UK Politics: Picking Your Career

[mormont]

59 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Rees-Moggs seemed to think it was serious or he would never have gone on.

That's footage of Rees-Mogg's own show on GB News.

So not a serious news channel.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

16 minutes ago, mormont said:

That's footage of Rees-Mogg's own show on GB News.

So not a serious news channel.

I think we just witnessed the definition for redundant.

Rees-Mogg's own show (!!) on GB News. Is exclaiming twice it's not a serious news channel. No serious News organization would give Rees-Twat his own show. Then you added on GB News, which we all know is not a serious News Channel. So the conclusion that it's not a serious news channel really was redundant. 

[Spockydog]

Been waiting for this to go mainstream.

 

[Spockydog]

Starmer goes quantum with Schrödinger’s tuition fees

Quote

 

When you’re 15 points ahead in the polls with the local elections just two days away, some might argue that it is best to keep quiet. Especially if you haven’t really got much new to say. Why rock the boat when you’ve got a comfortable lead? No need to go for another goal when you’re five-nil up with only added time to play. Just keep it safe, bank the win and save your resources for more important games to come. Don’t give the Tory party chair, Greg Hands, an excuse to fire off another desperate tweet about Labour having spent all the money.

Keir Starmer saw it rather differently. He had chosen to do a morning tour of the BBC studios. A last-chance power drive to remind everyone of what was at stake this week. Only he didn’t really appear to have given it much thought, as his only consistent message was that everyone was more broke than they had ever been. Almost as though he had imagined that just saying the same thing over and over again would get him through any 15-minute interview.

But sometimes the truth is not enough. You need an argument. A direction. Passion. And by the time Starmer had got to the Today programme, he appeared somewhat lost. As if he’d forgotten what he was doing and why he was on the radio. He would start sentences without having any clear idea how they would end. Somehow or other he managed to talk more about the things he wasn’t going to do, without giving a look-in to anything he would be doing.

It was far from a car crash. But it did feel like a misstep. With the Tory government seemingly out of any ideas for dealing with the cost of living crisis – or much else for that matter – the door is open for opposition parties to stake a claim on the country’s imagination.

The situation cried out for Starmer to take control, to make voters believe there was an alternative to the managed decline of Tory miserabilism. But the Labour leader was nervy. Diffident. Defensive. His affect curiously downbeat. Almost as if his replies had been written by a terminally depressed AI chatbot.

In the absence of any clear direction from Starmer, the BBC’s Justin Webb chose to bend the interview to his own will by focusing on stories in the morning papers. It had been reported that Labour was now planning to go back on its promise to abolish university tuition fees. Was this yet another promise that had bitten the dust?

Starmer sounded startled. As if he hadn’t expected to be asked about a news story in which he featured. It was like this: tuition fees were obviously unfair, but he would now be looking for a way of funding students that was more fair but which didn’t involve abolishing tuition fees.

Was that clear? Er, yeah but no but yeah but no. The economy had moved on, so he would be moving on to something that he couldn’t yet talk about as it was all top secret and he basically hadn’t had time to give it a moment’s thought. He couldn’t say fairer or unfairer than that. Tuition fees would be both going and staying. Politics in a quantum universe. Schrödinger’s students. Maybe they too would be both here and not here.

Webb was understandably confused. So he pressed on. How about the promise to still tax the top 5% of earners more? And to increase the rate of capital gains? Did they still stand? Yes and no. Or rather they had both fallen into a black hole in deep space.

Of course, those with the broadest shoulders should pay more, Starmer mumbled. It was just that the top 5% no longer had broad shoulders. Most of them were near-broke. So it would no longer be right to tax them more. It was time for the country to think of the destitution in which Rishi Sunak now lived. The high-tax, low-growth economic model was broken. Though he wouldn’t necessarily be reducing any taxes. Just not putting them up. So it wasn’t clear just how broken the system was.

Um … My mother was a nurse and my father was a toolmaker, Starmer reminded himself – the rest of us need no reminding – before adding: our phone was once off. Could we talk about that and the cost of living, the Labour leader asked. We couldn’t. Webb was having way too much fun. He wanted to pin down Keir on tax. Did he really think the very rich could not afford more in tax? After all, some appeared to have done very well for themselves in the past 13 years with asset prices rising.

Starmer again started mumbling. Borderline incoherent. He was going to grow the economy. How? By growing it. Top secret. If he told us how, he’d have to kill us. Mmm. If it was that straightforward, it’s a mystery why no one’s thought of it before. And yes, but could we stop talking about the pledges he wasn’t going to keep but focus on the ones he was?

Besides, he had only made those promises to get elected as Labour leader. Now that he was hoping to become prime minister, he had to jettison anything that might scare off floating voters. In any case, how come he got a hard time for breaking promises when Rish! did it the whole time and no one batted an eyelid.

 

 

[BigFatCoward]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65636772

£162 million to bury her, how much for his coronation on top?  Fucking disgraceful amount of money, they want that shit they should pay for it themselves. 

