DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

Oh fuck I just realised that I've been saying "perverting the cause of justice" all these years ;_;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/feb/07/michael-gove-gcse-replacement

English Baccalaureate dead in the water. This was Gove's flagship policy.

Which educational/textbook company does Rupert Murdoch own, just out of interest?

He owns a company called Amplify which hasn't really moved into the UK education sales sphere yet. There's no doubt that he sees education as one of the core money-spinners of the future, though.

Undoubtedly.

Gove got religion to secure places for his children at St Mary Abbots (best primary school in Kensington and Chelsea, also three miles from where he lives). The normal parents hate him and the wife, who apparently teaches a Sunday school class there for extra brownie points. In view of what he's doing to other people's children, isn't that interesting?

Gove is the equivalent of an football manager who fucks up all the time and the media go easy on him because he's their mate. He must be world class when it comes to sucking up to people.

Totally. One of the most hilarious things I have seen on Twitter was one C. Moran going 'wait, he's really nice' like he'd willingly interact with any other person from her background.

am i right in saying this has been blocked by the committee/lib dems for practical concerns about the specific implementation timetable rather than problems of principle? "dead in the water" seems premature if so.

and by premature i mean optimistic, although presumably not during this parliament

Strikes me they are using this opportunity to get the hell off this boat.

Gove gets mad love from journos because he's one of them: he's basically just the one out of a hundred blowhard opinions 4 u columnists who managed to kiss enough of the right arses to get a chance of actual power. He's living the op-ed hack's dream.

English Baccalaureate dead in the water. This was Gove's flagship policy.

Wack EBacc-y gets smoked...

am i right in saying this has been blocked by the committee/lib dems for practical concerns about the specific implementation timetable rather than problems of principle? "dead in the water" seems premature if so.

He seems to be proposing revisions to the current GCSE structure rather than a a replacement now so i think it's over for the foreseeable future.

Anything that punctures that little prick's balloon of self-regard is worth celebrating

am sure you're all up on this already but it was a slight revelation to me:

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/07/gove-dark-stab-baddiel-footage

Slave labour illegal after all, phew

love this, from the comments page:

To equate these schemes with "slave labour" is an offense to genuine slaves around the world, which is the real crisis.

lol@ that guy giving a fuck about genuine slaves.

Well you know what Poundland's like, all cheap imitations of the genuine article, including their slaves

DEATH TO FALSE SLAVES

So...

Has anybody else been invited to the Labour People's Policy Forum to decide what 'One Nation' is actually all about? I'm baffled as to where my name came from, having never even been vaguely involved with the Labour party, but I'm half tempted to go.

First thoughts from the literature they've included:

The new Labour party logo looks really like some kind of BNP offshoot, and using "one nation" alongside it doesn't help.

The language used feels like a BNP hybrid too - lots of emphasis on the country needing to act together and become great again, focus on heavier/better policing and protecting children/the family from the scary 'future' Britain. "On immigration where those in power seemed to ignore the public's message that high levels of migration were having huge impacts on their lives. We must work to make sure that never happens again." (my emphasis) There are only about 10 paragraphs of text, so including it shows it's one of the main points of policy focus.

Personally, "Britain Isn't Working" is a mis-step. Feels like they would have gone with "coalition isn't working" for the complete Thatcher vibe if they thought they could have got away with it.

It's "invitation", not "invite".

The "Your Britain Policy Den" where you get the opportunity to "pitch to Labour's Policy Dragons" is just hilarious.

Whoever chose the photos of Ed in the booklet should look for a new job. My favourite is 'feeling a giant pair of invisible boobs at a picnic table', although 'Ref! I got the ball!' is good too.

Perhaps life would improve for everybody if policies were not shaped to appeal to the stupidest and most reactionary white people, who never tire of reminding people they're oppressed worse than anyone while excusing others' poverty with 'this ain't Africa'. No child of immigrants has any business pushing shite like that.

Indeed, fuck one Britain

go, aldo, and express as much disgust as possible.

According to YouGov something like 43% of people consider "immigration" one of their top voting priorities. So either there are a lot of stupid and reactionary white people in this country or there's something else going on.

Immigration issues are usually housing or employment issues in disguise, they COULD make that clear but that would require a level of intellectual and moral leadership that is beyond the modern Labour Party.

People are always saying immigration is one of their top voting priorities and then ignoring it come election day - and voting on the economy as usual

Seriously, who thought this was a good idea?

