- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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I'm still pissed at the revelation that Keith doesn't support issues if they focus test badly. Motherfucker it's your job both as a QC and as leader of the opposition to make the case for the opposition.
Labour's infantile obsession with focus groups and political consultants is entirely because they've misunderstood how Blair won elections.
What I remember about the late 90's/ early 2000's is that Labour radiated confidence: even before '97, they were acting like they'd already won, while the Tories were visibly nervous and exhausted by comparison. They didn't awkwardly hover around focus groups, asking what policies they'd like to see: they swept people along on a wave of enthusiasm.
This is what the current Labour leadership just don't get: they think that they're reconnecting with the public by doing this continual: "Labour needs to apologise for x, Labour hasn't listened on y, Labour has appeared out of touch on z" when all they're actually doing is broadcasting to the electorate how timid and weak they are. Even when people don't conceptualise it in quite that way, they instinctively react to that cringeing attitude with dismissal and contempt. If Starmer and his cronies really were the new New Labour, they'd be actively gathering the public up and carrying them along with them; as it is, when they make it clear that they have no confidence in Labour's mission, why on earth should anybody else?
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Feb 1, 2021 08:42
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May 10, 2024 15:48
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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I'd say that does exude confidence, at least of a certain kind. Using focus groups as a factional tool to give the answer you want (so you can effectively say "look, the public agrees with me") suggests you are confident people will believe you. It's setting the agenda, or at least saying your agenda is also the public's agenda, and I think that gets to what Pistol Pete was saying.
I was actually pretty much just spitballing but I like your interpretation, so I'll go with that. I do believe that Labour under Blair were much more actively shaping the national agenda, instead of just reacting to events initiated by the Tories as Starmer does.
Put even more simply, in the runup to '97, you got the very clear impression that Labour were confident of winning and actively preparing for government while today the leadership shows this consistent lack of nerve that turns people off from them.
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Feb 1, 2021 11:38
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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"A national taskforce". It's just so... limp.
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Feb 1, 2021 18:35
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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Well, that Guardian article isn't particularly wrong:
The Guardian posted:
Presenting the strategy last month – including research on the party’s brand by agency Republic dating from September – the party’s head of research said voters were confused about “what we stand for, and what our purpose is, but also who we represent”.
His slides featured comments from the focus groups such as: “I don’t know anything about the Labour party at the moment, they have been way too quiet” and “he [Starmer] needs to stop sitting on the fence”.
Voters see this fog as deliberate and cynical, top officials have been told, proving that Starmer and his team are “not being forthright and honest … about where we want to be”.
I wonder if this leak is part of a deliberate push to get Starmer to do something? There's been definite murmurings of discontent among the Sensible Centrist commentariat of late.
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Feb 2, 2021 21:49
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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This is actually extremely good news. Not because of Keith’s dogshit strategy, but because the Guardian has unambiguously come out against it, and a bit more ambiguously, though still significantly, against Starmer himself.
Losing support of the Guardian is a huge blow.
In the article, Labour weakly try to deny that they're running this strategy but they blatantly are: we've been talking in this thread for a bit that Keith's forever appearing with flags and poppys and poo poo in the background when he does interviews.
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Feb 2, 2021 23:19
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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It's really got up people's noses 'cos it encapsulates everything that's wrong with his leadership.
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Feb 4, 2021 08:03
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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Yeah, the Left hate it 'cos it's trying to fight battles and move the party onto obvious right-wing ground; the Right hate it 'cos it's so condescendingly inauthentic.
The Centre don't seem too pleased either, 'cos it highlights unpleasantly Starmers complete lack of policies or direction. It's got something for everyone!
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Feb 4, 2021 08:55
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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Got an extremely specific question of the exact kind this forum loves to immediately produce complete answers to. It comes by way of... I guess a friend's coworker's friend or some poo poo? Someone wants to know this real bad, and is asking their friends, and it's catching on.
Here's the question. In Wormwood Scrubs park in west London is an area called Martin Bell's Wood; who is Martin Bell?
