ForenSix Opposition - Politics in the Soon To Be Former UK in Autumn 2020

alright i guess we might as well

lol nothing matters

but are we going to lol die?

I think that’s covered in the soon to be former UK

Cool, cool

Ah ok I see now nothing matters now

*Goes to the US, I hear they have an election soon*

joe no!! pic.twitter.com/7QS2GSDeKf

— wholesome on main (@InternetHippo) September 16, 2020

i regret to inform you that the data on who is going to die has been irrecoverably wiped

Nothing ever mattered, Alphie.

the six is the letters in chairman alph's name iirc

Six is the number of already-posted links he’s gearing up to post to the thread. He’s ready...

Jerutm Cribbtn was a secret Brexiteer!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EiBtlZ8WsAI7b1V?format=png&name=large

shocked that the great white hope of the people's vote is sanctioning this line

meanwhile i know it's been a few months since i've been on a train but i can't remember the last time i saw any graffiti on one

My trains are often graffitied tbf, I particularly enjoy some of the graffiti en route to work on the way as well, especially the “Southeastern are cunts” someone has thoughtfully sprayed on the side of a bridge.

This whole thing is sick, could do without the shadow justice secretary and the mcshitter reacting this way. Believe survivors (unless they’re not from your faction).

Shadow Justice Secretary doesn’t care about survivors is it? https://t.co/z0KhW9N7FQ

— Your Mum says Black Lives Matter (@judeinlondon2) September 16, 2020

Nothing ever mattered, Alphie.

― scampo italiano (gyac), Wednesday, 16 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

*goes on to post about internal factional Lab politics*

“Southeastern are cunts”

otm

Anyway yes this is the thread where we should see Brexit getting done. I'm excited!

Don't know much about this Athwal thing tbh but the extent to which he and his supporters keep referring to his family having gone through hell just seems quite dubious.

Great day to be in the Labour party, really covering itself in glory 🎶

EXCLUSIVE: Lesbian staffer quits Rosie Duffield's office over the Labour MP's 'overtly transphobic' opinionshttps://t.co/e94J2cVN63

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) September 16, 2020

That article was bad enough that I actually gasped out loud at one point, fair fucks to the staffer on walking.

Oh

I'm very pleased and relieved that the test result for one of my children came back negative this morning.

Thank you to the NHS hospital where my wife works for ensuring that their staff and family members have quick access to a test.

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) September 16, 2020

i feel like maybe there's a broader point he could make?

Not every marginal Labour MP is being kept in their position by the youth vote but Rosie Duffield absolutely is. Even if the Tories lose the next election they are going to win Canterbury back.

You’ll actually love to see it. I’ve seen so many activists angry at her behaviour since even before the election she was on TV slagging them off. Absolutely terrible person.

It's the petulant contempt in her response that rankles, along with everything else.

Duffield asked her staff member if, as a lesbian, she knew Sandi Toksvig.

Rayner doing great at PMQs: ‘get some skates on it!’

"The next time someone drives from London to Durham it will be for a Covid test" is a pretty good line in fairness.

yeah nice moves from Rayner

Rayner: What was the top priority for the cabinet this weekend? Restoring grouse shooting. It's good news for people like the PM's friend who paid for a luxury Christmas getaway to a Caribbean Island and funded his leadership campaign and just so happens to own two grouse estates

— Simple Politics (@easypoliticsUK) September 16, 2020

Guess now we know why we’re not seeing much of her.

Angela Rayner says she has a message from someone called Keir. He cannot go to work today because his family needed a test.

In new World Beating System news...

With some Londoners being offered local coronavirus tests only by entering an Aberdeen postcode, Matt Hancock has said that "people should take this seriously and not game the system"#MattHancock #TestandTrace #testing #Twickenham #governmenthttps://t.co/F4SR7pUrFp

— PublicTechnology (@PublicTech) September 16, 2020

love to game the system by doing a 1,100 mile round trip to get a covid test

It's gaming the system to pretend you live 500 miles away so it will offer you a test down the road, apparently.

Nev still speaking truth to power

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/sep/15/neville-southall-everton-keeper-boris-johnson-jk-rowling-loose-cannons?CMP=share_btn_tw

a genuine hero tbh

he's no Peter Shitlon!

I'm predicting a surge in the polling for Labour this and then when Keith the Cooler comes out of quarantine it'll dip back down to minus a few points behind.

Nev was always a real one tbf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XadLaAYKol0

"let's just level the playing field a bit"

(swings a lump hammer at Owen's right knee)

We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit.

Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period. https://t.co/Ecu9jPrcHL

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 16, 2020

Voting for Joe Biden now

A locked account I follow makes the excellent point that ofc the US doesn’t care that much about a trade deal with the UK, they don’t need to except as an extractive partner.

Going to need multiple ukpols threads at this rate

I’m hearing from a well-connected person that government now thinks, in absence of testing, there are 38,000 infections per day. Chris Whitty is advising PM for a two week national lockdown.

— Anthony Costello (@globalhlthtwit) September 16, 2020

A locked account I follow makes the excellent point that ofc the US doesn’t care that much about a trade deal with the UK, they don’t need to except as an extractive partner.

― scampo italiano (gyac), Wednesday, 16 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

We both follow this account too

Just stalking calmly as I normally do

👍👍👍

A good candidate for fucking off into the sun, here

Hey @joebiden would you like to discuss the Good Friday agreement? It is also called the Belfast Agreement so it doesn't offend both traditions. Did you actually know that? I was born in NI and I'm a Catholic and a Unionist. Here if you need help.

— Conor Burns (@ConorBurnsUK) September 16, 2020

Anthony Costello, thank you for your opposition.

I've been told by another insider I respect that Chris Whitty does not support a 2 week lockdown, so I'm pleased to correct the record.

— Anthony Costello (@globalhlthtwit) September 17, 2020

Also lol nothing matters

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/chris-grayling-ports-brexit-ferries_uk_5f625651c5b6ba9eb6e8ab0d

'No Ships' Chris Grayling To Be Paid £100,000 A Year To Advise Ports Company

Also the Mail putting the boot in (though this may partly be because the Sun has a several-page interview with Boris)

MAIL: Boris: we’ve failed #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/jEgWcHkEzj

— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) September 16, 2020

Grayling does have experience (of downing the odd bottle of tawny) tbf

That Mail headline suggests a bigger problem for the Tories, in that Johnson isn't just failing at delivering proper testing infrastructure, or failing to contain the rona. It's that he's failing to deliver for garden variety affluent middle-aged Tory voters what they want most of all from government - the ability to go about their lives in a perfectly atomised self-centred little bubble without anything really getting in the way. (That was part of the promise of Brexit as well, I'm sure).

Those people will probably turn out and vote Tory anyway but you probably don't want to piss off too many of them for the mood music alone.

It also suggests why the government might take a fundamentally dangerous approach to announcing a second lockdown.

Use of the phrase 'Good Friday', referring to the day that Jesus Christ was crucified before rising again, the most important event in the Christian calendar, may offend some traditions of Christianity.

it does bring back painful memories of the pubs not being open tbf

Ah now, we've abandoned that too, in the spirit of reconciliation and also because we really wanted to.

Why you gotta play that song so loud?
Because we want to! Because we want to!
Why you always run around in crowds?
Because we want to! Because we want to!

good to hear someone from the shadow cabinet calling for UC to be scrapped, you wouldn't be sure they were unequivocally opposed to fucking anything from the way forensick kieth talks.

are the pubs finally open on Good Friday? thank fuck for that

Christmas Day too, godlessness imo.

Ofcom has just told the 24,500 people who complained about a Black Lives Matter tribute on Britain's Got Talent to (I paraphrase) piss off because there's nothing to complain about. Well, they've taken eight pages to explain their reasoning but basically that's the gist of it.

— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) September 17, 2020

good job Ofcom

the real possibility of a pub lockdown over the Christmas period finally dawned on me the other day, i look forward to BAD THOUGHTS TRIGGER WARNING contemplating suicide along with the hundreds of thousands of other people living alone who won't be able to go see their families or indeed anybody else

Wasn't the Diversity thing the classic only a handful of people complained until the Mail (or whoever) ran an outrage piece about it a few days later and then thousands complained, most of whom probably didn't even see it?

As it happens:

Very few people complained following the original broadcast. Instead 96% of complaints about the show followed news articles *about the handful of original complaints*. Perhaps we need to stop outsourcing our culture war neuroses to television regulators on a weekly basis.

— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) September 17, 2020

Jim Davidson didn't like it and i wish i didn't know that

i'd be comfortable with everybody who made a complained being banned from watching TV for the rest of their lives

oh no

Boris's critics were right all along, says Toby Younghttps://t.co/8nw5m2tpbm

— The Spectator (@spectator) September 17, 2020

ET TU TOBE?

I feel like the Spectator and the Mail might struggle to come to the conclusion that if all these people were right in the first place, then maybe they were...?

