UK Politics: Step Right Up, Step Right Up. Come Marvel At Our Amazing North Sea Snake Oil. Will Cure All Your Electoral Woes. Get It While It's Hot ;-)

[Spockydog]

Just watched the BBC debunk the claims underpinning Rishi Sunak's ridiculous plans to suck all the oil out of the North Sea fields by granting hundreds of new drilling licences.

Also, just watched the Labour representative tell the BBC that, no, they are not going to revoke any licences granted prior to them coming to power.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 31, 2023 by Spockydog

[Spockydog]

 

 

[Heartofice]

44 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

 

 

Oh well another slam dunk there. That explains everything.

[Spockydog]

Where is Starmer?

Billionaire investor threatens to pull out of UK amid global outcry at new oil rush

Quote

 

A billionaire global investor has led international condemnation of the UK’s new oil rush, saying he would pull his major investment from the country if the prime minister pursued “clickbait” fossil fuel policies.

The Australian mining entrepreneur Andrew Forrest, who also runs the Minderoo Foundation philanthropic organisation, threatened to move his investments out of the UK over Rishi Sunak’s swivel towards new oil and gas drilling.

“I am a major investor here,” Forrest told Bloomberg News. “If I see this country steering itself over a cliff backing fossil fuel, I am going to start pulling out. I will push my investments over to North America … I must invest where I know I have proper leadership, not leadership which is on a clickbait cycle.”

The prime minister’s announcement that more than 100 new oil and gas drilling licences would be granted for the North Sea in the autumn has sparked condemnation from climate scientists, energy experts and some within his own party.

 

No condemnation from Labour. Not a dicky bird. 

[Spockydog]

Pretty stark, this. Perfectly crystalizes how untrustworthy and unprincipled the man is.

And as Sunak's brainless North Sea Oil plans draw condemnation around the world, where the fuck is Starmer?

It seems he's hiding in a fridge while sending his goons out to tell the media that Labour will not be revoking any drilling licences granted prior to them coming to power.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Spockydog

[horangi]

I am genuinely curious Spocky, is the measuring up of an opposition leader a British thing or a Spocky thing?  Maybe because there is no Shadow President in the US, I just cant imagine folks having such ire for someone who is, presumably, on their 'side' but hasnt yet been elected to office.  Outside of their local constituents, I dont think many Americans care what the Senate Minority Leader's positions are as long as they arent antithetical to the party as a whole (and maybe not even then).  Perhaps when a final candidate is selected and election campaigns are full swing, some people start paying attention.  Not sure how you can break a campaign promise before being elected?

[Spockydog]

45 minutes ago, horangi said:

Not sure how you can break a campaign promise before being elected?

They were very much campaign promises. They were the promises he made in order to get elected as leader of the Labour Party. 

And look, say what you like about Corbyn, but he was a leader. There is no way Corbyn would be hiding from the press over Sunak's criminal North Sea Oil plans. No fucking way. He would have been before the cameras the moment that crap fell from Sunak's mouth, condemning it. 

But with every passing day, Starmer is showing us his true colours. He is a coward, beholden and pandering to Murdoch and Big Oil, along with the absolute worst of the British electorate.

He is woefully unsuitable to lead, especially through a time of existential crisis. 

And I'm sorry if my anti-Starmer posts annoy. As far as I'm aware, I'm the only one here who voted for him. He stole my vote. He has broken twenty-six electoral promises, made during the leadership contest. Twenty-six u-turns on major policy areas that would have made enormous difference to countless people's lives. 

Like Corbyn, Starmer promised radical change. 

But now, what? Because corporate profits are at all-time record highs, and the rich are getting richer and richer, we have to endure at least another five years of.... exactly the same austerity bullshit we've had since 2010? 

Edited August 2, 2023 by Spockydog

[DaveSumm]

51 minutes ago, horangi said:

I am genuinely curious Spocky, is the measuring up of an opposition leader a British thing or a Spocky thing? 

Measuring up: British thing. Raging hate boner for Starmer specifically: Spocky thing. 

[Spockydog]

15 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Measuring up: British thing. Raging hate boner for Starmer specifically: Spocky thing. 

