like the queen this thread will never die: in which we ALL resign (ourselves to disgusting miseries to post-boris politics 2022)

starmer criticises cynicism while he also abandons the idea of nationalising public utilities because he cant fathom how it is even possible

Strikes me he's one of the most cynical politicians I've seen in a long time.

starting to wonder if maybe this starmer fella is actually a total cunt tbh

five missions - sounds like the shittest and most unappealing dlc ever. They've purposely avoided "pledges" (nor any policy content either) but still the opening questions to him to him this morning were firstly, how can you put something out so bad that it pained us to read it even more than usual. Then followed by, how about that time you conned the membership, eh?

Membership are wallet inspected cucks tbf, he was right that that wouldn't matter

yes, "guileless simps" would be more accurate. But still people who applauded the con at the time will be dutifully accusing him of being a slippery lying fuck all the way to the next GE

otm literally everyone, God help us cos the Labour Party sure as fuck won’t

Exc:

King Charles was lined up by Number 10 to meet European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tomorrow - just as highly contentious negotiations over the Northern Ireland Protocol were poised to come to a head

Some fear “misjudgment” dragging the King into poltics

— Sam Coates Sky (@SamCoatesSky) February 24, 2023

jfc the combination of an egomaniac monarch surrounded by yes men and a clueless gov that doesn't really give a fuck is a powerful recipe for fuckery

It's not Brexit...but it's Brexit.

Actually an ok piece detailing the combination of factors so we can understand why we have no tomatoes in supermarkets.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/25/you-can-blame-the-weather-and-brexit-but-theres-more-to-the-uks-food-supply-crisis

when there are empty shelves under a Labour govt I suspect the UK media will go in much harder on them and it will be deserved because I feel confident they will do absolutely fuck all to reign in all the big supermarkets monopoly on food production. Despite all this I managed to get four packets of piccolo tomatoes, fuck yeah!

baron sainsbury of sainsbury's just "returned to the labour fold" is how hard labour will reign in the supermarket monopoly

Public info campaigns on the importance of getting your 5 a week

I knew a guy once who thought he was getting his 5 a day via Fruit Pastilles, worth considering for the nu-nu-Labour era

lol at your dn

I like Rayner and that piece makes sense except for this part. Is this bad editing? I can’t follow it and the first sentence in particular sounds like… not something anyone would want to say

But if we structure our food system so that those in poverty can access it, we will only further damage our agricultural base. We need on the one hand to deal with the functioning of our food system and on the other with poverty, with a chronically unequal distribution of wealth. We need to stop talking about food poverty and just call it poverty.

I would say the UK is now officially a banana republic except there probably aren't any bananas in the shops either.

xp Rayner is simply advocating for fully automated luxury communism

I've got a bit of a malign inner FBPE goblin in me that feels that a lot of the stupid bigoted twats that voted brexit deserve to suffer some ill consequences for their racism and their hubris. But then it struck me they probably don't consume "foreign muck" like fresh tomatoes with the same frequency as pretentious bon viveurs like my bad self.

tracer: having just said that higher prices is a moral no-go (bcz it shuts out the poor), he's arguing that forcing prices down to a level affordable to those in poverty will also not *by itself* solve the problems of the extant food system -- and that it's no good trying to address the latter by itself unless we *also* confront (and presumably end) poverty aka extreme inequality

it's not great writing! i think partly bcz he's trying to avoid being attacked for the implication that bothers you -- but also bcz he doesn't want to end up at a place where he's arguing that a food system which delivers a wide range of choice and quality universally is (i) a luxury and a distraction right now, or (ii) part of the problem and some of the cause of extreme inequality

if there's one thing the last 5 years has demonstrated it's that the ultras on both sides of the Brexit referendum will never learn anything and any possible event simply proves their point

this morning's posts just reminded me of the beginning of The Affluent Society and Galbraith's suggestion that the West was in a post-starvation economy

looks like the joke's on you son

i think the basic concept of rayner's piece is good -- that this is a problem that was recognised and could have been tackled 15 years ago except the labour party is/was bought and sold be lord sainsbury (cf his cross point abt the 2006 "leave it to tesco" report)-- but it ends up being very contorted by having to pre-emptively answer various semi-irrelevant present-day interruptions (eg abt brexit)

lol 15 yrs ago is 2008 isn't it, let's say 16 yrs ago 👍🏽

Another 58 souls (at least) killed by Europe's racist border regime - so devastating & enraging https://t.co/JY8pGrxfee

