UK Politics Thread XII: The Lockdown

[Caracasus]

Hmmm, sacking her seems an over reaction.

It was an excuse to get rid of her.

Good, Starmer is becoming ruthless, then he can beat the tories.

You have to fight fire with fire.

Ah awesome. Exploiting antisemitism as a political cudgel always works swimmingly and never has any negative repurcussions later down the line.

Conflating Israel and specifically the current Israeli government with all Jews, as conflating legitimate criticism of Israeli government actions and antisemitism does, is in itself very antisemetic as it presents Jews as a sort of hive mind 'other' group. It sets a very dangerous precedent. It's also amazingly insensitive to celebrate this made up incidence of antisemitism as a political tool to further policies you personally agree with. You should be ashamed of yourself frankly.

[Vassenor]

Pictures of the PM's expensive vanity project.

Oh hell yeah I'm digging British Airways' new scheme- wait, this isn't a standard commercial airline's paint job? We've actually just replaced a cool grey with uninspiring white for a million pounds on a government plane.

Pretty silly all around.

And robbed the RAF of a frontline tanker in the process.

[Alyakia]

RLB has been sacked from the Shadow Cabinet for sharing article containing "anti-Semitic conspiracy theory"

jesus christ this whole thing is pathetic. it is known fact that US police forces are flown to israel for training, so it's not out of plausibility that this technique could have come from them. and even if she was wrong, that doesn't make it anti-semetic just because the country in question happens to be israel. this is a prime example of how the so-callled anti-semetism crisis in labour has been blown out of proportion and cynically exploited for political purposes.

[Fartsniffage]

Oh hell yeah I'm digging British Airways' new scheme- wait, this isn't a standard commercial airline's paint job? We've actually just replaced a cool grey with uninspiring white for a million pounds on a government plane.

Pretty silly all around.

And robbed the RAF of a frontline tanker in the process.

Eh, it can still fulfil the role if really needed. If any enemy aircraft is close enough to be eyeballing your tankers then you fucked up anyway.

But it was a massive waste of £900,000.

[Dumb Ideologies]

They are so regularly weaponised for trivial political spats that sometimes I wonder if the entire six million were turned into gunpowder.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

I don't know if this counts as politics, but I don't care either. Don't give your money to this shitstain please.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... qODYY9Q0Gk

[Caracasus]

I don't know if this counts as politics, but I don't care either. Don't give your money to this shitstain please.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... qODYY9Q0Gk

There was a residential care home/school near where I used to live partially run by those lot. Very low paid work with nowhere near enough training by all accounts. Someone I knew who worked there basically got out as quickly as they could cos apparently it was pretty dreadfully run. Interesting to see it probably wasnt an isolated case.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

So now we're supposed to care about children who aren't our family or friends?

[Greater vakolicci haven]

I don't know if this counts as politics, but I don't care either. Don't give your money to this shitstain please.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... qODYY9Q0Gk

There was a residential care home/school near where I used to live partially run by those lot. Very low paid work with nowhere near enough training by all accounts. Someone I knew who worked there basically got out as quickly as they could cos apparently it was pretty dreadfully run. Interesting to see it probably wasnt an isolated case.

Which one, if you don't mind me asking? I know a lot of people who went to those places.

[Caracasus]

There was a residential care home/school near where I used to live partially run by those lot. Very low paid work with nowhere near enough training by all accounts. Someone I knew who worked there basically got out as quickly as they could cos apparently it was pretty dreadfully run. Interesting to see it probably wasnt an isolated case.

Which one, if you don't mind me asking? I know a lot of people who went to those places.

This was a while ago, can't remember the name but it woild have been somewhere in East Kent. Had a quick google cos I was sure it had dutchess in the name? Something like that anyway but nothing came up.

[Ostroeuropa]

On the Bailey situation and more broadly the meme Israeli Lobbyists put out there that;

"It's anti-Semitic to hold Israel to a different situation and discuss them more than other countries in the same situation.".

It conflates discussion with condemnation.

"Saudi arabia sucks and does human rights abuses."

"I agree."
BAM. End of conversation.

VS

"Israel sucks and does human rights abuses."
"Well hold on a minute-"
hours of debate
"Ah see, you discuss Israel way more than Saudi arabia!"

…
So what? You've filibustered the conversation until that happened. It doesn't mean we hold them to a different standard. It means Israel is controversial, and other human rights abusers aren't, that's all. So why is Israel controversial while others aren't? Why is there such obfuscation and debate on the topic?