Look, I want to believe. I really do. But 2023 Starmer is virtually indistinguishable from Cameron or Theresa May's Tories. And it's getting worse. Every announcement Labour makes is designed to please Murdoch and Tory voters.

And a lot of people seem to be in denial about this.

But I would ask those people, what really is the point of Starmer's Labour? Where is the social justice? Where is the solidarity with the people? Where is the moral leadership?

Edited August 2, 2023 by Spockydog

[Heartofice]

5 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

But I would ask those people, what really is the point of Starmer's Labour? Where is the social justice? Where is the solidarity with the people? Where is the moral leadership?

I think you have to accept that there is not going to be any transformational big ideas coming out of either party in the  next few years. 
 

Im not even sure what ‘solidarity with the people’ even looks like, what does they even mean? Nationalisation of things because ‘reasons’. Tax everyone even if it doesn’t lead to more tax income? 
 

I think Starmer is just a realist, and is getting closer to government and can’t make the sort of wild claims someone like Corbyn would make about what he could do.

[Gaston de Foix]

14 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Look, I want to believe. I really do. But 2023 Starmer is virtually indistinguishable from Cameron or Theresa May's Tories. And it's getting worse. Every announcement Labour makes is designed to please Murdoch and Tory voters.

And a lot of people seem to be in denial about this.

But I would ask those people, what really is the point of Starmer's Labour? Where is the social justice? Where is the solidarity with the people? Where is the moral leadership?

I would say, in defense of Spocky, that it is possible to have (i) an impossibly rosy view of Corbyn and (ii) a raging-hate boner for Starmer and still have a point.  Starmer's approach to politics seems to be pander and dress it up as principle. 

Why attack Sadiq Khan's ULEZ policy? Why the U-turn on the child-benefit cap? These are bad decisions, and contrary to Labour's values. 

Look it's a responsible and grown-up feature of British politics that we expect opposition leaders to have fully-costed plans and policies and tell the British people exactly what policies their government will implement rather than the gauzy promises that characterize US politics. 

But what exactly is Starmer's substantive defense to criticism? That he will make tough choices (see, e.g., here: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/18/keir-starmer-defends-decision-not-to-scrap-two-child-benefit-cap#:~:text=Keir Starmer has doubled down,to win the next election.). 

OK, but what exactly are you spending the money on if not this?  What's the tough trade-off that's worth it?  You can't just keep Tory tax-and-spend policies because it is in some vague way "tough" and "responsible".   

[Spockydog]

The 2-kid cap thing would have cost £1.1bn. 

And who the fuck would have complained? In a universe where the Tories can steal billions under the cover of Covid, who would have kicked-off over reducing child poverty?

Starmer is a Tory.

 

 

Edited August 2, 2023 by Spockydog

[Fragile Bird]

I would think that the leader of the opposition in countries (like Canada) with British style parliaments get close scrutiny, because they could be the next prime minister at the drop of an election call. Certainly here both the federal opposition leader and the opposition leaders of every province regularly get roasted over the coals for their failings.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 hour ago, Gaston de Foix said:

I would say, in defense of Spocky, that it is possible to have (i) an impossibly rosy view of Corbyn and (ii) a raging-hate boner for Starmer and still have a point.  Starmer's approach to politics seems to be pander and dress it up as principle. 

Why attack Sadiq Khan's ULEZ policy? Why the U-turn on the child-benefit cap? These are bad decisions, and contrary to Labour's values. 

Look it's a responsible and grown-up feature of British politics that we expect opposition leaders to have fully-costed plans and policies and tell the British people exactly what policies their government will implement rather than the gauzy promises that characterize US politics. 

But what exactly is Starmer's substantive defense to criticism? That he will make tough choices (see, e.g., here: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/18/keir-starmer-defends-decision-not-to-scrap-two-child-benefit-cap#:~:text=Keir Starmer has doubled down,to win the next election.). 

OK, but what exactly are you spending the money on if not this?  What's the tough trade-off that's worth it?  You can't just keep Tory tax-and-spend policies because it is in some vague way "tough" and "responsible".   

Plus Portugal has shown the way to deal with a recession is to spend your way out of it, and not to go down the austerity path Greece was forced onto.

