I wonder who’ll be next week’s Prime Minister?
Politics and Current Affairs
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Jesse Jackson to step down as head of Rainbow PUSH
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I think the most interesting thing to come out of those by-elections yesterday is that the Greens were third in every one. Distantly, admittedly, but with an increased vote share in each. You’d have thought Labour or the Lib Dems would have come third in at least one of them.
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Generally, GDP is not used as a measure of economic prosperity here because of the distorting effect of the various multinationals headquartered here, the Irish government has developed a separate measure called the GNI per capita to try and correct for this. GINI coefficient is also used at times.
It’s interesting.
I just spent 2 and a half hectic weeks around the UK and then had one night in Dublin as Audrey has had offers of a move to Europe and for her company that means a choice of London or Dublin. She was curious to see it if there is a slim possibility of living there. (Yeah and sorry Lorcan and other pals there, including an old school friend of mine, I could not make any evening meetups due to the kids).
If given the choice I would still choose Dublin over London as the cost of housing and distance from work is much better. However despite the narrative of Britain being in a huge mess economically and Ireland doing well, which are both factually true, I’m not sure how well that is reflected on the ground. There was more begging and obvious homelessness in Dublin and there was a massive street fight between teens. The latter may just be bad timing and is anecdotal in the extreme but on first impressions London edged the sight test on the nicer place to live.
It is where economics and systems can be complex as California often boasts of it being wealthier than most countries and is a politically liberal stronghold yet I have never seen so many homeless people anywhere and I worked in India 22 years ago, before their economic boom.
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There was a Sonnenrad in one of DeSantis’s campaign videos apparently:
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Ye gods, this week has been a fucking depressing political mess.
Labour seemingly can’t go a day without getting more politically timid, while the Conservatives go ever more extreme. Nowhere is this more evident than on climate change, set against a backdrop of southern Europe literally burning up.
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Generally, GDP is not used as a measure of economic prosperity here because of the distorting effect of the various multinationals headquartered here, the Irish government has developed a separate measure called the GNI per capita to try and correct for this. GINI coefficient is also used at times.
It’s interesting.
I just spent 2 and a half hectic weeks around the UK and then had one night in Dublin as Audrey has had offers of a move to Europe and for her company that means a choice of London or Dublin. She was curious to see it if there is a slim possibility of living there. (Yeah and sorry Lorcan and other pals there, including an old school friend of mine, I could not make any evening meetups due to the kids).
If given the choice I would still choose Dublin over London as the cost of housing and distance from work is much better. However despite the narrative of Britain being in a huge mess economically and Ireland doing well, which are both factually true, I’m not sure how well that is reflected on the ground. There was more begging and obvious homelessness in Dublin and there was a massive street fight between teens. The latter may just be bad timing and is anecdotal in the extreme but on first impressions London edged the sight test on the nicer place to live.
It is where economics and systems can be complex as California often boasts of it being wealthier than most countries and is a politically liberal stronghold yet I have never seen so many homeless people anywhere and I worked in India 22 years ago, before their economic boom.
There’s been an increase in violence in the city centre for sure, and it’s making the news in a big way. Like just the other day an American tourist was beaten quite badly on the street, and as you note, more visibly unhoused people. I’m usually in town during daytime and there’s a few spots that are popular with substance abusers and there are more of them around now, which is not a good sign for a vibrant city
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Ye gods, this week has been a fucking depressing political mess.
Labour seemingly can’t go a day without getting more politically timid, while the Conservatives go ever more extreme. Nowhere is this more evident than on climate change, set against a backdrop of southern Europe literally burning up.
But the ULEZ, Ben, the ULEZ! A Tory safe seat only demolished, not overturned its majority, and it’s all the ULEZ’s fault!
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There’s been an increase in violence in the city centre for sure, and it’s making the news in a big way. Like just the other day an American tourist was beaten quite badly on the street, and as you note, more visibly unhoused people.
What’s the view on policing there? The fight I saw was in the middle of O’Connell Street, outside the GPO. A central and busy area but no gardai in site and they actually got chased off by members of the public shouting at them eventually.
The Met police are generally in disgrace but to be fair there is a visible police presence in any busy/touristy spots.
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There’s been an increase in violence in the city centre for sure, and it’s making the news in a big way. Like just the other day an American tourist was beaten quite badly on the street, and as you note, more visibly unhoused people.
