UK Politics: Mone, Mone, Mone. It's not funny. It's a rich toff's world.

[Heartofice]

1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

I don't disagree with this characterization that much, but do you feel the level of bile she has experienced is remotely justified for this?  She's a bit of a dick, not a serial killer. 

Also, Clarkson and Morgan agreeing almost certainly means that she isn't that bad. 

Piers Morgan is also not a serial killer, but also gets a ton of bile directed at him. Some people are just inherently unlikable. 

[BigFatCoward]

4 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Piers Morgan is also not a serial killer, but also gets a ton of bile directed at him. Some people are just inherently unlikable. 

I feel whataboutism is beneath you. 

[Heartofice]

14 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

I feel whataboutism is beneath you. 

It’s not even whataboutism. I’m saying some people get worse treatment than serial killers from the public just because they are dickheads 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

25 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

I feel whataboutism is beneath you. 

It obviously isn't.

30 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Piers Morgan is also not a serial killer, but also gets a ton of bile directed at him. Some people are just inherently unlikable. 

Piers Morgan has however worked hard to be such an unlikable pile of...

Markle has done very little in comparison to get that amount of hate.

[Heartofice]

9 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

It obviously isn't.

Piers Morgan has however worked hard to be such an unlikable pile of...

Markle has done very little in comparison to get that amount of hate.

Oh Meghan has worked hard to be this unlikable, it just wasn’t the intended effect 

[Week]

43 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Markle has done very little in comparison to get that amount of hate.

A young beautiful American woman of color (from Hollywood, gfc) that felt entitled to marrying, let alone dating, the (now) 5th in line of succession to an antiquated, out of touch, white supremacist figure-head monarchy AND believes that she should be treated with equal respect?? What has she done to deserve any of it?? Then she WHINES after receiving racist vitriol from the media, her new family, and the (apparently) common Briton. Where's the gratitude???

[Wall Flower]

2 hours ago, Week said:

A young beautiful American woman of color (from Hollywood, gfc) that felt entitled to marrying, let alone dating, the (now) 5th in line of succession to an antiquated, out of touch, white supremacist figure-head monarchy AND believes that she should be treated with equal respect?? What has she done to deserve any of it?? Then she WHINES after receiving racist vitriol from the media, her new family, and the (apparently) common Briton. Where's the gratitude???

Sure, Piers Morgan directed an endless stream of bile at a woman he had drinks with once and denied that her mental health might have been affected by constant vilification while storming off the set of his own show after one incident of mild criticism. Let's face it though, has he ever worn too much impractical white clothing. eaten climate-destroying avocados, held hands with his partner in Westminster Abbey or tried to kill Princess Charlotte with his wedding flowers? I think not.

Of course, I'm a mere colonial who can't fathom why so many Brits still seem to be lapping up sulphurous bile from the Murdoch and tabloid press whose main interest is in serving the agenda of their wealthy owners, who promoted Brexit, told you that Boris Johnson was a fit person to run the country and generally helped to put your country into its current apparently parlous state. If I seem a little smug, it's probably because the one thing that Australians did right in 2022 was show the middle finger to the Merdochracy and its associates. Anyway, apologies for the rant but we are still under Royal patronage too, so I do have some interest in the topic.

[Heartofice]

Not sure why someone marrying the standby 1st substitute, benchwarmer option in probably the most hierarchical family on the planet would expect equal respect. 

[DanteGabriel]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Not sure why someone marrying the standby 1st substitute, benchwarmer option in probably the most hierarchical family on the planet would expect equal respect. 

You'd think she'd get at least a little more respect than a sweaty, lying child molester, but you do you.

[Varysblackfyre321]

12 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I honestly can’t think of any reason why a self promoting narcissistic Hollywood  liar would be disliked? It really is a head scratcher 

Dude, you’ve railed against her for starting a podcast.

Didn’t even remark on what she’s saying on the podcast just raged that her doing so is she a narcissist.

[Varysblackfyre321]

6 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Not sure why someone marrying the standby 1st substitute, benchwarmer option in probably the most hierarchical family on the planet would expect equal respect. 

