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

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plot completely after being called dishonest by a judge, suspended for breaking lobbying rules and then having the whip withdrawn for comparing Covid vaccination to the Holocaust.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.

They should take a good look at the fuck-up that happened in Australia when the govt implemented an automated system for clawing back welfare payments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme

Not really a failure if it led to suicides, that definitely goes on the credit side of the ledger for govt here and in aus

"the cruelty is the point" is a sign that can't be tapped often enough

and there is literally no other point

the fiscal hawk arguments always fall flat when inevitably it ends up costing the state just as much or even more to render benefit claimants dead. When PIP was rolled out it was a bloodbath and yet it is still costing them something like 40% more than was anticipated by the ghouls who designed it and the endless logjam of appeals which wasn't really a major feature of the previous system will be a huge added cost.

And since unemployment is a deliberate feature of market orthodoxy the decision to make it as unpleasant as possible is absolutely ideological, not fiscal

The entire system is based on terrifying people into accepting ever worsening wages and working conditons

Which is why these waves of strikes -- as imperfect as they are in their lack of militancy -- are so important

This text is right. @DrJoGrady & the national @ucu account have lied about the extent of what has been "won" in the current offer.

The confusion, obtuse+misleading wording of the question & abuse of democratic process when it doesn't go her way has been deliberate. https://t.co/21dO9wO5uc

— Sol Gamsu (@SolGamsu) March 17, 2023

One of the meltier union leaderships, their desperation to settle is palpable

This also.

I am staggered that this deal is being proposed by unions. It sells their members horribly short. It builds in austerity. And it leaves the NHS with a continuing pay, retention and recruitment crisis that will crush its ability to meet the needs of the people of this country.

— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) March 17, 2023

I was thinking just this morning, it feels very clear why the unions have allowed their members' pay to be so eroded over the last decade

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/22/britain-arts-institutions-cuts?

"The only credible rescue mission at this point will come from an incoming Labour government. That mission must not be flunked."

Fools.