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

Literally with every new development I’m like this, we truly live in hell
https://media.tenor.com/X1S5OFcU8SUAAAAi/withered-wojack.gif

i wonder how many people live in constituencies where there will be zero candidates offering a chance to vote against this stuff come the next general election

looking forward to some news reports about how the electorate is apathetic

They’re going to have that voter id requirement as well, which might soften Labour’s cough as it’s more likely to dissuade at least some of their target voters even if the manifesto was solid.

Everyone who doesn’t have ID can do a postal vote, which if Tories lose will be dogwhistled to Hell and back because of ‘community leaders collecting the votes’ or similar.

Mic Wright with the receipts as ever

And falling in line behind the Daily Mail, there’s the Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper who told LBC that “we shouldn’t make comparisons with the 1930s”. So there’s the official policy of the Labour front bench: Never forget (unless it’s convenient to forget for political expediency).

In 2017, when Trevor Kavanagh wrote a Sun column that said Britain must deal with “the Muslim problem”, someone called Yvette Cooper, then chair of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, tweeted: When reports of islamophobia and antisemitism are rising, how can The Sun think it is okay to print a column on ‘The Muslim Problem’ with echoes of the 30s?

they're trying to cancel gary lineker

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/cancel-culture-cultural-cancellation-social-260nw-1754881073.jpg

i think they were trying to restore balance with this morning's Thought For The Day which seemed to be some woman saying it was ok for her to stop her local council's housing of refugees because she is religious (like that smp woman)

it's in the gospel of luke, innit? that timeless parable called the wicked and evil samaritan

just after the bit where Jesus walks on the water to tell this small boat to fuck off

there would be no need for people boarding unsafe sea vessels and so much risk of death at sea if Jesus could for example turn the Iranian and Afghani refugees into Ukrainian ones, makes u think eh!

Chapeau to whoever at BBC managed this angle of Braverman 😂

via @thewinesinger pic.twitter.com/0xjlvRKTR4

— Kate Masterofwhine (@Masterofwhine) March 10, 2023

It was used as the picture for the latest episode of the always brilliant @OhGodWhatNowPod (which I recommend to anyone not yet familiar with it). pic.twitter.com/FKDQuGV4f6

— Amyn Merchant (@merchant_amyn) March 10, 2023

not heard of them but they feature Dunty, so that's a no from me.

It’s literally remainiacs rebranded lol, for some strange reason they abandoned their stated mania in 2020

they're probably putting together something about how this Jammy Crumble's fault

oh god what now? is the perfect title

the anguished battle cry of supercilious liberal fuckwits who feel ever so slightly inconvenienced by recent events in UK politics

Telling my kids this is a picture of the Opposition front bench pic.twitter.com/SKS3t3Yv0L

— Khadija (@khadljasays) March 10, 2023

Andrew Bridgen going full-on covid conspiracy crank now, apparently

Unfortunately the Recall of MPs Act 2015 doesn't cover an MP losing the plot completely after being called dishonest by a judge, suspended for breaking lobbying rules and then having the whip withdrawn for comparing Covid vaccination to the Holocaust. This is beyond a joke now. pic.twitter.com/C0BSicxv6A

— Richard Bartholomew (@Barthsnotes) March 12, 2023

terrible person obv, but given the varieties of crank far right conspiracism amongst his fellow MPs i don't think he's a special case

nut case morelikeamirite

Showing their ass

The Board of Deputies of British Jews has apologised to the journalist Rachel Shabi after a (now deleted) message on its official Twitter account described her as an “asshole”.

Wonder which Gn*sher flubbed posting to their alt.

This was a pretty good summary from Goodall - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuwQMa1Uc2k

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/illegal-migration-bill-legislative-scrutiny

new pride flag just dropped pic.twitter.com/QF5KQcHoe0

— hayrr x (@hayrr) March 15, 2023

half a million workers on strike today. you'd think an opposition party might want to align itself with this energy

And..

UPDATE: BBC staff will strike tomorrow after last-ditch talks failed. The walkout will force Budget coverage off air and heap more embarrassment on director-general Tim Davie, who has apologised for scheduling chaos over the Gary Lineker saga. https://t.co/Xz5XUAsCja

— Jake Kanter (@Jake_Kanter) March 14, 2023

It’s just NUJ. Bectu has not balloted. eg they will not be protected if they join the action. In any case the changes to local radio are major and certainly strike-worthy imo. The old biddies who tune in to local radio are not going to be switching to BBC Sounds any time soon.

And like, even if they did there would need to be some content there for them beyond a regional breakfast show

cunts cunts cunts cunts CUNTS

Let’s admit it, it’s just not working. pic.twitter.com/Xhz0xn8k4Q

— The Labour Party (@UKLabour) March 14, 2023

for ilxors who don't want to go to prison for making death threats i'd advice avoiding anything Stephen Kinnock says at the moment

coming from the party led by the hotshot lawyer who didn't even have one plan to prosecute Savile, ho ho ho

look the Savile documents were just resting in his account

Checking in on the budget.

