#liz ireland
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
airplanes924 · 18 days ago
Text
Tumblr media
Books I've Read in 2024
Number 48
Mrs. Claus and the Trouble With Turkeys by Liz Ireland
0 notes
sasha4books · 2 months ago
Text
Book Spotlight Halloween Edition! 🎃
Book: Halloween Cupcake Murder (3-in-1)
Tumblr media
0 notes
blogthefiresidechats · 7 months ago
Text
Best 10 Books in.....Mystery
I’ve comprised a list of the 10 best books from the mystery genre. This list is in no particular order and this list is only my opinions based on what books I’ve read in the past. Enjoy! This series follows Mordecai Tremaine who is a retired from running a tobacco shop and an amatuer sleuth. In each book, he works with the local police to find out who the murderer is. Perfect for fans of Agatha…
Tumblr media
View On WordPress
0 notes
hetagrammy · 7 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
Come prima, più di prima t'amerò
Some 1950s IreMano for the soul
26 notes · View notes
secretsofthewilde · 4 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
Celia Ireland (Liz Birdsworth), sharing some light-hearted memories of Pamela Rabe between scenes on the set of Wentworth.
Source: Wentworth - The Final Sentence On File, by Erin McWhirter
9 notes · View notes
authorstalker · 9 days ago
Text
My September & October Reads
The City and the House, Natalia Ginzburg - An all-time favorite. An unexpected beach read. An epistolary novel! Twitter is still good sometimes, mainly for basketball tweets and unusual book recommendations; I checked this out of the library after a college professor tweeted that he taught The City and the House and his students became obsessed with one of the female characters, couldn't stop talking about her. On an 80-degree September day, I left work early and read this on the beach—it's a total pageturner and I can't recommend it enough.
The God of the Woods, Liz Moore - A summer camp murder mystery. Well written and engrossing, and I loved the way it ended. A fun coincidence that added to my experience: at the time of reading, I was traveling back and forth to Albany and the Finger Lakes region of NY, which is where parts of the novel are set.
The Slow Road North: How I Found Peace in an Improbable Country, Rosie Schaap - I keep track of Rosie Schaap's writing because she's talented and interesting, of course, but also because we lived in the same Brooklyn neighborhood for many years and she tended bar down the street from my apartment. Anyway! Rosie is great and I think this memoir is ideal for anyone who's contemplating a life change and could use some inspiration. The synopsis is that after Rosie's husband and mother both passed away, NYC no longer felt like home and she wanted a fresh start. During a research trip for a writing assignment, she fell in love with a small seaside town in Ireland, and she figured out a way to relocate. I love the storytelling in this book, the way Rosie writes about the history of her new home and her neighbors, the way she confronts grief and regret and uncertainty, and the way she builds herself a beautiful life there completely from scratch. Like I said, it's inspiring! Plus I'm now itching to plan a visit to Ireland.
Loved and Missed, Susie Boyt - Another favorite book discovered via Twitter recommendation, in this case because Rumaan Alam tweeted about it enough times that I had to know why he felt so strongly. Well well well: it's one of the best books I've read in years, so sad but SO funny. It made me cry on the train, it made me laugh out loud, it sent me down a Susie Boyt google rabbit hole (I was like, "Ooo who is this newbie, I've never heard of her".......only to discover she is Freud's great-granddaughter), it had me at Community Bookstore on a recent Friday night to hear Rumaan and Susie in conversation (amazing). READ IT.
3 notes · View notes
acourtjester · 8 months ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Irelands next prime minister (Taoiseach), this could be our Liz truss moment 😍 rip president I guess if so.
3 notes · View notes
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
4x7 ‘Panic Button’ 
3 notes · View notes
familythings · 2 months ago
Text
How We Can Permanently Change Our Eyes’ Color
When I was a small kid, I admired Liz Taylor, the famous actress. She was so beautiful and charming in the movies. After some years, she became even more famous as we heard she changed her eye color to purple. At the time, it was unimaginable for me to think that one could change their eye color permanently. But as technology kept developing very few things have remained in the area of unable…
0 notes
wally-b-feed · 4 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
Anthony Fineran (B 1981)
1 note · View note
ccohanlon · 1 year ago
Text
on the art of liz cullinane
The fragments drew me to the work: wood, bone, sea shells, a ribbon of map reduced by razor to frame a minimum of topography — a few contour lines, a couple of roads — each of which I took in at a distance of inches before I withdrew to look at the painted surfaces: a seascape in triptych, I thought at first, before it occurred to me that, despite its title, Swell, part of it could just as well be a landscape derived from everything that had been excised from the map; even now it remains unresolved.