You can argue priorities on where to invest, but actually continuing Tory fiscal policies is something he should be criticized for.

[Raja]

4 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

 and not to go down the austerity

 

The post 2008 austerity policies were also a massive failure in the UK & is part of the reason we're in the mess that we currently find ourselves in.

There's been extensive research in the UK that has repeatedly shown what a colossal mistake those polices were, including their adverse impact on health, infrastructure, housing & public services.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Raja

[BigFatCoward]

5 hours ago, Spockydog said:

 

And look, say what you like about Corbyn, but he was a leader.

 

But completely unelectable. I admire the shit out of him, but he was a fucking disaster. Better tory lite in power (and starmer might just go 'fuck it, they have lied for years for power, so did i') than principled socialist in opposition. 

[mormont]

The one thing Corbyn definitively was not, was a leader. He utterly failed at that.

[Spockydog]

Obviously, that depends on how you define 'leader'.

If it's being a smooth, duplicitous, media-friendly spiv, like Bozo or Blair or Cameron, someone who is led by the nose by a foreign-owned, right wing media, then no, that's no leader.

If it's conjuring a vision of hope for a people badly let down by a political class utterly beholden to a foreign-owned, right wing media, then I'll take that leader any day of the week.

Corbyn had thousands of people turning up to hear him speak, wherever he went. When was the last time a politician could do that shit? Starmer would fucking kill his dead mother's ghost for a fraction of that power. So please don't try telling anyone that Corbyn was a failure as a leader.

I know many, many people in the Labour Party who would have walked through walls for Jeremy Corbyn. I count myself amongst them.

Nobody is walking through any walls for Sir Kid Starver.

Edited August 3, 2023 by Spockydog

[Spockydog]

4 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

But completely unelectable. I admire the shit out of him, but he was a fucking disaster. Better tory lite in power (and starmer might just go 'fuck it, they have lied for years for power, so did i') than principled socialist in opposition. 

He wasn't suited to the cut and thrust (i.e. the lies and general dishonour) of modern political life. That doesn't make him a terrible leader.

And completely unelectable? He caused the establishment a massive scare in 2017.

Are people deliberately forgetting that Jeremy Corbyn was a handful of votes (2227 to be precise) away from Downing Street? After that, everyone shit themselves, and there was a sudden and noticeable increase in the anti-semitism stuff.

Yes, of course there is anti-semitism in the Labour Party, just as there is in any major organization. But in the run up to the 2019 election, almost every other door I knocked on, I had to bat back the absurd notion that Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong anti-racism campaigner, was himself an anti-Semite. This was in stark contrast to 2017, when people were really excited by his manifesto.

As Jewish comedian, Alexi Sayle, said at the time:

"It's absurd to see people who've spent a lifetime standing against racism being accused of racism, by racists."

 

Edited August 3, 2023 by Spockydog

[The Anti-Targ]

9 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Plus Portugal has shown the way to deal with a recession is to spend your way out of it, and not to go down the austerity path Greece was forced onto.

You can argue priorities on where to invest, but actually continuing Tory fiscal policies is something he should be criticized for.

Counter-cyclical govt spending is basic to some schools of economic thinking, but not basic to the neoliberal school of thinking. One might argue whether Starmer / labour are basically Tories, but it's not very arguable that Starmer is captive of neoliberal thinking. I guess a question might be whether he's suffering from Stockholm syndrome or is a true believer.

Fully costed polices is total arse. Rational spending policies and priorities, with sound checks and balances to make sure there is minimum corrupt leakage is what's needed. It's completely wrong to analogise govt to housekeeping as a whole, but damn if the roof is leaking and letting the rain in AND the piles are crumbling with the house starting to lean AND the mold is rising up the wall and giving you lung problems you spend what needs to be spent to fix the roof, replace the piles, and get rid of the mold. To hell with trying to pay for that shit out of your weekly pay package. Fortunately govts with currency sovereignty (like the UK) don't need to go begging to banks for a mortgage extension, or pick the pockets of citizens to do it. So they can spend what needs to be spent whenever they want to spend it.

The Tories don't want govt spending to fix stuff because they [say they] don't like govts spending in general. I'm not sure what Labour's excuse is.