Jeremy Hunt joked that workers aged 56 aren't old, but "experienced". In the part of London where i grew up men have a healthy life expectancy of 56.

It depends whose experiences you want to address.

— Aditya Chakrabortty (@chakrabortty) March 15, 2023

A lot of people left the workforce in their 50s because they have long covid but I guess they’ve shirked long enough

God help me I read the whole of KS’s budget response, I was looking for a single thing on public sector pay but the closest thing was a reference to waiting lists and “crimes going unpunished” ffs

There was also a quality dig at the tories over the lineker thing that they already made clear they agree with the tories about, nice one

older workers and the future of Universal Credit:

so, apparently there's a proposal to remove the Work Capability Assessment and leave all decisions about people's fitness to work in the hands of Work Coaches, who will "have a relationship with their claimants" and "understand their needs". if this goes ahead it means that the already inadequate assessment of people's physical and mental health will be handed over to people with no medical qualifications whatsoever. as opposed to the current system which at least features the nominal involvement of medical professionals, albeit not medical specialists. the average amount of contact between a Work Coach and a claimant at the moment is probably something like 10 minutes a fortnight by the way.

by strengthening the rules on sanctions for refusing paid work the DWP could end up stopping the entire income of claimants who refuse to work, for example, 12 hour shifts on a 4 on 4 off basis, night shifts, types of work that may aggravate their physical or mental health, anything really. individual Work Coaches may aim to be sympathetic to their claimants, but pressure from the top down will ensure that there's very little protection for vulnerable claimants and this understanding relationship will be meaningless.

people will die.

(people are already dying and the WCA is a brutal lottery, but the current proposals are a massive escalation)

for a brief few early morning dazed seconds when I first heard "WCA to be scrapped" I thought perhaps this is somehow unintentionally a good thing, then I came to my senses and thought no, it will be fucking sinister and totally evil, and result in many more needless deaths.

yeah it's hard to believe that they could make the process worse, but bad as the WCA is there's at least lip service to a medical assessment. how the fuck is a Work Coach supposed to judge what somebody's health is like or what work they could do?

turning work coaches into adjudicators of life or death is pretty fucking scary news for people with disabilities. When I had to deal with one last year as an appointee for a severely disabled person I was glad she wasn't a total arsehole, or perhaps just didn't have the power to be one in this situation!

https://t.co/Xhz0xn8k4Q

"pfft, you call that an orphan-crushing machine"

Even small changes in wording in newspapers can make a big difference in public opinion, according to a study published in a top economics journal. The study compared nationally representative survey data from before and after April 2013, when, after years of resistance, the Associated Press news service went from recommending use of the term “illegal immigrant” to banning its use in AP dispatches. After the change, people in counties with more circulation of newspapers using AP-sourced reporting became less supportive of tough immigration enforcement.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/03/16/opinion/social-studies-power-ap-style-trends-left-handedness-tip-liars-poker/

sounds like the unconscious bias training had very little effect on the Labour executive board

NEW: Martin Forde, the KC asked by Keir Starmer to write a report on Labour's culture (that Keir ignored), breaks his silence, saying there's a hierarchy of racism under Starmer:

"Anti-black racism, Islamophobia, isn’t taken as seriously as antisemitism."https://t.co/GRPQaI7TD0

— Alex Nunns (@alexnunns) March 16, 2023

Forde: “Quite a high proportion of Black and Asian councillors or prospective MPs felt they'd been subjected to disciplinary action which had been deliberately timed to exclude them from qualifying processes or selection.”

Just accidentally switched to bbc news to hear that ‘artificial intelligence will be used to apply benefit sanctions’. Not chilling to the bone in any way. I feel fine.

— jewess in distress (@rachelcohen7) March 15, 2023

Absolutely hate existing in this time thanks

Just like the Rwanda thing, it's already been tried in Australia, was an abject failure, led to suicides etc, and is now the subject of a royal commission

such major benefit reforms would almost certainly take more time to roll out than the tories have got left of the current term of govt, which of course means full steam ahead with this shit no matter what happens in the next GE.

For example, if there is no longer a WCA then how will it be decided whether a claimant will be eligible for additional payments because they are unlikely ever to be able to work? Will this be somehow combined with PIP or will there simply be no additional payment for new claimants?

hawkish think tank ghouls and Rachel Reeves would be jizzing themselves at the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of the idea of just doing away with assessments for the disabled component of UC so it only theoretically exists, but never gets paid to anybody apart from a few lucky golden ticket winners.