NEW: Flutter, the gambling group that owns Paddy Power has hired former Labour deputy leader (and anti gambling campaigner) Tom Watson. Scoop from @alicemhancock https://t.co/STp02QYerj

— Matthew Garrahan (@MattGarrahan) September 17, 2020

At least it isn't bagging a column for The Observer

And I think to myself... what a wonderful world...

Flutter Entertainment, the betting group behind Paddy Power and Sky Bet, has appointed former Labour party deputy leader Tom Watson as an adviser to its board as the company seeks to improve its treatment of problem gambling.

Mr Watson, a vocal anti-gambling campaigner, will guide the company on best practice in its shops, marketing, customer service and anti-money laundering procedures.

Flutter said the final details were still being confirmed but that it had been in conversations with Mr Watson since late spring and that he would be paid a retainer of “less than six figures”.

lads i'd be happy to advise you about how not to make money out of people's misery for less than six figures

maybe start by not calling yourselves Flutter

The ultimate Matt Zarb-Cousin news story.

Less than six figures !!!???

£1,234,500 a year

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-54188766

Limiting pubs to 17 hour days. That'll do it.

Here’s the full clip of Jacob Rees-Mogg saying people speaking out about the difficulty of getting a Covid test should stop the “endless carping”. pic.twitter.com/vhUlimENa1

— Ben Kentish LBC (@BenKentish) September 17, 2020

Cummings will have this guy locked in a cupboard again if he isn't careful.

Endless carping reserved for lads with big lakes on their country estates no doubt

Also this:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-17/johnson-s-covid-test-shambles-threatens-u-k-economic-revival?srnd=premium

RIP A&E:

Patients will have to book slots in A&E by calling ahead first, ministers confirm https://t.co/S3G9p8km6M

— The Independent (@Independent) September 17, 2020

nothing says "emergency" like pre-booking

i..... what

i think, tbf, the idea is that you'll wait for hours to be seen at home rather than in A&E but ime of A&E most of the people who end up using it will be taking no notice of that whatsoever

meanwhile listening to BBC Radio i'd say that the rules on lockdown are irrevocably broken amongst gammons/red wallers/cunts of all stripes and nothing short of martial law is gonna persuade a bunch of these to make any effort not to spread the rona as suits them

I mean, death from the rona would do it.

Looks like we're not going up to Newcastle this weekend, then.

🧅🧅🧅🧅🧅

Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has phone number and passport details hacked after posting boarding pass on Instagram https://t.co/w099pNzmaQ

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) September 17, 2020

definitely feel like i'm seeing fewer masks around the place, almost like people think Spike 2 is inevitable so why try to prevent it

That story is like when Alan Partridge showed his credit card on THIS TIME (2019).

People now seem to think that following the rules is basically optional. Absolutely no idea what could possibly have happened to give them that idea.

Just hearing all these entitled dorks repeating "common sense" which apparently means "whatever's convenient for me"

Can't imagine where they got this from

If you call 111 to discuss a problem eg. spider bite blowing up your arm, they already make an appointment for you at urgent care, A&E’s cooler younger sibling. In my case I was given an 8pm appointment, arrived to Royal Free urgent care at 7.55pm, saw the duty doctor bang on 8pm and was out the door with a penicillin course and on the 168 home by 8.15 (which meant £1.50 round trip because of Hopper fares). My antibiotics were free, too, because the doctor had them in stock and the hospital pharmacy was closed.

That is very much dependent on where and when tbh, I remember getting seen at Moorfields relatively quickly when my GP sent me there & being really impressed with the whole thing. My father in law, though, who lives near us, had to sit in a chair in a&e for about 19 hours in hard chairs while they tested him because they didn’t have any space. They treated him as well as they could but he is in his 80s, I think, it is a lot to ask of someone that age who’s not well.

Ugh, that sucks for your poor FIL.

"People now seem to think that following the rules is basically optional."

Something like this.

This isn't how I'm living my life but I can get that the confusion and inconsistencies make it really difficult to get on board with the things we're being asked to do/not do. Like the "we'll celebrate Christmas" narrative after fucking over people hoping to see their families for Eid ... just makes things really messy.

👀
Ireland’s health service boss @paulreiddublin told briefing today
- “v senior officials in NHS” contacted him to see if Ireland “could help” UK with COVID lab tests

- & said UK’s test & trace system in “almost collapse”, “shutting down swabbing centres” via @colmomongain pic.twitter.com/XwtE5z2Fjb

— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) September 17, 2020

FT talking about a national lockdown over half term

That’s what they’re planning in Ireland as well supposedly

half term is five and a half weeks away, things could have already gone very wrong between now and h/t.

it's also not the same week everywhere in the UK?

EXCL: Channel 4 News has seen a leaked document which calls on care homes in England to accept patients who are COVID-positive from hospitals.

Again.👇

(Thank you to all who helped us make this report.)https://t.co/t1fBSQbrfs

— Lucia Walker (@luciajwalker) September 17, 2020

Could this more obviously be made a continuation thread for the other one?

We’ve hit all the main notes so far I think. Just need some last.fm reporting from the new Gambling ambassador and a leak about Labour deliberately undermining Corbyn

Ugh he was listening to Japan today ugh ugh ugh

https://www.last.fm/user/baggymp/

and "Nowhere To Run"

Enjoy this collage of former Labour MP Michael Dugher visiting a range of betting shops pic.twitter.com/vHQylHbYC2

— black lives matter (@jrc1921) September 18, 2020

was just thinking didn't Tom Watson succeed this fucker as CEO of UK Music? So that would mean now Watson has his old gig and the bookie one at the same time, lol!

Highly amused at The Sun's take on this btw

"the trademark of left-wing regimes" pic.twitter.com/OuHMIhnB4u

— 'Client Journalism' Expert (@ClientJournoExp) September 18, 2020

"middle-class cocaine use" 🤔🤔🤔

The Sun doesn't want to be a narc now???

just imagining some furious coked-up Sun hacks panicking that they're going to be drug tested, ha!

there would be a lot of nervous hacks with bottles of piss in their pockets!

When you've eaten a full sack of wet eggs. pic.twitter.com/kO0UfxDPFo

— Llew (@llewcid) September 17, 2020

lol! at last the perfect caption for that pic

Your compatibility with baggymp is Super.

You both listen to The Specials, The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Cure

Super my arse! He's not played one fucking song from Pornography.

Your compatibility with baggymp is Medium.

You both listen to Ann Peebles, Curtis Mayfield and Buzzcocks

This picture is going to keep me warm through lockdown II

Wow. Picture of the year. pic.twitter.com/3emgdDK7oR

— Mike Holden (@MikeHolden42) September 18, 2020

Why? I don't think I get what is special about the picture.

I don't get it either. Just looks like a bunch of blokes making decisions that negatively affect the lives of the public to me

Is that Phil Mitchell?

It’s hard being PM.

As a backbench MP, with his Daily Telegraph column netting him £275,000 and lucrative speaking engagements, he was earning well in excess of £350,000 a year. His prime ministerial salary of about £150,000 might seem perfectly sufficient — but that is not what he actually receives. His use of the flat that he shares with his fiancée, Carrie Symonds, above Number 11 is taxed as a benefit in kind. Any food sent up from the Downing Street kitchen has to be paid for and if they want to have friends to stay at Chequers — Covid restrictions permitting — they receive a bill from the government.
As one friend put it: “Boris, like other prime ministers, is very, very badly served. He doesn’t have a housekeeper — he has a single cleaner and they’re worried about being able to afford a nanny. He’s stuck in the flat and Downing Street is not a nice place to live. It’s not like the Élysée or the White House where you can get away from it all because they’re so big. Even if he or Carrie want to go into the rose garden they have to go through the office.”

It’s the uselessness of the shower. Hancock alone. And Cummings clearly has the smirk etched into him. Whitty is possibly the only one who doesn’t look like a spud xp

Obviously the tiny violin stuff is hilarious but they've really buried the lede with "PM can't remember what he was told yesterday".

Oh gosh I hope he's alright

preaching to the choir for ilxukpol readers obv (and w.my usual caveat at somewhat lumpish NS prose):

A Biden victory cannot bring normal back | Tom Blackburn https://t.co/fy4SnriRvX

— Guardian Opinion (@guardianopinion) September 19, 2020

= a grown-up far leftist expanding in his own careful terms what every v minor weird-twitter shitposter (me) wd frame as "fact one of the landscape we all live in now: the grown-ups are never coming back"

not often the Graun publises a Tom malaiseforever opinion piece. Someone must have pissed the bed.

a lot people seem to saying New Labour were actually quite radical and dynamic compared to the dismal inertia of Starmer Labour

initially I should have said

"Without far-reaching change, it may be that another shift to the hard right is at best delayed by a few years"

probably getting a bit too ahead there, it won't be delayed at all.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EiRjfanXgAEFXYF?format=jpg&name=medium

lol, some of these sycophantic Marina Hyde fans are quite deranged!

