UK Politics: Gray's Anatomy

[Zorral]

A Louisiana friend in Cajun country is powering his (world class, professional level) recording studio and his attached home with two second-hand Tesla solar batteries.  They are 1800 lbs and bulky as hell, but they work so well, he's been able to power live concerts of local groups in his back yard (which is, perhaps, even larger than a small city's sports stadium), including all the lights, etc. with them as well.

After the devastation of Katrina, Louisiana, certainly around New Orleans, went solar Hugely.  It helped too, that the fed underwrote a lot of the costs of installation as part of the post-disaster federal assistance recovery.

[Mindwalker]

Glorious rant, explaining BJ and other British stuff to Americans:

 

[Which Tyler]

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Giving him too much credit. Cameron was a spineless chancer, who was brought down by his own hubris.

[williamjm]

1 hour ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Giving him too much credit. Cameron was a spineless chancer, who was brought down by his own hubris.

I think May was doomed anyway even if Boris hadn't helped push her over the edge, although I think he can safely take all the credit for his own downfall.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

3 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I think May was doomed anyway even if Boris hadn't helped push her over the edge, although I think he can safely take all the credit for his own downfall.

May inherited the poisoned chalice (Brexit) from Cameron. While Cameron was the creator of his own demise by not standing up to the ERG loons to tell them to get lost with their Brexit shit, and instead relying on winning the referendum campaign by virtue of being David I shagged a pigs head in college Cameron, you can sorta see Johnson as the face of Brexit playing a part in May's demise. Ofc, she was a sub-standard PM, but competence and Brexit don't mix. Again, thank that chancer Cameron for the state of the Tory Party. 

I mean that pig shagger basically decided to gamble on two coin flip referendums. Scottish IndyRef, he won. The Brexit one, he lost. Chancer.

[dog-days]

Guto Harri (placeholder journalist who already has a nice regular job presenting the unchallenging current affairs programme Y Byd yn ei Le) has signed up to the job of Director of Communications at Downing Street. As career moves go, it's difficult to fathom. Perhaps Harri played too much Lemmings at an impressionable age. Or he's planning on writing a tell-all The Last Days of Boris Johnson to bring in some extra dosh next Christmas. 

[john]

So an MP in a civil servant’s role and a director of communications who seems to hate him almost as much as Cummings … ok.

[The Anti-Targ]

12 hours ago, dog-days said:

For a horrible moment, I thought that was a real account, until I looked at the name more closely. 

Shhh, there is possibly a chance Hon. N Dorries will defend herself by saying, "see, my honourable Colleague Sir Michael Take gets it."

[mormont]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60274440

Quote

Labour's deputy leader Angela Rayner called the new appointments a farce, adding that the prime minister had "clearly run out of serious people willing to serve under his chaotic and incompetent leadership".

He ran out of those basically on day one.

[Spockydog]

Brilliant piece in the Guardian today:

Britain’s Covid story is about sacrifice and selflessness. Boris Johnson can’t tell it

Quote

 

Johnson has promised a “UK commission on Covid commemoration” and a “fitting and permanent” official national Covid memorial, but hardly any details have materialised. Meanwhile, answering the need for a story about what we have all experienced, people and places are beginning to collectively mark the pandemic – both the lives that were lost and the shared spirit that got us through it. Commemorative spaces and artworks are being unveiled all over the country. In London there is the national Covid memorial wall, whose spontaneous origins make it feel all the more authentic and human. The Welsh government is planting two commemorative woodlands. Scotland has a government-funded project called Remembering Together, intended to create occasions and spaces for remembrance, and honour how the country’s communities “continue to come together during the most difficult times”.

As Johnson flounders, other politicians have come up with their own versions of that basic narrative – as happened last week, when Starmer responded to Sue Gray’s “update”. He spoke about people who followed the rules and restrictions now being consumed by “rage, by grief and even by guilt”, and the need for them to “feel pride in themselves and their country, because by abiding by those rules they have saved the lives of people they will probably never meet”.