This lack of resolution is elemental to Liz Cullinane’s art. In the paintings that are framed without extraneous objects or attachments, there is the nagging suspicion that something is missing, as if the simple observations of shells around shallow, tidal rock pools are merely the loci of other artefacts the placement of which might cause us to reassess what we are seeing but also what we are assuming. Maps recur in many of Liz’s pieces, along with the physical evidence of an Irish littoral (the sea washes many of her works) but the artist herself, especially her relationship to these places, eludes us. This is a deliberate self-negation and yet, inadvertently, it draws attention to an undercurrent of absence and of loss, not all of it personal, that pervades these works and splices them to other strands of Liz’s prodigious creativity — as a writer and singer, and as a designer for film and the performing arts.
There are clues in the collage, In Absentia — an antique teething ring, a baby shoe, a silver devotional medal (the French call it a médaille miraculeuse) depicting Our Lady of Graces, and a painted sea and sky commemorate the cillíní, Achill’s mass grave sites where unbaptised babies were interred — but a deeper pain, a corrosive regret, is literally pinned within it, stark grief for a child or children closer to the artist’s heart. This is, again, left unresolved in the work, leaving the viewer to reconcile a grim curiosity and a natural emotional conflict.
Liz Cullinane is, in this sense, very much an emerging artist, still grappling awkwardly with the raw, emotive power of her ideas and her diverse physical materials, eschewing a conventional attachment to an artistic ‘practice’ so that she remains free and unencumbered to immerse herself within the jagged narrative of her psyche and allow it to flow through whatever physical medium is best able to contain and communicate it. In this exhibition, the narrative is fragmentary, unexplained, but all the more unsettling because of that.
Notes for Liz Cullinane's exhibition, Seatangled, on Achill Island, Ireland, August, 2023.
0 notes
airplanes924 · 11 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
Books I've Read in 2024
Number 1
Mrs. Claus and the Evil Elves by Liz Ireland
0 notes
reportwire · 2 years ago
Text
Biden rebuffs UK bid for closer cooperation on tech
Press play to listen to this article Voiced by artificial intelligence. LONDON — Britain was rebuffed by the Biden administration after multiple requests to develop an advanced trade and technology dialogue similar to structures the U.S. set up with the European Union. On visits to Washington as a Cabinet minister over the past two years, Liz Truss urged U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo…
Tumblr media
View On WordPress
0 notes
blogthefiresidechats · 2 years ago
Text
Latest Book Haul!
I went to the book store today and came away with quite the book haul. I always leave with books in hand when I go to the book store but I really spent a pretty penny at the book store today. You can’t say that I don’t have anything to read at my house. If I get any more books, I’m probably going to have to buy more book cases. *sheepish grin* Synopsis: This House Is Haunted is a striking homage…
Tumblr media
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
Clownfall: Endgame
I am calling it that in the full knowledge that batshit things may yet happen, but listen. Listen. We have a year left before the general election. I am hedging my bets and assuming all that comes in that year will be Tory manoeuvring ahead of that. Let's all hope for a nice quiet year in which everything can fall neatly under that banner, that won't ruin this naming convention.
Previous Reading
Important Terminology - Required Reading
What is a Whip?
How do Whips work?
Shadow Cabinet
Front Benchers, Back Benchers and the Cabinet
What do we need to call an early General Election?
The Adventures of Big Dog the Clown - Suggested Reading
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Elanor’s Guide to Liz Truss - Suggested Reading
Character-based prequel
The Premiership of Liz Truss
The Next Steps - Suggested Reading
The post-Truss contenders
Bye Matt
BoJo Resigns as MP
Alright, that's probably everything. Just nice to have it all in one place, innit? If you would like a nice soothing soundtrack to your reading, here's my recommendation. On with the show!
Clownfall: Endgame
Wednesday
So, let's start with charismatic and charming Home Secretary Suella Braverman! You may remember her from such hits as "Quitting before she could be fired after breaking the law only to be rehired by Sunak almost immediately and without consequence to appease the right wing nutjobs in the party", and "Claiming Pakistani men have a culture that makes them work in abuse rings to target vulnerable white English girls" (I should add that, if you are unfamiliar with Suella Braverman, regardless of what that quote implies, she is not, in fact, white); recently she made the news because she announced that being homeless is a "lifestyle choice". So true, Suella! They could give it up any time they wanted. They could, for example, get together and break in and steal your fucking house.