"preaching to the choir for ilxukpol readers obv (and w.my usual caveat at somewhat lumpish NS prose)"

One day I will finish that NS piece on Chinese Trotskyist poetry.

Been reading this piece on how covid has further weakened the union.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n18/neal-ascherson/bye-bye-britain

The Blair Shadow Cabinet was full of experienced political battler types like Robin Cook and Mo Mowlam and Claire Short, people who knew how to do Opposition properly and knew what they were doing in front of a camera. In government Blair gradually replaced them and the likes of Glenda Jackson with loyalists and technocratic wonkish types.

Fast forward to to 2010 and the Miliband Shadow Cabinet was full of people with experience at the highest level of everything *except* Opposition and as a result they were terrible at it. With one or two exceptions I'm sure the current Shadow Cabinet are basically well meaning people but they're wonks and inexperienced wonks with it, which is why you basically never see Anneliese Dodds despite her being the Shadow Chancellor. Ed Miliband is kind of a special case, so we'll leave him to once side, but it's only really Angela Rayner, Lammy and maybe Nandy who can do that kind of oppositional politics. (The other one who can is Thornberry and I'm sure she'd been told to keep herself hidden in case it annoys the Nick Ferrari crowd).

I heard a very disappointing interview with Glenda Jackson last week in which she made quite sweeping statements about the working classes and their apparently inherent socially conservative attitudes and how Starmer is a better leader than Corbyn because he understands this. It wasn't good.

the production and reproduction of yr own project (the creation, stablisation and maintenance of the conditions of the possibility of the realisation yr own ideas abt good in the world, to put it in a wanky way) (wanky yet correct but still wanky) is SO basic to politics, and the blair machine was SO bad at it

the neverending victory lap as the whole of praxis (see also RBG sito)

how did you rate the Blair regime for their period in opposition though, mark? I can't remember much tbh. Prescott making the stupendous comment that he was Thumper and Blair was Bambi sticks in my mind from the leadership contest!

Clearly not conspiracy theory nuts with those signs

Photos from Trafalgar square protest.
Unlike what media would have you believing, those are not conspiracy theory nuts.

The focus is on freedom and civil liberties.
No to masks, social distancing, lockdown and forced vaccines.

1/2 pic.twitter.com/aUzzP5IpDr

— Pishpish Cat (@PishPishCat) September 19, 2020

they were scornfully aggressive in opposition!

and also they had a concrete project to set out complete with plans (mostly neoliberal third-way plans to be sure, but also the GFA)

xp thanks you for yr passionate insight pish pish cat

Team Starmzy is now using the slogan "A New Leadership" to replace "Under New Management" well of course he lied to the guileless apolitical left members that voted for him, he's a politician!

It's nice that people who probably don't think "my body my choice" is a good argument for abortion are sure it's a good argument for crawling and huffing all over people trying to make their own choice to socially distance while going for a walk or buying groceries

*bristles gently*

pish pish cat is no Dr Fuck!

it's almost like it's more effective to administer urgent public health procedures from a central governing body rather than outsourcing them to a private company.

Test Appointment Lottery (via The Times) pic.twitter.com/pnmLhJZpu0

— r/Sheffield (@sheffieldreddit) September 19, 2020

I liked Blair & co in opposition - because I was young and easily led.

I was young and much more easily led to a pub than a polling station and never voted Blair, but tbh I'm not even sure I'd have voted for anyone better than Blair either!

did the young pinefox still get a hot flush at the sight of Hilary Clinton?

https://www.expressandstar.com/news/politics/2020/09/19/starmer-takes-the-gloves-off-and-goes-on-the-attack/

Kieth's mad as hell and he's not gonna take it any more

Starmer ain't taking no shorts, after so far mainly pressuring the UK govt to do exactly what they were going to do.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EiS2cErXkAI8m5c?format=jpg&name=small

it's gone long past the stage where the emperor even wears a string vest

😬

I'm sure I had read marina Hyde bits quite a few times over several years not knowing or guessing they were considered to be impressive in any way. They seem to be mostly 'well written' which might be enough to warrant praise compared to something like that incoherent Hadley Freeman thing someone posted on the guardian thread today (?) that read like a group office email from a coworker experiencing issues.

They seem to be mostly 'well written'

I would be interested in your definition of well written because on a sentence by sentence level Marina Hyde is absolutely terrible. There is usually one half-decent joke in each of her columns but that isn't enough to justify the slavering blue tick adoration she receives.

I might be missing some *history* but Hyde has definitely been worth reading, recently.

The Marina Hyde article is trying so hard to be funny, she can't settle on making a joke, she has to add a bunch of (middle aged / middle class) pop culture references and OTT adjectives, then do the same joke again just in case you didn't get it the first time. I was wondering why these blue ticks like it so much, but it fits their privileged POV and has references they will get immediately, so no mystery there I guess.

She’s a very useful idiot. The jokes are an acceptable valve for very tame railing against the status quo which does nothing whatsoever to change it.

I have smiled at a Marina Hyde article before, I'd say there are worse generators of "content" in the employ of national newspapers.

Go off lad

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/19/owen-jones-a-lot-of-people-in-the-parliamentary-labour-party-are-horrible

The parliamentary Labour party meetings were just brutal and gruesome. A lot of those people in the parliamentary Labour party – I’m just going to say it – are jumped-up thugs. Vicious, horrible people. They would sanctimoniously stand up and talk about the authoritarianism of Corbynism as they screeched like disturbed teenagers, spraying spittle at anyone with the temerity to support the elected leadership of the party of which they were members. I really don’t know what they are driven by.

"I would be interested in your definition of well written"

I only meant that they make grammatical sense and have at least some sense of argumentative or expositive development where things have a sequential meaning: Basic stuff you'd hope an undergrad could master by the second year but seemingly beyond a good deal of published writing I see in places where you would presume they could employ competent writers.

Do we have any ideas on when London (or all of the country?) will be under a lockdown again?

Health secretary overarching message this morning: if there’s another national lockdown the public will only have themselves to blame #Covid19UK

— Kay Burley (@KayBurley) September 20, 2020

Reports are saying restrictions will tighten further this week in household mixing but if pubs are not fully closed? Yes, if it sounds incoherent..

That's funny, deranged dude shouting at a couple of pigs near the bus stop yesterday said they were going to close the pubs. Also suggsted we wake up iirc.

I think they'll cave on the pubs shortly.

It would be madness not to close the pubs but looking at what they’ve done in Newcastle a part of me wouldn’t be surprised if it were lockdown 2 brought to you by Wetherspoon

In March all the talk was of “a series of phased lockdowns” and the point that got repeated over and over was that the most important thing was to time the lockdowns and relaxations so that a second spike didn’t coincide with flu season too much, so I’m sort of boggling that we’re now at that point and it’s all this vague we might fuck around and try another lockdown, see how we feel on the day eh. You’ve had six months you cunts!

Someone was saying that this spike correlated with the august bank holiday. So is it as bad in Scotland where the bank holiday was at the start of the month?

It would be madness not to close the pubs but looking at what they’ve done in Newcastle a part of me wouldn’t be surprised if it were lockdown 2 brought to you by Wetherspoon

― Gab B. Nebsit (wins), Sunday, 20 September 2020 11:10 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

national lock-in

https://i.imgur.com/MMDOaWm.jpg

that onion is always in her hankie

all that is missing that *emotive* John Legend track that almost ruined that Selma movie!

A tough few months for many to begin from today.

Today (20 Sept) is the last day of the eviction ban.

We've put together a quick guide explaining what the current notice periods are, and where the law stands until March 2021.https://t.co/iMHSqolZyA pic.twitter.com/UVjuYuhCuy

— Southampton SolFed (@sotonsolfed) September 20, 2020

Absolutely fucking miserable

🚨 EXCLUSIVE @repubblica 🚨
According to a statement and local sources, Boris Johnson recently travelled to Perugia, in Italy, apparently on the Sept 12-13th weekend.
No 10 dismisses it: “That’s wrong”.
My story with @irvine76 https://t.co/gtdLWIY0YY

— Antonello Guerrera (@antoguerrera) September 20, 2020

Interesting. My usual instinct is “lol nothing will happen”, but all the papers have been unsubtly aligning against him for a while.

I mean it wasn’t illegal (and appears to have a single dodgy eyewitness) so I’m with your first instinct. But this guy, ffs

11am Whitty presser tomorrow, that’s unusual

Resigning

Vallance as well so I guess they're delivering bad news the PM doesn't want to be associated with.

Assuming he’s in the country

Only on the 3rd time of asking did Schapps say he didn't know where Boris was having avoided the question the first two times...

And then made a point of saying Italy is in a travel corridor anyway.

You’re only as cavalier with public money as our current Chancellor if you don’t know the value of it.

