#labour is far and away better than tories

[tempestaurora]

it truly feels like a moral failing to vote for labour in the upcoming election but like. i genuinely don't think voting green is actually going to win in my area or nationwide and i really don't want to waste a vote even if voting for labour also feels like a bit of a waste

[lhs3020b]

The General Election Fallout Post

Hello again; I, uh, forgot to visit Tumble Dot Com for a bit.

Anyway, I'm back. For now, at least.

And yes, Election Day has been and gone. So let's start with some anti-Tory schadenfreude: ROFL, LMAO, LOL, get fucked, idiots. Good riddance, rust in pieces, you will not be missed.

Unfortunately, the overall political picture is - well, let's be honest, for a massive anti-Tory defeat it's ended up more bleak than I would have considered likely.

Unfortunately, the Tories didn't quite collapse in the way I hoped - they had a very bad night, but they're still the official Opposition, so the party will survive as a corporate entity. And that means we'll probably get it back at some point, which I'm not exactly thrilled about.

Meanwhile Labour managed to produce the most flimsy landslide anyone's ever seen. I say flimsy because actually, they took fewer votes than they did in 2019 - remember how our good friends the wise and all-knowing centrists assured us that that was a true sin unto the ages, and we should all hang our heads in shame and never be seen in public again? Yeeeeaaaaah. Your boy Keith did worse, guys. Meanwhile, Labour's fraction of the actual vote-that-was-cast was ... actually not great, either, at 34%. While he won, it's clear he's not loved.

Yes, that's right, their performance is barely a percentage-point better than 2019. And, uh, about 10 percentage-points down on what the Very Serious And All-Knowing Opinion Pollsters claimed it would be. So yes, there's been another fuckie-wuckie from the pollsters; unfortunately, as they technically got the headline result right (if none of the details), I suppose they'll get away with it :(

(Rewards for failure; it's very on-brand for the 2020s, isn't it?)

The only reason last night's landslide happened was because the Tory 2019 voter-coalition disintegrated (though, not as far as the pollsters claimed it would - honestly, we're overdue a period of silence from those guys).

In fairness yes, Labour get to form a government and yes they have a huge majority. But, what they pulled off yesterday will only work once - there will be no second Tory collapse - and their economic plans in particular have some ticking timebombs under them. A hint: what if the GDP Growth Fairy doesn't visit these sceptred isles after all ... ? How will Starmer's leadership ratings cope once their fiscal rules force them to deliver another austerity budget? What will they cut? What public services or government departments will simply stop?

TBH I wouldn't be even slightly surprised if, even one year in the future, Starmer's ratings and his party's have imploded. Yes, I'm fallible and I could be wrong, maybe they'll land another massive landslide in 2029 - but I'm worried about the future.

This brings us to Reform, Nigel Farage's latest vanity vehicle/puppet party-shaped object.

Unfortunately, a lot of the ex-Tory vote went to Reform UK, and if there was any question that Refuck are actual full-fat fascists, then I think the recent mini-scandal put paid to that. (For those who don't know, some Refuck activists were recently caught on camera by Channel 4 News, literally calling for asylum seekers to be machine-gunned, demanding a police pogrom against LGBTQ people, and so on. In as many words. No dog whistles, no coded remarks or anything like that. It was literally - and horrifyingly - what it sounded like. A call for deliberate, directed State violence against minority groups. Centrists, please, if you can't see that for what it is, then please consider why that might be!)

So, given that Refuck have won 5 seats, we now have actual, unambiguous fascists in Parliament. And that was something that had never quite happened before - our politics could often be an awful cesspit but even during the worst parts of the post-2016 crisis we hadn't quite tipped off that ledge.

Not now. Yay us, I guess?

You can tell I'm not enjoying this post anywhere near as much as I wanted to, can't you?

Anyway, fuck the Tories, fuck their ex-MPs, fuck their remaining ones and as for the people who still voted for them in spite of everything, honestly, what's wrong with you? (Seriously - why? What do you see in them? They've done nothing for you. They spent lockdown pissed on expensive wine and laughing at you. Why are you still supporting them?)

The other news is that the Lib Dems are back. They've done a surprisingly-efficient job of turning votes into seats - in fact it looks like they barely wasted any votes anywhere, and so have managed to get from 12 seats to 71 - yes, 71! - while taking only about 12% of the vote. Well, credit where it's due, I suppose. And much as I will never forgive the Coalition for setting us onto the path of ruin that we're on, nonetheless during the campaign Ed Davey was the only person who actually seemed to be enjoying himself. It seems to have worked out - the LDs have had their best election result since the 1920s.

If you want to look for some (possible) rays of light in this mess ... well, the Green Party did relatively well. Their vote went up, and they now have four MPs, vserus 1 in the previous Parliament. (Full disclosure: I voted Green. I don't think they're perfect, I'm not a stan, but Sir Keith's "changed" Labour Party has obvious contempt and loathing for people like me so ... fine? We'll go our separate ways, then.) Much to my surprise, they came second in my constituency, which I genuinely hadn't expected. Apparently my vote was less wasted than usual, it would seem. And the Greens' growth happened in spite of them being resolutely ignored by the entire print and broadcast media, so apparently they don't need the media to keep making progress. It is possible that their growth could continue, and maybe another election-cycle might give us back a semi-worthwhile left-of-center opposition party ... but here I am committing the Sin of Optimism, aren't I?

Also, well, lots and lots of Tories are miserable today. Grant Shapps has had a case of the slaps, Rees-Mogg has been time-warped back to the 18th Century (honestly he'll probably be happier there, it's for the best for everyone) and Liz Truss got yeeted feet-first into the Sun. (Sorry, Sol.)

Also a lot of bootlicking newspaper opinion columnists are having a proper meltdown today, and that is genuinely funny. They certainly deserve no sympathy.

So yeah, the overall picture is a) good riddance to Sunak, b) fuck the Tories and c) oh dear goodness, it's somehow all still a mess.

[morganaspendragonss]

Saw ur election post and just wanted to ask, since I'm still not decided - what do you think of how to balance voting for the best local candidate and voting for the overall party you agree with?

My local Labour candidate seems very good and the only candidate to have actual good ideas with regard to the area.

I'm in a tory seat that's predicted to swing pretty strongly labour.

However, i am not convinced by kier starmer and the party's national policies (to put it mildly) so i want to vote green (whom i agree with on everything except nuclear power).

On the one hand, the seat seems pretty safe for labour, so i want to use my voice to show opposition from the left. On the other hand, the seat is only safe for labour if enough people vote that way, and i do want the labour candidate for my seat to get in more than the others.

Thoughts?

hi anon.

so, i'm in a similar situation to you. my constituency has been tory since 2010 and it is predicted to swing to labour this election. i don't like kier starmer one bit and i think labour today is a far cry from what it should be.

that being said, i like my local labour candidate. from what i can tell, her politics seem sound and i think she'd do a good job at representing me.

let's be real here - labour are winning this election. so if you want to vote green (or any other party), there's probably no safer election to do it in. i've been tempted to vote green for sure.

however, my constituency differs a bit from yours in that the majority for labour, if it comes good, probably won't be that significant. it's not a safe bet at all and we may very well still come out of this tory, so i will be voting labour tomorrow. i trust my local candidate and i think labour is the best use of my vote in this instance.

aside from all that, one of the things that's swinging my vote away from green and towards labour is the fact that only labour and conservatives have bothered to do any campaigning in my constituency. i looked up all my local candidates (excepting reform, who i'd never vote for, and tory, who has been my mp since 2019 and who is a loud and proud thatcherite) and the only one who had a website was labour. all there was on the green candidate and the lib dem was a twitter account, and i don't have twitter so i was blocked from looking at that, and the workers' party candidate didn't even have that. man was a ghost.

so i thought, if you can't be bothered to show you care about my local community, if you can't be bothered to fight for the seat, then i can't be bothered to vote for you.

there are a lot of factors to consider when choosing who to vote for and it's taken me a long time to decide. as you say, it is hard to balance local and national, especially with a system like first past the post (proportional representation WHEN). ultimately, i've decided to do what's best to oust the tories in my constituency, and i am putting my trust in my local labour candidate. she seems to genuinely care about the area and that matters to me. this does not mean, however, that i endorse everything the party and its leader stand for.

you just have to weigh up your options and do what feels right for you, whether that's green or labour. ultimately, they're the better two options and your vote will mean something either way. I hope you figure it out and i'm sorry i can't be more helpful xx

[girl4music]

The entire world is turning conservative and republican that even small victories in labour and democracy are not enough. I thought Labour being voted in in the UK would set things right but it only ever appears to be making things worse. Not because of the Labour Party but because they don't have enough of a public backing to prevent or mitigate Tory power. So cost of living keeps rising to make up for the finances and supplements needed to be able to change things to the way they used to be because the way they used to be was far better as far as the average middle class citizen being able to afford both groceries AND keeping the lighting and the heating on.