There's a circumstantially obvious candidate in Martin Bell OBE, who among other things had a distinguished career as a war/foreign affairs correspondent with BBC News, who at the time would have been headquarted in Television Centre, which is near-ish to Wormwood Scrubs. But that's pretty tenuous. There's no proof of him being the namesake in question, or indeed any reference at all to where the name of that wood came from. All anyone's found is a couple of birdwatching websites that say it was formerly called Southern Paddock, with no detail as to when or why it was changed.
(Bell himself had an interesting life following war reporting; he ran as an independent MP for Tatton, a safe Tory seat, in 1997, and somehow managed to convince Alistair Campbell to stand down Labour's candidate and get the Lib Dems to stand down theirs, leading to him winning in a landslide, after which he did not run in 2002 and was replaced with George Osborne, so, uh, whoops. Also while in office he notably voted with the Tories against the repeal of Section 28, so I guess he's actually trash.)
I found this! (I am very bored at work.)
https://www.change.org/p/london-mayor-s-office-save-our-scrubs/u/17828051
Some petition or other posted:
We would like to see a route that enters the Scrubs closer to the Scrubs Lane car park, that then runs on the south side of what is locally known as "Martin Bell's Wood" (Martin Bell was often found wandering through the copse to the North of Woodman's Mews and to the south of the open space at the south east corner Scrubs) before rejoining the existing cycle path at the pony centre.
But that's the best I could Google.
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Feb 4, 2021 15:16
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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Re: Starmer, I just read a Marina Hyde article (yeah, I know) where she plausibly argues that, much as we tell our GP that we only drink 14 units a week (then get shitfaced), we tell pollsters that we want bland, managerial, centrist politicians (then go out and vote for energetic politicians who'll do fun, exciting stuff and keep us entertained). Starmer's incessant avoidance of risk bores the electorate to death and he'd honestly do better if he found a few good controversies and leapt into them with his fists swinging.
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Feb 5, 2021 21:43
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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The media seem to be rapidly turning against Starmer. I wonder if it's related to my previous post where he's just too boring for them to get any good stories out of and they want someone more interesting in charge? Here's a headline story in The Times today:
The Times posted:
Knives sharpen for Keir Starmer after a bruising week
He may be regarded as one of the most reviled men in Britain, but Piers Morgan seems to have greater appeal among lapsed Labour voters than Sir Keir Starmer.
That, at least, is the fear that has taken hold among members of the leader’s top team. Their efforts to win back voters in Red Wall seats, who deserted Labour at the last election, are not bearing fruit.
“Even Piers Morgan has more traction with these voters to criticise this government than we do,” a Labour source said. “Our problem is that the public wants Boris Johnson to do well. They think he’s had a really bad hand and they want him to succeed. We haven’t got permission to be in the room.”
Starmer set the tone of his leadership early last year when he warned that Labour had “a mountain to climb” to regain power. “We’re not up the mountain,” the source said. “We’re not even at the difficult point yet, where you’re huffing and puffing and feel like your heart is going to explode. The voters that we need to win back didn’t leave us overnight.”
Starmer, 58, has had a bruising week. The leak of an internal memo urging the party to make more use of the Union Jack and the emergence of an old video in which Starmer expresses support for republicanism put Labour spin doctors on the defensive.
Then, while watching the video of prime minister’s questions in his office on Wednesday, Starmer realised he had made a mistake. He had caused uproar by telling the prime minister that “the truth escapes him” and confronting him after the session to set the record straight. However, Johnson had accused him not, as he thought, of wanting to join the EU’s vaccination programme but the EU’s medicines regulator, which Labour did support in 2017. Starmer’s office had to issue a hasty retraction.
Meanwhile the leader’s office has had to deal with murmurs among senior Labour MPs who are concerned that Starmer’s risk-averse, carefully managed approach and moderate politics risk turning him into “continuity Ed Miliband”.
“There’s something missing,” one MP said. “We’re not in the relegation zone anymore, but equally we’re not ahead of the Tories in the polls and given the mess they’re in, we ought to be. Even Ed Miliband was constantly eight or nine points ahead of David Cameron — and look where that ended up.”