Why don't we just go;
"Israel sucks and abuses human rights."
"Yes I agree.".

Could it be... Israeli Lobbies purposefully obfuscating the issue and making it too drawn out and toxic?
Now, don't get me wrong. Saudi Lobbies us too. It's just that the Saud's don't give two shits if we think they're a bunch of backward human rights abusers. They lobby us on trade and defence and that's that. Israel however has a stake in its international reputation and in seeming "Western" and "The only democracy in the middle east" and so on, so their lobbying takes a different form. And those efforts are undermined if public perception of Israel sours.
It's branding.

Meanwhile, the public can hate Saudi Arabia and nothing about their interests changes. They don't care if we hate them, so long as business continues.
We can rail against Sauds and Chinese human rights abuses all we want. They have resources, we like resources, so we'll trade with them.

Israel? Israel is a service based economy.

If we decide "Fuck the Sauds", all that happens is we lose access to oil markets. We can't dig up hull and make our own oil. They know this.

If we decide "Fuck the Israelis"?, well, we'll lose access to their service economy. But that is something we can replace. We don't need an Israeli social media firm to trade with us or we'll face a lack of social media experts. We can have our own.

Because of this, Israels financial interests are heavily invested in countering discussion of human rights abuses, far more so than other countries. They do not have the resources to simply say "So what if we're breaching human rights? What are you going to do about it?" because the response would be "Stop trading with you.".

The material circumstances Israel finds itself in means its lobbyists take on a very different characteristic to other despotic regimes.
So they play these games instead and try and ensure "Israel is abusing human rights and we don't actually need them for anything economically" never becomes politically acceptable to say, because if people begin viewing Israel negatively and think trading with them makes us complicit, then there's not actually any material circumstances that force us to keep tolerating them. We don't *need* Israel, we simply tolerate them because they're "One of us" and "Western" and a "Democracy" and "Care about human rights.".

It's not like China where we'll ignore them being dicks because well, who else is going to build our shit, who else is going to sell us rare earth metals? Hence Israels behavior.
This is also unfortunate because it means Israel is heavily invested in distorting other countries politics and gaslighting their citizens, which isn't exactly helpful for the whole "The jews" thing.

[New Bremerton]

Labour’s Rebecca Long-Bailey sacked in anti-Semitism row



Antisemitic or not, the Corbynista Momentum far-left will think twice before spreading fake news about the IDF.

Interesting projections from the IMF yesterday about economic growth in a possible post covid-19 world.

(Image)

Obviously economic projections are vaguely comparable to reading tea leaves, but the IMF tends to be pretty good at it. They predict UK and Eurozone economies to shrink by roughly the same amount (with individual countries doing better and worse), and then growth in the UK in 2021 to slightly overtake Eurozone growth (again, with individual countries doing better and worse). Thats counting Brexit in those numbers.

The big winners seem to be china though, no shrinkage for 2020 and continued growth in 2021.

The case for imposing coronavirus reparations and sanctions against the CCP grows ever stronger.

Also we're not allowed to blame the government for fucking up the response to COVID: JRM is now literally blaming the weather for the spread of the virus.

Except he literally isn't.

From the article:

"Even things as simple as the weather may have influenced how the virus has spread, and so may the practices of individual cultures and societies."

He's making the perfectly valid point that a range of factors could have had an impact. That's common sense. The independents clickbait headline and your failure to read the article isn't.

I learned the hard way that the far-left The Independent is literal fake news and misleading clickbait. The Indy100 section is 100% pure, TDS, SJW cringe.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

To nobody's surprise austerity is bad for defence.

[Vassenor]

And robbed the RAF of a frontline tanker in the process.

Eh, it can still fulfil the role if really needed. If any enemy aircraft is close enough to be eyeballing your tankers then you fucked up anyway.

But it was a massive waste of £900,000.

Thing is that in the same rant where Boris first complained about the plane not looking regal enough for him he also complained that it wasn't available whenever he wanted to use it. And that was back when he was FS and so was a way down the pecking order for who gets to use the plane.

Basically the order goes that the RAF is supposed to get first dibs, followed by the Queen, then Charles, then the PM, then the rest of the cabinet. I get the impression that Boris wants that order rearranged to put him on the top.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Honestly not sure how i feel about the sacking of RLB

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Eh, it can still fulfil the role if really needed. If any enemy aircraft is close enough to be eyeballing your tankers then you fucked up anyway.

But it was a massive waste of £900,000.