Instead, I would take a responsible approach - so that public money was targeted at protecting jobs, jobs, jobs. https://t.co/MsOIhK0PqU

— Anneliese Dodds (@AnnelieseDodds) September 21, 2020

just a little taster of the transformative politics we can look forward to in the next manifesto

lol at matt dc posting a couple of days ago that we basically never see dodds and now... this

happy if she goes away again now

just need Rachel Reeves to come out and repeat her 2013 line that Labour need to be tougher on benefits cuts than the Tories and its almost a complete replica of Miliband Labour, but with a more conservative leader.

waiting for Starmer to say he feels a huge swell of pride when he sees a white van with a England flag on it.

Someone remind me how Labour did in 2015, because these fools seem to have forgotten.

Obligatory post about “how does he have a job ffs”

“Today we have ended the franchise system after a quarter of a century” says @grantshapps. So most risk of running railway will henceforth be with the government. In normal times, this would be a huge moment. John Major’s nationalisation is dead

— Robert Peston (@Peston) September 21, 2020

if most of the risk is with the government could you just clarify for me where most of the profits will go Pesto?

most competent manager is a shit strategy because you don't even need to be competent to retain credibility with the electorate, light blue Labour will always lose competence competitions against Tories with shit actors like Dodds and Starmzy's dismal angry Roy Cropper routine.

Starmer Labour have really picked a great time for attacking the govt on spending, like when there is going to be record high unemployment. Great fucking strategy lads.

garbage slogans, garbage people, garbage politics and jobs jobs jobs!

if most of the risk is with the government could you just clarify for me where most of the profits will go Pesto?

There won't be any profits for a long while and one of the reasons it's dead is that it isn't an attractive enough investment for anyone to pour money into. I'm sure it'll be spun as a political paradigm shift but it's basically a bailout of rail firm and there's no guarantee they won't quietly reprivatise them when it becomes commercially feasible. Private companies are still operating the trains and there'll still be a flow of public money to them.

Also Peston apparently doesn't know the difference between nationalisation and privatisation.

Literally the only thing that is popular about the government right now (other than the racism) is the fact they've been spraying cash everywhere. Labour is clearly going to oppose the end of furlough so they'll have to spend precious airtime explaining the supposed differences between good public spending and bad public spending, at which point audiences will switch off and stop listening.

"Also Peston apparently doesn't know the difference between nationalisation and privatisation."

This is embarrassing.

I've finally looked up who 'Roy Cropper' is.

I can see a slight resemblance to KS. But CORONATION STREET has 7 million viewers per episode which is only about 15% of the UK population. Not sure everyone out there is going to get this supposedly obvious attack line.

in recent YouGov poll 98.9% of respondents knew who Roy Cropper was but said who the "fuck is this cunt" when shown a pic of Sir Kieth throttling a donkey

Dozens of Tory MPs set to refuse unconscious bias training

Starmzy would make all his racist MP's complete the training. #NewLeadership

in recent YouGov poll 98.9% of respondents knew who Roy Cropper was but said who the "fuck is this cunt" when shown a pic of Sir Kieth throttling a donkey

:D

Science brief from Downing St with bad numbers and no policy change.

Presumably the PM hasn't got a nanny and was busy feeding the wean.

Potential for doubling of cases every week meaning we could be looking at 50k new cases per day by mid October.

That's a £500 lump sum. If you're expected to self-isolate for two weeks, that's £7.14 an hour based on a 35 hour week. The National Minimum Wage is £8.72 an hour. https://t.co/Pch1FVwZiN

— ACABology (@cheersdeclarer) September 19, 2020

Prof Whitty says the mortality rate will be slightly reduced this autumn and winter because treatment is better now - but there will still be many deaths.

He also talks about the decisions that ministers will have to take - balancing the impact on the economy with the danger of the virus.

"If we do too little, this virus will go out of control," he said.

But if we go too far the other way we can cause damage to the economy, he says, which will have its own long-term health effects.

Re: the last bit, it gets trotted out a lot but no one ever says what health effects these will be, and whether they would be worse than tens of thousands of excess deaths per year (and tens of thousands more with long-term debilitating after-effects).

Basically people that can't afford to miss work and have the virus will go. They might be fined but they won't pay it (because they can't) and will also be blamed for the increase in deaths xp

Even if they did take it upon themselves to pay proper sick pay it still wouldn't solve the problem of apparently widespread asymptomatic transmission.

my word, they've caught up with where a bunch of meme twitter accounts were a week ago https://t.co/4VA2AW345I

— Dan Davies (@dsquareddigest) September 21, 2020

“Endless treasury schemes and failed PPE contracts have cost hard-pressed taxpayers billions, but alternative expenditure is not the answer." 💬

Our response the shadow chancellor's Labour Party conference speech. 👇https://t.co/Cx7CxCTLiH

— TaxPayers' Alliance (@the_tpa) September 21, 2020

critical support for Dodds from the right wing think tank that would have the unemployed, pensioners and the disabled liquidated

Lads I don't think tax cuts and deregulation are going to get you out of a recession caused by a highly contagious killer virus.

it gets trotted out a lot but no one ever says what health effects these will be, and whether they would be worse than tens of thousands of excess deaths per year (and tens of thousands more with long-term debilitating after-effects).

DC is correct. The claim that economic downturn is equivalent to pandemic in terms of mass death and profound health damage is false. It shouldn't be allowed.

PS: surprised no one on here has yet mentioned the officially denied claim that the foul current UK PM took a secret trip to Italy.

Lol fuck this party

“We are a party of equality, we take it seriously”

Labour MP Wes Streeting wants “to look what we can do better as a party” on the rights of trans people and transphobia#PoliticsLive https://t.co/fZS7MwXSF2 pic.twitter.com/eRmcJz03Xw

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) September 21, 2020

Streeting is the kind of MP they invite on all the time because they know he'll make a cunt of himself and the party that lets him do it

PS: surprised no one on here has yet mentioned the officially denied claim that the foul current UK PM took a secret trip to Italy.

The timeline printed in the Italian press is amusing. The outward leg coincides with the time he was addressing an emergency meeting on the EU bill 'from no.10' but his internet kept going down so Michael Fabricant sang Rule Britannia to fill the time. On the return leg, the flight was delayed and a bunch of his evening engagements were cancelled. If his spokespeople are lying, they've been lying since the 17th.

I don't like talking about the disgusting PM in detail but - that particular meeting is, surely, the one about which people here on ILX were speculating about a resignation announcement?

If so, odd that it was dramatically pre-announced when the scumbag PM was secretly abroad.

Loving the sight of Perguia airport backtracking, un-backtracking, now contradicting itself

DC is correct. The claim that economic downturn is equivalent to pandemic in terms of mass death and profound health damage is false. It shouldn't be allowed.

If the response is, as I expect, more severe and prolonged austerity, then there will be huge casualties.

Other than the fact that the PM shouldn't be heading off for a nice weekend away during a crisis I don't get what rules are supposed to have been broken that would justify lying about the whole thing? Italy isn't on the quarantine list, this isn't Barnard Castle all over again. So it's either a dodgy meeting or having his baby baptised as a Catholic during a particularly tricky period re: Northern Ireland.

maybe he was hired for another tennis match at short notice

I think it is 1) it plays nice if the answer to the Where’s Boris clamour from the right is “Lebedev’s villa in Italy” and 2) they have apparently held off making lockdown choices because No Cobra/No Boris. If lockdown was delayed, at a cost of lives, so himself could swan to Italy ...

President of #Perugia airport tells me #BorisJohnson ‘definitely’ did not come through here this month. Says original press release confused him with Tony Blair, who did #perugiagate

— Nick Squires (@NickSquires1) September 21, 2020

Oh boy, an emerging situation!

Wait a minute...there's no airport in Perugia!

his internet kept going down so Michael Fabricant sang Rule Britannia to fill the time

i somehow missed this profoundly cursed detail in the reports

this fucking country

In further 'nothing matters' news:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54228079

That’s the spirit, Matt, knew this thread would break you one day.

'confused him with Tony Blair'

Tony Blair, who did #perugiagate

Just another in the long list of his crimes.

The Chernukhin thing is of negligible interest imo but it's always nice to see Sul3yman K3rim0v in the news as it reminds me of the time he gave his mistress a couple of million quid to start a business selling $10k velour tracksuits.

meanwhile that pelugia christening in full:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdcqrbS1Xh8

I guess Zap Brannigan wasn't enough business on his own

zapp brannigan, the michael fabricant of the 30th century

i'm sorry, the 31st century

either way it seems certain that fabricant believes, as does brannigan, that the most erotic part of a woman is the boobies

This didn’t really work did it

It’s reported that Sunak is arguing against new lockdown measures. Maybe a little humility and hindsight may be warranted as there is an increasing suspicion that his Eat Out to Help Out scheme may well have contributed to Eat Out to Help Out to Spread Out the infection.