Another senior MP said Starmer was too afraid to stray into less familiar territory and lay out a vision that sets him apart from his predecessors, especially on the economy. “Investing in public services, supporting the NHS and attacking the Tories on universal credit — these are all important, but they are also our comfort zone,” the MP said. “In their heart many people still think we are an anti-business party. Keir and Anneliese [Dodds, the shadow chancellor] need to be saying that we will strain every fibre to support enterprise.”
Labour’s strategy since April has been driven by two principles: to provide a “constructive opposition” that does not attack the government merely for the sake of it, and to introduce Starmer to voters.
This has left little room for others to shine. Angela Rayner, his deputy, has been tasked with internal party reform and kept out of the limelight, despite the fact she is seen by many as possessing the “star quality” that the leader lacks.
Among frontbenchers there is frustration that the leader’s office only allows a handful of trusted lieutenants, such as Wes Streeting, shadow education minister, and Rachel Reeves, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, on to the airwaves.
Some see the May 6 local elections as a key test of Starmer’s leadership. “They’re the last set of national elections before the general election. They will be a temperature check about voting intentions and the Labour Party,” one MP said.
The party is braced for Tory victories in strategically important contests, including the Tees Valley mayoralty, where Ben Houchen is expected to win a landslide.
Starmer’s allies insist the progress he has made since spring is enormous, but that shaking off the toxicity of the Corbyn years will take more time. “People don’t understand just how big the challenge is,” one said.
Another insisted that merely not being written off by the public represented a big achievement compared with his predecessors. “We have not had a leader who’s not been blown up on the beach within three months since Tony Blair,” they said.
Starmer’s office points to the party’s fortunes in the polls. Labour was 24 points behind in April, but is now neck and neck with the Tories. Starmer has the highest satisfaction ratings of any opposition leader since Blair. He has levelled with — and at times overtaken — Johnson on the question of who would make the best prime minister. “It’s been a while since Labour has had a leader who passes the test of whether the British public imagine him or her as the prime minister of this country,” one source said.
Party strategists seem to have taken heed of a memo that was leaked last week suggesting they needed to project a sense of patriotism. A public broadcast on Monday saw Starmer address voters in front of a Union Jack.
The approach is being criticised by some internally who argue there is a risk of appearing contrived and jingoistic. Party officials believe a member of the community organising unit, which was formed under Corbyn and is set to be disbanded later this year, was responsible for the leak, and for a quote likening the themes of the presentation to the storming of the Capitol in Washington last month.
In Starmer’s orbit there is a sense of exasperation that what they see as basic elements of patriotism, which they regard as essential to regaining the trust of voters, are being questioned by a segment of the party. “Trust people on the left to over-intellectualise our bloody flag,” one ally lamented.
Lord Mandelson, the architect of New Labour, said: “Surely you have to love a country if you want to lead it. It is extraordinary that Labour even has to say this to reassure people, but that’s the legacy Starmer took from Corbyn, and I am glad he is doing the rebuilding.”
Received opinion is that Sir Keir Starmer had a shocker this week (Quentin Letts writes). He told a laughable whopper at PMQs and then there were handbags in the Commons lobby. But at least he is being talked about. This, comrades, is progress.
In parliament the Labour leader is the antonym of a moth to the flame. He courts obscurity. When a snappy soundbite is required, “Suhkeer” produces legalese. Where low vulgarity might catch the mood, he lays down oatmeal dullness by the yard. In the press gallery we blunt nibs gather after PMQs most weeks to scour our notebooks in search of something quotable from him.
And on Wednesday there it was, a story. After the PM accused him of having called for Britain to rejoin the European Medicines Agency, Starmer snorted: “Complete nonsense — the truth escapes him!” It almost had a ring of Aeschylus to it. Except Starmer was wrong. Oops.
To be trapped in a fib by so nonchalant a fabulist must have stung. Starmer claimed to have “misheard” the prime minister. But does this saga tell us something about his character and leadership operation? Is he wargaming lines of attack? Does anyone in his office ask him difficult questions?
It was six hours before his office released a tortuous explanation. His admission that he “made a mistake in his response” was preceded by several lines of qualification. The apology should have been swifter, shorter and had an ounce of self-teasing. Alas, he does not do humour.