But in particular, here we're focussing on her recent stance towards the multiple huge pro-Palestine marches that have been taking place in London. So far she has indicated that she wants people who wave Palestinian flags to be arrested, so that's very measured and rational of her; but, last Wednesday (Nov 8th), she decided to write a lil opinion piece in the Times all about how mean and biased and liberal the police are. This is an absolutely fascinating assertion to I suspect literally anyone who has ever been involved with the police. But no! Quoth Suella, aggressive right-wing protesters are "rightly met with a stern response", while "pro-Palestinian mobs" are "largely ignored".
And, she claims, the march on Saturday isn’t simply a cry for help for Gaza, but an "assertion of primacy by certain groups - particularly Islamists - of the kind we are more used to seeing in Northern Ireland".
Imagine how well all that went down.
Thursday
You are underestimating how that went down, because it emerges that Suella deVille did not, in fact, get any form of validated sign-off or permission from Number 10 before squirting her ill-informed liquid horseshit all over the front desk of the Times news room, and that, Tumblrs, you'll be surprised to learn, is actually quite an important and compulsory part of criticising the police when you are the Home Secretary. Like, there is a Ministerial Code about this. It is very clear. It is in Article 8.2, Tumblrs. Thou Shalt Have Permission From Number 10 Before Making Media Interventions.
“The content was not agreed with Number 10,” a spokesperson for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters, referring to the prime minister’s Downing Street office. The ministerial code is clear that any ministerial media interventions need approval from No 10.
-AlJazeera
And the Tories are furious! The bloodbath forms quickly and loudly and the hounds start baying! Clown noses are flying everywhere! The factions are drawn! Because even now, there are Tories too stupid to understand that whether you agree with someone or not they still have to follow the rules! Also the other parties realise they can offer some actual opposition here, given that Suella has essentially dragged a barrel into the middle of the House of Commons dressed in a fish costume, handed around a set of loaded rifles, and then crawled inside to wait. The result is that the calls for her resignation are both deafening and pleasingly cross-party.
"(This is a) dangerous attempt to undermine respect for police", says Labour's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper. "(It's) irresponsible," says London mayor Sadiq Khan. "The PM's weakness when it comes to standing up to Suella is the most shocking thing in all this," claims a senior Labour source.
They're wrong, of course. The most shocking thing is Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey realising he can actually appear in the paper if he plays this right and so surfaces to attempt some politics. "(Sunak) must finally act with integrity by sacking his out-of-control home secretary!" he declares, frightening many MPs who had forgotten he was even in the room with them.
Meanwhile, several Tories approach the BBC anonymously.
"The home secretary's awfulness is now a reflection on the prime minister. Keeping her in post is damaging him," says one. Another straight-up describes her as "unhinged". Another claims the comparison with Northern Ireland is "wholly offensive and ignorant", and really, all of this is permanently triggering that "Heartbreaking: the worst person you know just made a great point" reaction image.
Saturday
Hey, speaking of reaction images, look, Labour has a go:
Tumblr media
Well. They tried.
BUT! Do you want to know the INTERESTING bit??!
Enter: Nadine Dorries! Mad shrieking pink harpy who spends her days maintaining a BoJo shrine in her bedroom! Always the most hinged of politicians, let's see what she has to say.
Former cabinet minister Nadine Dorries claimed Ms Braverman was trying to get sacked to give her a platform of martyrdom in service of the right-wing. "The competition is on now for who is going to be the leader of the opposition," Ms Dorries told the BBC.
???!??!?
PERTINENT POLITICAL OBSERVATION FROM DORRIES?!?!?? The most shocking part of this whole affair. Remember that time she yelled at a journalist during an interview about Boris Johnson's latest scandal when he asked her how Johnson was feeling about the whole thing and inadvertently implied they were having an affair when No One Asked? God, wonders never cease. She's even acknowledging the Tories can't win the next GE, look. I'd say this is growth, except I am 100% positive she's just being catty about BlowJo being fired again.
Anyway, the real Saturday issue: it's Armistice Day, and there's a pro-Palestine march planned.
