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

sounds a bit more like it, that figure was quoted (possibly in a misleading way or maybe I heard it wrong) on Today earlier, but this is a BBC politics dept program. I think they were trying to infer it isn't exactly going well over there either how dare they treat plague island UK like this!

sorry I didn't mean Today it was PM

Happy Christmas Matt. https://t.co/9I4uLj0sAd

— Michael Dugher (@MichaelDugher) December 22, 2020

ladies and gentlemen .. Michael Dugher. He's not looking for the next Shed 7 now, he's here to regulate online gambling and save us addicts from the black market version which is apparently much worse!

Gordon Brown's deregulation of gambling industry was a social disaster for this country. I miss the old days when you'd have some spit 'n' sawdust shithole of an independent bookie shop, without a working toilet and tobacco stained walls and none of the big bookies could open a shop within a square mile of it.

the best old-school bookies I ever worked in was the Hebden Bridge branch of Jack Pearson's which didn't even have a toilet on the premises. You had to go out of the shop and up some stairs at the hairdressers two doors away for the shared toilet. Sometimes the regular manager would forget to empty the piss bottles under the counter and it had a 1950's analogue till that only went up to £100.

but still Broon deserves a good shoeing despite my nostalgia for the squalor of old bookies

Washington State is barring entry for flights from the UK. Many thanks to Boris for keeping us safe.

damn it, I was just planning on a merry jaunt over there this very weekend!

Hold on do US states have to ban UK flights individually?!

That's weird. Fwiw in Canada it's a nation-wide 72h travel ban.

Solomon Hughes has been hinting that Labour Right are likely to be manoeuvring against the so called soft left, "low profile" shadow minister Anneliese Dodds if the dire polling continues and bad Local Election results follow. I can't really discern between Soft Left and Labour Right, they are all about as useful, but I suppose she isn't Rachel Reeves. I could imagine a more Rightish shadow cabinet with Streeting and Babs in the more prominent roles, lol absolutely appalling but funny as well. But you can tell Keith doesn't have faith in Dodds and probably only put her in there as a sop to the guileless, putatively-left membership.

Substitute 'Britain' for 'unstable African country whose government has just collapsed' and you can see where the UK's international standing is right now.

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia will run a joint repatriation service for their citizens to leave Britain on 28 December, the Lithuanian foreign affairs minister said on Wednesday, Reuters reports.

The three Baltic states were among dozens of countries to suspend flights from Britain or shut their borders due to concern over the more transmissible variant that has sent cases soaring in the United Kingdom.

The three countries will divide the 150 places on the flight equally between their citizens, giving priority to those with health emergencies or urgent family reasons such as funerals, the minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, told reporters in Vilnius.

“It’s a humanitarian mission,” the minister said.

The passengers will be required to purchase tickets and provide negative coronavirus tests from the previous 48 hours, or face a 10 days self-isolation after returning, he said.

Who is Babs?

the honourable member for Yardley

sorry I meant the honourable member for me myself and Jess

I didn't know this was her nickname!

she sold the rights to her Everywoman: One Woman's Truth About Speaking the Truth book to the bbc in 2019 and it was supposedly going into production by the team that made Years and Years in 2019 (yeah I don't know either). Not heard much about it since the Rona.

I'M EVERY WOMAN: ONE WOMAN'S STORY OF HOW ONE WOMAN TOLD THE TRUTH ABOUT SPEAKING UP, AND OUT, AND AGAINST JEREMY CORBYN MP (Harper Collins, 2021)

Truth To Power: The Chronicles of Babs (and why is everybody ignoring me now! It's still ME you know!)

Voting intention poll:

LAB: 41% (+4)
CON: 37% (-2)
SNP: 5% (-)
LD: 5% (-1)
GRN: 5% (-1)
BXP: 4% (-)

[My seat estimate]
LAB: 287 (+35)
CON: 278 (-35)
SNP: 53 (+1)
LD: 8 (-1)
GRN: 1 (-)
OTH: 23 (-)

Via @YouGov, 21-22 December (changes since 15-16 December) pic.twitter.com/FV2BrdVUOM

— Stats for Lefties (@LeftieStats) December 23, 2020

This much fucking and only four points, which might be recovered once enough people have the vaccine by May or so.

absolutely dire, any half decent leader would be 20 mince pies ahead. Lol, I unfollowed that account for posting: even though Kieth is bad, you still have to vote for him.