The real problem is people keep pushing for improvement or for expansion. Exponential growth at any cost. But what we don't seem to understand as a collective is that we're fine as long as we can all live comfortably. If it takes away our necessities, then we don't need "better" or "more". It's not worth it to strive for that if the cost is our comfortability, or for some of us, our actual survival. It's not worth it.

Political jargon aside. We're talking about losing basic human rights all in the nonsensical effort to have things exactly as we want them.

How in the world can anyone believe that that ambition is worth it?

This is an upper-class mentality. It shouldn't be the middle classes' because not only do we have a responsibility to the lowest class, but as soon as our necessities are taken away, we can't sustain ourselves and each other. We're powerless by that point because then we're truly only ever able to look out for ourselves. That's how they want it. The rich white suits. Whatever you want to call them. The ones with more money and power than sensibility and compassion. It doesn't matter to them what public services get defunded. It matters to us.

Please wake up and get a clue and start fighting for the right side. The moral side. The side that looks beyond their own backgarden. We really don't want to be in a position where we can't focus on the bigger picture and the longterm. Where we're forced to stop caring.

Believe whatever you want to believe in all the faux political ideology. Drive yourselves daft with all of that bullshit. I don't care. But please do not lose focus on what actually matters. Everyone's well-being. That's all of us no matter what economical class we're shoved into. Poor, average, wealthy. It doesn't matter when our capability to be human is what we're losing. Our capability to care about each other.

I'm speaking on a wide-world scale here. Not just my own country. We do not ever want to be in that position. Please don't put us there. If you have to pay more taxes. If you even have to personally sacrifice or compromise on something to ensure somebody else can both get a full meal a day and stay sheltered, just be a humanitarian and do it and stop with the upper-class mentality. We can't be like that or we all suffer as a collective as a result of our ambitious greed. Middle class do not get the luxury of getting what they want whenever they want it. That's not the way that we live and we shouldn't want to live that way because we still care about something other than ourselves. Right?

Middle class has always been about community and society. Always.

Don't lose sight of that because as soon as you do and you choose to put the people that promise you "better" and "more" in power - we've ALL lost. Everybody loses as soon as you fall for that line of political bull. Those people are not interested in making YOUR life "better" or "more". What they're interested in is being able to buy another yacht or villa that they already have excessively and they're able to do that through cutting down what YOU and many just like you actually need.

You don't want this world to turn completely conservative and republican. Those people are not on your side. They never will be.

Don't help them by helping those people that actually need your help. I won't say the words or use the terms everyone seems to be so thoroughly terrified by (although I don't understand why that is because it's a very HUMAN thing to do). Just give to whoever needs it. Support your community and expend your energy, time, money, and thoughts caring about and helping others. That's the way to win. It might not feel like if if you don't immediately receive reward back or even at all. But trust me, the only way to win is to keep this world balanced. You don't help the rich get richer. You don't help the poorer get poorer. You look at what you can do to keep things comfortable and you can still care about politics in the meanwhile if that really matters to you. I personally find it distracting and pointless but it really just depends on the mentality whether I pay attention or not. If the mentality aligns with my values as a human, then I will support it. if it doesn't, then I will do anything to make sure it never receives support. I deal in politics only when it coincides with human rights. And you may say that it always does. I say that it does and it doesn't and I can tell the difference. I know when it's used as a distraction and I know when it's used purposefully to actually make things better. I tune out when I can see that it's trying to indoctrinate me and I tune in when I can see that my voice is being heard and considered. And having this basic level of critical thinking and judgement no matter what you see on your TV or what you're being told by a political party is crucial. It determines where YOUR efforts are going to be and that's the most important thing. Where and how can you make a difference?

Just ignore the rest. It's not immediately relevant and it's distracting.

[libertineangel]

It's genuinely so frustrating to me that the most enthusiastic far-left organisation in Britain right now is that bloody newspaper cult, because we so sorely need something better, and we need it fast.

Sure, it's nice that the Tories are on course for electoral annihilation, it's been a long time coming, but Labour are virtually identical at this point and mass disillusionment with them is inevitable before the next election, people aren't even enthused about them now when they're projected to win a landslide despite themselves. Normally in such circumstances I'd expect the pendulum to swing back to blue ties in five years, but if the Tories really do wipe out as heavily as they're predicted I can't see them rebuilding that quickly, especially considering they're completely lacking in any members with an ounce of parliamentary credibility, capability or charisma. So where does that leave us?

I don't think Reform UK will get strong enough to become a contender in their own right, Farage was able to spend years building UKIP's populism by scapegoating the EU for all of society's ills and now that he doesn't have a specific target to point to I don't think he'll have nearly the influence he did ten years ago, the Lib Dems will remain a middle-class irrelevance and the Greens are also a party that exists.

I don't know what the political landscape will look like at the end of the decade, but it's plain to see what's happening now: the contradictions inherent to capitalism are coming to the fore, the bourgeois electoral system has rotted to point of collapse, the traditional status quo is breaking down and everyone can feel it, even if they may lack the terms to properly describe it. Things cannot continue the way they have done, but the development and decay of capitalism only has two possible destinations - it either reaches its culmination in fascism, or it is swept away in revolution.

The population may not be as bigoted as its loudest voices, but one of those forces is certainly more organised than the other right now, with a much stronger track record, and I don't know how long we can wait.

[themalhambird]

Just to correct some misinformation I've seen flying around, Diane Abbott has NOT been barred from standing as the Labour Candidate for constituency.

It's not clear who told her that she would be barred. Starmer didnt. Rayner certainly didn't. As far as I can tell, no one official told her. The decision about candidates is not taken directly by leadership, but by the party's National Executive Committee.

I don't think Labour have handled this incident particuarly well. But to say there's a purge going on just isn't accurate.

Like it or not, a Very Left Labour party does not seem to be electable in this country. They lost in 2010, in 2015, in 2017, and they had their worst defeat in over eighty years in 2019. Like him or not, Starmer has got the party to a place where its not only ahead in the polls, its been ahead consistently for two years and its currently still squeaking wider. "Red Tory" is a nonsense label- The Labour Party are planning on widescale investment in green energy; abolishing the tax free status of private schools; closing the tax avoidance/dodging loopholes that the rich get away with; forcing water companies to clean up the sewage they're pumping in to the water; nationalising the railways. Actually supporting, and perhaps increasing, devolution. They're nowhere near perfect. I'm a queer lets-go-with-woman/gremlin and the love of my life is a transwoman who does not pass. The Terfy shit Labour have been spouting terrifies me. Broadly speaking, however, they're still going to be better than another five years of the Conservatives. It's going to be easier to fight any transphobic legislation if we're not also fighting sewage dumps, complete disregard for climate change, and enlisting 18 year olds for National Service because a handful of boomers have hard ons for their parents' glory days.

The Tories are having a dismal campaign. Most of our media bats for the Tories. Suggestions of a purge, of a divided Labour party, being blown up out of proportion takes attention away from how badly the Conservatives have screwed up and their own monumental interparty slapfests. That is not to say that Labour haven't done anything wrong, I think there's a lot to criticise about the way this situation has been handled I general. But purge is an overexaggeration.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Bad News

This country depresses the shit out of me.

A thing that’s been in the news lately was some lovely lady was growing vegetables in her allotment and giving them to the needy. Now, we probably wouldn’t have heard anything about this, except that someone else apparently took exception to this. Did they destroy the garden? Not quite in the way you’d think. They didn’t uproot plants that I know about; they salted the earth. I mean, I mostly grow herbs with the occasional strawberry and tomato; I tried some veg last year and it was only a partial success and I worked hard. I cannot imagine how that poor woman must have felt when she came to do some weeding and harvesting and found that. There’s no coming back from that. There’s no replanting until they can deal with the salination level of the soil. That’s just atrocious.

And then there’s Andrew Edwards, a councillor in Pembrokeshire. He has literally been recorded saying that ���all white men should have a black man or a black woman as a slave” and “there’s nothing wrong with skin colour; it’s just that they’re lower class than us white people”. This is all still under investigation, because Edwards refuses to confirm or deny and threw it at an Ombudsman. I don’t really trust the Ombudsmen anymore, honestly, but ... oh, hell, I don’t even know anymore. I wouldn’t put it past any of them, honestly, either side of the political divide in this case.

Because there is no political divide anymore. Starmer’s throwing his entire party manifesto out the window to be in lockstep with Tory ideology, apparently trying to steal votes from them and ignoring the votes of people who don’t want any more of this shit. Recently backtracked on standing behind the Gender Recognition Act, instead saying he wants to “reach a consensus”. There is no ‘consensus’ to be reached here! Trans people just want to live as the gender with which they identify, and their allies want that for them; the other side wants them gone or dead! The only middle ground that exists there, if you want to call it that, is “They can exist but their lives have to be miserable and we have to be able to misgender them and force them into unsafe spaces all we want”, and that’s not existing! That’s not middle ground! That’s “Maybe if we make them unhappy enough, they’ll go away and / or die”, and that’s grotesque!