On Thursday morning Labour frontbenchers went doggo. Media blackout. Eventually Starmer did a clip for TV. He was wearing a mask that muffled his words. Images tell a thousand words and these screamed cover-up.
Presentational bungles are minor beside electoral strategy. The medicines agency to-do was sensitive because it was linked to vaccines, which have been a success for the government. Starmer has struggled to approach the story. His gut reaction was resentful: demand priority jabs for teachers and merely praise “our NHS”. Labour is anguished by the thought of not being able to play its traditional “Tories threaten the NHS” card.
What about patriotism? Advisers suggest he embrace the flag to impress lost working-class voters. It will only work if it is authentic. Up popped a clip of a younger Starmer talking of scrapping the monarchy. Time to rip off that mask, smile and sing Things Can Only Get Better.
They're not calling him "hapless" yet but I think it's only a matter of time...
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Feb 6, 2021 08:24
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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quote:In Ainsley's book she sets out what she sees as the key values which would chime with not just an increasingly diverse working-class but voters more generally: "family"; "fairness"; "hard work"; "decency".
You mean voters don't prefer broken homes, unfairness, skiving and indecency?!? gently caress me, give these consultants medals for these staggering insights!
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Feb 6, 2021 11:19
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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Donut cities but with no public transport are effectively a death sentence for inner city kids
Homer Simpson voice: "Mmm, donut cities..."
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Feb 6, 2021 13:56
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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It’s officially “faltering” now!
It will be upgraded to 'failing' in the aftermath of the May elections lol.
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Feb 7, 2021 15:07
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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If I wanted to be completely free of cognitive biases, I would simply join the BBC!
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Feb 9, 2021 20:42
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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I think about that too, traits that were useful for one evolutionary purpose or another, but are either stigmatised or flat out regarded as mental illness because they're counterproductive to modern life - people who naturally sleep in / stay up late being a good example of someone who would be able to wake the group when everyone else is sleeping, but are now regarded as being lazy or wrong.
Oh, for sure: the brains and bodies of human beings are optimised for living a hunter-gather lifestyle on the African savannah, in a small band of extended families. The consequences of creatures with these bodies and brains ending up living in modern, urban environments are... messy but endlessly interesting, I guess!
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Feb 9, 2021 21:15
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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Lots of good points being made here. I live alone too and am utterly lonely and sick of it all and just want things to be normal again.
But I wouldn't want everything to open up too early and trigger off a rise that leads to yet another lockdown later on; I really want this to be the last one.
But I'm also worried that the lockdown, which began as a one-off emergency measure, is becoming worryingly normalised and could end up as a semi-permanent thing.
And you'd think that rolling out the vaccines like we have done would allow everything to open back up.
But apparently, it doesn't.
Or, it might do?
Every news story I see tells me something different.
I hate all this and I think I'm going to get drunk.
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Feb 12, 2021 14:51
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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A more cheery article about the end of lockdown in the New Statesman:
The New Statesman posted:
How the UK could vaccinate every adult by mid-May and end lockdown
If vaccines continue to prevent hospitalisations and deaths there is no reason why significant restrictions should last.
From reading the news today, you might be forgiven for thinking the world has not discovered vaccines that protect against Covid-19, or that if any have been discovered, the UK is struggling to roll them out. Neither is true, and nor has any variant of the virus been shown to limit the ability of current vaccines to prevent hospitalisations and deaths.
Yet today’s Times reports that “Social distancing rules in England could remain until autumn”. While the Daily Mail reported that on ITV's Peston Professor John Edmunds, a leading member of government advisory group Sage, said that most curbs on daily life, "which may include the Rule of Six, are likely to be in force until the end of this year, while less restrictive curbs – like face mask wearing on public transport and indoors – could possibly be in place 'forever'".
These statements are remarkable because they seem to take no account of the UK’s vaccine programme: namely how quickly it is proceeding and how effective it is likely to be.