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8528/8478225797_4da8f699f5.jpg

Pass to me!

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8110/8478221367_e431d09c9e.jpg

Giant invisible boobage

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8234/8478216371_220dbd0291.jpg

Alex Salmond?

Just realised something about this:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8089/8479310206_b5ac9a9c3b.jpg

So the leader, the shadow cabinet and the policy advisers will all be there for you tell them what their policies should be. Isn't there a shorter way to announce you and your entire team have no ideas?

Biggest politicians imaginary breasts I've ever seen. It's lucky he's talking to a woman of such slender build, or the picture might go seriously viral.

"Under a Labour-run NHS you'd get a free operation to make them this big."

One Nation Labour - i'm guessing the nation is the Duchy of Grand Fenwick

Clueless tool surrounded by clueless tools...
Comic Relief: David Cameron appears in One Direction video

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/65931000/jpg/_65931746_65931744.jpg
Four people in this picture are a waste of space and irrelevant to the future of Britain...

Is that the David Cameron Madame Tussaud's waxwork?

Not unless they've had a wax shortage and have started filling them full of shit instead.

is this where we're discussing that big hoohah about benefit claimant Heather Frost and her 11 kids, a mansion and a horse?

I got a bit fed up of bickering about it on Facebook, so I did a rare opinion-based blog about it - http://charlieframe.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/about-the-lady-with-the-11-kids-a-horse-and-a-mansion/ Never sure how these turn out, it's probably pretty obvious stuff to most people here anyway.

how would you fix the system so that it both helped ppl and prevented widespread abuse or 'scrounging', that's the thing.

For all you say 'fix the system', i've worked for years in 'the system' over here and if even a majority of those able to work were actually willing to do so or to engage honestly with services, then the 'system' would function much better. That hasnt been my experience tho, and i'm not talking about only since the crash.

It's as overly simplistic to blame the apparatus as it is to focus on a single claimant, but i mean idk would i be tsk-tsking ppl if they're annoyed reading about individual cases like the one in question. Sure, it's cliched mailbait and all that but dismissing anyone it pisses off as not being highminded or politically pious enough is writing off a large % of yr fellow man tbh, wherefore macgregor theory x then eh?

benefit claimant

I believe you mean DOLE QUEEN.

It's fine to be annoyed about people playing the system so transparently but the objective here is clearly not to merely limit abuse but to reduce sympathy for all benefit claimants. At the same time, the government is actually keeping families in B&Bs and temporary accommodation for longer than the law allows.

So, we have this policy where people waiting for council housing are being told to leave private let flats that cost over £250/week in London, but they are moved on to B&B or temporary accommodation which can cost at least twice as much as that (they have housing need as judged by the council, so if your council isn't trying to transport them away from their families/schools/etc, this is where some wind up). Statutorily homeless people in hostels often have ridiculous 'service charges' added to the cost of rent - I mean, I don't know if places that provide 'breakfast' really need to charge another £100 a week to the claimant/the council for low-quality breakfast food, but it must be a nice scam on top of all the other private-sector money-shifters going on in this sector in Britain.

As to this particular family, there are only 109 families this size receiving out-of work benefits in the UK. Child benefit costs are a non-issue here. We complain that councils aren't building enough housing, but many councils (like Camden, where I am) are actually selling off the larger properties in their portfolios instead of putting large families into them. Most London boroughs have around 20,000 claimants each on their council-flat waiting lists, yet the only house-building happening is HAs building 'affordable' housing.

They should feed her horse to her children. In a box marked "lasagne or something".

(I won't read DM comments but I'd bet money there's one like that with up arrows galore)

Heh i'll assume that stands for daily mail

LOL

DM, saying what we're all thinking

So much for that AAA rating by which we were to judge Osborne

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21554311
fucking fucking fuck...

one of us, oooonnnneee offff usssssssss

disturbed that the tories are already attempting to have this parsed as, 'the aaa rating isn't important, but we're losing it because we're not shifting debt quick enough' rather than 'the aaa rating isn't important, but osborne's policies will guarantee that the economy doesn't grow'. the issue shouldn't be osborne's humiliation, delicious though that is, but the fact that austerity isn't working and should be discontinued forthwith.

reading these articles makes me realise i don't know what "credit ratings" or "bond yields" or indeed "growth" actually mean