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

[BigFatCoward]

2 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

You've completely ignored the comment about the difference between random person on a relatively small forum compared to well known public figure publishing in a national newspaper

Yep, unless someone from the thread is going to harass Clarkson it makes no difference, you can bet good money that his words to sun readers will lead to more online harassment etc. I'm pretty sure there is already, or soon will be a video of her face superimposed on Cersei. 

[Zorral]

From Charlie's Diary-Antipope:  

Quote

 

BTW, today's British political scandal which hasn't make the newspapers yet but is already blowing up on Reddit and twitter, is that someone leaked a photo of a letter to the LGB Alliance, the campaigning anti-trans pressure group, sent by Ofcom, the Office of Communications (a media regulator, so very official).

The letter itself is boring -- except for the address.

It turns out that LGBA operates out of 55 Tufton Street.

As wikipedia explains,

55 Tufton Street is a four storey Georgian era townhouse on Tufton Street, in Westminster, London, owned by businessman Richard Smith.[1] Since the 2010s the building has hosted a network of libertarian lobby groups and think tanks related to pro-Brexit, climate science denial and other fossil fuel lobby groups.[2] A group of these think tanks, dubbed "The Nine Entities",[3] use the building for biweekly meetings to coordinate policy and public messages.[4][1]

The nine lobby groups—the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the office of Peter Whittle (the former deputy leader of UKIP), Civitas, the Adam Smith Institute, Leave Means Leave, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (UK‘s principal climate science denial group), Brexit Central, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Institute for Economic Affairs—were accused by former Vote Leave employee Shahmir Sanni of using the meetings to "agree on a single set of right-wing talking points" and "securing more exposure to the public".[5]

Your takeaway is that the LGB Alliance, a leading anti-trans hate group, is funded by the same lobbyists as brexit, climate change denial, and the barking lunatics who fed Liz Truss her policy platform. Transphobia is thus not just an expression of "public concern", it's an active political agitprop campaign being fought with right wing billionaire money.

(Don't expect The Guardian to cover this.)

 

 

[Spockydog]

5 minutes ago, Zorral said:

(Don't expect The Guardian to cover this.)

 

Why not?

 

[Zorral]

Ask Charlie -- who is quite anti-Guardian, partly because he regards the papers' writers as transphobic in the same way others not far from us are.

[Spockydog]

1 minute ago, Zorral said:

Ask Charlie -- who is quite anti-Guardian, partly because he regards the papers' writers as transphobic in the same way others not far from us are.

Sorry. Thought the parentheses was yours. 

[Which Tyler]

TBF I wouldn't expect the Guardian to cover it - on the principal that the thinktanks operating out of Tufton St are pretty well known, and covered; so they probably don't consider it new, or newsworthy.

ETA: Google and Wiki tell you the address, both edits seem to have been added today, so maybe that is news after all.

[Zuzu Bolin]

10 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

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). 

 

It's always like this around Christmas time. I worked on the Railway between '02 and '13 and they plan engineering works around when most people are off work.

[Spockydog]

Yeah, this one is definitely going to prison. 

PPE Medpro: UK government launches action to recover £122m
 

Quote

 

The UK government has commenced legal action to recover more than £100m from the company that was awarded two large PPE contracts after the Conservative peer Michelle Mone lobbied ministers.

The claim, confirmed by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), is for the full £122m paid to the company, PPE Medpro, under a contract for it to supply 25m sterile surgical gowns that was awarded in June 2020. The DHSC is also seeking to recover the costs of storing and disposing of the gowns, which its officials rejected after an inspection when they arrived at the NHS depot in Daventry.

In December 2020, the company said in a statement issued by a lawyer for its director, Anthony Page, that the gowns, and 210m face masks supplied for £80.85m under another contract, had “undoubtedly helped keep our NHS workers safe”.

In fact, the gowns have never been used in the NHS.

Last month, the Guardian reported – based on leaked documents compiled by HSBC bank – that £29m originating from the profits of PPE Medpro was paid to an offshore trust whose beneficiaries, bank records indicated, were Lady Mone and her three adult children.

 

 

[Week]

cripes.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

On 12/17/2022 at 12:05 PM, 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. 

 

On 12/17/2022 at 1:38 PM, 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.

One of the things that struck me about the Harry & Megan doc were the number of people who said something that amounted to, "I've never seen anything like this." regarding press intrusion.

Nothing. Harry and Megan have done nothing to deserve this level of constant abuse and harassment from the UK tabloid press. Because "deserve" has nothing to do with it. It's all about money. 

At some point, one or more people involved with the UK tabloid press figured out that negative Megan coverage generates more clicks, more page views, and sell more papers than positive coverage; and they instantly pivoted to hard negative. 

Exactly what contributes that? Well we can speculate... 

The problem they have now is that, with the Sussexes no longer being bound by the terms of the Royal Rota, these assholes no longer have any access or any exclusivity. They got to watch the netflix doc and the Oprah interview at the same time as the rest of us Proles. They're taking it hard. 

OTOH,

When Piers Morgan testified for the Levinson inquiry, appearing by video conference, he made sure that his new book was sitting on the table in front of him and that it was arranged such that the spine of the book was clearly visible for the camera. In one of his responses he even says, "In my new book I say..." At one point he gave an answer to a question about the ethics of phone hacking that basically amounted to, "the ends justify the means". I can't find the clip at the moment.

The man is a colossal piece of shit. 

1 hour ago, Week said:

cripes.