The speed of the vaccine roll-out, and its probable impact, continues to be under-publicised. This weekend the government is set to meet its target of vaccinating the most at-risk 15 million people in the UK by 15 February. This should – beginning from two to three weeks from today, reflecting the time the human body takes to mount an immune response – begin to reduce the UK-wide Covid death rate among the most vulnerable groups by 88 per cent, official estimates suggest.
[see also: Europe’s vaccine crisis has revealed to the UK and Ireland the true nature of the European Union]
In other words, the high infection fatality risk of the virus – the reason the world has been on hold for a year – is soon set to decline dramatically in the UK. If it does, it is unclear why we should treat Covid-19 as having the same severity it had in 2020, as today’s headlines suggest we might.
A new paper published yesterday in the Anaesthesia journal shows the impact that vaccinating the UK is likely to have over the next three months. Under this timeline, the fatality risk of Covid will collapse in March, as shown by the red line, with pressure on the NHS – defined by intensive care (ICU) admissions, the yellow line – easing more slowly, as the age of the typical ICU admission (61 years old) is significantly younger than the typical Covid fatality (who is aged 83).
This projection assumes that the vaccines currently available in the UK offer 100 per cent effectiveness against hospitalisations and deaths: an assumption that has not been disproven by any existing research, despite much fear over the threat of variants.
As the lead author of the paper – Dr Tim Cook, a consultant anaesthetist at Royal United Hospital in Bath and a former Macintosh Professor of Anaesthesia at the Royal College of Anaesthetists – writes: “It is uncertain whether vaccination will be as effective with the new variants of the virus as those prevalent during vaccine studies, but most predictions and emerging evidence is currently reassuring.”
This paper also assumes 100 per cent take-up of the vaccine when it is offered. That is probably too high, but not by much; current take-up rates in older populations are above 90 per cent.
Meanwhile, the UK’s vaccine programme is continuing apace. Last week (1-7 February) the country vaccinated three million people. Data so far this week shows that rate holding steady. If the UK’s weekly rate remains at three million, then around 20 million more people will be given a first dose of the vaccine by late April – even with second doses beginning to take effect from early March.
If the rate of vaccinations increases gradually in the coming weeks, as it had been prior to this week, and eventually rises to five million per week by late April, it is plausible that every adult in the UK could be vaccinated by mid-May.
If the rate does not rise above three million per week, the need to give second doses will put a limit on the UK’s roll-out by May. But that will be no great problem. It is the first nine priority groups that matter, not the entire UK population. And the government has accepted that all nine of those groups will be vaccinated by May, as is predicted by current rates of the roll-out.
The first nine groups include everyone over 50 and anyone else who is clinically vulnerable. By that point, as Cook’s paper shows, 98 per cent of the fatality risk from Covid should have been eradicated. Eighty eight per cent of the pressure on hospital admissions should also be cut.
It is hard, in other words, to see why restrictions of any significance would continue to be in place by mid-May, or certainly by the summer, if that is defined as starting on 1 June. This optimism assumes the UK’s borders will be adequately controlled and that the risk of vaccine-evading variants is effectively eliminated by doing so.
But the key point to remember is that no variant has yet been shown to evade the vaccine on the metrics that matter: causing hospitalisations and deaths. The world did not shut down because of the threat of mild to moderate Covid disease.
It is unclear why the UK should remain locked in restrictions throughout the summer if Covid soon amounts to no more than that, as has been suggested by Andrew Pollard, the Oxford professor and head of the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccine and Immunisation.
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Feb 13, 2021 09:07
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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The stated purpose of lockdown has been to protect the vulnerable and prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed. Once those goals are met, why continue it?
If you're arguing to continue the lockdown for months past that point, you need to say how long for and to what purpose.
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Feb 13, 2021 09:55
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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Grown-up politics means that when someone says that your party is poo poo, you agree with them and apologize. This will make people want to vote for you.
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Feb 13, 2021 12:02
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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A five month lock down followed by mass spreading of the virus is an insanely bad way to 'get out' of the pandemic. It's literally ruining everything because the idea of doing things better is anathema to rightwingers.
