Psychoactive Substances: Rolling UK Politics in The Neo-Con Era

am always a little well-disposed towards those who care about the way we're vandalising this planet, but i'm sure suzy will be along in a second with a list of deeply unpleasant personal characteristics

That's a very ...interesting opinion to hold, built as it is on sand and bullshit.

lol

hm? i was being sincere. what's the dirt on goldsmith

There are ways to solicit information without appearing to be snarky to the casual reader on her way to the shops, perhaps? Work on that.

(re: dirt - I GOT NOTHIN')

It must be crazytime to be a politician in the middle of a news maelstrom. Last week I met J Corbyn at a neighbourhood peace thing and spent a few minutes chatting with him about ways I could help his housing policy team (I have a council flat and several no-brainer-to-me ideas about how to get £650/wk BTL landlords out of blocks like mine). After a few hours, I checked Twitter to see whether or not this meeting had been ~documented~ and the news is you can find a video on the DM website where they show most of that, plus still photos of the same thing elsewhere. *party whistle*

You chatted about housing policy and it's covered as Why are women hot for Sex Pot Trot ?

(the Shreddies ad is a no go)

Yeah, dude was surrounded by women and if you look carefully you can see Camilla Long hanging around the edges, doing more work than I normally credit poshgirl journos with doing. Usually it seems they're paid in guineas (compared to my colleagues) for doing difficult things like appearing on panel shows and writing puffola for STStyle.

Has anybody seen the full version of the Electoral Reform Comission's HoL report? I can only find the 11 page ExSum which has a giant picture of the author as Page 2 and cartoon taking up 70% of the other pages.

I mean it's one thing to say that 10 peers were responsible for 75% of the claims but if these were e.g. Karren Brady or Melvyn Bragg then perhaps the reporting (or at least the comments and inevitable Facebook shite) would be subtly different.

I'm not sure that isn't the full report. All their documents seem to be fairly 'graphics-heavy'.

http://electoral-reform.org.uk/sites/default/files/House-of-Lords-Fact-Vs-Fiction%20%281%29.pdf

It's not necessarily a massive surprise that 62 of the 750+ Lords didn't get around to voting in at least one year.

The ten Lords will have cost about £24k each - which over the course of up to five years isn't an extraordinary amount.

If that is the full report then I despair, that's Red Top level political analysis aimed at the LCD.

I did find this, but there's a lot to wade through:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld/ldstat.htm

DWP admits making up quotes by 'benefit claimants' saying sanctions helped them

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03369/ids_3369210b.jpg

What kind of incompetence or scandal is going to get IDS out of the Cabinet? Are we talking dead woman/live boy sort of thing, , or something more banal?

If stuff like this goes on being under-reported or ignored then he'll be around for a while yet.

There is no other person alive today who deserves a plate of gone-off seafood for his tea tonight.

More than 2,300 died after fit for work assessment - DWP figures... yes, he's back.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03369/ids_3369210b.jpg

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03368/snaps_ids-about-ap_3368683a.gif

I'd only seen still photos of this until today and hand't realised how reminiscent it was of limmy's eckied dad sketch

cunts, the lot of them

is he saying 'yes! fuck daddy!' there

i'm sure that relentless poverty and anxiety is ruinous of people's health, but those bald statistics are near meaningless imo without comparative figures for claimants prior to the current system and without information about causes of death and a range of other factors

obv when confronted with IDS people will grab for the nearest stick but unless this info has been better reported/analyzed than i've seen then people shd keep shtum until they can pin this more tellingly to government policy

Ben Goldacre, on that point:

https://storify.com/bengoldacre/how-dwp-has-confused-everyone-by-releasing-the-rig

i don't always agree with Goldacre but there it is

this was publishes a few weeks prior to the new lords being announced:

Some facts need to be rehearsed: Ultimo was not a particularly successful business. It also outsourced its production to Asia. Ms Mone and her former husband utilised employee benefit trusts to avoid tax. Their company created few jobs in Scotland, and she was involved in bugging one of her employees.

When Douglas Anderson of Gap Group – a company employing 1,300 people with annual revenues of £150m – writes to the Prime Minister to protest about the appointment of Ms Mone to the start-ups role, amid rumours of her also being appointed to the Lords, were we meant to ignore it?

Perhaps we were meant to ignore him when he said: “Her businesses have been no more than excessively over-promoted PR minnows gaining unjustified acclaim due to the glamorous sector they happen to be in. There is no way, by any measure, that she is qualified to advise anybody on setting up a profitable business, because, quite simply, she hasn’t.”

http://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/13597457.Herald_View__Michelle_Mone_and_the_public_interest/

published*

is he saying 'yes! fuck daddy!' there

The more I look at it, the more convinced of this I become.

It's not quite "that bigoted woman", but Cameron just caught on open mic bitching about Yorkshire.
"We just thought people in Yorkshire hated everyone else, we didn't realise they hated each other so much"

Labour have chosen Sadiq Khan to lose to Zac Goldsmith in the London mayoral election.

Brilliant. To both previous posts.

Khan was the strongest candidate by a mile but i think the election press coverage is going to get very, very ugly.

If Ken is sensible he'll keep his mouth shut for the duration of the campaign.

If Goldsmith gets the nod then the Evening Standard is going to be even more unreadable than usual.

It will either way. They flung vast amounts of mud at Livingstone for standing on a stage with 'extremist preachers' - Khan has represented terrorists in court and actively campaigned for their legal and human rights outside of it. He has also got a long track record of rinsing the Met on racial bias cases which won't win him many favours either.

The new guy on Newsnight, James O'Brien, has a extremely strange manner. So laconic It's almost like he can't even be bothered talking.

DAVID CAMERON FUCKED A DEAD PIG

i'm so glad i checked twitter before going to bed

more worryingly, he's mates with James Del1ngpole

that's unnecessary googleproofing sure

anyway, well done charlie brooker. you called it, and all your fans will be eulogising you on social media for the next three months

A knighthood for the originator of the "Has the PM been casting pearls before swine?" line.

of all the times to be too busy to just constantly refresh my twitter feed :'(

I assume Iain Duncan Smith is the owner of the photo and that's how he's managed to cling on to his role for so long.

"Twitter fails on many levels but it is definitely the social media platform of choice when news breaks that the PM once fucked a dead pig"

c'mon it's a little pigfucking let's be cool about this guys.

this is the funniest shit ever. THE PRIME MINSTER FUCKED A PIG.

This is properly hilarious.

it feels politically significant

just in the sense of "yeah but you fucked a pig" for the next 5 years

jealous of people who still get to hear this news

What a publicity hog.

while this is going on the beeb leads with some positive Osbourne froth, fucking wankers.

anyway, well done charlie brooker. you called it, and all your fans will be eulogising you on social media for the next three months

― jordan amavero (imago), Sunday, September 20, 2015 10:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

or brooker had heard of this beforehand

^He says not.

Jeremy Corbyn turned vegetarian after a stint working on a pig farm. Is PMQs happening this week?