What’s the view on policing there? The fight I saw was in the middle of O’Connell Street, outside the GPO. A central and busy area but no gardai in site and they actually got chased off by members of the public shouting at them eventually.
The Met police are generally in disgrace but to be fair there is a visible police presence in any busy/touristy spots.
There hasn’t been any major controversy involving them or anything, they aren’t facing the same kind of flak as the Met or various US police departments. A lot of people have been asking why the Guards haven’t been intervening on O’Connell Street, especially as it’s the main thoroughfare in the city and there are multiple stations in the immediate vicinity. And they seem to have plenty of manpower to escort far-right activists as they harass librarians. Some people are assuming it’s low personnel numbers overall though.
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A lot of people have been asking why the Guards haven’t been intervening on O’Connell Street, especially as it’s the main thoroughfare in the city and there are multiple stations in the immediate vicinity
As a cheeky outsider I think they should. These areas need to be patrolled if only for PR reasons.
I mean overall these kids weren’t a huge risk, they were 14-16 year old boys being dicks and throwing one punch and running away, it wasn’t Bloods v Crips with machine guns, however it’s a poor look easily resolved if a Guard steps in and whacks them up the arse with a truncheon.
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This actually popped into my RSS feed about an hour ago:
https://www.thejournal.ie/dublin-gardai-policing-committee-6127522-Jul2023/
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Now I have more incentive to stay out of Missouri:
https://www.theroot.com/missouri-school-district-walks-back-2020-anti-racism-re-1850669697
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When my mom was in her mid-80s she began getting what the doctors call TIAs or Transient Ischemic Attacks, a sort of mini-stroke that normally lasted less than a minute, but during which time she was in a fugue state. Looking at that video of Mitch McConnell yesterday, his vacant stare was exactly like my mom’s.
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After Tim Scott joined Byron Donalds as the second prominent black Republican to criticize his slavery curriculum, Desantis fires back saying their comments are “false accusations and lies.” pic.twitter.com/GNdcbbjE71
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 28, 2023
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Would it be against the law to smack Ron Desantis upside his head twice? Asking for a friend…
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Would it be against the law to smack Ron Desantis upside his head twice? Asking for a friend…
If the ref doesn’t see it, it didn’t happen.
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Council attempts to save £300k on cladding costs. A few years on and 72 deaths and numerous traumatised families and communities and the cost is around £1.2bn.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jul/30/grenfell-tower-disaster-cost-soars
There has got to be prosecutions over this, it’s too awful a pattern of activity. Nor can the companies be permitted to buy their way out of it.
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‘Of course’ Trump lost the 2020 election, DeSantis says after years of hedging
Can we please drop them both down a deep, dark hole and leave them there?
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‘Of course’ Trump lost the 2020 election, DeSantis says after years of hedging
Can we please drop them both down a deep, dark hole and leave them there?
Only if you pour cement in it afterwards.
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Lauren Boebert Could Soon Be Out Of Congress
Let’s hope so.
Dare to dream!
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This is a good start to the Labor Day Weekend here in the US:
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McConnell appears to freeze again during news conference
Mitch got a glitch! Maybe he has the 403 error that we were suffering with.
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Jeez, these politicians need to learn to let go of power. McConnell is out there freezing mid-sentence and Feinstein is barely a person anymore. Why can’t they go spend whatever remaining time they have left in their probably giant homes with their families? And then let’s bring some age limits to government. It’s insane that the median age in the Senate is 65.
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Bitch, you ain’t exactly fit for office your damn self.
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Jeez, these politicians need to learn to let go of power.
It’s a deep problem I think. You look at Murdoch now in a different setting, he’s in his 90s still running the empire, just relax on a beach, you have more money than you can spend before you die.
I’d retire tomorrow and just arse around having fun if I was a multi-millionaire but there’s a mentality to these people that can never let go. I’m not hugely a fan of term limits or age limits per se, I think the former can prevent a genuinely good operator being re-elected and the latter can be ageist, old people deserve to be represented too.
It is a mindset though that these people can never let go and it’s an unhealthy one and that means we have people with power fetishes like McConnel and Feinstein not helping. He’s in a hugely influential job and has frozen twice, unable to speak.