Every member of my household has underlying conditions as specified by the nhs guidelines. I don't really feel like seeing how well my kids or wife can "take it on the chin"- a friend had covid 2 months ago- didn't suffer too much during the sickness phase compared with some but is now dealing with significant health issues and long term if not permanent and life changing damage to his kidneys.
You're both talking as though effective vaccines don't exist and aren't being rolled out to millions of people right now this minute. Obviously there's a debate to be had about how and how quickly we relax restrictions as vaccination cover expands but if we can't relax things even once everyone's vaccinated, what's the point? I'm no fan of the government but a policy of beginning to relax restrictions once the elderly and vulnerable are vaccinated and effectively ending all restrictions once everyone's vaccinated seems reasonable enough to me. I mean, what else are we supposed to do? Stay in lockdown forever?
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Feb 13, 2021 12:14
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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I wish I'd never posted that article.
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Feb 13, 2021 18:00
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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I'm probably talking poo poo but to me the sort of people that like cruises* are the sort of people who've white-flighted themselves to suburbs where even the slightest diversion or entertainment is a longish drive away and they haven't spoken to their neighbours in 20 years. Like the appeal of a cruise seems to be "All the entertainment, dining and activities you could ever want are within a few minutes walk from your 'house'", without having to deal with... those people", with the packaged land excursions being just an extension of this, letting them feel like they're seeing the world but in carefully-controlled conditions.
* At least the modern form of cruise in the giant floating pleasure domes - I could certainly see the appeal of pre-mass-air-transport passenger liners where the ship is basically just something to keep you distracted on a long journey, and I have to admit I'm semi-tempted by one of those Rhine river cruises for the same reason I love sleeper trains, I love the idea of a hotel that magically transports you somewhere else while you sleep.
David Foster Wallace wrote a long article about cruises:
https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-0007859.pdf
If you can't face wading through 50+ pages of David Foster Wallace's prose, I can tell you that he didn't enjoy his own cruise very much.
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Feb 13, 2021 18:09
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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It's an interesting question : does the fact that others are suffering more than you invalidate any grief you might feel about your own situation? Like, is ANYONE entitled to ever feel sorry for themselves in the developed world, when bombs are being dropped on other people who are objectively worse off?
I think the answer is 'yes', even though it is helpful to put your own suffering in perspective.
My own perspective is that while I'm sure worse things are happening elsewhere in the world, the bad things that I'm currently experiencing are happening to me and therefore deserve an outsize proportion of my personal attention.
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Feb 13, 2021 22:42
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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what the gently caress
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Feb 13, 2021 22:44
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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Dodds speech about their economic plans at best amounted to 'we'll improve value for money in state spending' so yeah there's no originality coming from within the cabinet and lol if they end up crawling back towards some part of Corbyns platform which they firmly denied last year.
Yeah, whatever they suggest will be caveated and focus-grouped into incoherence. The Left will roundly mock it, the Centre will be unimpressed, Labour'll shrink another couple of points in the polls and the lesson the leadership will take from that will be: "We were far too radical! We'd better tone it down if we want to win back the trust of the electorate!"
I'm betting skills wallets, but for furloughed people who can prove they've done at least 16hrs a week of voluntary work during the pandemic or some poo poo like that.
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Feb 15, 2021 13:34
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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What should you do if you don't have a solicitor and the police want to talk to you? Can you pull out your phone and start googling solicitors or do you have to accept one the police provide or what?
Lol, I've wondered that. I can imagine it going like this:
Me: "I demand to speak to a solicitor!"
Police: "Ok, here's the phone."
Me: "....
...
...
... erm, who would you recommend?"
It's not like I have a preferred solicitor, or indeed any solicitor, saved to my contacts.
How would you even know if a particular criminal solicitor is any 'good'.
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Feb 16, 2021 16:35
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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Starmer isn't actively ugly, it's just in every photo of him, he always looks massively uncomfortable in his own skin. Reminds me of Gordon Brown, in a way.
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Feb 18, 2021 20:51
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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At least he's now matchesd Jo Swinson, in that he's got a trademark dumb policy to be remembered by.
Corona bonds will deffo be his skills wallets.
