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UK Politics - Wanted: 50,000 Lorry Drivers. Long hours, Crap Conditions, All The Schadenfreude You Can Eat


Spockydog

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7 hours ago, mormont said:

Is the suggestion here that for a politician at any level to say in any context "never mind life expectancy, never mind cancer outcomes" can ever be anything other than very stupid?

No, I’m saying he’s not stupid enough to say it in the context everyone’s trying to paint it as. It’s still a very poor choice of words, but it’s not the ‘ah see I told you he doesn’t care about people’ gotcha that some would like it to be.

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1 hour ago, DaveSumm said:

No, I’m saying he’s not stupid enough to say it in the context everyone’s trying to paint it as. It’s still a very poor choice of words, but it’s not the ‘ah see I told you he doesn’t care about people’ gotcha that some would like it to be.

The context is that the interviewer is asking Johnson about 'levelling up' and whether it is more than an 'empty slogan'. The questions is about what metrics can be used to measure 'levelling up'. Johnson replies that the most important one is wage growth - dismissing life expectancy and cancer outcomes as alternative ways of measuring whether 'levelling up' is actually taking place and having a real effect on people's lives.

The 'out of context' argument doesn't seem to me to have much purchase here.

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18 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Playing devil's advocate, a rise in incomes is likely to impact Cancer outcomes and life expectancy. 

Yep, higher GDP per citizen usually leads to better outcomes (subject to distribution of course). This seems a little bit of Boris being a klutz with his speaking. In the context of leveling up, getting wage growth up (especially for the bottom 50%) is possibly the most critical measure. 

That said, clearly Labour should try to make hay with it. 

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@mormant, I totally agree that the whole incident around this rape & murder is terrible, and raises big issues around whether or not he should still have been a policeman, and how it was investigated. And I think some clueless statements have been made by the police.

But when it comes to what you should do when faced with a dangerous situation, unfortunately there aren't many (any?) good options and shouting for help, running away, calling emergency services, are good advice. Certainly there is an argument that unless its for a known reason (e.g. there's been an ongoing investigation) everyone should always call the emergency services and confirm the badge numbers of any police taking you into custody. Certainly single drivers are advised to do that before pulling over when they see lights (although its not taught enough). 

21 hours ago, Spockydog said:

Rapists gonna rape. I suppose. 

However, if he had been properly investigated for exposing himself, presumably he would no longer have been a police officer, therefore would no longer have had a warrant card to use as a tool in Everard's abduction. And she might still be alive. 

That right there was an opportunity. Actually, make that two (that we know of) opportunities. 

Unfortunately, I suspect the first line is the correct one. 

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2 hours ago, mormont said:

The context is that the interviewer is asking Johnson about 'levelling up' and whether it is more than an 'empty slogan'. The questions is about what metrics can be used to measure 'levelling up'. Johnson replies that the most important one is wage growth - dismissing life expectancy and cancer outcomes as alternative ways of measuring whether 'levelling up' is actually taking place and having a real effect on people's lives.

The 'out of context' argument doesn't seem to me to have much purchase here.

Well your first paragraph is a perfect summary of my take on it too, so I guess we agree? The way some people are reporting it is as if he was asked ‘hey Boris, do you care about cancer outcomes and life expectancy?’ and he replied ‘Nevermind cancer outcomes, nevermind life expectancy’. Which isn’t what he’s saying.

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I think we can all agree that BJ says enough stuff that is outrageous that we don't need to argue about stuff that 'might' be a bit offensive. 

And also that It's not a 'gotcha' anyway, as most people clearly don't give a shite what bile he spouts. 

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Wages are ‘growing’ probably because many lower-paid jobs have disappeared due to Covid or can’t be filled (fruit-picking etc) due to those workers having left the country. So people arent being paid more, there are fewer people being paid less to lower the average.

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1 minute ago, BigFatCoward said:

Who'd have thought Tony and Cherie would be greasy tax avoiders? Can't get to upset though when he's the only Labour politician in my life who isn't a serial loser. 

Yeah, bombing brown people makes him so much better than the competition. :ack:

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7 minutes ago, dog-days said:

Everything. I'm glad involvement in foreign wars doesn't make someone a loser in your book. 

But I very specifically was referring to his tax avoidance and how I can't get too bothered because he won elections. I didn't say 'he gets a pass for all his cuntery because he won elections'. 

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8 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Playing devil's advocate, a rise in incomes is likely to impact Cancer outcomes and life expectancy. 

Possibly true. But if this was Johnson's point, he had an open opportunity to say just that. He didn't, and from that we can conclude that his reaction was an arrogant insistence that his woolly pronouncements about 'levelling up' be judged only by the metric he decides. He hates being challenged in interviews, even a relatively mild challenge like this, and that's what caused that reaction. 

In that moment, he wasn't thinking 'yes but a rise in incomes leads to higher life expectancy', He was dismissing life expectancy as unimportant in the only thing he really cares about when it comes to 'levelling up', which is people telling him what a brilliant election-winning idea he's had.

The quote in context is about as bad as it gets and I can't really see how anyone can say 'he's not that stupid' when he has, in fact, been about as stupid (and insensitive) as a politician can get.

ps Johnson, by the way, has had two careers (journalist and politician) for which expressing yourself clearly is a core skill. People shouldn't be so quick to excuse his gaffes as just being shit at the very thing he's supposed to be good at. Generally, I read them as flashes of unintentional honesty rather than failures of communication. Johnson can communicate well when he remembers to. He has benefitted entirely too much from people's willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt on just about everything in his rather tawdry, exploitative, cynical and selfish life.

7 hours ago, ants said:

But when it comes to what you should do when faced with a dangerous situation, unfortunately there aren't many (any?) good options and shouting for help, running away, calling emergency services, are good advice.

In the context we're talking about, they really aren't. At best, they're counsels of despair. There is no good advice in that situation, because by the time that situation arises, you're in deep shit. And this doesn't address the point that the Met's role here is not to offer advice, good or bad. It's to shoulder responsibility. Offering advice is a distraction from that: unkindly, we may even say an evasion.

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