I think gerrymandering and lobby money are also huge contributors to this in the US. The UK is finding the opposite. Tory MPs are resigning in droves at the next election as they think they’ll lose their jobs, which by polling estimates they probably will, the age of positions in power is much lower. We’ll have two guys now aged 60 and 43 contest the next election.
Despite a few attempts otherwise the districting/constituency process is generally independent and based on demographics. When you see those convoluted maps in some US states it makes ‘first past the post’ an even worse system as probably most seats are safe as houses whatever you do or say.
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One year on from this:
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Concrete closure list: What schools will have to close because of crumbling RAAC?
More than 100 schools are impacted by the Department for Education’s order to close over safety fears
I heard about this in passing this morning and thought it was about concrete “cancer” in old buildings. It happened to some 50s/60s council houses in my village a little while back and they need to be scaffolded, reinforced and reclad. And for the most part, it seems it is:
Pupils across the country will be forced to resume their studies either online or in temporary facilities, after the government ordered more than 100 schools to close immediately following fears over a type of concrete, described as “80 per cent air” and “like an Aero Bar”.
Known as reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), the dangerous material was used to construct schools, colleges, and other buildings between the Fifties and mid-Seventies in the UK, but has since been found to be at risk of collapse.But it’s also more modern schools. There’s one whose main building is only three years old that’s been told it needs to delay bringing students back for the new term while scaffolding is set up and temporary classrooms installed.
Haygrove School: Hundreds to start late after building issues
They said earlier in the year, two other schools built by Caledonian Modular – Newquay Primary Academy and Launceston Primary School – were demolished before construction was completed.
The construction company has since gone into administration.</p>
Absolute madness3 users thanked author for this post.
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It’s as if a load of free market, deregulation fanatics had been in charge since 2010…. Oh wait….
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In today’s episode of No-Shit-Sherlock News:
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Jeez, these politicians need to learn to let go of power. McConnell is out there freezing mid-sentence and Feinstein is barely a person anymore. Why can’t they go spend whatever remaining time they have left in their probably giant homes with their families?
It’s really crazy. I love my job, but I can’t wait to fucking retire!
You know what the problem is, I think? These people all grew up without video games. I mean, the day I retire, I’ll buy a proper gaming machine and just start playing every Final Fantasy game starting with IX. That should keep me occupied for a bit, and then I’ll go on to the games I’m missing right now like Baldur’s Gate 3. Oh, and I expect the Occulus stuff is ready to really take you into a different world (it’s slowly getting there right now), so chances are none of you fuckers will hear from me again because that’ll be all I’m doing when I’m not going out getting drunk or high.
Jesus fuck, these people. What the hell is the world to them?
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You have a problem – a large, floating turd has hit a fan. It is going everywhere, the solution? Increase the fan speed for maximum splattage and chaos:
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I don’t understand why the government isn’t paying to fix schools. I’m sure there are some big party doners and ministers’ mates who own construction firms
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Weird how there’s no cash given that you’ve got all those huge bundles of cash now that you’re not giving to the EU!
I thought that’d be used to fix, like, everything!2 users thanked author for this post.
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It’s already been given to the NHS, Christian. That’s why we currently have the best staffed* hospitals in the world.
* staffed by British people, naturally.
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No shit:
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It’s interesting the doublethink we engage in: Musk is a piece of shit for doing what China wants, but many of the the people who have that opinion will be perfectly comfortable with the government censoring covid “disinformation” on social media.
Seriously at this point in history if the government thinks you’re OK, you’re doing something wrong. You have to strive to be an Uyghur.
What utter horseshit.
So much of that COVID “disinformation” are flat out lies, with a lot of it coming from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and other hostile nations. While you may not have personnally liked the measures that were taken by governments with COVID, they did in fact save millions of lives.
Musk is a piece of shit not for bending the knee for China as at lot of nations and industries do so, but for turning off the satellites that Ukraine was using to launch an attack on Russia, the country which invaded them.
I trust goverments far more than I will ever trust Musk.
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So, let me get this straight. American Republicans are attacking Hunter Biden for owning guns.
Republicans are saying a man shouldn’t own guns.
…
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Only the right kind of man can own guns, including the Christ-blessed Holy M4.
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So, let me get this straight. American Republicans are attacking Hunter Biden for owning guns.