Now, to give context, Armistice Day has a creepy level of patriotic state-worship attached to it in the UK. Some time in October everyone on telly suddenly starts wearing a poppy, and if you don't you get hanged, drawn and quartered by (a) the British press, and then (b) a baying mob outside your living room. You most be performatively sad. You must perform reverence and hero worship and say things like "Never again" all while whole-heartedly supporting current wars. You must talk about "our brave boys", and share the works of dead poets from the trenches, and then completely fail to absorb any of their lessons. If anyone tries to wear the white poppy to distance themselves from the current political appropriation while still commemorating the millions of conscripted casualties, you accuse them of being "woke" and pissing on the worthy dead of WW1. It's a whole thing, and politicians love using it as an excuse to point fingers and mock each other for being insufficiently patriotic if they wear the wrong tie to the ceremonies, or choose to walk with actual veterans rather than a head of the current army, or any number of other things. And then on November the 12th they'll order a drone strike or something.
So, off the bat, you can see how a pro-Palestine rally on the same day was likely to be seen as provocative to some.
"Some" included Sunak! He didn’t (publicly at least) ask the police to ban the protest, but did call on organisers to call it off, claiming the choice of date was “provocative and disrespectful”, because as I say, a march calling for the ceasefire of a genocide is super disrespectful to every sad dead poet in a trench who dreamed of a ceasefire so they could live, or something.
But the inevitable therefore happens, which is that far-right activists agree that it's disrespectful, and so decide to violently target the march to show their respect for the idea of peace on Armistice Day, or something.
Here's the planned route by the organisers:
Tumblr media
Note, though, that the Armistice ceremony happens at the Cenotaph - visibly nowhere near the march. These two events actually wouldn't have overlapped, if it weren't for far-right protestors deliberately linking them to stop them being disrespectfully linked, or something.
And that's exactly what happened. From the Guardian:
Perhaps the most striking incident, though, was when far-right protesters charged past police who sought to hold them back from the Cenotaph. In this video, a man shouts “this is fucking our country” in celebration. Whereas the pro-Palestine march had been excluded from the area as a precaution, the far right was not; by overwhelming the police, they supposedly sought to defend the site from an enemy that simply wasn’t there.
(that's quite a good article of the whole thing, actually, I recommend giving it a read.)
Crucially to the clown show, though, several politicians and others accused Suella deVille of emboldening the far-right, which... well, several of the far-right protestors straight up said was the case on the day, so hard to disagree, really.
Rumours of a reshuffle in Whitehall circumnavigate the land so fast the truth gets sucked into a tornado and is declared MIA.  Here's the thing! I've covered a few Cabinet reshuffles by now, Tumblrs, you know the drill. Reshuffles are always deniable until they actually happen – so if, say, a reshuffle was going to happen on Monday 13 November 2023, there’d be no need to publicise it in advance. That way, if things change and politics happen, you don't need to retract anything :)
Because, remember: reshuffles are always controversial.  Yes, some people get demoted, and those people will often kick off, and some people who don't deserve it get promoted, and lots of people kick off.  But the big thing is that a lot more people get overlooked for promotion.
His most ardent supporters would say that Rishi Sunak is a cautious man (if you'll allow me a moment to express my own view on the matter, Tumblrs, if you'll forgive this crumb of personal opinion amongst my otherwise impeccable journalling of greatest integrity, I once did a teambuilding task with my students where they had to build the best possible bridge out of uncooked spaghetti and pieces of marshmallow, and I personally would liken the structural integrity of his spine to the losing team's entry), and reshuffles will spread a lot of disappointment to Tory MPs who lose – or fail to gain – a cabinet position.
So, all in all... regardless of Suella's idiocy...
There's no guarantee of a reshuffle. Rumours are just that - whether they prove to be true or not remains to be seen.
Week Commencing Monday 13th November, 2023
New week, new challenges! And it's going to be a big week this week. On Wednesday (tomorrow, at time of writing), three big things are going to be announced, and these announcements will colour everything else this week:
One.  The Supreme Court decide whether the government will be allowed to enact their plan to send some migrants claiming asylum in the UK to Rwanda, a signature Braverman plan that human rights campaigners (including many in Rwanda) have been trying to block for ages.
It’s a massive deal anyway – a flagship government idea that’s been bogged down in the court, and we’ll finally have an answer one way or another.  For what it’s worth, the Tories aren’t confident about winning it, either.  The optimists among them reckon it’s a 50/50 chance, the pessimists reckon it’s 70/30 against, so it's iffy at best.
But here's the thing!