Thing is that in the same rant where Boris first complained about the plane not looking regal enough for him he also complained that it wasn't available whenever he wanted to use it. And that was back when he was FS and so was a way down the pecking order for who gets to use the plane.

Basically the order goes that the RAF is supposed to get first dibs, followed by the Queen, then Charles, then the PM, then the rest of the cabinet. I get the impression that Boris wants that order rearranged to put him on the top.

Why the hell do we only have one part-time state aircraft?

[Vassenor]

Thing is that in the same rant where Boris first complained about the plane not looking regal enough for him he also complained that it wasn't available whenever he wanted to use it. And that was back when he was FS and so was a way down the pecking order for who gets to use the plane.

Basically the order goes that the RAF is supposed to get first dibs, followed by the Queen, then Charles, then the PM, then the rest of the cabinet. I get the impression that Boris wants that order rearranged to put him on the top.

Why the hell do we only have one part-time state aircraft?

Because we've gotten by before by chartering flights.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

Honestly not sure how i feel about the sacking of RLB

I suppose it served multiple purposes:

Signalling he's hard on anti-semitism

Getting rid of a rival

Contrasting neatly with Boris Johnson's seeming inability to sack Cummings or Jenrick

[Vassenor]

Equalities and Human Rights Commissioner Failed to Declare Tory fundraising

A commissioner at the U.K. equalities watchdog, which prides itself on impartiality, failed to declare her donations and fundraising activities for the Conservative Party, Newsweek International can reveal.

Pavita Cooper, who is a commissioner at the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) made donations totaling £7,000 to a Conservative MP and to the Conservative Party itself, according to the Electoral Commission's website.

The EHRC is an independent body responsible for the promotion and enforcement of equality and non-discrimination laws in England. When its impartiality has been questioned in the past, it stated that it was an "independent regulator" that took its impartiality "very seriously."

The EHRC is currently investigating the opposition Labour Party for alleged antisemitism but has said that "it would not be proportionate to initiate our own investigation" into the Conservative Party after a number of allegations of Islamophobia from within the party were made.

So now we know why the EHRC isn't going to investigate the Conservatives' Islamophobia problem.

[Dumb Ideologies]

Ah my favourite genre of news is back, reporters going to beaches and interviewing people who've travelled hundreds of miles who think its awfully bad and concerning that other people have done the very same and ooh is that an ice cream van over there?

[Ostroeuropa]

Ah my favourite genre of news is back, reporters going to beaches and interviewing people who've travelled hundreds of miles who think its awfully bad and concerning that other people have done the very same and ooh is that an ice cream van over there?

I wish we could return to the era where Journalists got arrested if they were being nuisances. There's that famous clip of a BBC journalist a few decades ago doing some nonsense and the cop is like "You're blocking the pavement. Please leave.". So she does only to set up elsewhere, and so she got arrested. That would never happen nowadays.

Oddly enough it was a segment where the BBC was trying to shill for Bat soup by feeding it to the public and being like "Do you like it? ITS BATS. HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW?!"

[Fartsniffage]

Ah my favourite genre of news is back, reporters going to beaches and interviewing people who've travelled hundreds of miles who think its awfully bad and concerning that other people have done the very same and ooh is that an ice cream van over there?

I wish we could return to the era where Journalists got arrested if they were being nuisances. There's that famous clip of a BBC journalist a few decades ago doing some nonsense and the cop is like "You're blocking the pavement. Please leave.". So she does only to set up elsewhere, and so she got arrested. That would never happen nowadays.

Oddly enough it was a segment where the BBC was trying to shill for Bat soup by feeding it to the public and being like "Do you like it? ITS BATS. HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW?!"

Found guilty and fined as well.

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/ne ... /857758636

[Ostroeuropa]

I wish we could return to the era where Journalists got arrested if they were being nuisances. There's that famous clip of a BBC journalist a few decades ago doing some nonsense and the cop is like "You're blocking the pavement. Please leave.". So she does only to set up elsewhere, and so she got arrested. That would never happen nowadays.

Oddly enough it was a segment where the BBC was trying to shill for Bat soup by feeding it to the public and being like "Do you like it? ITS BATS. HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW?!"

Found guilty and fined as well.

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/ne ... /857758636

That's the one.

[Dumb Ideologies]

Sometimes I wonder if the reporters are doing the whole report with just a shirt over their swimming costume and wearing a rubber ring and flip-flops.

[Ostroeuropa]

There is a game show called "The floor is lava" now on UK Netflix.

It's exactly what you expect.