the day after the deadline: can the union survive brexit and other deep questions

Not intentionally blaming CW for racist pricks, but you have to admit he is a bit of a persistent embarrassment for appearing on RT and generally being a total arse during the Antisemitism scandal. And other things like wildly going off message and retweeting George Galloway type crap.

100% admit that, yep!

Can someone just put this show out of our misery?

Our second question tonight is on housing #bbcqt pic.twitter.com/QHYtE81eAd

— BBC Question Time (@bbcquestiontime) May 3, 2018

god why do i read these things ffs?

Question Time now operating at the same level of sophistication as Yahoo News

https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/former-haringey-council-leader-joins-regeneration-management-firm-56129

On her appointment Ms Kober said: “High quality housing is the centrepiece of successful thriving communities. That is why I am delighted to be joining Pinnacle Group as director of housing, ensuring that the company continues to play a leading role in the provision of high quality housing management services.

she's taken a slight paycut, not rinsing two wages now!

Was the answer "uhhh, No?" ?

Funny thing is, I spent about four months not eating (well, not paying for it) thanks to being in hosp in 1987, and when I came out, I'd saved enough to put down on a flat.

But, that's just me.

You'd have to be Mark Gangster these days to pull that off! And you'd probably end up owing something to one of Branson's healthcare firms.

Kober is such a banana republic-type figure. The battle against these ppl is just beginning.

Here is a good piece on the left and Labour councils:

https://newsocialist.org.uk/better-a-dented-shield-the-left-and-labour-councils/

Electoral Reform Society are saying 3981 voters were turned away in the voter ID trial polling stations. That seems staggeringly high considering the low turnouts.

It was a massive problem in '17 : "While 337 allegations of electoral fraud were made across the UK, the majority - 207 cases - resulted in no further action and a further 82 were "locally resolved"."

the fox news 9-11pm EST power hours are worse for american culture than BBCQT is for british culture, but not by a lot.

🖼

Electoral Reform Society are saying 3981 voters were turned away in the voter ID trial polling stations. That seems staggeringly high considering the low turnouts.

It was a massive problem in '17 : "While 337 allegations of electoral fraud were made across the UK, the majority - 207 cases - resulted in no further action and a further 82 were "locally resolved"."

I've not looked into which boroughs had the ID trials and their results yet, but this is just small beer really. Imagine this replicated nationwide during a GE and the numbers involved then? it is quite a scary thought tbh.

it’s horrible. i just look over the atlantic and it seems to move easily into massive targeted disenfranchisement.

I really hope some of the "gerra driving license then loser" mob end up in the shit one day, and find themselves disenfranchised + thinking "this systematic evil isn't supposed to turn on me, I'm white". Discriminating against those lacking ID is also a major part of UC disenfranchisement. People are still having benefits horribly delayed because of lack of passports/driving license. just repetive, asinine complaints about Tories on a friday night, but these fucking people are the worse and we should never forget that or get too used to it IMHO

without wishing to drift too much, but also having had a few beers, the UC point is well made. One of the things that staggers me about both UC and immigration is how many of the official claims get overturned. an FT article cited something like 80% for UC, and david lammy said 50% on immigration. now those are just ones where people manage to get some decent representation. obv a lot will go through without being challenged. now that is just a terrible performance indicator. if these were serious organisations they’d be crucified on performance.

now i reckon it’s obv it’s deliberate. so the political culture we live in is to run deliberately bad organisations and process to fuck people over. you can then later claim incompetence rather than malice and idk rebrand to “compliant” rather than “hostile”. for these shits incompetence is actually a method. i think this is meaningful beyond UC and immigration and moves into general “how politics is practiced” (shying away from “praxis” there).

it also means you can rely on only doing something when there’s a public campaign or awareness. this isn’t policy. it’s deliberate “how much shit can we get away with”.

i mean - incompetence as method. hell of a thing.

maybe indifference rather than incompetence. outsource > contractor’s customer is government with a cost focus rather than people using service. it’s perfectly competent at serving its customer. “do this mess for as little as possible” but people are just the thing being processed.

at least it is a very British concept. I mean persecuting groups of people at a cost has been a recurring theme of UK governments British Empire for nuff time! Probably not totally incompetent by design at all times, this lot aren't competent enough to even maintain that low bar. Anyway I read some thinkpiece (possibly A Barnett) that this country still has a troublesome + entrenched Empire state mentality - agree.

empire effectiveness of civil service people processing costs! so let’s outsource and let incompetence do the job. it’s brilliant in a way. obv imbeciles like IDS suggest it may not be brilliant but low-browed laziness and idiocy.

we will write a book i think fizzles you and i

otm get the fernet in i’ll bring the typewriter.

branc page

aside from ASTB i have been interested in reading this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Restraint_of_Beasts

seems germane here

Funny thing is, I spent about four months not eating (well, not paying for it) thanks to being in hosp in 1987, and when I came out, I'd saved enough to put down on a flat.

But, that's just me.

hey Mark, if it's just you and not a different economic situation 31 years down the line - if I keep track of all the money I spend on food in the next four months, will you put in the difference towards a deposit on a flat in 2018?