 

Because expecting Human decency should be a benchmark expectation even when joining a family of noble inbreds.

The members of the Royal family aren’t innately better the members of a family plumbers.

well actually maybe that’s not true.

Plumbers can and do help society more than they take from it 

[Spockydog]

After a year when the only certainty was Tory chaos, could 2023 be even worse?

Quote

Doctors assessing people for signs of dementia have traditionally asked their patients: “Who is the prime minister?” Some health professionals report that they stopped using that question this year. There has been so much manic mayhem at the apex of politics that it has been a struggle to keep up even for those in full possession of their faculties.

...

The breakdown of government cannot be explained by parliamentary arithmetic. This time three years ago, the Conservatives won the biggest vote share at the 2019 election, which first-past-the-post translated into one of the larger majorities secured by a postwar government. Even after a pummelling series of byelection defeats at the hands of disgusted voters, the Tories are in possession of a hefty majority in the Commons. It’s not disruption by the opposition parties that has destabilised the governance of Britain but the Conservative party itself.

No explanation can overlook Brexit, a rupture unique to this country and one that has left Britons poorer than they need have been, while scrambling the synapses of the Conservative party responsible for it. Between 1979 and the referendum in 2016, a span of 37 years, the UK had five prime ministers. There have been as many in the six years since. I have heard some argue that this accelerated churn demonstrates that the premiership has become an “impossible job” that will destroy anyone foolish enough to have a go at it. I don’t buy this. There have been other periods of our history that placed demands on leaders that were as heavy, if not heavier, as those today. What has become impossible is finding anyone in the Tory ranks capable of managing that dysfunctional party, never mind giving fruitful leadership to the country.

A sequence of successively worse prime ministers has crashed and burned because they promised things they couldn’t deliver. The smooth but shallow David Cameron glibly gambled that his Brexit referendum would resolve his party’s civil war over Europe and settle Britain’s relationship with its continent. He self-immolated his premiership when he failed on both counts. The workaholic but wobbly Theresa May pledged to find a do-able Brexit that would satisfy parliament and spent three miserable years being defeated. The costless route to the sunlit uplands promised by the mendacious Mr Johnson was a rocky road descending into a dark ravine. He was finally ejected when even Tory MPs tired of his lies, but his party had become incorrigibly addicted to populism, boosterism and cakeism. So the Tories then put the country in the hands of Ms Truss, another chancer peddling tickets to another flight to fantasyland. Her pitch to her party was that she could deliver the elusive dividends of Brexit. She scoffed at the peril that her prospectus of unfunded tax cuts would accelerate inflation, balloon debt and spook markets. “Project fear”, she sneered, a conscious echo of the line used to dismiss the warnings of Remainers before the referendum. For a second time, the Brexit-addled Tories awarded the premiership to someone manifestly unfit for it. Tory MPs like to blame party activists for the spectacular debacle of the Truss premiership, but they put her name on the ballot as they had Mr Johnson. The consequences caught up with them more rapidly this time. She flamed out after 50 nights in Downing Street when her miracle elixir for the economy transpired to be snake oil laced with poison.

This cycle of leadership boom and bust has been accompanied by vicious purges as the so-called Brexit revolution devoured itself. The pool of Tory talent has been drained, especially of Conservatives of more decent and sensible character, many of whom have been ejected from the party or abandoned it in despair. Both Mr Johnson and Ms Truss appointed governments in which slavish loyalty to the leader was regarded as a much more important qualification for running a department than judgment, integrity and competence. He put together a cabinet stuffed with nodding dogs; she surrounded herself with nodding donkeys. So 2022 has been a year of extreme misgovernance, but it is best interpreted not as a shockingly unexpected aberration, but the culmination of forces unleashed since 2016.

 

[Spockydog]

  

‘We didn’t vote for this’: anger over Brexit failures is haunting the Tories

Quote

 

Three years ago last week, Boris Johnson stormed to victory in an election fought by the Conservatives under the simple slogan: “Get Brexit done.” The morning after, the then prime minister urged everyone to “find closure” on the European question that had split his party and country for so long.