Republicans are saying a man shouldn’t own guns.
…
To quote Frank Wilhoit:
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
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Here’s what conservatives don’t grasp: If Hunter Biden is found guilty and/or receives some sort of punishment, liberals are not going to riot. As a matter of fact, liberals will say “the system works”. The real truth is liberals don’t give a fuck about Hunter Biden. Everyone knows he’s a human disaster. He’s not at the center of a cult of personality like Trump is. Trump is a fucking traitor but his followers willfully ignore any negativity directed towards him. The world has passed them by and naively pray he will bring back the “good old days” that never truly existed for them. He’s a narcissist and will bleed them dry without a second thought.
Here’s a question to ask them: Why would anyone donate money to a billionaire?
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It may not have been in the past, my mum used to defend conservatives, even if she never voted for them as people with a level of conviction and some logic.
Right now it is obvious, their entire agenda is just retaining wealth. None of it makes any sense outside that lens. The UK is a shambles of a country, nothing works, it doesn’t lack of money it just has a system that directs it upwards rather than downwards. As does the USA.
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For all the talk of alleged Nazis in Ukraine, this Russian propaganda poster literally uses Nazi terminology:
it reads “Children, kitchen, church. The meaning and greatness of the Russian woman”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder,_Küche,_Kirche
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Linked to but also separate from nazism, that is also a “back to the kitchen, woman” message.
Meanwhile, with RishGPT (thanks to John Crace) rolling back green targets, there’s only one real privatisation left for him to do – oxygen.
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Rishi is fucked basically.
This looks like a final spin of the dice betting on anti-green policies because maybe they had a huge vote loss but hanging onto Uxbridge by the fingernails is all he has. It doesn’t really impact people, demanding cars all go electric by 2030 never said you couldn’t buy ICE cars afterwards and most people in the UK don’t buy new cars but second-hand.
It doesn’t seem to be moving the dial, it’s just appealing to voters he already has. It smells like Major’s ‘cones hotline’ nonsense on the verge of him being hammered at the polls.
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He’s fucked and making sure everyone else is too.
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This is fucking hilarious when you’ve spread anti-semetic memes on here Arjan.
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But hey, let’s gloss over and forget all of Putin’s atrocities during his term of power.
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Or that Russian media is full of talking heads talking about literally wiping out Ukraine. Or that the Russians are stealing Ukrainian children.
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Or that Russia is pumping out shit tons of disinformation and propaganda to make the Ukraine look like absolute monsters and that the invasion was justified.
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Well, three things:
1. It is deeply embarrassing for the Canadian government and parliament that this man wasn’t vetted and that this was allowed to happen. They’ve got to do better than that, as this kind of event is playing into Putin’s hands.
2. Ultra-nationalism and even fascism is probably a problem in Ukraine, like it is in other post-Soviet countries.
3. Both are also problems in Russia itself, and Putin himself has been using fascist tactics as well as utilising neo-nazi groups.
4. Using this kind of event as an indication that “we have sided with nazis” does not have any grounding in reality, has nothing to do with the incident itself and shows that someone is buying directly into Russian the propaganda that the Ukrainian government are a neo-nazi mafia that is being used to justify not only a war of invasion but also a form genocide that seems pretty obviously planned for Ukraine.5 users thanked author for this post.
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While it is true that the Ukraine government has traditionally been corrupt (second only to Russia as most corrupt nation on the continent of Europe), let’s not forget who invaded who without justifiable cause. And we haven’t heard any rumors about Zelenssky’s critics and opponents suddenly falling out of hotel windows or dying from contact with a powerful poison.
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2. Ultra-nationalism and even fascism is probably a problem in Ukraine, like it is in other post-Soviet countries.
Hell, show me a country in Europe that doesn’t have this problem right now.
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That mess in Canada looks to be a combination of Canada’s dirty political laundry and a royal fuck-up. Both of which play to Putin’s advantage.
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2. Ultra-nationalism and even fascism is probably a problem in Ukraine, like it is in other post-Soviet countries.
Hell, show me a country in Europe that doesn’t have this problem right now.
Not just Europe. It’s a global problem.
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1. It is deeply embarrassing for the Canadian government and parliament that this man wasn’t vetted and that this was allowed to happen. They’ve got to do better than that, as this kind of event is playing into Putin’s hands.