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) September 21, 2020

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/21/coronavirus-government-liberties-tories-police-powers-laws

Maybe take a trip and listen to the racists to tell you how much they love all this too and chill.

*barf*

xpost

who could possibly have foreseen &c &c xxp

Meanwhile in Italy

We’re at #Perugia airport, where its President tells us Boris Johnson has not recently travelled through. He’s checked passenger registry. Says airport worker meant to say Tony Blair, not Johnson, arrived on 13th Sept; left 14th. Only UK flights on 11th was Ryanair. None on 12th.

— Mark Lowen (@marklowen) September 21, 2020

Now... #Perugia airport has checked 12th Sept arrivals list again and there was indeed a flight from Farnborough that landed here. It had one passenger on board. Airport checking that person’s identity as we speak...

— Mark Lowen (@marklowen) September 21, 2020

gdpr, how does it work

"when will the Left speak up" ponders man who spends his working life trying to shut down the Left

“For every home across Northern Ireland there will be no mixing of households indoors”

Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster says “doing nothing was not an option” as she announces new Covid-19 restrictionshttps://t.co/VDUICABQaW pic.twitter.com/5uQAb7xLT9

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) September 21, 2020

not like the DUP to say no to something

something something mixed households

🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

Coronavirus: Grandparents exempt from local lockdown rules for childcare reasons https://t.co/7naNoVjFVG

— SkyNews (@SkyNews) September 21, 2020

DISPOSABLE GRANDMAS OF HIPHOPRISY

"Don't kill granny" xp

Don't grandparents tend to be in support bubbles anyway? I thought that was basically what they were for.

🎵 whennn... the... ‘rone hits your gran
like a germ-ridden van
that’s..... the tories🎶

kinda lol but mostly sad

Btw here is the conclusion to "perugiagate"

President of #Perugia airport has checked with police and the association that manages non-commercial flights into this airport. The one passenger who flew in from Farnborough on Sep 12th was “a private citizen and not Boris Johnson”.

— Mark Lowen (@marklowen) September 21, 2020

after all this he'll think twice before he flies there again

i mean ever, before he flies there ever

Wish I had been executed before reading that tweet.

Rare moment for you on the wrong side of history.

Wait a second... Boris is Catholic?!?!

Yeah, there’s a lot of pennies just clanging down now, what of it. I didn’t realise he himself was raised Catholic either.

Boris Johnson, who was baptised a Roman Catholic, has baptised his own son at a Catholic church. There has *never* been an openly practising Catholic prime minister of the UK........... https://t.co/7yR2phMSET

— Hugo Gye (@HugoGye) September 21, 2020

"He could've been Pope, Ted..."

LOL at the idea the PM practices Catholicism. I mean, perhaps some aspects.

wth, I had no idea boris was catholic

if Biden wins we will rule the anglosphere

makes Blair's whole waiting until he got out of office to convert seem especially weak.

Catholicism is a lot more fun than Protestantism tbf, and also Blair was a convert and converts tend to be a lot weirder than the born-and-raised.

His Wikipedia page says he was baptised a Catholic but then later converted, but like that counts.

Brexitism

having looked into it he basically is an anglican, think the kid is being baptized catholic because of his partner

If this Perugia thing was confected then a lot of previously loyal media outlets enthusiastically ran with it.

popbitch has provided further helpful info on the perugia trip

Our company (in the city) had been letting people go back, though I don't think that all that many had. They announced today that they're closing the UK offices again, in effect from at latest Wednesday (presumably because they sent out the mail at 5 today)

(my "this changes everything" for today is finding out that Harry Cole had been in a long term relationship with Carrie Symonds)

xxp was just laughing at that, excellent content.

AF, how weird is it knowing that now?!

Popbitch stuff is where? Can’t find it n the latest daily email.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oHGe321raVs/VLvsl6l_K4I/AAAAAAAAg5E/I6TlrQ6Z7L8/s1600/Cole350.png

in the few years since this pic was taken. She looks near enough the same, he now looks like David Jason in Porterhouse Blue.

Never mind, I was posting here about Harry x Carrie around the time of the Camberwell Domestic Incident.

Harry & Carrie wasn’t a secret, AF is just behind.

he looks like mark kozelek

lol he does, only he was born in 1985 and could easily pass for someone in his early 60's these days. fuck it, much less stringent appearance shaming regs apply to wankers like Harry.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dd1xdpKV4AAOP76.jpg

tbf he's got a much better hairstyle than Starmer.

"Some context on the significance of tmrw in our national life: it will be only the third PM’s address to the nation on Coronavirus

The 1st was in March when he announced lockdown; the 2nd was in May when he set out the roadmap to recovery. And now, the second wave brings the 3rd" (Beth Rigby)

Is this really true?

He's taken a few pressers as well iirc but not many

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/21/pubs-and-restaurants-across-england-to-be-forced-to-shut-at-10pm

This seems like the weakest sauce yet from this lot. Is that really it? They've been saying for weeks that pubs aren't a source of transmission, so why is their sole substantive measure trimming their hours a bit?

Pubs round here have been shutting at ten anyway except maybe Fridays and Saturdays

As a bad but happy citizen, my first exposure to the incarnation of Harry Cole was as Lefou to JRM's Gaston:

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CeLkTWqgcu8/W-6_pNLmTJI/AAAAAAABGKM/dylDYkoPtMMKkARq8RJZwEDR9QPm0TJEACLcBGAs/s320/Cole465.png

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5f01cPS-Kso/W-6_qFFI6UI/AAAAAAABGKc/CrR9heXhXAgSY2sm3lA5QShjssOTi6i1gCLcBGAs/s320/Cole468.png

lovely to wake up to Lisa Nandy's delightfully Trumpian language, good reminder why I'm never going to vote for this shithole party again in my life.

it's amazing how fast Progressive Patriotism evolves into evoking the name of the UK's leading fascist party.

Ahhhhh pic.twitter.com/4e5dIFZSyJ

— Snark Maiden (@femsocialist) September 22, 2020

Not sure how he's going to combine singing "Marcus Rashford's Hungry Children" terrace-chant style with outflanking the Tories on capital-S Security for the edification of The Sun but excited to be along for the ride.

My cancelled direct debit should see my membership lapse out of being any day now. Stoked

Watched 3 minutes of KS's speech there. Seemed a straight lift from the early Blair playbook minus the fake dynamism and surface charisma.

Any progress in engaging the young left from Corbynism has been abandoned in favour of selling mature competence.

Not sure how he's going to combine singing "Marcus Rashford's Hungry Children" terrace-chant style with outflanking the Tories on capital-S Security for the edification of The Sun but excited to be along for the ride.

I don't think those things are remotely disassociated in the minds of a lot of voters, the dissonance will be between touchy-feely human rights Starmer and prosecute-em-all-now Starmer. I'm guessing he'll try and get over the former by just pretending it doesn't exist and hoping the Mail don't decide to rake it up.

The really pertinent question is why The Sun is playing along, why the right-wing press is giving him such an easy ride so far. It has to be more than 'well he's centrist enough to be acceptable'.

Starmer ending by stating the obvious - there was no point in putting policy in this speech if your first task is to win back trust.

“We’ve got a long road ahead of us. We’re not going to win back those we’ve lost with a single speech or a clever policy offer. Trust takes time.”

— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) September 22, 2020

The entire strategy appears to be to beam messages at people who are predominantly disengaged with politics on the assumption they won't think too hard about the contradictions, and on the assumption that any kind of vision of hope is frivolous shit that the public won't believe in any case.

Why give people hope when you can chuck some minorities under the bus for some Vichy shit

I can see Starmer getting to a point where the disengaged don't reflexively hate him and Labour, i have a harder time seeing him being able to motivate them to vote in sufficient numbers.

The right-wing press has no leverage over Johnson if he has a huge majority and their unwavering support. They need to make out they've got options.

Does Nandy not have any problems with using a slogan that was amongst the last words Jo Cox heard before she was murdered in Batley? I really hope her dad has completely disinherited her now.

Starmer isn’t just going to fail to motivate, he’s going to actively drive away chunks of the voter coalition and replace them with... what? Like modelling the party on the democrats where they seem perfectly fine to lose elections as long as their faction retains control.

xp fucking hell I didn’t even notice she said that, i want to be sick

fuck this party

Corbyn's Labour was demonised for championing internationalism and an inclusive collectivism, supporting migrant and minority rights. Now it seems Labour is going out of its way to disassociate from those values.

— rachel shabi (@rachshabi) September 22, 2020

The question of whether or not it's the right thing to do morally has been separated from whether it will work - there aren't many recent examples of politicians failing to prosper because they overestimated the stupidity of the discourse. In their minds a Labour victory IS the correct moral course and therefore the ends justify the means.

I actually get the trust argument (as in the Anvil 'he might be a cunt but at least he knows how to do it' sense), but you need to make sure you aren't incinerating the trust of the other people you need behind you in the process. It's a gigantic gamble on that front.

