Ne'er get thee stitched til Booris be ditched: UK General Election 2019

Today I'm feeling cautiously upbeat. Thursday night I'm gonna go watch our Hannah play Aladdin, and then i'm either gonna hang out with friends for the results or sit at home, drinking either way, with the Disintegration Loops on.

- healthcare isn’t free in Ireland

How so? (I'm just curious, I know absolutely nothing about this.)

I also know nothing but I imagine that you have to pay for it

Yes but there's a spectrum with the US at the shameless other end.

Well, prescriptions aren’t free unless you pay over €134(?) a month for a family. It’s a big different from each one costing €9 if you pay here. And the GP costs €50-€60 a throw to visit. I was on my parents’ family plan for insurance the last time I lived there so not sure how much I’d have to pay there now.

Also it was pretty shocking to me when I went to get the pill the first time & it was free. That’s a big difference as well.

Is that the case even for lower income brackets?

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/ireland-has-third-highest-quality-of-life-in-world-says-un-report-1.4110646

Canada isn't in the top 10 therefore that list is invalid.

Cost of healthcare is partly offset by free water and free cheese iirc.

that sweet welfare Galtee

i'm stuck in the middle of two massive essays on lolsome xmas deadline so i'm not going to unload my full thoughts abt the badness of the BBC in eg the 80s and 90s except to say that it was structurally very different pre-birt and in *certain* ways absolutely repaid the trust in it that had been built up -- it was an org with its own deep reaches of institutional knowledge and genuine expertise, not exactly independent politically but significantly hard to scare or nudge into bullshit. it was also riven with its own unexamined and exploitable problems *cough* savile *cough*, as englamoured as the rest of the high media classes by e.g. the SDP and as opaque and confusedly hostile e.g. to the miners.

the brit "revolution" shattered its institutional inertia -- an inertia which was combination good and bad, but at least meant that a current affairs doc made from a challenging perspective (eg "death on the rock") would once broadcast be backed up with all its serious mission-to-inform weight. afterwards such a prog would have to be pitched by an independent production company, with internal editorial making changes and demands upfront, if they weren't just saying no upfront. the "institutional weight" of trust now switched to the opaque decisions of insiders (often ambitious young uns), and absolutely away from the independent production company (who could be jettisoned as partisans whenever this was needful). hence the ugly mess when andrew lol gilligan confronted the blairite argument for war: director general greg dyke defended gilligan -- who for once in his worthless life was more or less correct -- and was himself jettisoned. but this debacle was the endpoint of birtisation not the startpoint of a decline in quality.

tldr: just ask an old-school bennite* abt the bbc in the 70s and 80s, they're not fans! the idea of a state broadcaster is very vulnerable to the bad kind of capture! the technocratic ideals behind it are (a) bismarckian and thus (b) culturally and politically problematic! but it was being significantly degraded throughout the 90s, until gradually most of the good elements (of the political affairs reaches) were sold off or corroded away. it still does good work outside political affairs but the corrosion is everywhere

*i'm no fan of benn for various reasons, even tho he looks better now than ever -- but he had started political life as a bushy-tailed bismarckian technocrat himself and much of his latterday politics was about distancing himself from this, not always entirely unhypocritically

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/ireland-has-third-highest-quality-of-life-in-world-says-un-report-1.4110646🕸

This thread provides receipts on the BBC’s eagerness to platform fascists dating back decades

working class antifascists in the 1930s banner-dropped BBC headquarters and gatecrashed their broadcasts in protest at how the BBC helped to facilitate the rise of Mosley, while ignoring or obstructing working class struggles. https://t.co/gwt4Kn3bex

— michael (@Sisyphusa) May 10, 2019

Cost of healthcare is partly offset by free water and free cheese iirc.

not that invalidates your arguments mark which i'm in broad agreement with, and i might be misunderstanding the point, but "Death on the Rock" was ITV, World In Action iirc

you could argue that the BBC wouldn't/couldn't have produced and broadcast that particular investigation because even in the pre-Birt years it would've been to vulnerable to pressure from the Thatcher government and the spooks in ways that ITV *possibly* wasn't? trying to remember who did most of the work covering the facts of the Belgrano sinking

