of dickish world leaders that the UK deals with he's not even in the top 5.
Personally I don't like his policies, his opinions or the persona that he projects in public however if we are going to start shunning world leaders because we don't like their policies Trump is an odd place to start.
As an example, T May last week met with the US's Trump AND Turkeys Erdogan... Which of the two has the worse record to date?
I'll just leave this here :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_state_visits_received_by_Queen_Elizabeth_II
A quick glimpse shows : Turkey, Russia, Ghana and others all of which have human rights records far worse than the US.
I'm not for a second saying that we shouldn't be discussing blocking visits from countries that we don't want to deal with, but its a bigger discussion than "Lets block trump" we should be saying lets set a bar.. a minimum level of [Insert some metric here*], any lower than that and we wont deal with you.**
If the UK is as in demand by the rest of the world as Farrage and the Leavers claim then maybe we will have enough sway for them to start making improvements just so that they can deal with the UK.
* Suggestions for metrics:
Does the country employ torture of prisoners?
Is there a fair legal system in place?
Do they employ the death penalty?
Are they fulfilling commitments to international organisations they are members of (NATO, UN etc)
and are they complying with any conventions etc they have signed up to?
** My personal opinion is that if we do this, trump will end up making the block list before the end of his term anyway.