The most likely explanation seems to be mere carelessness — let’s find a war veteran from Ukraine and applaud him for a cheap soundbite … [later] omg, he’s a what? No of course we didn’t do a background check!
What I find very strange is that the conspiracy theorists aren’t coming out to say that this was a deliberate stitch-up to make the parliament and Zelensky look bad, and this veteran’s war record was faked and deliberately leaked to the press, and he’s not even a a vet anyway, he’s the leader of the opposition’s brother-in-law’s uncle who’s also a paid actor.
But no, the tin-foil brigade aren’t saying any of that. I just find it strange that conspiracy theories only work in one direction
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Meanwhile, Braverman is at it again, I can’t put it better than Jon Sopel did:
https://x.com/jonsopel/status/1706703093214109904?s=20
“Multiculturalism has failed’ says Suella Braverman who is from Kenyan and Mauritian background and married to a Jew, serving as Home Secretary in a govt led by someone whose family came from India. Wonder what multicultural success looks like…..”
But the much bigger problem is her trying to argue against the 1951 UN convention and what that says about her and Sunak. That, if permitted to do so, they would remove the UK from both the ECHR and the UN. They want to exempt themselves from every kind of scrutiny and law.
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Yep, it’d be incredibly stupid but this is the first time I’ve the sense they want to leave the UN too. That they can simply opt out of all international law.
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I think the Tories’ cynical gameplan for the next election has been pretty clear for a while now. It’s to make withdrawing from the ECHR a central plank of their campaign, and to hope that they can use that to harness the same xenophobia and ugly nationalism that helped to drive their successes with Brexit.
The truth is that despite 13 years in power, the only area where the Tories have had any real electoral success for their entire tenure is with stoking this kind of division.
They only managed to win enough votes to cobble together a coalition government in 2010, but then swung a full victory in 2015 off the back of promising an EU referendum – to head off the threat of UKIP stealing the Tory vote and letting Labour in.
Then after the Brexit referendum vote itself they basically fought a subsequent pair of elections on that one issue. May barely scraped the first one with an unclear vision for her Brexit, and then Johnson secured a stronger victory in the second one on the back of pushing the country towards a very severe separation from the EU.
So it’s no wonder they see the ECHR and immigration issue as an opportunity to stoke similar division and win votes. It’s the only card they really have left to play at this point.
We just have to hope that people are by now sufficiently sick of them – of their incompetence, their corruption, their contempt for the electorate, their lawbreaking, their transparently negative politics and their endless slide into becoming a sort of shitty off-brand ersatz BNP – to give them the boot in 2024.
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Yep. It’s all deeply depressing stuff.
Meanwhile Trump and his organisation committed fraud. But hey, America, where you can still run for President no matter what you’re convicted of.
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Hell, show me a country in Europe that doesn’t have this problem right now.
Indeed. At this point, invading Italy for being a neo-nazi country would probably make more sense than invading Ukraine did.
Should we tell Putin?4 users thanked author for this post.
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Meanwhile, Fox! Wootton! GB News investigations and suspensions! Man fight!
Yes, this is as pathetic as you think it is.
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It’s so funny that so many right-wing media figures have recently been caught because they can’t stop themselves from writing text messages that show their true faces. Apart from the whole Fox thing, we’ve also had a similar case recently, with the CEO/majority owner of one of Germany’s biggest media groups (who are mostly notorious for owning the hateful and shitty tabloid Bildzeitung).
The German CEO of Europe’s largest media publisher tried to use his flagship tabloid, Bild, to influence the outcome of Germany’s last election and fed the newspaper his personal views attacking climate change activism, Covid measures and the former chancellor Angela Merkel, leaked messages suggest.
The internal chats, emails and text messages published by the German weekly Die Zeit on Wednesday clash with the public presentation of Axel Springer SE’s chief executive, Mathias Döpfner, who recently said he wanted to bring “non-partisan” journalism to a too-polarised US media landscape through his acquisition of the English-language title Politico.
In one of the messages quoted verbatim in Die Zeit, from 2017, Döpfner says: “I am all for climate change,” seemingly arguing that human civilisation in periods of warm climate was always “more successful” than during cold-climate periods. “We shouldn’t fight climate change but adjust to it.”
