love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

The name was vaguely familiar but I hadn't actually made the connection as to he was and didn't bother to check, it was more to get the screenshot out there.

Killed the embed, there are so many of these accounts that it's difficult to keep track.

as much as a running joke Watson is, he still wielded enough power + influence to get Dawn Foster sacked from the Guardian. None of these wankers are ever actually amusing clowns.

baggymp was one of the great running gags tbf

i mean not so much running as jogging for a bit and stopping for breath but you know

He was listening to some classics last night tbf. Also need to point out the top message in his shoutbox is still someone calling him a cunt.

a lot of suspects in this thread

Tom is as fit as a butcher's dog now, fucking shitbird does 3 marathons before breakfast!

i know also body shaming jokes are bad but also Tom Watson is a tory cunt

i know also body shaming jokes are bad

It's never stopped a single ilxor from going there

(inc me, I might add, though I think I try to reserve it for footballers turning up for pre season)

you can't body shame Tom these days, he benches 180 (wtf that means) and he's that strong he can slice through an engineering brick with his hand.

xp not only sacked, but sacked by email while waiting to be discharged from three weeks in hospital for a massive epileptic fit and injuries incurred while having it.

He was transparently their main source of disgruntled frontbencher quotes going back maybe a decade but his influence and power - such as it existed - was predicated on being that guy. Now he's no longer in Parliament it no longer exists although it might be sufficient to get some coverage of his forthcoming Lanchestrian masterpiece.

He's still occasionally rinsing the Giggs and Headie One bangers but the most notable thing from Baggymp's recent Last FM action is that he reloaded the Band of HM Royal Marines' Bugle Fanfare to mark VJ Day. I wasn't aware that any human being would actually do that even if they were so inclined, as opposed to, say, sticking the TV on.

so a HANG THE PEEDO?!?! mob has been yelling outside Buckingham Palace today or yesterday? my sympathies have never been more torn

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EgH2wSyXkAAul8X?format=jpg&name=large

lol! some Rona/5g truthers seem to be piggybacking their cause to the let's lynch a paedophil mob!

i assume these are QAnon adjacent tbh and if not they're still probably horrible fascists but then so's the monarchy, it's a score draw

Yeah they’re all Qanon people, great

oh aye!

Starmer has been attacking the govt on their competence. But Rachel Shabi made the good point that competence isn't the main problem, even if they were competent they still would be led by ideology and make the exact same decisions i.e huuuge privatised test and trace contracts for pals etc.. The only reason Starmer can only go for competence is because he's barely fucking different from these cunts, just owned by different paymasters.

Other than the vague idea of turning libraries into extra schools, is there anything Labour has proposed about how they should re-open? If so, I’ve missed it.

Lol

The UK is a country with a deep and lingering sickness in its soul pic.twitter.com/cTAOTaMqzN

— keewa (@keewa) August 23, 2020

Really what can you do with the likes of them? Listen attentively to their concerns?

any leader of the Labour party that ignores Teachers' Unions concerns while doing annoyingly non-committal and vague attacks on the govt without offering anything better, could do with some forensic scrutiny directed at themselves. Or if not a baseball bat directed at their head.

careful now

of course a soft padded one I meant, all in the spirit of the ilx polite discourse regulations act 2020

How will the National Trust cope without the subscriptions of 'Mr 13lls' and 'Plane Pimp'.

re National Trust, this curiously echoes something I think about a lot. Namely:

Why are membership organizations expected to police the public statements of their members?

Political parties (in practice mainly Labour, but in principle others) are assailed for having members who have, in a private capacity, tweeted something abusive (or sometimes things that are fine, but are falsely alleged to be bad).

Demands are made about their Disciplinary Procedures. Things must be speeded up. The fact that complaints are 'mishandled' is a scandal. The general implication is that these people must be expelled ASAP (though with the Con party I don't know if it ever happens).

Meanwhile ... the National Trust is also a membership organization. Will people demand that it TAKES ACTION about the people tweeting disdain for its anti-racist initiative? What if one of them becomes more fully abusive and starts using unmistakably racist language> Will it be imperative for them to be thrown out of the NT as quickly as possible? Will the NT be publicly shamed and attacked if this process is delayed? Or - as I imagine - will no-one notice or care?

The comparison also draws attention to an anomaly in perception: party disciplinary procedures tend to imply that it's a privilege to be in a party and people should be desperate not to be thrown out. But really, those of us who join political parties are doing them a favour and giving them money we could happily use elsewhere. Which is what these National Trust protesters are threatening to do.

I mean the National Trust is not really the same as a political party but if a group of members start posting deranged shit on social media, flaunting their membership, then it does quickly become a PR issue for the institution.

I'm not convinced that the above accounts are all real people let alone real National Trust members. The NT has attracted a number of negative news stories in the last couple of weeks - they appear to be heavily strapped for cash - and these have largely been in the right-wing press. Given the membership is likely to skew older and more rural it's probably becoming an unwilling vector for a bit of cultural panic about not very much.