I cannot do anything about any of this. I live in what has been a fairly safe Labour seat (though I don’t know what’s going to happen in future given that Labour is just the Tories with a red tie now) but that means jack all when there’s an 80 seat Tory majority and a string of Prime Ministers we didn’t even get to vote for. We don’t get a vote for PM for another year at least anyway. I hate this country like you would not believe. I know it’s a vocal minority that’s being like this, but that vocal minority has the money and the power and the rest of us are stuck suffering for their comfort, all the way across the board.

So I may be ever so slightly depressed.

However, there are good things. My friends love me and I love them in return. My plants are thriving - my tomatoes sprouted already, and there’ll be pictures when the light’s a little less iffy (it’s been partly cloudy today, so the sunshine comes and goes). Somehow looking at my growing seedlings makes me feel better. And I still have a couple of days off and new House Flipper DLC, so there’s some Zen that should help. Though doing a farm DLC, and even looking at my plants, still gets me thinking of that poor woman with the allotment. At least her Gofundme to keep helping people is going well, but nothing will take away the sting of someone going that far to ruin so much hard work so completely. I hope they find that asshole and I hope they go to jail.

[guiltyblogging]

This is from the uk so slightly but not to far removed. It shows what happens when there is a low turn out (many who didn't want tories or labor to win didn't show up)

This was a lie. Lib dems and green were popular around where I lived, plenty of other parties two.

If a party can say "vote for us, as we are the lesser of two evils. All other votes are a wasted vote."

Somethings gone seriously wrong with politics at the moment. Our country was fuck Labour but at least their better than Tories.

And you seem to be going fuck Biden but at least he's better than trump.

What the fuck happened to democracy in our voting systems? All our choices have been stripped away.

You cannot vote your way out of fascism.

But you can sit and allow fascists to vote you into fascism.

Which is a problem, since you cannot vote your way back out.

Fascists would love nothing more than for you to abstain from voting.

[dwestfieldblog]

AGNOSTIC EXTREMISM

Greetings on all points of the dodecahedron, mere days away from a tumescently exciting election here in the Untied Kingdom. The Tories, still putting the con into Conservative (and not serving any other than themselves) are promising things they had FOURTEEN years to even attempt to achieve. And failed on every single count. Other than the counting of billions of pounds made for their own offshore bank accounts and best mates.  Russian oligarchs (donors to the Tories) with puppet strings to the Kremlin (which can quickly become hanging ropes) are STILL being allowed to purchase huge London properties. Makes ex hedge fund manager Risible Sunak, Boris the Turk and ‘Call Me Dave’ Cameron look just a little two faced and corrupt. And still, they smug on with condescending smiles, Hallmark platitudes and repeated lies.

Electioneering ideas…some Conservative genius thought it would be a clever notion to bring back national service as a vote winner. This guarantees that all the usual mass of lazy youth 18 to 25 who are usually too cool to put an x in a box, are certain to vote for any party which is not Tory. A government (in its various deviant formats over 14 years) which has depleted our armed forces to the point of ridicule, thinks it a warrior’s idea to replace them with untrained, non-volunteering youth to the cost of several billion pounds. My personal feeling is that half of the idea which involves youths doing free community service is fine, but more than one weekend a month. Be useful. Tory manifesto promises … ‘if elected we will���…you had FOURTEEN years boys and girls, why didn’t you do ANY of it?

There are 71 verifiable serious failures for which the Tory government is directly to blame including 7.3 BILLION pounds of public money stolen by those who abused Covid schemes. (National Audit Office report). Makes Liz Truss look amateur. But at least we got our blue passports back. Eh?

Nigel Farage leading Reform. George Galloway leading the Workers Party. Both seeking to disrupt Conservatives and Labour by weakening their votes. Both aiding the Kremlin to undermine and sow discord. Populist poleznyye idioty, both so close in levels of self-adoration and mental disturbance that if they had intercourse/ mutual rape, the anti-Christ would be born. Farage has announced he is determined to remove the UK from European Court of Human Rights. The dummies who would vote for this don’t seem to realise that this would mean they also would have fewer rights and support, should a future government ever impose dodgier laws.) Which seems ever more likely.

Nigel fellated himself again while simultaneously stepping on his own balls by blaming the West for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine…which he saw as a result of NATO expansionism (rather than being due to Russia invading Georgia and Crimea to ‘protect’ its citizens) and the EU absorbing countries who CHOSE to be in them (not forced to join the glorious Motherland). He is getting the cart before the horse and the stable door has already bolted. (So to speak.) And as for one of his guys writing; ‘Britain would be in a far better state today had we taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality…but oh no Britain’s warped mindset values weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people’. And later; ‘In Britain we need specifically to exorcise the cult of Churchill and recognise that in both policy and military strategy, he was abysmal’. Which would be why we won the war. This guy, as does Nigel, thinks he is a patriot. (Is it too early to shoot traitors or do we have to wait for the third world war? Coming soon to a country near you, mushroom cloud season…)

‘International morality’ is a bad thing, is it? Extremists on all sides are never fans of this as it tends to make them almost feel guilty about mass genocide and/or murdering its own citizens. Those who don’t, possibly feel as if they are Nietzschean Übermenschen rather than soulless wasters needing the fake validation of a ‘Purpose and a Vision’. Think for yerselves, you schmucks.

If you were watching a tv series and even if one main villain/shyster wasn’t overacting, you would know them for what they were. So why can’t so many millions tell these types in real life. ESPECIALLY when they are wannabe leaders and share the same characteristics of shifty greedy lying pig slime everywhere. Hello Nigel, Boris, Trump and the foul cabal of European populists on the rise. I always rooted for the bad guys in films, the cowboys in black, Darth Vader, Agent Smith etc, but in ‘real’ life? These politicians are venal and insane, crawling up a hill of filth to prove their worth as the worst of the worst. The scum rises like rancid cream, bubbles of fetid methane. All dreaming of wielding the same power in the same ways our enemies do in non-democratic countries. Meanwhile, in another parallel tunnel reality…

Trump is guilty eh? (Big orange manbaby surprise.) Of this one particular case so far. 34 charges against him and still his sewer scum allies say it was a politically orchestrated ‘witch hunt’. He was tried by 12 who were unanimous, not ambiguous. Donald sobbing about how hard it has been for his wife.  As hard as his mushroom for Stormy? The multi millions might help a bit when you already know what a fat sack of lying porcine excrement your man is, buy the ticket, take the ride, keep his balls empty darling. Nixon won twice too. Here come the ‘Proud’ Boys and all the other righteous suckers.

Anyway, on the bright side, the International Criminal Court have indicted Benny Yahoo and the leader of Hummus for crimes against humanity. (Seems likely that however this never-ending parable ends, they will have many thousands more new recruits.) I watched the videos of right-wing Israelis stopping trucks, trampling food and medical supplies for the Gazans underfoot. Hezbollah are getting tooled up to enter the fray full time too…Salaam, God is great, so we can righteously cut your head off. Scum. A former chief of Mossad (2016-2021) is alleged to have threatened ‘consequences’ if an ICC prosecutor refused to abandon a war crimes investigation. Well, that worked. Shalom.

Norway, Ireland, Spain and Slovenia all recently agreed to recognise a separate Palestinian state. The Knesset, (may peace be upon them) said this was ‘a reward for terrorism’. And thus, it came to be with all haste that the command was given to ‘strengthen’ settlements in the occupied (isn’t everywhere there now?) West Bank. Religious studies - 3000 years ago…Amorite, Canaanite, Hittite, Perizzite, Hivite, Jebusite etc tribes lived in the land now known as Israel, long before the Hebrews and the Arabs came in and wiped them all out. Those tribes no longer have rights due to being slaughtered. To the victors go the spoils and they re-write the history books. ‘God’ does not.

(For any who might come across this writing and see me as being antisemitic because I think Benjamin the Corrupt is using mass murder as a ‘patriotic’ tool to remain in politics and avoid prison. No.  My first loved girlfriend was Jewish (God rest her soul). The first woman I deeply wanted to marry was also Jewish and I would have changed my habits to fit her beliefs. Four of my best friends are Jewish, George Soros is a mensch and my favourite writer is Leonard Cohen.) What Hamas did on October 7th was horrific and a despicable war crime. However, after decades of settlers in the occupied territories breaking international laws (to which Israel had agreed) and continuing to build on Palestinian land over and over, because Moses long ago (recognising the need for positive spin for tired people) told hisfollowers that an invisible, non-provable non-Being said they were ‘chosen’ and therefore had the right to do what they want, pressurised tensions were, are and will continue to ignite. Saying ‘God told me…’ is what mentally ill people say. This belief is no defence in a court of actual law and hardly stands as a plea bargain of temporary insanity over the centuries of slaughter in the name of Nothing.