There's going to be a massive backlash over the Nandy thing and deservedly so.

Is the first of Keir Starmer's ten pledges – increase income tax for top 5% of earners, reverse Tory cuts to corporation tax – now gone? "I expect so," says Lisa Nandy #PoliticsLive

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) September 22, 2020

Quite something to chase this hard the 40k who voted Brexit Party at the last election.

Labour will take your vote but never offer you a fucking thing while they chase the spiteful pensioner vote already allied to the Tories. Weird how certain groups of voters get condescended to and told to shut up, isn’t it, and how it’s always their fault for not just handing their vote over unquestioningly to a party that despises and resents them.

I was thinking the other day about starting a "what's the best strategy for the left if the Labour Party's lost?" thread but I can't bear to look into that void at the moment

I've been wanting someone to start that thread for months

most of my answers involve the Rote Armee Fraktion redux so maybe let somebody else have a go

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/21/momentum-to-focus-on-resisting-evictions-during-covid-19-crisis?

Nandy's answer doesn't seem to acknowledge what a 'pledge' is. Or why it's bad to make one then break it.

The story Alphie linked to seems like the way forward to me.

My cancelled direct debit should see my membership lapse out of being any day now. Stoked

You didn't inform your branch secretary? No point in taking a stand if you don't ask to speak to the manager imo.

@ThangamMP
35m
WATCH! Keir Starmer's keynote #LabourConnected (virtual conference) speech as Labour Leader - introduced by my friend Ruth Smeeth.

Smeeth introduced the keynote WTF really?!

XP apparently it will take several months for lj's cancellation to get into the published membership figures. If he wanted to be kicked out sooner he should've just showed he was a green all along or shared his tactical voting preferences.

first the vote of confidence from The Taxpayers Alliance, now Harry Cole says best conference speech in a decade. Blue is the colour this season, baby!

supporting blue, whatever they do, a bit more managerially. what's not to love

If the orthodox Left in Labour doesn't like what we're now doing, they need to explain a) what they would do differently and b) give an explanation for the fiasco they presided over: I've not heard that on a single Zoom call - the replies are open, go ahead ✊🚩

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) September 22, 2020

hitler 'dangerously incompetent' says loto

also - and don't quote me - i'm hearing the fuhrer once took a trip to poland that was against the rules at the time

Creative use of "they" from Mason, as if he wasn't involved at all from 2015 onwards.

Stoya come to rainy fascist island

meanwhile don't go into the office, what idiot told you to do that?

My resignation got a surprisingly sympathetic phone call from my local branch and then months after that an e-mail of meaningless gibberish from Labour HQ.

fucking spice-zombie was plotting with Starmer during the December election campaign

Feel alphie and i probably as much on the same page as we ever are re future directions for the left lol

Absolute car crash pic.twitter.com/ziOPnYYrIa

— Dawn Foster (@DawnHFoster) September 22, 2020

Oh mister Wokeman, We will continue to take a stand against you and your anti-Britsh, anti-free speech agenda. Socialism is not the answer and time will demonstrate what a real idiot you are! #ProBrexit, #ProBoris, #ProTrump 🇬🇧 https://t.co/9VvWbnaJF3

— Andrea Jenkyns MP (@andreajenkyns) September 22, 2020

The @Conservatives are running FB ads promoting a ‘petition’ calling on Labour to support their proposed Overseas Operations Bill. https://t.co/R5OLknxow9 pic.twitter.com/3B8sbaJ4Wx

— Who Targets Me (Install our browser extension!) (@WhoTargetsMe) September 22, 2020

Interesting thread here shedding a bit of light on how this stuff works in practice.

what is much funnier than any shit melt-approved parody account is that when you search "Paul Mason People's Vote" Google Searches Related To.. also gives you Paul Mason Spice and Paul Mason Shitting In a Fountain!

xp nobody ever seems to want to go for the "all soldiers are bastards, especially the ones who do war crimes" demographic.

i suspect that every time Labour decides that they must woo the working class/petit bourgie fascist vote it's not really based on solid psephological analysis so much as personal prejudices and stereotypes. maybe i'm wrong, maybe the petit fascists are the deciding constituency, forever

i'd like to see their workings tho

Maybe somebody's already written something good about the proximity of the Party's blood and soil stakhanovite tendency and actual fascists, idk. Feels like a good historical subject

my workings on that would be

1. Most constituencies are in England
2. Most English people are petit bourgeois fascists by nature
3. That's pretty much it

It's not very rigorous tho, however right it feels

in fact i mean it's not very forensic

I know some people do genuinely believe the "forensic" thing, but for better or worse they dont seem to actually be in charge of anything.

Sir Haircut is like a baby:

Johnson vaguely talks of “the option to draw on military support to free up the police.”

— Dawn Foster (@DawnHFoster) September 22, 2020

Now we're talking! pic.twitter.com/pcWpBxmzg1

— Nikola (@Greasy_Boiler) September 22, 2020

Not sure how things work in whatever formerly industrial backwater you guys grew up in, but round our way the pubs closing (particularly closing early) usually results in bags of booze and all back to someone's house.
This will be disastrous.

i can assure the thread that i can get pissed way before 10pm

Yeah, one of the biggest cultural differences I noticed when I moved to the UK is everyone getting shitfaced right after work and stumbling back home, kebab in hand, around 10/11pm.

BAAAAAANTS

I know how they feel https://t.co/0RSzUjp7Zv

— Michael Gove (@michaelgove) September 22, 2020

What do you think when you see a sack of wet eggs?

KS: I think...respect.

So Long Bailey, Abbott, Burgon have all been pushing for a "zero covid" strategy - and getting some pushback on left twitter that this is totally unworkable. Thoughts?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EihS8oHWoAEPcOv?format=jpg&name=medium

For you see the left keep winning the election for the right you see.

I see the knives are out on parts of Labour left for Starmer's speech. Let's just be really clear about something: Patriotism is not the same as nationalism. And by rejecting patriotism, you make it easier for nationalists to claim a monopoly on love of country.

— Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) September 22, 2020

these people keep saying this but i haven't seen a convincing distinction

i mean especially in the public sphere, especially once you try to politicize it or make political capital of it

but in general

there are threads already for this i'm sure and this should go there

"love of country" is for fucking rubes and racists

Best Tory policy to date

Mate of mine who was an officer in the army has just told me a mate of his has said the army are going to be used for fruit and vegetable picking pic.twitter.com/iVbDTgV5Hg

— terry christian (@terrychristian) September 22, 2020

guns into plowshares is it

I wish our brave lads every success with operation cauliflower, lol it would be nice if this last blast of summer would last but alas its an awful job when it is pissing it down and cold.

it's going to be like then somme in the potato fields of Suffolk, only without the risk of injury or death, so actually not very much like the somme, just a bit muddy, still #heroes

can’t wait to clap for our brave potato-picking squaddies as the death toll ramps up again

Btw for people asking on what to do now Lab is gone here are some further links:

"Whatever our differences over this use of time, money and energy (we were skeptical), the fact of the matter is this: we cannot spend the next five years like we’ve spent the last four."https://t.co/Pc6Bg2CfHG

— libcom.org (@libcomorg) September 22, 2020

(The anarchos in my timeline were fully awake and ready this morning)

🎶send in...the tanks🎶

🎶don't bother
they're here🎶

Ffs don't read the comments

A rule 4 life

Unshocked by this from Trumpson

"I think the continual attacks on local test and trace and what NHS Test and Trace has done are undermining and unnecessary. Actually, there is an important difference between our country and many other countries around the world: our country is a freedom-loving country. If we look at the history of this country over the past 300 years, virtually every advance, from free speech to democracy, has come from this country. It is very difficult to ask the British population uniformly to obey guidelines in the way that is necessary."

Extremely critical support

So you’re still OK for Boris & Carrie’s ? https://t.co/WtVRatN3gW

— Adam Boulton (@adamboultonSKY) September 22, 2020

Hahahahaha.

An overwhelming 78% of Britons support the new lockdown measures announced today, including 44% who "strongly support" them.

Just 17% of Britons are opposed...https://t.co/cwZ3vSKLpE pic.twitter.com/SUhCkAqC9e

— YouGov (@YouGov) September 22, 2020

Surprise.

Keir Starmer has called for the government to extend or replace furlough

Some disquiet, then, that Labour is ending furlough on 30th Sept — a month before national scheme ends — and that some staff are being let go

(It's understood Lab has not claimed from job retention scheme) pic.twitter.com/aZbp0AOTfc

— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) September 22, 2020

Are Labour staff unionised what the fucking fuck

this clarification is ... not good

Source texts to say Labour's furlough scheme was principally for workers who contracts had expired as they were "linked to shadow cabinet posts and this has always been the case"

"It cost the Party hundreds of thousands of pounds and was agreed by Jennie Formby" https://t.co/sebhqZe1Bn

— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) September 22, 2020

For who? It’s good that they were kept on a few months, sad party doesn’t see fit to do so longer. Wrt unions there’s no single union for the party, so people are probably represented by different ones.