Never followed it, just get it RT-ed every now and then.

Must say it feels a long time since I saw a projection with Labour having more MPs.

According to that chart the Greens have the same vote share as the SNP ?!?

it's very very rough and wrong projection imo and doesn't add up in a FPTP system. I don't know why that account bothers with it tbh, probably another reason I stopped following them.

According to that chart the Greens have the same vote share as the SNP ?!?

One is a share of 50m voters in the UK and one is a share of 4m voters in Scotland.

yeah there is that as well, if you did a chart of seats instead obv the SNP would tower above the Greens

lol

Westminster voting intention:

CON: 39% (-)
LAB: 38% (+2)
LDEM: 8% (-1)
GRN: 4% (-1)

via @Survation, 22 Dec
Chgs. w/ 10 Dechttps://t.co/LimxSTm2a4

— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) December 23, 2020

good to see that even my prediction of boris briefly dropping two points in the polls after cancelling xmas was giving too much credit to the residents of rainy fascist island

if the vaccine roll-out isn't a complete mess and some kind of compromise deal is made with the EU. Then I think the Tories will be 10 pts ahead at least.

Oh yeah, easily.

The economy is the thing that's might burst their balloon.

Years and Years in 2019 (yeah I don't know either)

Dystopic sci-fi series about Britain plunging into worse chaos and economic/refugee strife than the rest of the world over the next decade+, told through the locus of one family from Manchester getting on with their increasingly-fucked daily lives as the circumstances change. If you're able to enjoy The Crown, you might love this.

the team that made

not the team as in any of the same people, just a Manchester-based division of a French-ish multi-billion-$ media asset leverage company

oh so it's a documentary!

xp

that will be where Kieth starts to surge ahead after recycling some previous Tory campaign slogans interspersed with Jobs Jobs Jobs

The economy is the thing that's might burst their balloon.

― Eggbreak Hotel (Tom D.), Wednesday, 23 December 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Landlords will be making less, both at the commercial and residential sectors, for one. Brexit and it's implementation will hit the economy.

Plus when the racists still see migrants haven't packed up they won't like it. Although Priti Patel will do her best.

Landlords will be making less, both at the commercial and residential sectors, for one. Brexit and it's implementation will hit the economy.

Not sure any of that leads to any gains for Labour. I'm sure there will be some discontent but mostly people will come to the conclusion they're still better off with proper Tories than pretend ones.

How German public TV is illustrating an infographic on the new #Covid20 mutation. pic.twitter.com/nlqiDBpDO7

— Christian Odendahl (@COdendahl) December 22, 2020

They don't like it up 'em

More areas will enter Tier 4 from Boxing Day

Hancock has announced Essex, Norfolk, Sussex, Surrey, Oxfordshire and Hampshire will enter Tier 4 restrictions from Boxing Day.

we will be exceeding 1,000 cases per 100,000 people today. the most shocking part of the statistics here for me, is that out of all the covid cases recorded since March, over 1/3 of them were recorded last week.

Herefordshire and Bristol were moved to T1 and T2 respectively last Saturday. Those moves will have lasted for a week.

Nowhere is now left in T1. Virtually all of the south of England will now be in T4 or T3.

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) December 23, 2020

At what point will they bin this tiers bollocks and just lock the entire joint down until vaccine-assisted herd immunity is achieved? Probably never I guess.

Meanwhile we will leapfrog 3 completely and go straight from 2 to 4 on BD, sure there’ll be a crush of ppl on one last scotch egg bender tomorrow

xp wondering same

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/23/eu-countries-prepare-for-possible-imminent-brexit-deal

I haven't really followed the minutiae of what's happening elsewhere, does any other country have something analogous to the tier system or is it a peculiarly British approach based in the historically-approved class system?

It's the same here in Quebec except we mostly use colours (red, yellow, green).

Ireland has one

they robbed it off us in fact

Correct. And “substantial meals”. And the six counties.

Seamus Heaney, Paul Mescal, Zig & Zag...

Terry Wogan, Anne Marie Waters...

Daniel Day-Lewis, when sober