Transference of blame and transference of reason. Can’t be guilty of anything if one is serving a higher purpose, eh? The same holy cow, holier than thou bovine excrement as the pilgrims used in America to ‘justify’ murder. The manifest destiny of Israel. Will be fun to see how many ultra-orthodox yeshivas will heed the call to be conscripted, given that they are the loudest in favour of protecting their land but have been so unwilling to wear a soldier’s uniform. Get those payots cut boy! Yes, it is important to study, not fight forever wars. When I am world president, all religious extremists will be shot. Agnostic extremism…

PEACE IN A WORLD FREE FROM RELIGION. Or at very least, fewer wars and evilly stupid excuses to kill. Life is sacred? People are scared.

Mentally incapacitated, inconvenienced by rationality, idiots are still ranting on Twitter and Facebook against the ‘fake news’ of the mainstream media. What do they think Twitter (368 million users monthly) and Facebook (2.9 billion monthly) are, if not mainstream? Is this just paranoid jealousy? Please like my comment, give a smiley face thumbs up and approval. Weaklings. Algorithms for the gullible, Reform bots activated from the troll offices, artificial intelligence cancers spreading via unclean fingers on keyboards with infectious key words. Very old men still sending young untrained working class cannon fodder into killing fields to protect the high ideals of those who pay the governments the highest bribes. Or follow through on their worst threats…

The difference between capitalism and totalitarianism. (Updated/amended quote); ‘The government acts as a company cop for the rich’…or the president uses the wealthy’s money to be the cop. ‘The government, above all should be under constant surveillance.’ Leary.

And onwards and downwards into the new/same old-world disorder…

Elon Musk continues to fail to ingratiate himself with the world of sanity by pontificating on ‘free speech’ which he proclaims to adore, while taking China’s cash with whom he enjoys doing a fine business. Not known for their tolerance of free speech. Hypocrite in the highest degree. Putin doing deals with Kim Wrong Un and Xi, a James Bond trio of bad guys and all the West has to offer against them is a plethora of wannabe reality tv star type populist fascists being manipulated by hybrid of psychological greed games from the East, dividing to conquer. Will America choose senility or a truly evil psychopath? Do they think ‘Well at least Donald is as insane as THEIR bad guys, so we have a chance’?  Trump is serving Vladimir because he only respects and craves POWER and sees no harm in abusing it. And Vlad knows this type of ego. Power is to be brandished and used without mercy, regardless of truth or consequences.

‘The function of law and theology are the same; to keep the poor from taking back by violence what the rich have stolen by cunning. The function of theology? The recitation of the incomprehensible by the unspeakable to pick the pockets of the unthinking’ Nature’s God - Robert A Wilson, Hilaritas Press.

[autokratorissa]

Some absolutely repulsive apologia for a brutal agent of state repression and terror from The New Yorker. Dick is a victim of no one, least of all her own officers. Nobody outside the political and media cliques that hold a monopoly over public thought, and the middle class from which they are drawn, ever saw her as anything other than another in a long line of police tyrants. Ordinary Londoners have never seen the "symbolism" of a gay woman; they've seen the reality of racist, misogynist, anti-worker policing that murders their neighbours with impunity, ruins the lives of their loved ones, and makes them far less safe than they would otherwise have been.

The British establishment is currently attempting to salvage some of the rapidly collapsing public image of a vital repressive state apparatus; this kind of rhetoric is not possible in Britain right now, and is pushed to the side in favour of an "acceptance" that Dick had to go and that the Met is fundamentally corrupt. Dick is openly associated with the appalling nature of the Met precisely in order to facilitate a new image when the next commissioner comes in; the sins of the police are being deliberately associated with her in the hope that they might be thought to disappear when she does, away to a chokingly rich early retirement. But this kind of disgusting bullshit, published in an American magazine but by a London-based writer, shows what the commentariat really thinks. They don't care about the people who are hurt; they view them with contempt. Menenzes means nothing to them. They want more state repression, not less; even under Corbyn the Labour party was trying to outflank the Tories to the right by calling for an expanded and better funded police force.

Media should serve the people, not dismiss and oppress them. Once, liberal journalists understood this, and some of their names have gone down in history as martyrs, Marat being an early high water mark. But that history is a long, long way gone. Knight cannot even bring himself to describe the unprovoked, broad daylight murder of an innocent man by security services in any more stringent or powerful words than as an "error". Why should workers value freedom of the press when this kind of insulting nausea is what that freedom brings them? When the workers take control of the productive capacity of society---when they take direct control over the presses, and the server banks, and the offices---they will demand and produce a higher standard of media. This kind of sickening article is a sign of a dying society that has run its course and is begging to be put out of its misery, and saved from its crisis of the mind.

[fission-mailure]

My view, and it's a view that's only backed up by the debate, is that the question of Trump vs Harris is basically the same as the question of Tories vs Labour in the UK general election.

I might not especially like Keir Starmer or Labour, but I voted for Labour at the general election in July because Labour was a party that actually seemed to want to govern and be serious about governing, as opposed to the Tories who are venal psychopaths addicted to cruelty to others, for whom governing is only the means by which they can alternately satisfy themselves by hurting people and enrich their friends.

And so far, the outcome of Labour getting into power has been mixed. There have been really good things: They shut down the horrific 'traffic refugees to Rwanda' scheme, they have a Renter's Rights bill going through that seems genuinely amazing, they've got workers rights reforms and nationalisation of public services plans which while I don't think are going far enough are at least improvements on what we have now. And there have been bad things: Taking Winter Fuel Allowance from pensioners is an absolutely massive one that may prove to be the thing that sinks them, for example, and I'm sure there'll be more, some of which might affect me and drastically change my opinion of them. On balance so far, though, they've been an improvement. I said before the election that I didn't believe the UK could survive five more years of the Tories, and that remains true: The UK couldn't have survived the Tories. It might survive Labour.

Harris vs Trump feels like the same, only magnified. It's a choice between a competent politician who knows her stuff and is actually interested in governance, who for a lot of people absolutely doesn't fulfill being an ideal candidate; and Trump, who is a venal, stupid felon, an alleged rapist, who tried to commit a coup, who fantasises about being a god king and who honestly has absolutely no interest in making life better for anyone except himself, no interest in governing, who will gleefully take your rights away and cause maximum suffering because his only agenda is whatever makes him feel good.

I think the choice is clear. And that's often called incrementalism and derided, and yeah, it is incrementalism, and yeah, it doesn't always work, and in fact it often doesn't. But we live in Hell, and on election day the only meaningful choice is between The Candidate Who Might Improve Some Things And Who In Every Other Aspect Will Minimise Harm, and The Candidate Who Will Make Everything Worse As Fast As Possible. If the latter wins, people will suffer, and people will die, in greater numbers and to a greater degree than if the former wins. Women, POCs, Ukrainians, Palestinians, LGBTQ people, disabled people, and more and more besides, they cannot afford a Trump presidency.

I truly believe, as an angry progressive who hates the helplessness that this implies, that when your only choices are between harm minimisation and harm maximisation, that the ethical choice is harm minimisation, not refusing to make a choice at all. And I despise that I have to say that, but it is true.

And even within that framework: As far as harm minimisation candidates go, Harris is frankly not the worst candidate available to you. She is incredibly competent. She understands the issues, appears to have compassion, seems to have some kind of moral backbone, and she can be swayed on issues. Frankly, that's more than a lot of people can say about their leaders.

So I do hope that the US votes in Harris come November. Please, really please, do not let Trump become president again. That has dragged half the countries in the world to the Right before, and it will again, to say nothing of how many people in the US died because of him. It has emboldened fascists everywhere, within the US and outside of it, and it will again. Harris may do some good, and I genuinely think she will. Or she may keep things exactly the same, which wouldn't be great but is an improvement on things getting worse.

From an outsider's perspective, the US is lucky with Harris. I would kill for Harris to be Prime Minister of the UK instead of Starmer, and I don't even particularly dislike Starmer. It sucks to say, but your choice in November is binary: Make the right one. God knows the fascists will all be voting for Trump.