"I got Bobby by the pound, Whitney by the key · DJ Screw by the gallon, bitch the game belong to me"

that me when I broke my ankle and was living on statutory sick pay for 4 months!

LAB: 2,350, diff. +78
CON: 1,332, diff. −33
LIB DEM: 536, diff. +75
UKIP: 3, diff. −122

"Analysis suggested the two main parties were neck and neck overall in terms of national vote share - on 35% each. Last year Labour's vote share was estimated to be narrowly ahead of the Tories."

did someone misinform the BBC that we have adopted PR?

Coffee and avocado fuck's sake

They've jumped on that phrasing because if you said 'Maybe young people would be able to afford a house quickly if they were careful with money' that could be taken up and proven wrong but if you say 'Eee it's cause they're having coffees and avocados all the time' the reaction is just a middle finger

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-44035177

The SNP try to avoid a court case by pointing out they hadn't actually banned fracking, they had just used language that made everyone think they had.

This is what their website currently says about fracking:

https://www.snp.org/pb_what_is_the_snp_policy_on_fracking

"What is the SNP policy on fracking?
The Scottish Government has put in place a ban on fracking in Scotland - meaning fracking cannot and will not take place in Scotland."

BREAKING: Brexit Britain looks to 73 year old David Trimble for @BorderIrish solution involving something called "technacology" and apparently a "cross between a sat nav and a mobile phone". #r4today https://t.co/VFAEM1QHdD

— Aidan McG - #FBPE (@aidanjmcg) May 9, 2018

look it's cool that we're nearly two years out from the brexit vote and 10 months from leaving the eu and we still don't have a fucking clue what's gonna happen with the irish border it's just fine everything's fine it's fine

just read the phrase "leading Tory backbenchers Anna Soubry and Dominic Grieve"

i mean

centrists that persist with this myth that Soubry and her cuddly One Nation Tories are really really lovely people, even after they just voted down a Windrush enquiry to protect their poor beleaguered Maybot, really do piss me off.

https://newsocialist.org.uk/a-revolution-of-souls/

interesting article on the past & present local and cultural activities of the labour party and the possibilities for the community organising unit

"Playing to a gallery of puce-faced social reactionaries"

good to see twitter commentariat moving away from played out "Gammon" laziness!

*beams with pride* pic.twitter.com/vI5yQ3Dk7e

— Revolting-Subject (@UnRoyalReporter) May 8, 2018

2011 mind

Yes, that's before they all started voting Tory in Scotland.

ffs!

was just listening to R4 media show and New Statesman are launching a Nicky Woolf edited N American web edition soon, they want a slice of that Trump action perhaps!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/10/disabled-people-internment-care?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

As vast budget cuts see people with disabilities and older people lose their support to eat, wash, and leave the house, the care sector is “in crisis” because of severe staff shortages. Low pay, zero-hours contracts and poor conditions means staff are leaving while councils and care homes struggle to hire and retain qualified carers. The drive for outsourcing public services in recent years, championed by Conservative and New Labour governments alike, only exacerbates this.

This will only worsen after Brexit as the care sector faces a future without the contribution of its largely European migrant workforce. With no carers found, Edith’s social worker has come up with increasingly desperate solutions, including asking Edith’s bosses to alter her working day around her care call hours. “This isn’t shift work. I’m an accountant,” she says. Edith tells me she cried as soon as she heard the latest plan: putting her into a care home. If no agency can be found in time, she has been told she’ll have to leave her own flat and move into an unnamed residential institution. “I feel like I’m being threatened into accepting a care package which will strip me of my life and just leave me surviving,” she says.

This is what austerity, outsourcing and a decaying social care system is doing to actual human beings, and it isn't just on Blue Tories is this outrage.

I think this devastating Dr F Ryan piece should be posted to Kate Andrews, I'd love to hear how her take on how the private sector pisses all over the NHS matches up to this.

i know disabled young people chained into a prolonged childhood because this country refuses to offer them the reasonably basic level of personal support they'd need to develop independence away from relying on their families for everything. and in some respects they're probably lucky to have families who care enough to do that. you're damn right it's an all-party issue.

IT'S ALL BEEN LEADING TO THIS pic.twitter.com/2tNsWaIv4Y

— Paul Stollery (@PaulStollery) May 11, 2018

Just perfect 👌

Outstanding work from @MarkCarruthers7 and @bbctheview pic.twitter.com/4BtakjfqGd

— Good Friday Agreement (@BelfastAgmt) May 10, 2018

JRM crumbling to pieces under some rare scrutiny from a BBC interviewer.

If even that level of mild scrutiny was applied to him on a daily basis, he'd be a nervous wreck by now or he'd had publicly wet himself at least once.

This is a fundamental point. Brexit isn't mainly about us as individuals. It's about the future of our country & its contribution to the world & world history over the long term - including those not yet borne & those not in the UK. Your next 10 years are irrelevant. https://t.co/6sAJxetm7z

— Andrew Lilico (@andrew_lilico) May 11, 2018

more just stupid, in that you could say the same about literally any political decision ever taken