78% of the GBP support the lockdown measures because they like dobbing in other people and anyway common sense tells them it's fine to have this extended family barbecue and hot tub party we've been planning it for weeks that's just stupid it's the students and the BLMs doing all the spreading

Really, people like the firefighter in the screen shot organising with Momentum...people doing the work is the only way to wipe the smile off cunts like Dan.

Biggest troll on this website, and it is just one more mark of shame on our national press that a man who does nothing but degrade the national conversation is paid several times the average salary for his disproportionate 'contribution' to it. pic.twitter.com/B5en4AmEuV

— Andrew Bartlett (@AndrewBartletta) September 22, 2020

oh fuck Hodges and his overrated senile Blue Labour mum!

I keep seeing pics of shopping trolleys stacked with desperately snatched toilet rolls of panic and despair, but this has had no impact on the bulk-buy markets yet. The cheap stuff is still going for as low as 108 for £16.49 on e-bay, some of these toilet roll magnates that made their fortune in the first months of lockdown 1 now have so many acres of the stuff stacked up in their warehouses, they won't start the price gouging until they've sold at least a million tonnes of these fuckers at normal rates!

People aren't seriously panic-buying again are they?

according to twitter and my mum the toilet roll aisles in ASDA are empty again.

My only metric of what’s going on in the outside world, the availability of Ocado deliveries, suggests yes.

weird. I just had a look on Ocado and there is no toilet roll out of stock, presumably this hasn't hit the south coast yet!

I have a young autist in the house who seems to use quarter of a roll per dump sometimes, so I always bulk buy. I ordered 108 for 18.49 from an e-bay seller last month they didn't arrive within 2 and a half weeks after my payment, so I complained and they sent me 216 as a twofer goodwill gesture and as ruthless as I am I gave them a neutral feedback score!

I use a few different online delivery merchants and despite all the extra recruitment and expansion the big supermarkets did during lockdown 1, those delivery slots are definitely getting taken up much faster now and I could see it getting worse. The fucking price Ocado charge for their bogroll - I'm not surprised they haven't sold out in some regions!

it’s grown from ethically sourced panda dreams

which are more expensive than you’d think, because of the cost of mining them

special toilet roll, if you hang it over your bed at night it catches your dreams and your fingers don't go through the paper. Got to say though the new Ocado partnership with M&S makes me wish I could afford a delivery from them every week, fucking love M&S food. yes now I'm bad as well!

I remember working on a Huntapac carrot line back in '92. When the line supervisor got out those marks & spencer bags, if you put a carrot that looked like a syphilitic cock into one of their hallowed bags ... you might get away with it once.

I stumbled into a Metro article about an expected surge in panic buying and difficulty with delivery slots.
It was full of uncaptioned photos of empty shelves from 6 months ago in order to boost the panic.

i can't see any reason why anybody would panic buy on the other hand there are people who think the rona is an illuminati conspiracy so

I don't know who starts it but it's like Katamari. Within days we'll all be caught in a rolling ever-expanding bog roll that won't stop until someone deflects us into the paracetamol or hand sanitizer levels.

the mad thing is everybody's been thru this now, they know the supermarkets will be open and stocked. panic is a weird thing, like you say, like a stampede

what will be the real doozy will be when the brexit transition period ends and the new panic-buying will be looting and the new police will be armed soldiers (fresh from the sprout plantations of North Wales and ready4action!).

The military will be too busy with the sprouts for a Normal Christmas so we'll need a private militia to replace the replacement rozzers.

Speaking of

I condemn wholeheartedly this erosion of global human rights standards and I am proud to be supporting this amendment, along with other @socialistcam MPs, laying out our opposition. pic.twitter.com/Qu9izS666Y

— Apsana Begum MP (@ApsanaBegumMP) September 23, 2020

January's going to be the real motherfucker.

2021's going to be the real mf

be prepared

https://youtu.be/v-mWK_kcZMs

What if we are in the real mf now, and it just goes on forever?

well yeah also that

mf doom

End Times don't go on forever, the clue is in the name.

feeling a bit guilty about all the times i said 'lol we're all gonna die' in the ukpol threads now, sorry everyone i probably shouldn't have been using this monkey paw to type it out

Asking again since my last post didn't lead to any responses: zero covid strategy, practicable or not? I know it's academic - the govt won't do it - but would like to know...

Seems fine

https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1308752656014413825

https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1308752656014413825 ah

SIGH

NEW : Internal border to be erected Kent

Gove confirms that truckers will have to have a Brexit passport to get permission to drive into Kent.

Those who don't have "Kent Access Permit" will be turned away by police using automatic number plate recognition, he tells house.

We need to go full Passport To Pimlico imo.

fuck driving to Pimlico

Fuck Pimlico in general, there’s nowhere good to eat there

it's got a lovely gallery

counterpoint: what have the burgundians ever done for us

Asking again since my last post didn't lead to any responses: zero covid strategy, practicable or not? I know it's academic - the govt won't do it - but would like to know...

Honestly I don't think it's credible given the country's geographic position and how contagious the virus is, it might have been an achieveable goal in Feb-March but it's too pervasive now.

This is what Kent deserves for voting Tory all the time

If there is to be a border with Kent, it should be drawn with a ruler by a brown guy who has never been there

— Ahir Shah (@AhirShah) September 23, 2020

"If there is to be a border with Kent, it should be drawn with a ruler by a brown guy who has never been there"

New Zealand is still struggling a little with zero Covid and they're remote islands with a very limited number of access points.

(Things Tories might've been right to worry about: alternate history PM Corbyn hastily signs deal to return NI in March)

🤔🤔🤔

Despite the same commitment in the Conservative manifesto none of this bill applies to Northern Ireland says @JohnHealey_MP

— PARLY (@PARLYapp) September 23, 2020

Yeah was about to post that, actually bleeding from the eyes and nose

That's the "protect our brave boys" bill?

Yes

I have a young autist in the house who seems to use quarter of a roll per dump sometimes, so I always bulk buy. I ordered 108 for 18.49 from an e-bay seller last month they didn't arrive within 2 and a half weeks after my payment, so I complained and they sent me 216 as a twofer goodwill gesture and as ruthless as I am I gave them a neutral feedback score!

Classic post

Yeah that is pretty hard to beat tbh. Just stunned appreciation when I read it.

i love that you can spot a calz post within five words

i feel like calz could post five words picked at random from the dictionary and it’d still somehow be obvious it was him

Otm all, magnificent work.

This, I have nothing to say. Good to see abstaining on the position of whether soldiers should be prosecuted for war crimes or not, that’s what I call #realopposition baby

DIVISION RESULT:
Second Reading of the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

AYES: 331
NOES: 77

The AYES have it. The AYES have it.
Majority of: 254. #OverseasOperationsBill

— Balance of Power (@BalancePowerUK) September 23, 2020

The Labour MPs that voted against. pic.twitter.com/7YMV6IUfpT

— How Upsetting (@HowUpsetting) September 23, 2020

as usual it's much easier to list the principled MP's, the rest can go to hell.

Good on them!

Labour MPs quit Keir Starmer's team to vote against bill condemned by Jeremy Corbynhttps://t.co/qqpEM6IvhV pic.twitter.com/SZ9b5OKOtf

— Mirror Politics (@MirrorPolitics) September 23, 2020

I didn't even know Nadia Whittome had a junior role in the shadow cabinet. But good on her and FUCK STARMER and this sham of an opposition party. They don't deserve her.

🚨 BREAKING: #SameOldLabour just refused to back Britain's Armed Forces in Parliament 🥀

✍️ Our #OverseasOperationsBill will protect veterans from reinvestigations & vexatious claims, while ensuring victims always have access to justice.

🇬🇧 We've taken action to support them. pic.twitter.com/7TOQcRNA43

— Conservatives (@Conservatives) September 23, 2020

this pusillanimous abstention game to desperately try and play to 1098 middle-class racists in Workington is never going to be as effective as just being .. genuine Tories. It's like when they abstained on the welfare bill, nobody who hated people on benefits really believed them and also the people they are supposed to be representing didn't care much about them either.

otm

Whittome didn’t quit, she was sacked.

labour briefing guido before they’d even told @NadiaWhittomeMP she’d been sacked is absolutely shameful. pic.twitter.com/hJcw1NdruE

— Ben Smoke (@bencsmoke) September 23, 2020

Must be nice to be a hateful racist bigoted cunt, you have so many political homes (and media outlets) to choose from! Just being woo’d constantly and reassured that all your opinions are actually very correct and fair enough. What a life!

Nadia Whittome is my MP and I was so grateful to get someone like her after Piss Leslie defected. She's been treated like shit by the party.