Something else that stands out: Trump was repeatedly asked questions about what he would do to improve various issues: healthcare, the environment, the war in Gaza. And all he does is say “well this problem never would have happened if I had been the president.” And that’s not the question asked! Like, tough luck, but you weren’t president. Here is what the situation is now. What are you going to do about it? And he doesn’t have an answer. Not on healthcare, not on environment, not on Gaza. He appears to think that all these problems will magically disappear if he becomes president. Well, they won’t. The problems will still exist, and he has no plan to deal with any of it; if he had a plan, he would have told us. (He’s so good at telling us his plans for illegal immigrants, after all.) He does have a plan for the economy, but it’s a complete disaster that would raise the cost of living and increase the deficit—tax breaks always increase the deficit unless you offset them with a tax hike somewhere else, and the cost of tariffs is always passed on to consumers (which is why Harris was calling it a sales tax, because more people would understand how that affects cost of living). Oh, and he also accused immigrants of eating cats, accused the FBI of fraud, repeatedly trashed our country, and generally sounded like a listing for an alphabet-soup brand’s product on Amazon, only instead of “chair seat papasan loveseat perfect for living room bedroom parlor,” it’s “immigrants crime China Mexico Venezuela fracking guns executing babies.”

Harris, by contrast, has plans. I personally think they are pretty good plans. There are some minor details I would change, but it’s a hell of a lot better than “no plans, I’m too awesome for plans” and/or a reskinned Project 2025. She also hasn’t accused immigrants of eating cats or accused anyone of “wanting abortions in the ninth month” (an utterly ridiculous claim; if someone doesn’t want a baby at that point, you induce labor and the newborn becomes a ward of the state).

It’s a race between utterly incompetent dictatorial insanity and a competent woman whose policy positions may be somewhat off from your preference (or not).

Please don’t vote for the guy who thinks immigrants eat cats and dogs.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Trudeau promises massive covid stimulus

Canadian Prime Ministers have a fun gambit: when things start to go really badly for them, they "prorogue" (suspend) Parliament, which dissolves all committees, inquiries, etc, until such time as they are ready to reconvene, with a tabula rasa.

Most egregiously, the far-right asshole and climate criminal Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament in the middle of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis in order to avoid a no-confidence vote that would have triggered new elections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932009_Canadian_parliamentary_dispute

While this DID save Harper's bacon, it also left Canada without a legislature during a global crisis that threatened the nation's entire future. It was a crazed, reckless thing to do.

Canada has a safeguard to prevent this kind of gambit: as a constitutional monarchy, Canadian parliamentary manoeuvres have to receive the Crown's blessing, in the form of assent from the Governor General, the Queen's rep to Canada.

This is the sober, apolitical adult supervision that fans of constitutional monarchies are always banging on about, and then-Governor General Michaëlle Jean completely failed to do her fucking job, leaving Canada without a Parliament during the GFC. She literally had one job.

Proroguing Parliament didn't just save Harper from a no-confidence vote: it also dissolved all the Parliamentary inquiries underway at the time, including the "Afghan detainee transfer" affair, which was investigating Canadian forces' complicity in the torture-murder of POWs.

In many ways, Trudeau is the anti-Harper: a charismatic Liberal who tells refugees they're welcome in Canada, marches with Greta Thunberg, and appoints the first-ever First Nations person to serve as Attorney General .

Truly, there is no policy so progressive that Trudeau won't endorse it...provided he doesn't actually have to make it into policy. Because many of his policies are indistinguishable from Harperism, albeit with a better haircut.

This started before he won the election, when Trudeau (whose father once declared martial law!) whipped his MPs to vote for a human-rights-denying mass surveillance bill, C-51.

Trudeau did so while insisting that the bill was a massive overreach and totally unacceptable, but claiming that the "loyal opposition" should still back it so as not to be accused of being soft on terrorism in the coming election. He promised to repeal it after.

Of course, he didn't.

Trudeau is often compared to Obama, a young and charismatic fellow who makes compromises, sure, but comes through in the clutch.

Tell that to pipeline protesters.

After the Obama administration killed the Transmountain Pipeline - the continent-spanning tube that would make filthy, planet-destroying tar sands profitable enough to bring to market - Trudeau bailed it out, spending billions of federal dollars to keep it alive.

Then, Trudeau - who campaigned on nation-to-nation truth and reconciliation with First Nations - announced that he would shove this toxic tar-sand tube through unceded treaty lands across the breadth of the naiton.

And then he had the AUDACITY to march with Greta Thunberg at the head of a climate march, demanding a change to policies that would see billions dead in the coming century.

HIS OWN policies.

I mean, Trudeau's boosters have a point - Harper NEVER could have pulled that off.

The Harper years were a Trumpian orgy of blatant self-dealing and cronyism.

The Trudeau years, on the other hand...

One of Trudeau's major donors is SNC Lavalin, a crime syndicate masquerading as a global engineering firm (think Halliburton with less morals).

SNC Lavalin had done so much crime that it was on its final notice with the Canadian legal sysem, a probation that it must not violate on penalty of real, big boy federal criminal prosecutions.

Then it did more crimes.

Remember Trudeau's historic appointment of a First Nations woman to the Attorney General's seat? Now was AG Jody Wilson-Raybould's moment to shine.

As Wilson-Raybould began aggressively pursuing these corporate criminals, she started getting calls from Trudeau's office.

For avoidance of doubt, these were not calls of support. They were demands to drop the case and let the SNC Lavalin crime syndicate get off scot-free. Eventually the PM himself called her and demanded that she give his cronies a pass on their repeated criminal actions.

Wilson-Raybould went public, decrying political meddling in the justice system. Trudeau denied everything and began to smear her (Harper had tons of scandals like this, BTW, only the counterpart was usually a rich old white guy, not a First Nations woman).

But Wilson-Raybould had recorded the conversations, and she released the recordings, and proved that Trudeau had lied about the whole thing. Trudeau fired her and kicked her out of the party.

But at least he's not Trump, right? He's the anti-Trump! (Well, except for the pipeline and that time he announced "No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there").

Remember the Muslim Ban? As Trump was tormenting refugees at the US border, Trudeau tweeted "To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada."

Yes, that was awesome. There is no policy so progressive that Trudeau won't endorse it...provided that he never has to do anything to make it happen.

Canada and the US have a "Safe Third Country Agreement" that says that asylum-seekers turned away from the US border can't try again in Canada. To make #WelcomeToCanada more than a hashtag, Trudeau's government would have to suspend that agreement.

Instead, Trudeau's government insisted that under Trump, "the conditions of the Safe Third Country Agreement continued to be met" and thus they would not suspend the agreement and give hearings to those turned away by Trump's border guards.

But at least Trudeau handled the pandemic better than Harper handled the Great Financial Crisis.

No, really, he did!

Mostly.

I mean, unless you were in a nursing home or on a First Nations reservation.

https://www.canadalandshow.com/podcast/an-emergency-season-pandemic/

But still, Trudeau's government did a MUCH better job than the Trump government, or Boris Johnson's Tories. Neither Liberals nor Conservatives will really fight cronyism, climate change or authoritarianism, but there are still substantive differences between them.

But in some ways, they are depressingly similar.

Take corruption.

Long before the plague struck, Canadaland was publishing damning reports on We Charity, a massive, beloved Canadian charitable institution nominally devoted to ending child slavery.

Canadaland's initial reporting on the charity focused on its partnerships with companies that were using child slaves to make their products, but the investigations mushroomed after the charity sent dire legal threats to the news organisation over its coverage.

And then Canadaland founder Jesse Brown found himself smeared by a US dirty-tricks organization that got its start working for GOP politicians, who got a contract to plant editorials criticizing Canadaland's We coverage in small-town US newspapers.

Private eyes started following Brown around, even keeping tabs on his small children. Rather than being intimidated, Brown kept up the pressure on We, which prompted whistleblowers to leak him even more details about the charity's activities.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/03/turnkey-authoritarianism/#we-charity

These included massive, mysterious real-estate holdings, hard-to-excuse criminal investigations of its Kenyan activities, and (here's where I've been going with this all along) GIANT CASH PAYMENTS to Trudeau's family, as well as valuable gifts to his Finance Minister.

And, as with the Wilson-Reybould affair, Trudeau's initial response to this was to simply deny it, calling his accusers liars. But then the scandal kept unspooling, his Finance Minister quit in disgrace, the charity (sort of) folded up and shut down, and Trudeau...

Well, Trudeau prorogued Parliament, shutting down Canada's government in the midst of a crisis that was - unimaginably - even worse than the 2008 crisis that Harper had left the nation rudderless through to avoid his own scandal.

(Again, for constitutional monarchy fans, that's two entirely political proroguings in the midsts of global crises, signed off on by the Queen's supposedly apolitical and sober check on reckless activity)

Shutting down Parliament seems to have rescued Trudeau's government from snap elections, which may well have been won by the Tories, who have resolved their longstanding racist and plutocratic tensions with a new ghoulish nightmare leader:

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/09/canada-erin-otoole-conservative-party-cpc/

And, as Trudeau has reconvened Parliament, he's promised something genuinely amazing: a massive, national stimulus package meant to keep families, workers and small businesses afloat through the looming second pandemic wave.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-canada-economy/canada-bets-the-farm-on-big-spending-as-second-wave-threatens-economic-recovery-idUSKCN26F1NF

This is something Canada - and the US, for that matter - desperately needs. Canada is monetarily sovereign: it issues its own currency and its debt is in the same currency, meaning it can never run out of money (no more than Apple could ever run out of Itunes gift cards).