Plenty of Tories have always disliked Suella.  Others could handle the odd outburst she has, but can’t stomach the sheer number of them lately - the Lib Dem non-entity man was absolutely right that she is rapidly growing out of control and just does not know when to shut the entire fuck up.
Which means! If the Supreme Court allows the Rwanda plan, Braverman could become emboldened, like a far-right protest injuring police officers to defend the cenotaph from people who are nowhere near it and have no interest in it.  Do we want an emboldened Braverman?? Well; no, obviously. I also don't want dysentery, or rotten meat, or a serial killer in my neighbourhood. But it's a question even Tories are asking themselves, which is notable.
Plus, even if the court allows it, there will still be months of planning, and lawyers might still prevent the plans in the long run...  But psychologically, the issue is this: the government wants this win, but probably doesn’t benefit from Braverman feeling victorious.
Two.  We’ll get inflation figures.  The government promised to halve inflation, and it seems likely they’ve managed this.  Expect them to massively celebrate this, to distract from the promises they haven’t kept e.g. waiting lists in England, competent governance, etc.
Three.  Voting on a ceasefire in Israel seems likely for Wednesday.  It’s the SNP’s idea, and it won’t affect government policy (they won’t support a ceasefire – they claim it’ll empower Hamas).
But it’s a big deal for Labour, even more so than the Tories.  A Shadow minister has already resigned over the war.  A bunch of frontbenchers want a ceasefire, but that isn’t Keir Starmer’s policy, a man who is calling for the colours of the Israel flag to be shown at sports matches to show that "we stand in solidarity with Israel", because you can really count on Starmer to fuck up everything he touches.  So what do they do?  Abstain?  Claim they had a prior commitment??  We might see more resignations, basically.  Big day for Starmer.
So! With all that in mind...
Monday
8.43am
Oh look. Timestamps are back. I wonder if that suggests anything?
Suella Braverman is sacked as Home Secretary.
Tumblr media
But! Sunak is accused of waiting too long! Which he demonstrably did!
He should have made the decision after the illegal article that she shouldn't have written and triggered a far-right rally on fucking Armistice Day.  Instead, remember that 'cautious' descriptor I talked about?? He waited until the tide had turned against her completely, and now looks like he (a) was too much of a useless wimp to fire her until he was sure people would still like him and pat his dick and tell him he's a Good PM, and (b) only fired her because he caved in to that appalling lefty liberal cabal that somehow these days includes the Metropolitan Police of all fucking people, and she'd have been able to stay otherwise.
Shout out to the best comment from Reddit:
u/nowonmai666: Doesn't she normally get sacked on a Friday so she can have the weekend off before being reappointed?
Anyway, that's the big risk now: Braverman’s supporters can claim she was only fired because Sunak caved in to the left.
8.56am
Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns claims Sunak only sacked Braverman because he caved in to the left.
9.00am
Neil O'Brian, Pharmacy Minister, quits to live out his stated dream of being a back-bencher with less power.
*sus*
9.09am
Nick Gibb, Schools Minister, quits to live out his stated dream of being more diplomatic, or something.
*sus*
9.42am
The Lib Dems decide to build on the success of their leader getting to be on telly for his one comment on Thursday and call for a general election.  Says Ed Davey: “It was the Prime Minister’s sheer cowardice that kept her in the job even for this long. We are witnessing a broken party and a broken government, both of which are breaking this country.”
Good job! They're having such a good few days.
Anyway remember the Tories don’t have to have a general election until December 2024, though, thanks to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act (2011), which was passed by the coalition government of Tories and, um, Lib Dems.  In which Ed Davey served for three years.
Hmm.
9.43am 
James Cleverly (remember him?) returns to the Cabinet and is appointed Home Secretary. The party attempts to appear trendy by experimenting with emojis:
Tumblr media
This appointment is probably because Tory strategists wanted him in a domestic role to help the party’s chances in the next election; as Surprising Political Pundit Nadine Dorries told us, of all fucking people, the race is now on to lead the opposition.
But hey, this is not likely to lead to any more changes -
10.03am
FORMER PRIME MINISTER, BREXIT-TRIGGERER AND PIG-FUCKER DAVID CAMERON BECOMES FOREIGN SECRETARY
!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tumblr media
And look! Another emoji! They're so hip!
Tumblr media
(Side note... the balls on this one are astounding, actually. The UK political system has been in chaos ever since Cameron, and he was the first domino. This is not a well-loved former hero that will be greeted warmly by the unwashed masses.)