I agree with Frank Reynolds about funerals  - That's not gonna be my future. I'm not gonna be buried in a grave. When I'm dead, just throw me in the trash.

[Heartofice]

27 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65636772

£162 million to bury her, how much for his coronation on top?  Fucking disgraceful amount of money, they want that shit they should pay for it themselves. 

I agree with Frank Reynolds about funerals  - That's not gonna be my future. I'm not gonna be buried in a grave. When I'm dead, just throw me in the trash.

Think of how much you could use that money to fund the NHS!
 

 

[BigFatCoward]

44 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Think of how much you could use that money to fund the NHS!
 

 

It would pay for about 5000 nurses salaries for a year. Doesn't seem quite so trivial when you use sensible maths.  You can probably double that for his fucking new hat party.  

Edited May 18, 2023 by BigFatCoward

[Which Tyler]

I see that the maths expert got his maths wrong.

I'll note that that 8ish hours of running the NHS would be about half a million patients interaction / consultations (using pre-covid numbers).
I'll also note that I seem to recall the funeral taking less than 8 hours.

[Spockydog]

 

[Spockydog]

Also...

Nissan: It’s Brexit
BMW: It’s Brexit
Vauxhall: It's Brexit

Secretary of State for Being A Delusional Cretin:

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

1 hour ago, Spockydog said:

 

That was last week, a day after Hoyle finally reminded Sunak that at PMQ, the PM is supposed to answer questions questions, not ask them. This rare appearance of Hoyle’s backbone coincided with the Tories getting drubbed at the council elections, so he seems to have realised his ‘don’t piss off the tories’ strategy may not yield him a peerage after all.

Edited May 18, 2023 by Derfel Cadarn

[The Anti-Targ]

I have to say, I fully agree with the National Conservatism Conference proclamation that there needs to be a much greater collectivist/communitarian/communalistic perspective to the role of the individual in society. The greatest part the individual cam play in society is to work towards the common weal. Bravo! and Huzzah! I say. Not surprising that many senior Tories are disavowing that conference, hardcore individualists that they are.

Of course there is that problem of having a very narrow-minded one way Jesus, only one kind of family sort of overtone. I suspect the practising Hindu PM will have no truck with Christian Nationalist policies, so much of the harms, though not all, would be headed off at the pass before they entered into political party manifestos.

9 hours ago, Spockydog said:

Also...

Nissan: It’s Brexit
BMW: It’s Brexit
Vauxhall: It's Brexit

Secretary of State for Being A Delusional Cretin:

 

From the link

Quote

The “rules of origin” requirements raised by car manufacturers are part of the TCA, and are therefore definitely related to Brexit. But Badenoch is right in the sense that all European car manufacturers are having problems because there is not enough battery supply in Europe, making them reliant on imports from Asia.

As a result, as the Financial Times reports, German carmakers who export to the UK are also calling for a delay in the introduction of TCA rules that, from next year, would impose tariffs on UK/EU vehicle imports with foreign batteries.

As the FT reports in its story:

The intervention is the belated fulfilment of Brexit advocates’ hope that German carmakers would step in to EU-UK negotiations to protect their own sales.

Perhaps the German car makers (but not Italians and French?) are calling for this delay. But is it that bad for them really? The EV price will go up relative to ICE vehicles in the UK, but since there will be bugger all EV manufacture in the UK the German car manufacturers won't have direct tariff-free competition from domestic production. I don't know what the rules of origin rules in the CPTPP are, even though we're already in it, so perhaps cars made in CPTPP countries, like Japan and Mexico, will have low or no tariffs going in to the UK, so the Germans will have direct competition from other imports. Though BMW and Volkswagon produce EVs in Mexico, so...

[Spockydog]

 

[BigFatCoward]

Considering his initials Boris is really into penetrative sex. Mrs Boris is pregnant again. The man is fertile as fuck. How many is that now? 

[Spockydog]

Nobody knows. Not even Johnson. 

[Pebble thats Stubby]

If ever we need someone to go out there and impregnate the rest of the gallaxy Boris is a far "better" person than Kirk or Riker.  

[mormont]

1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

Considering his initials Boris is really into penetrative sex. Mrs Boris is pregnant again. The man is fertile as fuck. How many is that now? 

There is literally a court injunction preventing anyone publishing a reply to that question.

[Maltaran]

2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Considering his initials Boris is really into penetrative sex. Mrs Boris is pregnant again. The man is fertile as fuck. How many is that now? 

8 that he admits to

[Gaston de Foix]

4 hours ago, Maltaran said:

8 that he admits to

3 with Carrie (including the upcoming baby), 4 with Marina Wheeler, one with Helen Macintyre.  

The Court of Appeal judgment refers to him engaging in unprotected sex that resulted in conception twice (para 43): https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2013/554.html. 

I don't really want to spend time delving into the litigation(s), but I guess that is why the question of the existence of a 9th, unacknowledged, child persists. 

I'm sure he's a model father to all of them. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

That's why I think Boris Johnson is key for peace in Ukraine.

Russia withdraws its troop from Ukraine territory, and in return Johnson will help them fix Russia's problem with demographics.