UK Politics - We Don’t Want to See Your Papers, Please

[Spockydog]

That picture of Bozo and Laura Kuenssberg on the park bench has been doing the rounds on my twitter timeline today.

I've been looking at it, wondering at the circumstances. It doesn't look like an interview. She's got a coffee and a cigarette, but no notebook or recording device. And the look on his face. Lol. He looks very much like a bloke getting dumped by his girlfriend. 

 

 

 

[Fragile Bird]

48 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

That picture of Bozo and Laura Kuenssberg on the park bench has been doing the rounds on my twitter timeline today.

I've been looking at it, wondering at the circumstances. It doesn't look like an interview. She's got a coffee and a cigarette, but no notebook or recording device. And the look on his face. Lol. He looks very much like a bloke getting dumped by his girlfriend. 

 

 

 

Holy smokes, he looks worse than Trump ever did.

[Spockydog]

43 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Holy smokes, he looks worse than Trump ever did.

The ladies love him, apparently.

That picture is two years old. He did say he lost quite a bit of weight when sick with Covid. Every cloud and all that...

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

IIRC that’s after his Brexit deal was voted down by parliament, in Autumn 2019.

[Spockydog]

This is really sad.

 

[dog-days]

18 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

This is really sad.

 

Yeah, very sad. My first thought when I read about it last night was: "if this were a folk tale, the police marksman would find out he'd murdered his son, who'd been transformed into a stag by a wicked witch." 

Actually, if this were a Welsh folktale, the stag would be alive, would be a magician in disguise, and would be getting it on with his brother in the form of a hind. 

Anyway, shooting the creature seems like a huge overreaction.  They could have tried blocking the streets and herding it towards safety/space/anywhere where it could be tranquilised. The Sami of Finland are no doubt laughing at us. 

Apropos of nothing, has anyone noticed an increase in teenagers smoking over the last year? Smoking roll-ups/cigarettes, I mean, not vaping. There seems to have been a noticeable increase near me. A bit sad about it. 

[BigFatCoward]

7 minutes ago, dog-days said:

 

Anyway, shooting the creature seems like a huge overreaction.  They could have tried blocking the streets and herding it towards safety to be tranquillised. 

They did. For 9 hours. 

[Spockydog]

And in that time couldn't raise any animal specialists able to assist. What were they doing, sending telexes? 

[dog-days]

17 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

They did. For 9 hours. 

They could have done it better? Possibly with direwolves and the local lunch club out in their electric wheelchairs. I saw a man once in Rhyl with a shunt on the front of his and skull-and-crossbone emblems stuck to the wheels. 

[The Anti-Targ]

10 hours ago, Spockydog said:

Just got back from my mum's. Had to listen to her banging on about the DVLA, who, according to her right wing news outlets, are today's owners of responsibility for the fuel crisis.

She seems unable or unwilling to grasp that the DVLA is a government agency, and has been under the control of the Tories since 2010. 

When is anyone from this pathetic excuse of a government, or the people who put them there, going to take responsibility? For anything.

That is a rhetorical question, because we all know they never will. Tomorrow, it will probably somehow be Jeremy Corbyn's fault.

 

It is meant to be the fourth estate's job to hold government to account for its failures. So the problem isn't so much the govt but the fact that there is too much of the media that is a propaganda department for the govt rather than a watchdog. When the whole media is doing the job it is supposed to be doing, then the public will demand accountability and the govt will have to actually answer for its actions (in between elections). While so much of the media is its shield and defender, there is no real accountability.

[Spockydog]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

It is meant to be the fourth estate's job to hold government to account for its failures. So the problem isn't so much the govt but the fact that there is too much of the media that is a propaganda department for the govt rather than a watchdog.

Indeed. There are plenty of reasons why Kuenssberg is often referred to as Johnson's Minister for Propaganda.

Whether it's doctoring video of an interview in order to fake a story about Jeremy Corbyn, or using social media to manipulate the courts on behalf of the government, or perhaps even delivering strategic advice from a bench in a London park, her continued presence as BBC's political editor raises serious questions about the integrity of that newsroom.

The place is riddled with Tories. Those who are not are probably operating in a state of existential terror. Yet, with the assistance of Murdoch and Dacre and their ilk, large sections of the British electorate have been brainwashed into believing that BBC news output consists mainly of left wing propaganda.

[The Anti-Targ]

5 hours ago, dog-days said:

Yeah, very sad. My first thought when I read about it last night was: "if this were a folk tale, the police marksman would find out he'd murdered his son, who'd been transformed into a stag by a wicked witch." 

Actually, if this were a Welsh folktale, the stag would be alive, would be a magician in disguise, and would be getting it on with his brother in the form of a hind. 

Anyway, shooting the creature seems like a huge overreaction.  They could have tried blocking the streets and herding it towards safety/space/anywhere where it could be tranquilised. The Sami of Finland are no doubt laughing at us. 

Apropos of nothing, has anyone noticed an increase in teenagers smoking over the last year? Smoking roll-ups/cigarettes, I mean, not vaping. There seems to have been a noticeable increase near me. A bit sad about it. 