The comments are part of a longer message in which Döpfner sums up his foreign policy views as “Free west, fuck the intolerant Muslims and all the other riff-raff.”
Döpfner, who holds a 22% share in the Berlin-based company Axel Springer and sits on the board of directors of Netflix, repeatedly voiced his distrust of the population of the formerly socialist states of eastern Germany. “The ossis [east Germans] are either communists or fascists. They don’t do in-between. Disgusting.”
[…]The leaked messages also raise specific questions about close links between the Springer publishing empire – whose flagship titles includes Bild, Die Welt, Business Insider and Politico – and the pro-business Free Democratic party (FDP), a junior partner in Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition government.
Citing a dinner with the FDP leader, Christian Lindner, Döpfner repeatedly urged Reichelt as Bild editor to “do more for the FDP” in the run-up to the September 2021 federal elections. “Please strengthen the FDP,” he wrote two days before the vote. “If they do well they can act with such authority in the traffic light [coalition of Social Democrats, Green party and FDP] that it collapses.”
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The truth is that despite 13 years in power, the only area where the Tories have had any real electoral success for their entire tenure is with stoking this kind of division.
They’ve been surprisingly honest about it. Lee Anderson saying on camera they have nothing to run on but culture wars and pushing anti-trans rhetoric.
I think like many parties after a while they run into a cul de sac, appealing to the further right when most don’t care. 50% of Brits surveyed have never even met a trans person, far more will be affected by discount chain Wilco gojng bust, it’s the key anchor for my local shopping centre in the UK.
Sunak is just offering daft policies that will never happen, like everyone learning maths to 18, they don’t have enough maths teachers as it is. He’s now extended it to be being even more nonsensical by ruling out laws that were never happening anyway like a ‘meat tax’. It’s not without impact but I can only see it influencing those who already vote for his party.
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Sunak is just offering daft policies that will never happen, like everyone learning maths to 18, they don’t have enough maths teachers as it is. He’s now extended it to be being even more nonsensical by ruling out laws that were never happening anyway like a ‘meat tax’. It’s not without impact but I can only see it influencing those who already vote for his party.
Yes, it really feels like the dregs of Tory government now, just circling the drain and playing to the small crowd of supporters they still have left.
I just hope their electoral annihilation next year really is as inevitable as it seems right now.
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The problem is that the alternative to Sunak is Sir Kid Starver.
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The problem is that the alternative to Sunak is Sir Kid Starver.
Not really that much of a problem for me.
Starmer is certainly not perfect, but I think his Labour government would be far preferable to the Tories, would act with more competence and integrity than the current lot (not difficult, to be fair), and would be far more aligned with my values in general, even if not in all areas or on certain specifics.
It is a standard trap for the left* to fall into to fight among themselves and tear down their own candidates for their weaknesses, at a time when the main objective needs to be to actually win the next election. Labour need to get into power and kick the Tories out, and at the moment everything should be about that.
(* Yes, by all means you can argue the extent to which Labour is truly “left”, but I’m just talking relative to the Tories.)
Starmer should and will be under scrutiny and subject to criticism, especially if and when he becomes PM. But until then I feel as though the (often legitimate) attacks on him from his own party and other opposition parties only play into the Tories’ hands in terms of clouding the right choice at the next election.
For a long time, the Tories have tried to paint politicians as ‘all as bad as each other’ to distract from their own failings, which isn’t really the case. And I feel like a lot of the current criticism of Starmer plays into that, unfortunately.
Yes, Starmer has his faults as a politician. And policy-wise, on a lot of matters he’s being more cagey and conservative-with-a-small-C (and occasionally, on subjects like immigration, with a large fucking C) than I would like. But at the moment, with a general election less than a year away, I can forgive a lot of those faults in favour of a focus on actually making sure Labour get into power, and then going from there.
(And while Corbyn supporters within the Labour ranks might be bitter about that kind of sentiment, and suggest that the party should have similarly aligned behind their leader then and put their in-fighting and squabbling to one side, I felt exactly the same during his tenure. For all his faults, his government would have been preferable to the Tories, and with less Labour in-fighting and a more united focus on winning the election things could have turned out differently.)
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Until it changes due to him being bolder and more Labour as they should be, my view of Starmer is elect him on Thursday, fight him on Friday.