The Canadian DOES face constraints on its spending, but they're just not MONETARY constraints - they're RESOURCE constraints. If the Canadian government creates money to buy the same things the private sector is shopping for, there'll be a bidding war, AKA inflation.

But as a new wave of lockdowns and mass illness looms over the country, there's going to be a hell of a lot of things the private sector isn't trying to buy - notably, the labour of the Canadian workforce, millions of whom will be locked indoors through the winter.

An analyst warns that Trudeau's proposal is likely to add CAD30B to the deficit, which is a completely irrelevant fact unless that new money is going to be chasing the same goods that Canadian business and citizens are seeking to buy.

Trudeau has promised to create a national prescription drug plan (a longstanding hole in Canada's national health care system), as well as universal childcare, and he's denounced austerity as a response to the crisis.

There's a part of me that is very glad to see this. My family and friends are in Canada, after all, and if Trudeau lives up to his promise, he will shield them from the collapse we're seeing in the USA.

But that is a BIG if. Trudeau isn't Harper. He's more charismatic, he's got better hair, and he says much, much better things than Harper.

However, when the chips are down, Trudeau out-Harpers Harper.

Mass surveillance legislation. Corruption scandals. Lying about corruption scandals. Bailing out the pipeline. "No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there." Abandoning asylum-seekers to Trump's lawless regime.

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." It would be pretty naive to assume that merely because Trudeau has promised to do the right thing, that he will do the right thing.

Indeed, if history is any indicator, the best way to predict what Trudeau will do is to assume that it will be the OPPOSITE of whatever he promises.

I won't lie. I felt a spark of hope when I read Trudeau's words.

But hope is all I've got - and it's a far cry from confidence.

Or relief.

[generalelectionmusings]

It’s time to stop kidding ourselves: we don’t live in a democracy

New allegations of 'cash for favours' are just the tip of the iceberg. Millionaires and corporations exert enormous sway over our politics.

Yes, we have elections every five years in which all adults except prisoners are entitled to vote. Yes, these elections are ‘free,’ in the sense that it is illegal to explicitly coerce somebody into voting a certain way. Yes, anyone can stand to be an MP. But the UK is not a true democracy.

True democracy runs much deeper. In Britain, the processes outlined above show themselves to be merely democratic decorations. They are ‘fig-leaves,’ to borrow a phrase from Greece’s ex-finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, for what this country truly is: an oligarchy.

Oligarchy comes from the Greek ‘oligarkhia,’ meaning ‘rule by the few’. It describes a nation in which power is concentrated in the hands of a small elite, elected or otherwise. Never has it been clearer than in recent weeks that this definition is a far better fit for Britain.

In Britain, a broken party funding system forces political parties to rely on big donations from corporate sponsors. Corporations hold undue sway over policy. Consequently, decisions are almost exclusively made in the interest of these big businesses.

We don’t need to delve too far back into the news to find a prime example of this. In recent days, it has emerged that the housing minister, Robert Jenrick, overturned rejections by the local council and independent inspectors to grant property developer Richard Desmond permission to build 1,500 homes on east London’s Isle of Dogs.

The decision came just a day before changes to the planning system which would have cost the developer’s company Northern & Shell an extra £30-£50m. Two weeks later, Desmond donated £12,000 to the Tory party. Tory ministers have insisted that there has been no wrongdoing. [Ed: There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Mr Desmond]. But Labour have rightly said the affair “grave concerns about cash for favours”.

We can find countless examples in the murky world of party funding: lucrative NHS contracts being given to party donors, or more recently, contracts to make ventilators being given to some of the Tory party’s biggest backers. In Britain, the small fee of £50,000 will buy a CEO a nice, cosy dinner with the leader of the Conservative party.

The High Court has ruled that Jenrick’s conduct was ‘unlawful by reason of apparent bias,’ but what change is likely to come of this ruling?

In 2018, the Electoral Commission fined Vote Leave for breaking electoral law by exceeding spending limits. The High Court upheld the Electoral Commission’s ruling, but the figurehead of Vote Leave is now Prime Minister, and the chief architect of the campaign, Dominic Cummings, is his top adviser. Vote Leave received a £61,000 slap on the wrist, and all was forgotten. The referendum result wasn’t deemed unlawful, let alone undemocratic.

Time and again, ministers line the pockets of multi-millionaire supporters, and they get away with it. Britain’s justice system is often held up as our saving grace, the one thing propping our broken democracy up. But what if politicians found a way to circumvent judges here in order to help them better serve the interests of big corporations?

After reading leaked documents giving details of the UK’s planned post-Brexit trade deal with the US, it looks like this prospect isn’t too far off.

The Trade Bill, which has now reached the committee stage in the House of Commons, makes no provision for parliamentary scrutiny of any post-Brexit deals. Parliament has no legal right under this bill to debate or vote on a trade deal, or even to know what it contains.

The bill also grants the government Henry VIII powers to change the law on trade agreements without full parliamentary approval. As George Monbiot writes in a recent Guardian column: “This is not democracy. This is elective dictatorship.”

Even more worrying than these already terrifying details, however, is the fact that the US is all but certain to insist the deal is enforced by an offshore tribunal, which allows corporations to sue governments if domestic law affects their ‘future anticipated profits’. Monbiot adds: “This mechanism has been used all over the world to punish nations for laws their parliaments have passed.” In turn, that will warp our legislation in favour of corporate power.

If, and it seems more like when, such a demand is included in the deal, it would make oblige politicians to defend corporations against policies that impact on their ‘future anticipated profits’.

Yes, in Britain, we can vote. But as we’ve seen yet again with the Robert Jenrick scandal, our ability to hold politicians and big businesses to account is already shaky.

The US-UK trade deal risks seeing our fragments of democracy crumble away entirely.

Source:

https://leftfootforward.org/2020/06/its-time-to-stop-kidding-ourselves-we-dont-live-in-a-democracy/

[thessalian]

Thess vs Disgust

Ever just feel like screaming and never, ever stopping?

Look, things in the UK are horrible. Like, really bad. And they don’t look set to get better any time soon. Tax rises, electricity price rises, shortages and price rises of damn near everything (most publicised being the fuel shortage, which only partly affects me because I still take the bus but does mean that the bus is rammed these days and cane or no cane, it’s hard to find a seat and social distancing went out the window)... And then there’s the Sarah Everard thing.

Now, to be fair, some of this is good news. See, short version is that back in March, a little while before the lockdown started easing and I think we were in the “rule of six” phase, Sarah Everard was apprehended by a policeman, Wayne Couzens, who used his credentials and some of his police kit with some other stuff to abduct her under the guise of arresting her for breach of lockdown before raping and murdering her. He was caught fairly quickly, as these things go, and today he got life in prison.

This in and of itself is a good thing. He deserves to be in prison. The things that disgust me are these:

Piers Corbyn. Brother of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, ‘weather predictor’ and all around conspiracy theorist - climate change denier, Covid-19 denier, anti-vaxxer ... and also very anti-lockdown. And he tends to use every opportunity to appear in front of a camera to air those views. So he stood in front of the courthouse where Everard’s murderer got served justice and used the whole thing as a platform for an anti-lockdown rant. Yes, I know we’re not in lockdown anymore and haven’t been for months; he’s trying to make sure we never get into another one no matter how bad things might get in winter (with the anti-vaxxers still spreading it to the tune of over 35k new cases a day, 130-odd daily deaths, and people not producing antibodies anymore with no interest in recording the uptake of booster vaccinations, we can probably assume there’ll be another spike). Which is bad enough, honestly, but he used a situation that was supposed to be about some form of closure for the family and friends of the victim (especially the friend she was visiting - gods, imagine the guilt) to further his agenda and it’s disgusting.

And then there’s the “Not All Men” brigade.

Yeah, apparently we have a lot of people jumping onto tweets about the situation with Everard going, “NOT ALL MEN!” As you do. Thankfully the hashtag, which is trending hard, is being hijacked by women who are flagging up that no, not all men do that, but enough men do that that all women have to be afraid. And honestly, you have to wonder about the men who get all defensive about this shit. And seriously, now?

Not to mention - Sabina Nessa. The coverage of her murderer being brought to justice, and her just in general, is nowhere near as all-encompassing as Everard. Note the names. Yeah, Sarah Everard was white. Sabina Nessa ... was not. Guess who’s getting the most news coverage? I’m hoping that it’s more to do with the fact that Everard was murdered by a cop than because of institutional racism in the media, but honestly, por que no los dos?