— Lisa Tilley (@Tilley101) February 26, 2023

awful. Any kind of substandard sea vessel was never going to last long in conditions like that :(

Can see no issues here, no massive problem for people they push into any old shit to get their bonus, none at all https://t.co/Zjf2rOFSeH

— Magic Money Tree 🌳 (@charlottor) February 27, 2023

What could possibly go right, but a good policy for these psycho motherfuckers that see employment figures as the most important metric of them all. Also Labour have been making noise about encouraging, substantively meaning, forcing disabled people into a poverty wages jobs market that even able bodied people are struggling to live in. This is why I think politicians should go out and meet the public more often - without any security detail and explain why they think it is a good and necessary thing to keep rolling back a rich country closer and closer to the pre-welfare state period of early capitalism.

No words.

After the worst week of my life, I wanted to write an update on this but I just can't get my head around what's happened/is happening, so I'll leave this here instead https://t.co/gjPfXa7WAT https://t.co/QeIIezAx70

— Emma Szewczak (@EmmaSzewczak) February 27, 2023

Good morning from the Amazon picket line in Coventry. The second ever strike at an Amazon warehouse in British history. pic.twitter.com/xVxqpF2h9q

— Taj Ali (@Taj_Ali1) February 28, 2023

Apart from the rest of this shit, a friend points out this is just such a weird use of the word "families" - "voters" or "people" would have done the same job, this is a nugget of exclusionary language that someone told them polled well, so it's become a thoughtless reflex.

.@Keir_Starmer on the Hancock WhatsApps: “Families across the country will look at this and see politicians writing books portraying themselves as heroes, selectively leaking messages- it’s an insulting and ghoulish spectacle.”

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) March 1, 2023

it's been happening for a long time now. it's a very visible NuLab/Labour right/whatever these desiccated husks are tic, and yeah it's hugely, visibly exclusionary but i'm sure they're aware of this because it's pitched to their target market and they don't give a fuck about people outside that

Love to gather the family around to look at Hancock's whatsapp messages.

Right before dinner, I thought everyone did this

I once was with a group of people who got thrown out of a pub mainly because this fairly cracked guy called Graham would swear very loudly + v frequently, every sentence without fail usually. The manager said we can't have that kind of language in a "family pub". Graham replied: I'm from a fucking family as well you stupid *** ****!

the family thing is more sinister than something that polled well it's maybe the central thing in right wing discourse and ideology right now. used in the starmer way it seems to mean among other things no more queer nonsense, no more fringe interests, no questioning familiar categories

a very vocal portion of the very online UK left completely lost its shit recently over some pretty basic critiques of the family form so I have to assume they're loving this

Nice alternative recent history prompt here

"There was an idea at one moment that we may have to ask the public to exterminate all the cats in Britain."

Former Health Minister Lord Bethell discusses the early government response to the Covid pandemic. pic.twitter.com/YWyp32zPML

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) March 1, 2023

They would gain critical support from calzino tho

they, as in the national govt, started a pet extermination program that killed nearly a million domestic pets at the start of WW2. At first the home office gave out instructions on keeping pets safe during air raids, then they changed their mind - nah kill 'em all instead, the bunch of useless parasitic eaters!

the family thing is more sinister than something that polled well it's maybe the central thing in right wing discourse and ideology right now. used in the starmer way it seems to mean among other things no more queer nonsense, no more fringe interests, no questioning familiar categories

https://doglab.com/wp-content/uploads/Woman-blowing-into-dog-whistle-near-white-poodle.jpg

Our own feline version of the great Hanoi rat massacre could have been just the stimulus the uk economy needed in the first phase of the pandemic. About as much as fucking eat out to help out at least

just off to photoshop a picture of Alf wearing an "eat out to help out" t-shirt

I once was with a group of people who got thrown out of a pub mainly because this fairly cracked guy called Graham would swear very loudly + v frequently, every sentence without fail usually. The manager said we can't have that kind of language in a "family pub". Graham replied: I'm from a fucking family as well you stupid *** ****!

Ultra-Calzino content.

"mainly" we must be told the other reasons!

The whole fam-damly!

xp

It's a whole other lifetime ago for me. At least 99.9% of the work people I used to regularly drink with - I'd dash across the road into moving traffic to avoid them these days.

The family stuff is quite cynical and was already hackneyed in 2005, as Freedland of all people, pointed out

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/apr/23/election2005.politicalcolumnists1

are the fmailies hard-working? that's what i want to know

Was Freedland ever good?

That question looks naive, I already regret it.