Pretty much. But Clarkson swims in the same circles as the Morgan types. They both just had lunch with the Queen Consort. He'll be fine. 

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

From Charlie's Diary-Antipope:  

 

The LGB Alliance's excuse is that the offices are convenient for Parliament and 'became available' and that anyone who reads anything into this is a 'conspiracist'. To which the reply is: it's very convenient that they became available to you, isn't it? How did that happen, exactly? Did they advertise it? No? Huh.

ETA - for the record, the Guardian have been very poor on trans issues. So have the BBC. I can't think of a media outlet in this country that have given as much space to trans people's voices as they have to 'gender critical' people.

[Denvek]

1 hour ago, Which Tyler said:

TBF I wouldn't expect the Guardian to cover it - on the principal that the thinktanks operating out of Tufton St are pretty well known, and covered; so they probably don't consider it new, or newsworthy.

ETA: Google and Wiki tell you the address, both edits seem to have been added today, so maybe that is news after all.

The news that the LGBA is in the same address as the others is new, but some of the Guardian writers do have a reputation as being as anti-trans as the right-wing papers are, so that may be why Charlie Stross made that comment. (Other Guardian writers are pro-trans rights, but the editorial policy seems to be very much to both-sides the issue and not have an official position themselves)

[Heartofice]

8 minutes ago, Denvek said:

The news that the LGBA is in the same address as the others is new, but some of the Guardian writers do have a reputation as being as anti-trans as the right-wing papers are, so that may be why Charlie Stross made that comment. (Other Guardian writers are pro-trans rights, but the editorial policy seems to be very much to both-sides the issue and not have an official position themselves)

There are no anti trans people at the guardian. There might be some gender critical people ( although some have left) but there are no ‘anti trans’. Please stop using that term, it’s silly.

[Zorral]

I gave not a toss about Meghan and Harry.  I had no idea who she was when this sad sorry bs began.  It was jerkwad online venues like The Daily Beast, that ran at least one or two stories a day slagging Markel -- that brought them to my attention.

Thanks to them and the royals and the tabloids, I got yet another window, opening ever wider, on the incredible racism and hatred of women that exists in the UK, and here, of course, too, already, but in this case, also in US garbage circles that seem to rather wish to be part of those UK royals and tabloids and their other garbage media, so they gleefully attempted to be even worse.  Not to mention incels everywhere.

So, in the end, their desire to make us hate Markel, in their drive to destroy this innocuous woman -- I came to have immense sympathy for her and for Harry -- about whom previously I'd vaguely thought was following in his uncle Andrew's disgusting footsteps.  But it seems he turned himself around.  I dunno, of course. Ultimately don't really care except as there are so many who seem to have made him and his family their meal ticket of pushing hatred of them -- while gushing over that inimicable institution for Britain, the monarchy.

[Derfel Cadarn]

1 hour ago, Week said:

cripes.

Someone points out that ‘Rose West’ is an amagram of ‘Westeros’

[polishgenius]

9 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

There might be some gender critical people  but there are no ‘anti trans’.

That's like saying there are no racists, just white supremacists. 

[Heartofice]

2 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

That's like saying there are no racists, just white supremacists. 

 it’s closer to saying ‘there are no people who disagree with me, only nazi’s’. Same energy.

[polishgenius]

But it's not really, is it.

 

ps: you forgot to add an  reaction to my post.

[Heartofice]

2 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

But it's not really, is it.

 

ps: you forgot to add an /cdn-cgi/mirage/b1d36aab6e4d0c2e7df9c46228ba7b52d529f606338274170eb3ddf4244ab9b0/1280/https://asoiaf.westeros.org/uploads/emoticons/default_blink.png reaction to my post.

But it is though. It’s exactly the same.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

32 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I gave not a toss about Meghan and Harry.  I had no idea who she was when this sad sorry bs began.  It was jerkwad online venues like The Daily Beast, that ran at least one or two stories a day slagging Markel -- that brought them to my attention.

Thanks to them and the royals and the tabloids, I got yet another window, opening ever wider, on the incredible racism and hatred of women that exists in the UK, and here, of course, too, already, but in this case, also in US garbage circles that seem to rather wish to be part of those UK royals and tabloids and their other garbage media, so they gleefully attempted to be even worse.  Not to mention incels everywhere.

So, in the end, their desire to make us hate Markel, in their drive to destroy this innocuous woman -- I came to have immense sympathy for her and for Harry -- about whom previously I'd vaguely thought was following in his uncle Andrew's disgusting footsteps.  But it seems he turned himself around.  I dunno, of course. Ultimately don't really care except as there are so many who seem to have made him and his family their meal ticket of pushing hatred of them -- while gushing over that inimicable institution for Britain, the monarchy.

This is pretty close to my experience of it, except it got on my radar primarily because off the buzzfeed article comparing coverage of Kate v Megan. The meta-narrative is what's more interesting here.

Something that came up in the documentary was the idea of various royal offices coordinating with the media. Harry seems to believe it. I don't know about any of that but it seems pretty obvious that if the tabloids are going after Megan, they're not going after Andrew; they're not going after Camilla, they're not going after William and Kate. Is that the game that's being played? It's possible.

I know very little about Harry. He comes across as a bit naive and very worldly at the same time, but you'd expect that given his upbringing.  And given the insanity he's had to deal with for much of his life (regarding the tabloid press) , he seems very well screwed together IMO. Just a really nice guy.