Oh, and the Labour party - our only hope of one day getting out from under this Conservative shitshow - is too busy infighting and bitching about whether a Labour MP can say that “only women have a cervix” without being transphobic (hint: NO THEY CANNOT) to have a hope in hell. And even if they manage to get it together, that’s years away. I have three years of this shitshow before there’s even a hope of it getting better, and that seems pretty far-flung right now, given the only real opposition the Tories have.

So, yeah, on top of a migraine that’s fading but not quitting and a really significant pain flare that should probably keep me home from work but won’t (look, one of my colleagues was talking about how fucking swarmed we are right now with doctors playing catch-up on medical procedures like biopsies and gave me such a look of gratitude and a comment of, “We’re really glad you’re back” filled with such sincerity that I can’t bring myself not to go in for anything less than literally being unable to move - which is probably going to happen sooner than I think because even stepping on the footpedal to play dictation hurt today but never mind)... Long and short of it is, I feel like screaming. But honestly, I just don’t have the energy.

[uncommon-etc]

I know right! What depresses me most is that so many of these posts come from people in their late teens and early 20s (why so cynical already young un's?) who aren't even old enough to remember what life was like before the tories.

I'll be the first to say that I've liked, and trusted, nearly every Labour leader since 1935 except Blair. I'd trust that man as far as I could throw him, and I'll never forgive him for throwing away the goodwill of a significant portion of the electorate on a stupid war in the middle east which destabilised a whole region. The PFI stuff wasn't so great either, but...

I had just started school when Blair won the landslide in '97, and from then until I left school the year the tory-libdem coalition arrived to stamp on all my dreams of an affordable university education, things actually did get better.

We went from being taught in prefab huts where the roof leaked and there was no heating in the winter, to shiny new school extensions with double-glazing and textbooks that weren't 20 years out of date. Because teachers could afford new books, we could read texts by contemporary authors, including those under-represented on the current curriculum, instead of just reading Of Mice and Men for two years like schools do today.

Though the rightwing press did everything they could to demonise benefits claimants, the process was still relatively humane. You could speak to an actual human on the phone at your local jobcentre, and they would show you a list of local vacancies, instead of telling you to go away and sign up for Universal Credit online and come back in five weeks when you were destitute. If someone needed to claim JSA or ESA, they weren't penalised for doing so, and a couple claiming either could get about £800 a month, and housing benefit to cover their rent.

My hometown had five libraries, many public attractions like museums, art galleries, and botanical gardens were completely free, because they were heavily subsidised. Three of those libraries have closed now and the others have had to start charging for DVD rentals, meaning expensive foreign films that those on low incomes could never afford in HMV are still out of reach.

And, being Scottish, I got to watch as we got our own parliament for the first time, an actual seat of power that wasn't 500 miles away from the lives and experiences of everyone I knew. I actually attended a debate there in 2009 about whether devolution had been a success. This was because under the last labour government, state schools had debate teams, and swimming pools, and trips to places other than the local rubbish dump or abbatoir. There was no assumption that just because your parents weren't paying for your education that you deserved less than the children of the rich.

I know that everyone who had a half-decent childhood can have their judgement clouded by nostalgia, but it isn't just white malteasers and belville lego that I miss about the 00s, it's having a government that actually fixed things for the people who paid their salaries.

(Also if you were born between 2002 and 2011, the government literally set up a trust fund for you and put a grand into it, if you didn't know this, go and check right now, it was one of the first things the tories scrapped when they got into power, but you can still claim yours even if your parents never paid anything extra into it.)

Buzzing for a general election. Not so buzzing that every social media timeline is going to be filled with middle-class white girly pops saying 'Labour are no better' whilst the over 4 million children living in poverty in the UK right now might like the option of finding out xoxo

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: January 2021

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of January 2021 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

Once again, we knew that Donald Trump wasn’t going to take losing well, but when a legion of his most boneheaded supporters storm the Capitol demanding the election result be overturned because a certain thin-skinned orange gobshite had spent several weeks screaming about electoral fraud and, by the way, also set the date of January 6th for some major event, even Mike Pence couldn’t sanction his buffoonery any longer - especially when said buffoonery involved him saying “I love you” to people who were guilty of sedition and, by the way, murder - all of which led to him finally, finally, getting the boot from various social media platforms

...all while Lauren Boebert appeared to be trying to help out the insurrectionists by livetweeting the location of Nancy Pelosi, presumably because Boebert forgot about that Glock she claims to take to work with her every day and was looking for a convenient meat shield, which naturally has nothing to do with her tweeting the day would be like 1776 earlier that morning

...but the real victim in all of this was Melania Trump as it interrupted a photo shoot she was doing, which she somehow thought it was a good idea to mention several days later in a statement riddled with two opinions: “both sides” and “me, me, me” which shows she didn’t realise the optics of rearranging the china as Washington burned around her

...but according to Laura Kuenssberg it was merely a “scuffle” at Congress, as opposed to an organised group attempting to stage an armed insurrection against the government complete with at least one member carrying zip ties

...and finally, we had Ian Austin reminded us that he’s still alive by saying the exact same thing would have happened in the UK with Jeremy Corbyn supporters storming parliament, as if that happened in the four years Corbyn was wishing Austin would go away, then did go away, but sadly didn’t go away

Once again the Tory government think they know better than virologists, epidemiologists and pharmacists with their one-two punch of thinking they can just mix and match the various vaccines available rather than give people two doses of the same vaccine, but they further weaken any chance of vaccination succeeding by ignoring Pfizer’s recommendation the second dose be given within three weeks of the first by adopting a policy of the second dose is given three months later, and it it’s just as likely to be the less effective but cheaper Oxford vaccine they get a dose of

...swiftly followed by the BBC did their bit to encourage people to get vaccinated by reporting a story of a nurse getting a dose of Covid six weeks after her first vaccination jab not by reporting how she was three weeks overdue for the second dose (or, if you prefer, six weeks before her second one) but simply saying that people vaccinated can get Covid, which goes beyond the BBC’s sociopathic inability to criticise Tory fuckups into being downright fucking dangerous - as does their putting sentient testicle Toby Young on Newsnight to say how we’re all overreacting as it's not as bad as all that

Of all the things proven liar Boris Johnson should have said when the UK’s Covid death toll officially passed 100,000 (as opposed to unofficially, which would have been last December), “We have done our best” was not it, because if their best includes not going into lockdown in order to protect landlords, having Dominic Cummings dictate herd immunity in spite the fact that you need vaccinated people for it to work, refusing to have quarantine at airports until July, thinking it would be a bright idea to tell people it’s their patriotic duty to go to the pub, giving them £10 vouchers to go to restaurants, putting children going back to school ahead of any concerns about every single school could become a petri dish and countless other horrifically mismanaged instances, then we should be kept up at night dreading what their worst would be

The fact that Chartwells were given a contract to provide free school dinners with a budget of £30, and the supposed lunches that arrived had £5 worth of food in them which begged the obvious question where the other £25 went, is appalling - but not surprising, as the Tory government gave them the contract and, equally unsurprising, Chartwells was founded by a Tory donor, and equally unsurprising their response to their grift being exposed was to tell all the public school clients they cater to a pack of lies while hoping nobody found out about them doing so...which worked about as well as you can guess

Something possessed the EU to ramp up the row over the AstraZenica vaccine not passing the rigorous tests for over-65s by threatening to trigger Article 16 and limit the number of vaccines that Northern Ireland received, and that something was it was hopelessly misguided as it allowed the Tories to get their hapless response to the pandemic off the front pages for a few days and let the Leave headbangers say this is why we left the EU...in spite this threat would have never been in play if we were still in the EU

There is no way to make jokes about Kellyanne Conway posting what was, in effect, revenge porn photos of her 16-year old daughter, because that sentence is so far out there that it is borderline incomprehensible

In the space of less than twenty seconds proven liar Boris Johnson claimed that there was no prior warning of the new strain of Covid, he had the SAGE paper stating it was coming which was handed to him last September held up in his face, and then said the government acted accordingly.  Yes, you read that right, he claimed the government acted accordingly to something they had no prior warning about, which is literally impossible, all in the space of ten seconds

In the latest hire by the BBC which is cause for both comment and concern, they announced their new chairman would be Tory donor Richard Sharp, whose credentials for the position are being Rishi Sunak’s ex-boss at Goldman Sachs, donating at least £400,000 to the Tory party, and having no background in journalism whatsoever

Smirking bully Priti Patel said that the UK should have closed its borders in March 2020 in order to prevent the spread of Covid.  Presumably she forgot that she was a.) Home Secretary in Marsh 2020 so could have done that, and b.) Home Secretary when she said that the borders should have been closed as that indicates she doesn’t know what’s going on