Awkward though, since just last month Sunak claimed that we’d lived through “30 years of a political system that incentivizes the easy decision, not the right one.”  It would be a terrible shame if a journalist was to ask David Cameron whether he agreed with the Prime Minister on that, given that Cameron’s job is to support the Prime Minister now.
Especially since Cameron took to Twitter last month to explicitly criticise Sunak for breaking the Tory promise to deliver High Speed 2.
(Cameron tweeted this criticism last month.  Labour MP Angela Rayner however promptly retweets it now lol suck a dick Dave, but try a human one this time)
Also, fun fact, Cameron has just come out of a large-scale lobbying and corruption scandal. Given the state of Sunak, though, that's actually probably what got him the job.
BUT!!! Here's an even funner fact: the man is not an MP. He left politics after he accidentally triggered Brexit and then it came out he'd once face fucked a dead pig's head while it was held on the lap of another Tory; he's been living it up in the lucrative world of after-dinner speaking, as these people do.
So can you do that?? Can you hold a Cabinet position if no one at all has voted for you??
Yes, turns out.
Tumblr media
Don't be alarmed by that, though:
Tumblr media
But, convention holds that anyone who becomes a Cabinet member while not being an MP needs to be a Peer - that way, if they do bad and naughty things, they can't be held accountable by the House of Commons but they can be held accountable by the House of Lords. Only problem is, Hameron is not a lord...
10.13am
The reshuffle, bafflingly, continues. Jeremy Hunt will remain as chancellor.
For the first time since 2010, the top four positions in government – Prime Minister (Sunak), Chancellor of the Exchequer (Hunt), Home Secretary (Cleverly) and Foreign Secretary (Cameron) – are all held by men.
10.18am
Lots of people tweeting about the historic context of Cameron’s appointment.  Here’s my favourite:
Tumblr media
10.48am
David Cameron is given a life peerage, so his proper name now is Lord Piggledick.
10.52am
Health secretary Will Quince quits.  He wasn’t planning to stand for re-election anyway though, so this one is probably not a shock. But it's important that no one else resi-
11.04am
Decarbonisation minister Jesse Norman resigns.
...
...
...
Time for a
✨Conspiracy Theory✨
Between Quince and Norman – as well as Neil O’Brien and Nick Gibb – we’re seeing several mid-ranking ministers resign, despite being generally regarded as fairly competent.
It’s possible they were fired in private, and they’re publicly resigning to save face.  But here’s another theory.
MPs aren’t allowed to seek commercial employment for six months after resigning from the government.
So hypothetically, if you were going to lose your seat in a general election, you’d want to have resigned six months earlier so you can still get a job.
If that’s what these guys are doing, it suggests we’re on track for a May 2024 election...?
11.05am
Tumblr media
11.12am
Remember Cameron's financial scandal? Quick background here: David Cameron was specifically vice-chair of a £1bn China-UK investment fund.
So let’s see what throwback former leader Iain Duncan Smith thinks of Cameron’s return:
“I am astonished at this appointment. It seems to send a signal to China that we are pursuing business with them at all costs and any costs. Those who have been sanctioned now feel more abandoned than at any time. Those facing genocide and persecution will feel more abandoned than at any time.”
I cannot believe I am about to say this.
But.
I agree with Iain Duncan Smith *spits on floor*
11.50am
Former Tory deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine is asked to sum up the return of Cameron, and says it’s the “clearest signal that the sort of right wing lurch that we’ve seen and the anti-European movement that we’ve seen has been put to bed, and that will get a message across to people”.
Tumblr media
12.13pm
A Tory MP is worried that Cameron’s return will turn back the clock on Brexit and Johnson’s election.
“It is very alarming. I am predicting a softening on small boats, a softening on legal migration. I would not be surprised if the ban on conversion therapy returns.”
... Don’t threaten me with a good time.
Anyway, let’s see how the public actually sees Cameron compared with other PMs!
Tumblr media
Yeah, not sure people will mind if Cameron’s not Boris Johnson.
12.43pm
ITV political editor Robert Peston walks past a minister of state.  The minister’s on the phone, but takes a moment to heatedly shout at Peston, “The PM just sacked me!”
I guess some days are easier than others as a journalist
12.47pm
Therese Coffey resigns as environment secretary!!!!
*choirs of heavenly angels sing*
You'll remember her of course, Tumblrs - she was one of the thugs manhandling people into the 'right' voting lobbies to force their vote on the day of Liz Truss' fracking law. Rumour has it she still has the Whip handle in her ass.