Have you written to her, she's probably appreciate hearing that sentiment!

The line (or a line, anyway) is that there's things in the bill that are worth salvaging (and not worth the publicity of being against) so they'll try to amend out the bad on second reading and vote against it then if they can't.

Which we'll see but also I don't expect a labour leader with a non-fucked view on Our Troops in my lifetime.

This small crop of MPs are the tiny, tiny hope Lab have of ever being anything again (and whoever from the left wing keeps at it). But they will all be treated like shit.

60 out of 61 towns picked by Cabinet Minister for financial support were Conservative with average majority 3000 or Conservative targets. Included his own seat. pic.twitter.com/HooH4ikafQ

— Paul Lewis (@paullewismoney) September 24, 2020

The amendments thing is a fig leaf, there’s no chance of any of them going through.

Seconding plaxico, you’re very lucky emil.y!

Is this (and for the matter the Internal Market Bill) likely to get through the House of Lords?

yeah surprise surprise all 3 Hull MPs are snivelling Starmerite lapdogs

The thing about abstention is it's just cowardly, they clearly don't agree with the bill, they just don't believe they can win the argument so they're hoping that as few people as possible are looking at them while it's happening.

Starmer's own version of the Clause Four showdown will be replacing the Labour rose with a giant poppy.

the narrative has already been decided. Starmer's intention is to win back the votes of a bunch of Blue Labour/white working class/Red Wall types and calculate on that being enough plus the old "nowhere else to go" voters stringing along.

even if his electoral calculus is correct - that seems very doubtful to me - and even if losing a bunch of us who will not vote for that shit doesn't have an impact - maybe less doubtful but still probably not really calculated - i strongly doubt he's gonna convince the voters he thinks matters so much to vote for milquetoast fascism when the real deal is on offer from the actual government

this is like the Charge of the Light Brigade redux except not all of the Light Brigade were cunts

Starmer's own version of the Clause Four showdown will be replacing the Labour rose with a giant poppy.

Looking forward to this season's minutes silences

Red Wall in and of itself isn't enough, they have to win back the Red Wall and parts of Scotland and swathes of Southern England and those areas are pulling in such different directions that it's almost impossible to see what might appeal to them all.

tell that to Kieth

My answer to that might once have been 'policies that will materially improve people's lives' but it's hard to escape the overwhelming sense that there's a chunk of voters who have just given up on the very idea of that being possible.

I think the answer to 'lives getting better' ended up being Brexit for enough people Don't know what happens when life gets worse..

blame the EU, immigrants, any out group you care to choose; more fascism

xp it’s more that there’s such a chunk of pensioners living in homes paid off with triple-locked pensions in alliance with the rich and comfortable who don’t want any of the people they consider undeserving to share in it. Politics of spite. I know several people arguing their parents about this last December, it’s fucking scary the extent to which voting for their children’s future no longer makes an impression.

Anyway, here’s Momentum

This you @Keir_Starmer? pic.twitter.com/oJl8EsKIsq

— Momentum 🌹 (@PeoplesMomentum) September 24, 2020

demographics are on our side, people under 40 are not getting the comfortable life which makes them buy into the system.

Maybe depends on whether this works in a world where newspapers are less of a thing and where the problems might be different, i.e. your house is flooded.

Yeah but it’ll be too late by then.

Boris dodged the floods last year and the north still voted for him in numbers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

it doesn't matter about demographics unless there's a mainstream party that represents change

They disbanded after the Euros last year, sorry.

it's "Democratic People's Republic" level bulshittery that the only policy of Change UK was "let's not change the UK"

i said mainstream tbf

Demographics are a thing too although I think a lot of younger people are radicalised in different directions.

Do think also much of the Lab offer wasn't radical enough during the Corbyn years. Social democracy is a huge part of the story of this country post-WWII (Thatcher is really known as someone who fought against it) and I think it's return got short shrift from a public that knew we got here by having that stuff in the first place.

Yeah but it’ll be too late by then.

― ciorapomenitul (gyac), Thursday, 24 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

That isn't really true. Climate change isn't a big bang event.

There a graph that I can no longer find that broke down the last decade's worth of elections by age - the blue and red lines were much closer together in 2010, the blue had the slight edge on the red among older voters but it wasn't that pronounced. They'd started to diverge by 2015 and then massively by 2017, young voters overwhelmingly voted Labour and pensioners overwhelmingly voted Tory.

The difference between 2017 and 2019 was that in the first election, Labour and the Tories were virtually neck and neck among middle-aged voters (Labour had more of the 40-somethings and the Tories slighty more of the 50-somethings, it evened out in general). In 2019, Labour had lost the middle-aged decisively - understanding why is the important thing and there were plenty of conflicting reasons.

So forget about spiteful pensioners, they aren't going to be won round, it's the middle-aged that need to be convinced. Obviously a lot of these are a) at parenting age and b) worrying about their own ageing parents. If the government's response to the pandemic is going to swing voter intention, it's going to happen there.

Suspect it is only going to be worse without the newspapers, which have acted as a bit of a restraint on the total lunacy of WhatsApp-forward-land. The BBC, massively imperfect as it is, has been an unhelpful weight against the Foxicification of radio and TV, so that’ll change too.

The goal is the perfect combo of nothing-matters-nothing-is-true social (QAnon already making inroads among the whatsappery here) with truly polarised broadcast.

They can wedge-issue and voter-disenchant themselves to power for a century on that sort of terrain.

and c) gammons

xpost

The other way in which the pandemic might have an effect is remote white collar workers moving out of cities and taking their voting habits with them.

Yeah but it’ll be too late by then.

― ciorapomenitul (gyac), Thursday, 24 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

That isn't really true. Climate change isn't a big bang event.

"WhatsApp-forward-land"

Isn't the demographics for this at the older end?

the comments under the momentum tweet along the lines of "this arguing amongst yourselves is why labour are out of power for a generation!" are as annoying as ever, need to draw a clear line that blue labour oxford ppe career politician cunts are not "us" and any movement which seeks to include them is probably doomed.

The west is already going full fascist on small numbers, what happens when hot regions become uninhabitable and bigger numbers of people start moving north?
― ciorapomenitul (gyac), Thursday, 24 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

A lot of borders could become unsustainable?

The right is much, much better at making electoral hay from disasters than the left or even the centre is, that's been shown time and time again in recent years. And in any case, climate change isn't going to be an election-defining event for years, maybe even decades.

I don't believe that younger voters are exactly immune to dumb conspiracy theory thinking either.

'Climate change becomes more pronounced -> people demand action on climate change -> this benefits the left' is the sort of logical, linear thinking that never seems to actually play out.

my one full covid conspiracy chum is in his 20s so yep

"WhatsApp-forward-land"

Isn't the demographics for this at the older end?

"The right is much, much better at making electoral hay from disasters"

Like in 1945?

Seriously though the upcoming disasters could be of such scale that electoral answers will seem highly inadequate. Just looking at the response to a thing like covid here..

The number of red rose emoji student dickheads on Twitter who seem very attracted to antisemetic conspiracy theories also suggests this sort of thinking doesn't break down by age.

The problem isn't necessarily age, it's a mistrust of information sources and an inability to distinguish between reliable information and bullshit. The mainstream press has helped fuel this environment in numerous ways but we are moving towards a complete free-for-all.

The numbers on supporting lockdown/mask wearing in public suggest these people are still very much in the minority but they're a growing one.

I know it wasn’t the point but gyac seemed otm with the “too late” simply because I want change before I’m in my 60s and that’s how long it will take if we have to wait for the last Boomer voter to cast their final ballot. And the Right will have pivoted its offer by then anyway.

I got an URGENT letter from Labour this morning saying they were suckers and my membership is about to close and so please renew so we can go forward together.... etc. Love to get mailshot that is paid for by donations from Bet365 and various billionaire property developers and contemptuously throw it in the bin. Can't wait for the next membership audit when they find out at as well as the mass desertion, at least 80000 of them were apolitical entryists who only joined to vote for Babs for leader and aren't renewing.

The thing about the Right's offer..

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/24/rishi-sunak-to-unveil-new-covid-economic-support-measures-furlough

Thank you all for your messages of support. My statement below: pic.twitter.com/7pZWFUYZzs

— Nadia Whittome MP (@NadiaWhittomeMP) September 24, 2020

i just Tweeted her some love, yeah

That was good.

Sadly others have not come through as hoped

A really important read from @DanJarvisMP 👇 https://t.co/TNRUXV9rwS

— Charlotte Nichols (@charlotte2153) September 23, 2020

RLB should have ran a venomous campaign against KS instead of the milquetoast crap her team presided over. It should have been: this is a life death struggle for the soul of the party, are you really going to trust a reconstructed Tory cunt QC to continue in a centre-left direction? Even if didn't work they could have gone down fighting instead of the pathetic manner they fizzled into insignificance in the face of a blatant right-wing takeover.