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Until it changes due to him being bolder and more Labour as they should be, my view of Starmer is elect him on Thursday, fight him on Friday.
Yeah exactly. But you have to do it in that order.
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I don’t see Alan Sugar sticking to it and it’s irrelevant to Bruce because she effectively uses Question Time to promote her politics.
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I don’t have a complete picture of Starmer for me yet, but it is kind of sad that the Tory breakdown didn’t happen while Corbyn was in charge. It would’ve been fun to see an actual (middle-)left-wing government in the UK for a bit.
I think the right wing and center press would have propped up the government more if this was happening while Corbyn was in charge.
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I don’t have a complete picture of Starmer for me yet, but it is kind of sad that the Tory breakdown didn’t happen while Corbyn was in charge. It would’ve been fun to see an actual (middle-)left-wing government in the UK for a bit.
I think the right wing and center press would have propped up the government more if this was happening while Corbyn was in charge.
100% this. The same people who were wringing their hands over Corbyn’s alleged antisemitism haven’t said a word about massive numbers of Jewish activists having their party membership revoked under Starmer.
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The North you say? Fuck the north – and fuck London too:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/02/hs2-rishi-sunak-scrapping-manchester-leg
This is a deeply stupid move from a weak PM with no clue. If there is any business left with a pro-Tory view this likely sets fire to it.
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The North you say? Fuck the north – and fuck London too:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/02/hs2-rishi-sunak-scrapping-manchester-leg
This is a deeply stupid move from a weak PM with no clue. If there is any business left with a pro-Tory view this likely sets fire to it.
This was also a fun bit:
The row added to what has been a difficult start to the conference for the prime minister, who also saw his predecessor Liz Truss steal the limelight during a packed fringe event at which she called for immediate and sweeping tax cuts.
It’s nice to see that the alternative to the current self-destruction seems to be to dig an even deeper hole to climb into and then blow up with dynamite.
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Sunak was quoted today as saying he won’t be pushed to make a decision despite this being something he’s brought up himself and has been trailing through leaks for nearly a week.
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In response to the Conservatives going batcrap crazy, even by their standards, and unwilling to concede the no. 1 political crazy spot, the US Congress has done a “hold my beer” move and booted out the Speaker for not being far enough far right.
More seriously, how fucked up is all that?
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I don’t know if the Democrats have been doing the right move by supporting Gaetz in ousting McCarthy. I don’t have a clear picture of McCarthy, but this is a win for Gaetz, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the Dems backing is coup.
On the other hand, it is interesting to see their reasoning in this, outlaid by the minority leader Hakeem Jeffries:
https://democraticleader.house.gov/media/press-releases/dear-colleague-pending-republican-motion-vacate-chairIt kind of amounts to, Fuck the Republicans. And I have to say, it’s at least understandable. Why should they support the GOP centre after they’ve fucked over the Dems time and again and let themselves be led by the crazies? Things aren’t going to settle down or get better by supporting the “moderate” Republicans. So let them rip themselves apart. If what emerges is a full-on foaming-at-the-mouth Trump MAGA movement, at least everybody knows exactly where they stand.
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Sunak was quoted today as saying he won’t be pushed to make a decision despite this being something he’s brought up himself and has been trailing through leaks for nearly a week.
The only way this all makes any kind of sense to me is if Sunak has been deliberately leaking the unpopular cancellation of the Manchester route so that he can heroically save the day today by surprising everyone with a decision to go ahead with it after all.
But even then you’d have been trading days of negative press coverage of the conference in exchange for a brief stunt of a reversal.
If he does go ahead and announce the cancellation today as expected, at the Tories’ main annual conference in Manchester itself, then it will be one of the most badly handled policy announcements I can remember. Beyond even the wildest imaginings of The Thick Of It.
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The only way this all makes any kind of sense to me is if Sunak has been deliberately leaking the unpopular cancellation of the Manchester route so that he can heroically save the day today by surprising everyone with a decision to go ahead with it after all.
That assigns him a level of competence that I’m struggling to believe.
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Yeah, he’s not exactly an Ozymandias-level strategist.
It also probably wouldn’t really make that much sense as a strategy, when he could have instead had days of more positive coverage by leaking that he was going ahead with the Manchester line, then formally announcing it today.
I guess I’m just trying to rationalise the various inexplicably bad decisions that have gone into this.
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