A lot of people seem to be resigning today! But don't be fooled. In almost every case, it’ll be because they were told to resign.  They’ve been sacked, but they resign to save face. A last mercy from their benevolent leader.
My guess: Tessie here is terrible at media skills, so – get rid of her before she hurts general election chances. This, too, is a pattern.
12.52pm
Rachel Maclean sacked as Housing Minister! Fun fact, numbers fans: it took Doctor Who 33 years to make it to eight Doctors, but since the 2019 election, the Tories managed eight Housing Ministers in just under 4 years
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
trololol
1.15pm
Jeremy Quin quits as Minister for the Cabinet Office.
1.37pm
Times Political Editor Steven Swinford reports that No 10 is struggling to find a new housing minister (owing to rumours the job is cursed). Several people have turned it down, including Jeremy Quin. It is incredible to me that they didn't line someone up before sacking the last guy.
Kemi Badenoch and Michael Gove are apparently unhappy that Rachel Maclean was removed from the role. I for one do not care about the opinions of Kemi Badenoch or Michael Gove.
Tumblr media
2.04pm
Health Secretary Steve Barclay becomes Environment Secretary.  This is effectively a demotion for him. It is our 5th Environment Secretary in four years. Chasing that Housing Minister record! It took 19 years for Doctor Who to have five Doctors
2.15pm
Richard Holden appointed new Conservative Party chairman.
A 2019-intake Tory MP, he led the charge against Sir Keir Starmer over Beergate, which did damage Starmer a bit (albeit not much, given that it turned out Starmer had complied with lockdown regs, and the accusation was nakedly to try and distract from Partygate).  So this appointment looks like more strategy to win the next election - someone not known enough to be hated, with what passes in the modern Tory party for a proven track record.
This could be a sign that the Tories intend to at least try to shore up the Red Wall votes? As unlikely as the Tories are to keep those seats.
That said, Holden’s seat disappears in a boundary change next election, sooooo … we'll see what they do there.
2.24pm
Victoria Atkins appointed Health Secretary, replacing Steve Barclay who’s moved to Environment Secretary. She's a relative unknown but also considered actually competent. Massive middle finger to Steve Barclay
2.37pm
Laura Trott (formerly in pensions) promoted to Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
2.42pm
Science minister George Freeman resigns.
3.18pm
YouGov conducts a snap poll: is the appointment of David Cameron as Foreign Secretary a good decision or a bad decision?
Good decision: 24%
Bad decision: 38%
Don't know: 38%
So that's going well
3.24pm
Greg Hands is made a business minister after losing the Tory chairman role.
John Glen moves from chief secretary to the Treasury to become the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General.
3.39pm
With Cameron being a Lord now, he’ll be based in the House of Lords rather than the Commons.  The most recent Cabinet Minister to be based in the Lords was former Brexit minister Lord Frost, who did weigh in on the matter:
“[T]hough I was not running a whole Department too. I don’t think it works well to have a lead Cabinet Minister answering questions and defending their Department solely in the Lords. The Lords is not a fully party political environment - nor should it be - and voters are owed proper political scrutiny. In our system, that can only happen in the Commons.”
I cannot believe I am about to say this.
But.
I agree with Lord Frost *spits on floor*
The SNP had already called this out, with MP Stephen Flynn claiming, “The UK is not a serious country.”
4.21pm
Conservative MP Lee Rowley appointed the 16th housing minister in the past 13 years. Even counting David Tennant twice, that's more than all the Doctors Who we've ever had, and that took almost 60 years.
5.16pm
Sky News’s Tamara Cohen reports that Sunak sacked Braverman by phone this morning!  Downing Street says there won’t be any exchange of letters between them - this is almost unheard of. Politics runs on paper trails! Everything happens through formal letters! By phone!
It means we’re denied insight into their differences.  But Cohen reckons we’re likely to hear from Braverman on Wednesday, as the Supreme Court rules on the Rwanda scheme.
6.03pm
Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, former Education Minister, submits no-confidence letter in Rishi Sunak.
It's almost like, in the absence of Dorries, she's decided that someone needs to step up and have a tantrum and that someone might as well be her. It is, actually, an extremely funny letter, as these letters go. Normally they're written with a sort of furious earnestness wrapped in formal language. I presume that Andrea Jenkyns MP, former Education Minister, was aiming for something similar, and the first paragraph manages it. But by the end you sort of start to wonder if this was supposed to be a letter she wrote with her therapist to get her feelings out:
Tumblr media
My favourite line, when pulled in isolation, is "Yes Boris Johnson, the man who won the Conservative Party a massive majority, was unforgivable enough."