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Feb 18, 2021 20:56
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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Every morning I wake up and open palm slam an ideology into my brain. It's fairness doctrine and right then and there I start considering that maybe I've been excessive and biased in my characterization of Europe. Then Macron tweets
https://twitter.com/ryanlcooper/status/1362845431210860548
Huh, interesting parallel with what's going on in the Uk.
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Feb 20, 2021 13:35
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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Jose, are you being mean to Brown Moses again:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/feb/20/eliot-higgins-people-accuse-me-of-working-for-the-cia
quote:
Abuse from trolls is something I have come to accept in my life. What we do, revealing things, is worthwhile, despite the potential threats. I’m trying to wean myself off Twitter. People constantly accuse me of being a liar or working for the CIA. It winds you up.
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Feb 21, 2021 04:17
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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Everything Starmer's doing makes sense once you hypothesize that he's completely under the influence of the Labour right. Then the spiteful, counter-productive attacks on the Left are suddenly understandable, as is his habit of formulating every announcement and policy decision to appeal primarily to a small group of centrist columnists.
The Labour right are pulling his strings and the Labour right are a bunch of petty, blinkered dipshits.
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Feb 21, 2021 21:16
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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It's like cleverer people than me have said: Starmer's ditched ideology and is running on a pure platform of being more competent than the Tories. This kinda worked for a bit but now the Tories are visibly getting ahead with the vaccine rollout and are nicking the more popular bits of Corbyn's 2019 manifesto, Labour are left with absolutely nowhere to go.
And yeah, at this point, I'm perfectly happy to sit back, fold my arms and watch Starmer and the Labour right faceplant in the grave they've dug for themselves (to mix metaphors slightly).
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Feb 21, 2021 22:31
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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O cursèd thread. I started a diet yesterday (for the 3rd time this year) and now my head is full of cravings for fluffy bread things stuffed with omelettes.
I've been downsizing myself since the beginning of January and my body's hanging on to the last few pounds of fat that I want to get rid of with astonishing tenacity. I'm literally starving myself 3 days a week at this point and it's still persisting lol. I just want a flat stomach for once in my life, body, I promise I'm not trying to kill you!
I never suggested it was. I dashed it off last night before bed, and I think at some level I knew it was provocative, so not even I buy the "oh hah ha, it was only a joke".
This thread has the habit of picking up someone's throwaway remark and angrily analysing it to death, putting in 100 times more effort and emotion than the original post entailed. I wouldn't let it worry you.
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Feb 22, 2021 15:05
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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At a certain point, this will literally never happen unless you have some abdominal muscle.
I don't really care about abs, I just want a tummy that does this: | instead of this: )
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Feb 22, 2021 15:34
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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Well the thing is, I'm not sure there will be a period of crippling austerity. The Tories have got into the habit of splashing money around... and they rather seem to like it. I can easily imagine a newly-confident Johnson, boosted by a successful reopening of society, gleefully investing in industries and opening new universities and stuff. Meanwhile, Labour would be stood off to one side, gloomily shaking their heads, muttering about the need for fiscal responsibility and generally coming across as a bunch of joyless gits. Readers of this thread will be familiar enough with what Starmer and Dodds are like and how they view politics: is it really so unrealistic to imagine Johnson cheekily outflanking them on the left?
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Feb 22, 2021 20:49
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May 10, 2024 15:48
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- Pistol_Pete
- Sep 15, 2007
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Oven Wrangler
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Also,
The Times posted:
What is the point of Sir Keir Starmer?
What’s the point of an opposition that doesn’t want to bring down the government? This is not a rhetorical question, although it might be a tricky one to answer. I ask it because of Sir Keir Starmer and his thunderous support for Matt Hancock. Which is, of course, not quite how he’d put it. Or, if they were being fair, how anyone would.
To recap, the High Court found last week that Hancock’s department had failed to publish details of last year’s contracts for PPE in a timely manner. Contracts also went to ministers’ aquaintances and party donors, and often with no record kept of why one company was prioritised over another. Perhaps they went through proper channels; perhaps they just knew the right minister’s dogwalker. Perhaps we shall never know.