I would have thought in pure attendance terms, National Trust properties that have reopened might have had an OK summer, given the number of people holidaying in this country, the generally good weather, and the fact that most of these places have enormous grounds. They might be attracting a different audience to normal and that's going to throw up opportunities for any malign actor determined to stir up fear and resentment.

if i was the NT i would simply not care about these type of idiots or the bots that impersonate them.

i guess last night i was having a brainstorm more about how a society ought to deal with people who will continue to insist on their "right to hate" and specifically to hate in public

They are doing the right thing, they have a membership base that is literally going to die off and they aren't going to improve it by pandering to these people, which means engaging more deeply with young people and being more honest about the history of these places and where the money to build them came from.

Younger people, perhaps, not just the under 30s.

the irony of the Tweet about "erasing history" was so intense i assumed it had to be a pile-on from somebody with no NT membership who just wanted a culture war skirmish

as an aside there is a neo-nazi dude that lives around the corner from me (he has a Flemish-Nazi flag painted on his front door) who has become an avid cyclist during lockdown who now proudly displays his British Cycling membership poster in his window.

National Trust are definitely doing the right thing and yes, a lot of fake accounts @-ing them, not as big an issue as it looks

I have no problem with the NT's policy. Their statement (that is attacked) looks very mild, moderate and sensible to me.

I quite agree with DC that there are PR issues - at least in theory, potentially - for a membership organization whose members make offensive statements in public. And it is logical to think that this would apply to political parties also.

But political parties are held to exceptionally high standards re: the behaviour of their members, in a way that other membership orgs are not. This goes as far as literally dominating national news, becoming a top headline story for years, etc.

There may of course be Realpolitik reasons for this difference in what is demanded of the two kinds of membership organizations. But I have never seen the reasons explained as a matter of principle.

XP: Calzino's post is an excellent additional example! When will British Cycling TAKE ACTION ??

equal parts amused and unnerved by the continuing protest outside Buckingham palace

Did this happen? https://t.co/toEUw2f7RX

— Jeremy Vine (@theJeremyVine) August 24, 2020

on the above, further evidence that Facebook is melting people's brains

Now that the rallies in the UK are over, I can post this. All of today's "Save Our Children" marches, without exception, were organised in private Facebook groups within four or five weeks. Literally all of them https://t.co/izVsFXv2w6 pic.twitter.com/GuvWm4BmA9

— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) August 22, 2020

are they protesting against this worldwide paed-conspiracy thing or do they just want to give prince andrew a good old fashioned lynch-mob shoeing?

I think a little from column A, a little from column B, insofar as they can said to have a coherent agenda at all

pinefox, I'd say another difference is that very often the "party members" that political parties get into trouble over aren't just randos with a membership - they might be elected officials, important cogs in the party structure, ppl w/ public profiles.

The answer to "did this happen?" might be 'no'?

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-palace/fact-checka-crest-has-not-gone-missing-from-buckingham-palace-idUSKBN23A369

Daniel RF: yes, I strongly agree that *those* people should be subject to standards, discipline, scrutiny, etc - as appropriate. MPs, MSPs, councillors, even prospective candidates for those roles; party employees, officials -- the same as anyone might be subject to workplace discipline (though there are certainly grey areas even with that - most of us don't want to think that our employer can determine what we publish in our own time - including posts on ILX for instance, for that matter).

My point is that most of the members 'investigated', at least within Labour, are not people like that, but are private citizens who happen to have paid membership fees.

Within the Con party, I have observed that a lot of accused people actually *are* people like that (local councillors posting racist abuse, etc), but whether any of them are disciplined or expelled I am unsure.

lol at the reuters fact check almost makes you suspicious

"The windows have been covered with a protective film while the building is being reserviced."

Within the Con party, I have observed that a lot of accused people actually *are* people like that (local councillors posting racist abuse, etc), but whether any of them are disciplined or expelled I am unsure.

SOP is to suspend for an internal investigation then quietly reverse 3-6 months later when the dust settles and no-one is looking.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/25/mercy-baguma-woman-in-extreme-poverty-found-dead-next-to-crying-baby-in-glasgow

The Home Office said: “This is a tragic situation and our condolences go to Ms Baguma’s family. The Home Office takes the wellbeing of all those in the asylum system extremely seriously, and we will be conducting a full investigation into Ms Baguma’s case.”

No you don't, fuck you.

humiliating stuff from Labour pic.twitter.com/6WpRNJbuK8

— black lives matter (@jrc1921) August 25, 2020

should have stuck with RLB, she didn't agree with Tories on bad policies until they u-turned

this would be the same Labour whose leader decided to weigh in on a racist dogwhistle story *made up* by the Times and he still sided with the fucking racists

far be it from me to suggest that Kieth Starmer would say literally anything if he thought it might get him elected Prime Minister