Yeah, Andrea babes. You're bang on there.
6.05pm
Esther McVey is appointed as Cabinet Office minister.  Not a full cabinet member, but she will attend cabinet meetings.
This is notable: unlike a lot of today’s appointments, she’s on the right of the party.  Her role will be to represent the government on TV and radio as much as possible, talking about gender/culture/British colonial history issues (i.e. she’s anti-woke and a screaming bigot).
In other words, with Braverman gone, McVey is an offering for the populist right of the party to try to appease them.
Tumblr media
6.15pm
Sunak tweets about the new cabinet, claiming they’ll make “the right decisions for our great country, not the easy ones.”  So it looks like that’s the new slogan, and we're pressing on with austerity
6.27pm
Tim Loughton, a Tory MP on the “One Nation” wing (i.e the David Cameron side) responds to Andrea Jenkyns’s letter of no-confidence by tweeting:
“Where can we submit a letter of no confidence in the Pantomime Dame?”
(It’s Andrea he’s publicly referring to as a pantomime dame there. A lil joke from the Tories for you)
6.31pm
Paul Scully sacked as minister for London. Didn't know that one was a position.
9.43pm
Sunak says that only a two-state solution will allow a new future for Israel/Palestine.  This is, um, not what the Prime Minister of Israel wants.  Who knows whether the Prime Minister of Israel will survive this crisis anyway – but these are big words from Sunak.  Cameron’s influence? Maybe? Interesting either way
10.03pm
And then - PLOT TWIST!!!
According to ITV political editor Robert Peston, a senior government source reveals that Cameron was approached on TUESDAY. 
Which means plans were underway to get rid of Braverman not only before the far-right violence on Saturday, but before her anti-police article on Wednesday.  It seems she lost her job not because of what she said about police after all; but because she claimed homelessness was a lifestyle choice.
Well well.
11.05pm
And the day finishes with Andrea Leadsom back in government (as Under Secretary of State for Health and Social Care) which nobody saw coming!  Pretty demeaning to the other 300 Tory MPs who could have been given this.
The final response from numerous Tories: they are feeling jilted and insulted because David Cameron being brought back when he's NOT EVEN AN MP, RISHI suggests that they themselves are not good enough to be in government.
No one tell them
2K notes · View notes
whatevergreen · 5 months ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
The positives of the UK election result include:
The Conservatives (Tories) gone from government and 100s out of parliament including such scum as Rees-Mogg, '15 minute' former PM Liz Truss, Coffey, Gullis, and Shapps.
There are no Tories left in Wales.
Tumblr media
Former Tory MP Jonathan Gullis is not taking it well.
There's 3 new Green MPs, Diane Abbot retained her seat, Jeremy Corbyn retained his seat and is joined by four other pro-Gaza independent MPs.
Jonathan Ashworth (Labour) lost his seat to one of the pro-Gaza independents, Shockat Adam.
Right-wing Labour MPs Jess Phillips and Wes Streeting came within a few hundred votes of almost losing their seats to pro-Gaza independents.
The Paisley's (DUP) are gone from Northern Ireland (though his TUV replacement isn't any better)
Anti-trans campaigner Posie Parker lost her deposit (only 196 votes). The trans candidate Sophie Molly running for the same seat won more votes than Parker.
Also, some key anti-trans MPs have lost their seats:
Tumblr media
The Reform Party (pretty much Nazis) did not win the 13 seats they were initially projected to win based on the exit polls (and some of the worst estimates before the election had them gaining up to 60+ seats)
The dubious Workers Party GB got nowhere, and lost their only seat (goodbye Galloway).
-
The negative results:
The SNP lost most of their seats.
The Reform Party (basically just Nazis) won 4 seats. This includes millionaire and Trump lover Nigel Farage, now MP for Clacton-on-Reich. So the frog faced fascist is going to parliament (apologies to actual frogs) after decades of failing to get in.
And it's no good anyone pretending that it's only 4 seats, it doesn't matter: the really disturbing part is that Reform - a party led by xenophobes, racists, and homophobes - received just over 4 million votes nationwide.
Taking down Reform and Farage needs to be an antifascist priority.
105 notes · View notes