But on the political right, the narrative vacuum Johnson has left is being filled by stories that feel toxic and dangerous. In some Tory circles, any idea of a dutiful public making sacrifices for the common good is at risk of being replaced by something very different: the belief that lockdowns and restrictions were simply a failed experiment, and what motivated people to follow what the Conservative backbencher Steve Baker recently called “minute restrictions on their freedom” was not a willing spirit of collective sacrifice, but a state that had decided “to bully, to shame and to terrify them”. On the wilder fringes of the internet, similar ideas are expressed by the irate keyboard warriors who insist that those of us who supported Covid rules were dupes and “bedwetters”.

Johnson’s endless disgrace will only fuel those stories. We already know that around £14bn of public money was wasted on fraudulent Covid loan claims and unused personal protective equipment. The apparently imminent public inquiry into Britain’s experience of the pandemic will doubtless unearth more evidence of such misrule and incompetence. As people’s fury about Downing Street parties festers, these things may yet be the perfect raw material for a grimly familiar tale that would perfectly suit Nigel Farage and his ilk: the idea that the pandemic really boiled down to yet another betrayal of the people by a rotten elite, and that most of the restrictions and rules were never really necessary in the first place. Its effects could go well beyond politics, into people’s basic wellbeing: if this story catches on, it may only deepen the sense of torment and confusion that has already pushed many people over the psychological edge.

These are the dangers that the nodding-dog Tory supporters of a failed prime minister need to wake up to. People really do live by narratives, and in times of collective crisis those who rule us need to give us at least some sense of where we have been, where we might be going, and what everything means. Johnson’s serial stupidities mean he is simply unable to do that: if the great storyteller has no stories, his own tale has surely reached its end.

 

 

[Spockydog]

 

 

 

[Spockydog]

Very disappointed to see a lot of people I admire hand-waving the Jimmy Carr joke.

For instance:

No. He most definitely is not a decent person. Quite apart from the fact that he has made a career, and a shit load of money, of out of punching down on all kinds of minority groups with his 'jokes', he is a disgusting, tax evading wanker. And I really, really hope he gets what's coming.

ETA:

Here is the 'joke'.

"No one ever wants to talk about the thousands of Gypsies killed by the Nazis, because no one wants to talk about the positives."

Not very funny, is it?

Would Coren-Mitchell be defending him if he'd substituted the word 'gypsies' with any of the other groups targeted by Hitler's holocaust? Can you imagine the noise if Carr had made that joke about Jews? Rachel Riley's head would literally have exploded.

This is not okay.

 

 

 

 

[Heartofice]

22 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Very disappointed to see a lot of people I admire hand-waving the Jimmy Carr joke.

For instance:

No. He most definitely is not a decent person. Quite apart from the fact that he has made a career, and a shit load of money, of out of punching down on all kinds of minority groups with his 'jokes', he is a disgusting, tax evading wanker. And I really, really hope he gets what's coming.

ETA:

Here is the 'joke'.

"No one ever wants to talk about the thousands of Gypsies killed by the Nazis, because no one wants to talk about the positives."

Not very funny, is it?

Would Coren-Mitchell be defending him if he'd substituted the word 'gypsies' with any of the other groups targeted by Hitler's holocaust? Can you imagine the noise if Carr had made that joke about Jews? Rachel Riley's head would literally have exploded.

This is not okay.

 

 

 

 

You seem to be on the same side as Nadine Dorries on this one.

[mormont]

25 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

You seem to be on the same side as Nadine Dorries on this one.

Well you see, this government believes racism against travellers should take the form of systemic discrimination against them and criminalisation of their entire lifestyle, not jokes.

[Spockydog]

 

[Which Tyler]

34 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

 

Talking about Nadine.

Apparently, we've had the internet for 10 years now - so... since 2012.

 

It's lucky she's not the gorvernment minister in charge of digital media or anything.

oh shit.

[Spockydog]

This is what happens when you vote for a bunch of morons led by a lying fucking moron.

 

[Which Tyler]

It is increasingly looking the main qualifying criteria for being put forwards for media interviews is the ability to make Boris look competent in comparison

[A Horse Named Stranger]

26 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

It is increasingly looking the main qualifying criteria for being put forwards for media interviews is the ability to make Boris look competent in comparison

<Insert Labour running Jeremy Corbyn joke here>