ForenSix Opposition - Politics in the Soon To Be Former UK in Autumn 2020

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jfc

Priti Patel, true Australian hero, or a least learning fast from Abbott now he’s in town.

Why Ascention when we have thousands of uninhabited islands in the british isles on which to construct more cost-effective concentration camps?

just the tories having their little Madagascar Plan moment, nothing to see.

lol honest I didn't see David Schneider posting the same comment before I posted, but tbf he is correct.

Placing bets on Sir Haircut laying the last brick on that camp.

he might be mulling over the ruins of his political career with more time to spend with his donkeys by then!

Dr Francis Ryan, who can be a bit of a Labour Right happy clapper at times is saying Keith needs to be braver in her column. lol the serious repercussions of the Gogglebox incident have took the shine off his huuuge 3 pt lead.

Worth a wee scroll up and down this thread when you look at Patel's offshore immigration processing proposals.
It's like everyone's determined to be the next Thatcher in the worst way possible.

David Blunkett – As Home Secretary wanted to send all asylum seekers to offshore processing centres outside Europe https://t.co/dzhMj2GWfW

— Jon Stone (@joncstone) February 23, 2020

"leftwing thinktank"

literally the first act of Blairism was reducing single parent benefits and demonising them as scroungers. What did that cunt say? You can build a hospital a week with what they are scrounging off the state.

and he did! and now the nhs is stronger than it's ever been, thanks tony

I remember the first act of Blair was to sign the EU declaration of minimum wage, or whatever its called.

(just sayin')

that isn't the the way I remember it! And this is the 2nd time we've been through this.

both of us could be wrong and right at the same time, but sometimes it can be telling how people do remember political history.

ohmygod i've just heard 2 minutes of a glorious discussion on You and Yours about whether benefits should be linked to earnings and contributions cos this middle class lad has been paying into the system for years and now he's been hit by the shutdown it's not fair

then i threw the radio up the other end of the kitchen and stomped on it but it was illuminating up til then

You and Your is like the dark heart of middle England, it gives me the shudders. Well apart when I'm laughing at tory voting wankers crying because they've become mortgaged to a substandard new build home, with a rapacious hidden leasehold sewn into the deal!

i didn't even stop to listen to what this lad's job used to be but he'd put so much tax into the system and now he had to live on the same money as the other dolescum, my heart was breaking

I wouldn't mind a compilation of homeowner misery from You and Yours, it cheers me up hearing middle-class tory callers breaking down + bursting into tears while describing how every time it rains, a stream of raw sewage surges past their front door!

istr the system in the old days, when it was our dads losing their jobs, you got more money if you'd had a job and "paid your stamps" - you had a period of unemployment benefit aligned to how long or how much you'd paid in then moved
onto social security for less money

am I making that up?

No, until pretty recently, tho it wasn't meaningfully more money last time I looked. That was anybody with 2 years NI paid tho iirc

I mean no you're not making it up. I guess under UC there are small differentials based on rent/mortgage/maybe number of dependents?

The chat on the radio was framed in this horrible "quality of life you're used to" way, obv I'm not saying benefits should be punitive or that people shouldn't expect a reasonable quality of life from the state. Just lol at the obliviousness and speculation on their previous political opinions

I def don't think the rate of unemployment benefit has ever been tied as a ratio to your previous earnings

I'm the like the top boss level benefits scrounger as a carer, not only do I not *work* - I also get my stamp paid!

which might be relevant if I live to pension age, but that'll probably be raised to 90

NoCheers I just remember vague bits and bobs about big stamps and wee stamps and bru money.

It's kinda lol that the folk who've spent years shitting on dole scroungers didn't realise it could be them. Still sad as fuck, mind, because for every one of those cunts there are people who are nothing like that plus obviously millions of dependants.

xp

lol i've give up on the idea of pension age, it's running faster than i can

pension age is an ever moving horizon

I can’t remember the exact details but my employer did a research piece that I think anticipated people working until 100 when the average life expectancy reaches about 120, which thankfully will never happen the rate we are going.

Who the fuck would want to live that old, grim as fuck

You can argue that it makes sense if life expectancy and quality of life increase significantly over the next 50 years but idk if i'd be betting on that.

Right answer, as always:

Keir's response to the idea of processing asylum seekers on Ascension Island? "Ludicrous and inhumane. It’s completely impractical and it would be hugely expensive for taxpayers."

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) September 30, 2020

LabourList might have retconned "inhumane" into that quote.

Don’t worry they can make it cheaper

Downing Street confirms the government is examining proposals for off shore asylum processing centers (as per @FinancialTimes scoop this morning) but potential locations are likely to be closer to the UK than Ascension Island.

— Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) September 30, 2020

And now that it's cheaper and less ludicrous-sounding I for one cannot wait for the leader of the opposition to emphasize the inhumanity of it.

A lot of Middle England doesn't care that it's inhumane. Guess there are a lot of people on, say, the Isle of Wight who will be all for the proposals until the point comes at which a chunk of their countryside is turned into Serco Gulag Island though.

This country has had years to start caring about the manifest inhumanity of something like Yarl's Wood and they just don't give a shit or worse actively approve of it.

have they really let the Ascension Island thing out just so Rockall sounds more reasonable?

and yeah beyond the actual frothing at the mouth racists i'd imagine there's a large number of cuddly-ish centrists-ish who maybe think detention centres are unfortunate but highly necessary and hey what can you do

"A lot of Middle England doesn't care that it's inhumane."

People may not care either way so more reason to say how bad it is.

But yes I know it's pointless.

Yvette Cooper for governor imo.

you offend nobody worth not offending by speaking out

lots of the Blue Labour 2019 Tory voters he's trying so hard to impress are probably barely paying attention, the harder Right Wing elements of the PLP and the UK media he's trying to impress will just stab him in the back despite his efforts anyway.

so essentially if it's got no pragmatic value and you do it anyway, it's because you're a hateful well y'know

i mean obviously i think fuelling racism and xenophobia and contributing to immiseration and death are kind of bad things to do in a broad deontological sense but i'm a naive extremist so

Asked whether Starmer would support peaceful resistance to bailiffs now that the eviction ban has ended, his spokesperson said: "If we’re going to stop mass evictions, it’s for the government to take national action to do that."

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) September 30, 2020

he's literally on nobody's side apart from former big New Labour donors, pigs and landlords

you don't understand it's a ploy to win the election so he can get on with the real work of supporting billionaires, pigs and landlords

he could at least sometimes offer some insincere lip service ffs! or more like 'KIP service in his case amirite?

Exactly right. Labour in Parliament is a legislative, not a protest party.

— Nicholas Breakspear (@MrBreakspear) September 30, 2020

pic.twitter.com/LJavwXNcsj

— So I Says to Mabel... (@ISaysto) September 30, 2020