 

5 hours ago, Spockydog said:

And in that time couldn't raise any animal specialists able to assist. What were they doing, sending telexes? 

Speaking as an animal specialist.

As far as I know the only real experts on live capture of deer live here in New Zealand and their best technique is a helicopter and a big net up in the mountains. So not sure how that would translate into the urban setting, and it is improbable that anyone with the skills and equipment exists anywhere in the UK. Maybe there are some in Scandinavia, but I think they are mostly doing conventional open country herding not live capture.

Fricken RSPCA being useless with its advice to just let it find its way home. Totally impractical in a busy urban environment.

For a tranquiliser gun, the max range seems to be about 25 metres. Beyond that you probably don't have the kinetic energy for the dart to pierce the skin to deliver the drug. Not sure that a marksman could get within 25 metres without startling the animal. and shooting it with a tranq will startle it and could cause it to injure itself before the drug kicks in.

Ultimately it's just a deer, which is an animal that is hunted by thousands of people on a regular basis globally including across the UK and Europe. The only thing special being the colour of its pelt with some superstitious folklore association. A reasonable attempt to get it out of town seems to have been made, and shooting it was a reasonable next step.

[Spockydog]

5 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Ultimately it's just a deer, which is an animal that is hunted by thousands of people on a regular basis globally including across the UK and Europe. The only thing special being the colour of its pelt with some superstitious folklore association. A reasonable attempt to get it out of town seems to have been made, and shooting it was a reasonable next step.

Yeah, try telling us that when the freakin' Wild Hunt is unleashed as revenge.

[The Anti-Targ]

It's different when prey knows it's prey and understands what it means to be prey.

Imagine if all deer knew that their purpose is (partly) to be food for the animals with the big sharp teeth / sticks (pre-historically speaking)? It's better that they don't have the cognitive capacity to know such things.

[BigFatCoward]

7 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

 

Speaking as an animal specialist.

As far as I know the only real experts on live capture of deer live here in New Zealand and their best technique is a helicopter and a big net up in the mountains. So not sure how that would translate into the urban setting, and it is improbable that anyone with the skills and equipment exists anywhere in the UK. Maybe there are some in Scandinavia, but I think they are mostly doing conventional open country herding not live capture.

Fricken RSPCA being useless with its advice to just let it find its way home. Totally impractical in a busy urban environment.

For a tranquiliser gun, the max range seems to be about 25 metres. Beyond that you probably don't have the kinetic energy for the dart to pierce the skin to deliver the drug. Not sure that a marksman could get within 25 metres without startling the animal. and shooting it with a tranq will startle it and could cause it to injure itself before the drug kicks in.

Ultimately it's just a deer, which is an animal that is hunted by thousands of people on a regular basis globally including across the UK and Europe. The only thing special being the colour of its pelt with some superstitious folklore association. A reasonable attempt to get it out of town seems to have been made, and shooting it was a reasonable next step.

No no no, all action by police must be judged on a headline only.

I suppose it took some anti police attention from some of the more horrific details released in the Sarah Everard case. 

[The Anti-Targ]

And when I say speaking as an animal specialist, it's possible I'm the only person on the board who has worked closely with farmed deer, as a farmhand when I was a student, as a vet in clinical practice, and at slaughter facilities. Even quasi domesticated with a couple of decades selectively breeding for being less flightly they are tricky to handle. The only way you can handle them safely for both the person and the animal is if you can pack the deer tightly together so they can't move and get a decent amount of momentum to jump, or by getting them into a crush (sounds worse than it is) where the floor drops away so their feet are not in contact with the ground.

[BigFatCoward]

And of course 'police cause mass pile up by failing to capture wild deer which ran into traffic' was an obvious alternative headline. 

[BigFatCoward]

Now that furlough has ended who would still be on it other than some people in travel industry? In my experience everything is fully back to normal. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

31 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Now that furlough has ended who would still be on it other than some people in travel industry? In my experience everything is fully back to normal. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58735299
 

A million still on ot apparently, the travel and airport industry strongly affected

[Spockydog]

Massive Labour u-turn on the horizon.

Two days after Labour's shadow Brexit secretary told remainers to 'get over it and move on', Starmer's people are now saying that Labour will go back to the negotiating table with the EU and fix Johnson's Brexit deal.

First out of the blocks, David Lammy: 

Quote

There are challenges for hauliers, of course, right across Europe. But let's be clear: there are no queues in Spain, in Germany or France.

So what's the difference? The difference is that we exited the European Union on Boris's deal we're out of a customs union, the cabotage system that were set up that allowed drivers to come here and go back with goods and the tariffs that we now have mean the drivers aren't coming.

This is his deal. When we come to government, we'll have to look at how we fix his deal.

Let's be clear, shortages right across the country, shortages of fruit pickers, shortages of builders, shortages in terms of lorry drivers: all of that is down to Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab and the promises they made to the British people.

I mean, it's admirable. Despite the best efforts of our government propaganda outfits, everyone knows the deal Johnson 'negotiated' is terrible for this country. But, really, after the way the Tories behaved over the past two years, why would the EU even bother picking up the phone to talk with us?