The terrifying world which Alison Pearson lives in has now started to cross over into our reality due to her responding to one of the four people she hasn’t blocked on Twitter calling her what she is - namely a liar - by siccing the Torygraph’s lawyers on them claiming libel, doing the usual cry bully tactic of learning the person she is harassing works for GlaxoSmithKline so promptly went to their CEO demanding he be fired, and howling about the hate campaign being waged against her - while telling the person, who was saying he was thinking suicidal thoughts after the pile-on that Pearson had instigated even after he had deleted the tweet and apologised , that “You’re finished”

Someday in the future, scholars will study Ted Cruz responding to Biden rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement within hours of getting his feet under the Oval Office desk by pontificating about how terrible it is that Biden is more interested in the citizens of Paris than the jobless of Pittsburgh and wonder just how somebody who doesn't know why the Paris Climate Agreement was named the Paris Climate Agreement ever got to be a senator

...and judging by how Lauren Boebert also latched onto this brainless rhetoric, not only can it be asked how she got to be a senator when she had the opportunity to actually realise Cruz’s mistake, she also begs the question how she can be a senator after her publicly trying to use Nancy Pelosi as a meat shield during the Capitol riots

Unifying force Keir Starmer stated that Labour should be devoting their time to fighting the Tory government rather than fighting court cases, somehow forgetting that by breaking the guidelines of the EHRC report (which he pledged to follow without question months before it was published) is the reason that they’re fighting court cases, and just so happens to be the reason why people are asking how a meeting attended by Starmer, Angela Rayner, Len McCluskey and others either didn't have a single person taking notes, which is David Evans’ entire defence, or they did take notes by quite conveniently lost them

Oh boy, did Wall Street cheerleaders not take it well when r/WallStreetbets exposed to the entire world that the stock market is little more than a game people play with other people’s money - because the teams the Wall Street cheerleaders support started losing, and all it took was a few Redditors investing in Gamestop and Bed Bath & Beyond 

Nice of Shaun Bailey to remind everyone that he’s a Tory by giving his suggestion for how the homeless could get on the property ladder, namely by saving a minimum of £5000

Clearly Marjorie Taylor Greene didn’t get the memo about the Streisand Effect, as the first thing she did after taking her seat in the House of Representatives was go on a mass deleting spree of Facebook posts - which only served to draw attention to her video saying that Nancy Pelosi be executed for treason, her track record of spreading conspiracy theories about the Parkland and Sandy Hook shootings, and her claims that a Jewish space laser is responsible for the 2018 California wildfires

Insufferable self-promoter Jess Phillips got her 2021 off to a good start by tweeting out that, as Britait has happened, we should shut up and accept it.  To the surprise of nobody other than insufferable self-promoter Jess Phillips, this led to a lot of people saying that, no, they will not accept an advisory referendum somehow being bolted onto the Ten Commandments, especially as numerous things that were promised wouldn’t happen such as a border in the Irish Sea, leaving Erasmus, losing freedom of movement, leaving the Common Market have all happened

It is wrong to say that smirking bully Priti Patel has lost 150,000 police files.  The actual figure is closer to 400,000 - which begs the obvious question as to what those files were, for example if those files also happened to fall under the same category as the ones that 55-year old ex-minister Mark Francois might want to have disappear for the sake of convenience

At last CD Projekt Red took some responsibility for Clusterpunk 2077 being such a cyberfuck...if by “taking responsibility” you mean “taking responsibility, dumping it all on the QA testers, and saying that everyone should blame them for everything” - and then with perfect comedic timing CD Projekt Red released an update for Clusterpunk 2077 that was so broken they had to release a hotfix for their broken patch

Expenses-fiddler Robert Jenrick decided that the most important thing to protect in the United Kingdom at this exact moment in time is...statues.  Not key workers, not the vulnerable, not any human life at all.  Statues.

So either Rafael Behr wrote a column for The Guardian where he tried to blame Jeremy Corbyn for his heart attack which saw Guardian higher-ups remove that passage from their print edition but forgot to remove it from the online version of the article, or The Guardian deliberately left the passage in the online version of the column in order to get some form of engagement from rage clicks while allowing Behr to act as if he is suffering some great injustice

Of course it wouldn’t take long for Steve Baker to try and claim some spurious victory for Britait, namely him claiming that tampon tax he spent so long fighting against being abolished is proof of the sunlit uplands of our post-EU nation...which ignores the fact that a.) It had nothing to do with the EU in the first place, and b.) The fact that Baker voted to keep it in place in a 2015 Commons vote

Employer of the year WWE went for an interesting twofer, as one minute they were proudly stating that WrestleMania would go ahead with a prospective 30,000 in attendance without any concerns for social distancing or any other Covid preventative measures, and the next telling the wrestlers on their roster that they would not be supplying them with Covid vaccines at the exact same time the NBA were floating the idea of providing vaccines for all their players

Make no mistake, the criticism that Erik Lamela, Sergio Reguilon, Giovani Lo Celso and Manuel Lanzini have received due to the four of them flouting lockdown regulations to attend a New Year’s party is justified - however, the fact that Duncan Castles tried to chase a headline by claiming that Lo Celso and Lamela had tested positive for Covid in a swiftly-deleted tweet is a new low for the noted barrel scraping rumour monger

Self-awareness sceptic Laurence Fox was entirely predictable in his response to the news that talkRADIO had been booted from Youtube for repeated violations of their ToS, specifically the part about spreading Covid misinformation, screaming the usual things about being “cancelled” - and then, within hours, responded to the BBC announcing a plan of educational programming to help during Lockdown III by saying he will be shielding his children from being “indoctrinated” by the BBC’s “left-wing bias” - which not only means he’s cancelling the BBC, but also had people remember that Billie Piper has custody of his children so it's not like he can even enforce his rules on what his children can and cannot watch

...by the way, Fox said nothing about Lord Sumption appearing on the BBC’s Question Time (the same show where failed actor on the grift Laurence Fox announced his new career as a clueless right wing irritant) where he told a woman with bowel cancer that her life wasn’t valuable, it was merely less valuable as she has less life left.  Yes, that is eugenics getting free airtime on the BBC, thanks for noticing

Somehow the best choice of words the BBC could find when reporting the death of Phil Spector was “talented but flawed” as if murder is some character flaw instead of, oh I don’t know, a criminal activity?

You would have thought that Twitch would have simply retired the PogChamp emote permanently in the wake of Gootecks going all insurrectionist, but no, instead they thought of having a rotating cycle of emotes of various creators, in spite of those creators telling them this would be a bad idea - and those creators were proven right when Critical bard was inundated with racist and homophobic abuse in his chat that led him to close his social media profiles when he was selected for rotation, with Twitch doing fuck all about it

Fashion editor no matter what she claims she is Hadley Freeman had a really clever take about The Sopranos...actually, no she didn’t, she had an absurd belief that it’s the exact same show as Sex in the City but people overlook it Because Misogyny, and when she was lambasted for missing the point so badly she had noted dipshit David Baddiel rushing in to her rescue to mock those getting “triggered” by her insipid take while saying he never liked The Sopranos because, as he isn't an Italian-American mobster, the show did not speak to him - in other words, he made himself a subject of equal mockery

...but there was no sign of Baddiel when Hadley Freeman then jumped on the BidenErasedWomen bandwagon alongside the TERFs of Twitter as soon as Biden got his feet under the desk, which also happened to show hard centrist extremist Freeman say how she thought Trump did far more for women than Biden ever has, which as takes go is so bad that the best explanation is that she briefly forgot the difference between the words “for” and “to”, before she then deleted the tweet and tried to deny ever posting it with increasingly nonsensical explanations that rapidly looked uncannily like gaslighting

...although David Baddiel wasn’t quite done being a bellend, as he was soon yukking it up with professional victim Rachel Riley about his latest book which accuses the entire progressive left of antisemitism

The oppressed underclass known as Manchester United fans really showed their colours, first by responding to a loss to Sheffield United by sending racial abuse to Axel Tuanzebe and Anthony Martial on social media, and a couple of weeks later responded to a draw with Arsenal by sending racial abuse to Marcus Rashford, because apparently when your team drops points the most important thing is to look for which member of your team you can racially abuse

And finally, oh so finally, we have Donald Trump and his discovery of electoral fraud at last - electoral fraud that consisted of Donald Trump calling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger demanding he change the result and all he needs is Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes while also saying that he had proof of vote-counting machines being removed early...and when told they were still in Georgia, changed his lie to say the inner workings had been removed without anyone noticing.  By the way, the only reason anyone knows about this is because Raffensperger told Trump that he wouldn’t release the call to the public if Trump didn't say anything about it - so, of course, the Orange Overlord took to twitter, ran his mouth, and the Washington Post had one hell of an exclusive as a result