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

Gone around and around but got no place to go now

always enjoy it when members of the House of Lords talk about threats to democracy

are people really gonna isolate for 14 days on ssp just cause they get pinged by the app telling them they got within 2 metres of a person who tested positive, if it isn’t a legal requirement to do so? And if not... what’s the point

I think it's within 2m for 15 minutes or more so not quite the same as walking by a +ve case.

fwiw I think I would comply but I get full sick pay so I'm v much privileged.

Not sure how it works if you get pinged every couple of weeks if you live and work in a city and use public transport. Like is it possible you could need to isolate for 2 weeks out of every 3 till this new wave passes?

The only way that would work is with very widely available, easy and quick turnaround pregnancy-test style testing. That looks like it's on its way but I fully expect the government to bungle the purchase/rollout.

Lol nothing matters

That moment when you've had enough of their shit pic.twitter.com/pSKpDZyHqB

— Jim (@Barcajim3) September 28, 2020

stand up proud Lib Dems, Skills Wallets are back, baby

surely we have enough artificial pricing of education already? every course at £3k a pop! would it be be a better idea if it were hours or ECTS credits instead? probably still a whole jostling of invisible elbows.

i just breathed a big sigh of relief that i'm out of FE, then had a chuckle about how 30 year-old A-levels apparently disbar you from needing skills training

In Parliament just now, @RichardBurgon and I raised the concerns of staff and students about reopening universities.

Conservative MPs decried us for 'speaking for the @UCU'.

I'll always be proud to stand up for workers and trade unionists in Parliament.

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) September 29, 2020

If you all write up a letter to nominate gaz coombs for the Nobel peace prize I’ll submit it, it’s one of the few perks of my profession

Looks like we are going to get to three figures soon?

"The UK has recorded 71 new deaths. That takes the official headline total to 42,072."

7,123 new cases as well.

all seems a small price to pay to protect our freedoms

T May will be the first former Tory MP to defy a three-line whip today since Heath voted against the Poll Tax. Led By Donkeys set to unveil a hundred foot statue of her as a welcome to the resistance gesture.

I get that students will want to go home (probably) but the focus on Christmas seems problematic after those hoping to celebrate Eid al-Adha were fucked over so readily (I'm open to the idea that the restrictions in the north west might have been necessary but you can't then say "We'd do pretty much anything to make Xmas happen").

Now the students are there the idea of allowing them to spread the rona amongst themselves and then sending them all over the country again feels like an absolute disaster waiting to happen. Still, the government will do virtually anything to avoid being the government that cancelled Christmas so I guess they'll either instigate full-on lockdowns in October and November or they'll just go "fuck it, herd immunity time, off you go kids".

as far as Eid and Yom Kippur are concerned, well, people have to understand that there's a pecking order in this country and not all citizens are created equal

Nicola Sturgeon pointed out last week that people had already been restricted through Jewish and Muslim festivals when asked about a 'normal Christmas' the other day. I'm sure her response didn't make the papers.

Is it possible for them to spread the rona amongst themselves quickly enough to get them all infected, immune and home before Christmas?

(apart from the sick and the dead ones, obv)

xp I mean, the Herald?

💥 FT Exclusive: Priti Patel asked officials to explore the construction of an asylum processing centre on Ascension Island - a British overseas territory more than 4,000 miles from the UK in the south Atlantic, for migrants coming to Britain.https://t.co/X0zaES7KZr

— Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) September 29, 2020

https://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdyd1cbIqU1rby04wo1_1280.gif

jfc

Priti Patel, true Australian hero, or a least learning fast from Abbott now he’s in town.

Why Ascention when we have thousands of uninhabited islands in the british isles on which to construct more cost-effective concentration camps?

just the tories having their little Madagascar Plan moment, nothing to see.

lol honest I didn't see David Schneider posting the same comment before I posted, but tbf he is correct.

Placing bets on Sir Haircut laying the last brick on that camp.

he might be mulling over the ruins of his political career with more time to spend with his donkeys by then!

Dr Francis Ryan, who can be a bit of a Labour Right happy clapper at times is saying Keith needs to be braver in her column. lol the serious repercussions of the Gogglebox incident have took the shine off his huuuge 3 pt lead.

Worth a wee scroll up and down this thread when you look at Patel's offshore immigration processing proposals.
It's like everyone's determined to be the next Thatcher in the worst way possible.

David Blunkett – As Home Secretary wanted to send all asylum seekers to offshore processing centres outside Europe https://t.co/dzhMj2GWfW

— Jon Stone (@joncstone) February 23, 2020

"leftwing thinktank"

literally the first act of Blairism was reducing single parent benefits and demonising them as scroungers. What did that cunt say? You can build a hospital a week with what they are scrounging off the state.

and he did! and now the nhs is stronger than it's ever been, thanks tony

I remember the first act of Blair was to sign the EU declaration of minimum wage, or whatever its called.

(just sayin')

that isn't the the way I remember it! And this is the 2nd time we've been through this.

both of us could be wrong and right at the same time, but sometimes it can be telling how people do remember political history.

ohmygod i've just heard 2 minutes of a glorious discussion on You and Yours about whether benefits should be linked to earnings and contributions cos this middle class lad has been paying into the system for years and now he's been hit by the shutdown it's not fair

then i threw the radio up the other end of the kitchen and stomped on it but it was illuminating up til then

You and Your is like the dark heart of middle England, it gives me the shudders. Well apart when I'm laughing at tory voting wankers crying because they've become mortgaged to a substandard new build home, with a rapacious hidden leasehold sewn into the deal!

i didn't even stop to listen to what this lad's job used to be but he'd put so much tax into the system and now he had to live on the same money as the other dolescum, my heart was breaking

I wouldn't mind a compilation of homeowner misery from You and Yours, it cheers me up hearing middle-class tory callers breaking down + bursting into tears while describing how every time it rains, a stream of raw sewage surges past their front door!

istr the system in the old days, when it was our dads losing their jobs, you got more money if you'd had a job and "paid your stamps" - you had a period of unemployment benefit aligned to how long or how much you'd paid in then moved
onto social security for less money

am I making that up?

No, until pretty recently, tho it wasn't meaningfully more money last time I looked. That was anybody with 2 years NI paid tho iirc

I mean no you're not making it up. I guess under UC there are small differentials based on rent/mortgage/maybe number of dependents?

The chat on the radio was framed in this horrible "quality of life you're used to" way, obv I'm not saying benefits should be punitive or that people shouldn't expect a reasonable quality of life from the state. Just lol at the obliviousness and speculation on their previous political opinions

I def don't think the rate of unemployment benefit has ever been tied as a ratio to your previous earnings

I'm the like the top boss level benefits scrounger as a carer, not only do I not *work* - I also get my stamp paid!

which might be relevant if I live to pension age, but that'll probably be raised to 90

NoCheers I just remember vague bits and bobs about big stamps and wee stamps and bru money.

It's kinda lol that the folk who've spent years shitting on dole scroungers didn't realise it could be them. Still sad as fuck, mind, because for every one of those cunts there are people who are nothing like that plus obviously millions of dependants.

xp

lol i've give up on the idea of pension age, it's running faster than i can

pension age is an ever moving horizon