So, does this mean Hancock should go? “I don’t want to call for him to resign,” said Starmer on Sunday. “I do think he’s wrong about the contracts ... but ...” The rest is just noise. A Labour leader thinks a Tory health secretary should stay in post. Cue a chorus of leftish Labour talking heads who feel that calling for Tory scalps is the bare minimum they expect from their leader. Oh God, they shriek. You can’t even do that? What are you even for? What is the point?
The thing is, there’s a very good reason for Starmer to resist demanding Hancock’s resignation. Which is that as demands go, it’s ridiculous. Hancock goes, and the situation is improved ... how, exactly? Do we all breathe more easily under the stewardship of health secretaries Williamson or Raab? Starmer doesn’t want that. Even the shrieking heads don’t want that. Nobody does.
The public, I expect, doesn’t really want anything. The Tory defence for cronyism over PPE is roughly, “you bet we broke the rules because things were screwed.” My hunch is that it goes down pretty well, on the basis that when nurses are reduced to wearing binbags, time is of the essence. Which means that Hancock’s resignation over this would be both a bad idea and probably not even a popular one. Yet despite all that we still expect the leader of the opposition to call for it anyway. Because otherwise what’s even the point of having one?
This is not a crisis unique to Keir Starmer. Journalism is about criticising, too, and for the past year that has sometimes made it a bit hard to navigate. Think of it as if you were on an aeroplane (remember those?) crossing the Atlantic, and you hit a godawful storm, and the door to the cabin swung open, and you saw that the pilot was actually, no kidding, Mr Bean.
Terrifying, right? Worse. A near-criminal failure of both the people who put Bean in the job (the electorate, but let’s not get bogged down with that) and bloody Bean himself, for taking it. Somewhere down the line, this whole “who in holy hell gave Mr Bean a pilot’s licence?” scenario will definitely have to be addressed. Only, there and then, as the masks drop from the ceiling, what do you actually do? Do you get right up in Bean’s face and scream, “AAAAAGH, YOU’RE RUBBISH, BEAN! YOU’RE NOT THE PILOT WE WANT!” while he’s literally wrestling with the steering yoke to prevent you from plunging into the ocean? Because personally (and really, this has been my defining professional angst of the crisis) I’m not sure that helps.
For journalism, there is at least a justifying shibboleth here, in the idea that scrutiny and criticism of government makes for better government. The leader of the opposition, though, is not expected to help the government perform better. By all the logic of our political system, he should seize upon mistakes and magnify them, so as to make the government tumble and, ultimately, be replaced by him. Tradition dictates this should be done when it is reasonable, but also when it is not. This is just the gig.
Starmer, though, is cripplingly poor at being unreasonable. When his tilt at leadership began, at the end of 2019, this was the whole point. Enough of the lunging irresponsibility of Boris Johnson, or the firebrand petulance of that guy with the allotment that we used to hear so much about. This new British disease of polarised extremes; enough of that. Starmer’s staid technocracy was to be the cure.
Yet a long exposure to Covid has mutated the Johnson government, and the Starmer vaccine now displays a vastly reduced efficacy from that expected in laboratory studies. Opposing the Tory Brexit deal could have been irresponsible and led to a no deal outcome, so he didn’t oppose it, and then it happened, and now he can’t really say anything about it at all. In his big speech last week, he didn’t even mention it. On Covid, meanwhile, he is equally afraid of rocking the boat, which means he doesn’t, which means the only opposition that worries the government is the one from its own backbenches.
Fundamentally, what Starmer lacks is the ability to project the idea that what Britain really needs is for the government to fall messily apart - right now, Brexit chaos, lockdown and vaccine rollout notwithstanding - and to be replaced by him, instead. A zealot or a bullshitter could manage it. In the same situation, Jeremy Corbyn or Nigel Farage or even Boris Johnson himself would certainly try. Starmer, instead, just wrings his hands, transparently aware that things could be much, much worse, but without the cavalier swagger required to pretend that he, personally, could immediately make them much better. And the fact that this might be true, I’m afraid, is neither here nor there. Because what, I ask you once again, is the point of that?
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Feb 22, 2021 20:53
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Feb 1, 2021 08:42
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