He called on the British people to unite, to “let the healing begin” and to focus on the NHS. The Tories had broken through the “red wall”. They seemed all-powerful. It was Labour that faced existential questions.

Now, with about two years to go until the probable date of the next election and with Johnson and his successor, Liz Truss, both ousted by their own MPs, Labour is between 15 and 20 percentage points ahead in the polls at the end of 2022.

The NHS is on its knees and beset by strikes. It is desperately short of money and staff, with nurses, doctors and paramedics leaving in their thousands. Not a penny of the £350m a week that Johnson said Brexit would release for the health service has ever been seen. Increasingly, the whole Brexit endeavour is viewed by business leaders and economists as a self-inflicted disaster that has severely weakened the British economy, despite continued claims to the contrary by former Brexit opportunities minister Jacob Rees-Mogg on the BBC’s Question Time last week.

For Brexiters who followed Johnson, it was not supposed to be like this. He had promised them a new dawn of independence, deregulation, prosperity based on global trade deals and lower taxes. Instead, the reality is one of diminishing UK influence, dud trade deals or none at all (notably with the US), extra bureaucracy, reduced exports, lower gross domestic product and higher taxes.

Brexit and the fear of a Jeremy Corbyn government helped power the Tories to an 80-seat majority. But disgruntled Brexit supporters are crying betrayal. They make the case that Brexit has been catastrophically mishandled and needs new management. Worryingly for Tory MPs, that is precisely what is being offered by Reform UK, the latest incarnation of the Brexit party, which stands at 8% in Sunday’s Opinium poll for the Observer – 1 point behind the Liberal Democrats and rising.

Before the party is even particularly well known, 19% of all voters questioned by Opinium said they would consider voting for Reform UK and its populist agenda on immigration, doing Brexit properly and lowering taxes, including 23% of 2019 Conservative voters and 11% of 2019 Labour voters.

 

The Tories are finished.

Farage is coming back to lead these Reform cretins. And I seriously doubt there will any electoral pacts with Johnson in 2024.

 

[Zuzu Bolin]

Piers Morgan and Clarkson and other nasty pieces of work like Richard Madeley and Lord Sugar are just tools being used to divide and distract the populace from the real issues. Corrupt politicians, bonuses and huge pay increases for the Bosses of Avanti and the Royal Mail, millions and millions of Taxpayer money stolen by PPE profiteers - and yet these pricks are attacking Mick Lynch for ruining people's Christmas. And it sort of works - the amount of tweets from ordinary people I've seen moaning about the salaries Train drivers earn. 

[Spockydog]

1 hour ago, Zuzu Bolin said:

the amount of tweets from Tory bots I've seen moaning about the salaries Train drivers earn. 

FTFY. 

[HexMachina]

6 hours ago, Spockydog said:

FTFY. 

I think Zuzu Bolin is right, actually. There's a depressing number of people on whom the distraction tactics do work, whose anger is directed at the latest scapegoat instead of the actual issues. I think there's a danger in ignoring that and assuming its all paid for Tory bots rather than their tactics working.

I am feeling very cynical these days too so maybe this is more a reflection of my own lack of faith in people

[BigFatCoward]

Why the f'ck does my train line have pretty much no service until 9th Jan. I thought it finished on Saturday. Its costing me 20 quid a day in petrol (my blame for this is with work and the government, not the railworkers, my boss won't let me work from home despite all my staff being off because its the school holidays, and i'm office based anyway due to current injury - loves a pound of flesh). 

[BigFatCoward]

Even Clarksons daughter has called him out. Can that cunt not be cancelled completely, or a very severe spanking, whatever. 

“My views are and have always been clear when it comes to misogyny and bullying and the treatment of women by the media.

“I want to make it very clear that I stand against everything that my dad wrote about Meghan Markle and I remain standing in support of those that are targeted with online hatred.

[Raja]

28 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

 or assasinated,

I was nodding along and this bit made me burst out laughing

[Heartofice]

Just gonna check my intersectional chart of oppression to see if calling for Clarkson to be assassinated is okay.. yup. That checks out.