Boris Johnson isn’t a leader. He’s a coward. He can’t even stand up for himself, let alone stand up for Britain. pic.twitter.com/OKcHdKQUg2

— The Labour Party (@UKLabour) December 10, 2019

i mean i actually think the bbc was distinctly less terrible in the 60s and 70s on this particular point than it had been in the 30s: the post-war (lol pre-boomer) intake had had a very specific political education by virtue of their war years

as an index of the contradictory complexities: for years their US correspondent was a fellow called charles wheeler -- who was really very good on the civil rights movement and race in the US, and the anti-war movement and that era of the culture wars, very clearly very sceptical of washington's bullshit about itself and what the absurd cadre of US lobby correspondents would say was the thing to say

except wheeler was also boris johnson's father in law

x-post lol yes yr right, i guess i'm thinking of some other ireland-related mid-80s current affairs doc which MR seamus milne's dad and then-BBCDG alistair m was screamed at and monstered for

(haha i think you've corrected me on this same point before also, my filing system *points to stupid head* is bad not good these days)

don't really know what this means but it seems good

Literally every Labour office i've been in the last week they've said "we thought we'd just be on GOTV but we've got so many volunteers we're doing another round of don't knows today" #ge2019

— Sarah Jaffe (@sarahljaffe) December 10, 2019

gotv - get out the vote, enough volunteers to go beyond that hand have a proper plan of action

focussing on don't knows is i guess more labour intensive but more productive to swinging vote shares

Normal country

The woman who originated the false claim that the picture of Jack Willment-Barr was staged… now says her Facebook account was hacked, she is not a nurse, and she has no political allegiance: https://t.co/YMzuSUjEHQ

— hern (@alexhern) December 10, 2019

lol mark the fact i've got no idea that i might've corrected you before is also consistent with the state of my memory, obviously 80s TV was bad for us

aww hell yeah the brexit party have their own mayor pete dance

#TheBrexitParty flash mob got there first #Sunderland https://t.co/jvswxxPQSc pic.twitter.com/EJfH6XUiUX

— Ajay Jagota 🏃‍♂️ (@ajayjagota) December 8, 2019

National Service for them and only them

they're well coordinated for fascists

god more than ever this week Jme's "Pricks" really ought to be on Youtube

did anyone see the brexit party exposé on channel 4 news last night? lovely stuff

sarah jaffe tweet rhymes w/dan hancox’s report from the 17 election where they found they had so many canvassers they just printed the electoral register. the time round - impressionistically it seems like there have been MORE canvassers + a more offensive operation

the red centrist telephone’s model now predicting a LAB minority govt

red centrist telephone is an mi5 misinformation campaign, sorry to report

"why did you sit idly by and do nothing, imago"

"Here are the marginals that need you most.
Tell us where you’re going, so we can ensure people are sent to marginals that still need more support.

Harlow
18.9 mi"

i'm contributing to the online war ;)

pinefox was campaigning really near me tbf! if Lewisham East or Eltham is lost i will go about in sackcloth

sad to hear the red centrist telephone has been cancelled

The Chapo hosts were apparently out canvassing for John Cruddas in Dagenham - I can’t imagine that went particularly well but good luck to them.

loool

Their UK content is exceptionally terrible but nice to see them doing a praxis

worth campaigning in both lewisham east and eltham

I don't know what I'm basing this on but I'm reasonably sure there are a higher proportion of undecided voters out there than in pretty much any previous election in my lifetime. It would explain the variance in the polls and why any commentator citing "the data" is likely to make a fool of themselves.

I live in Lewisham East and I have to say I'd be pretty surprised if it returned anything other than a Labour MP. Obviously it's worth campaigning there nonetheless.

i've heard quotes of "millions" of undecided voters, which seems boggling and i find v hard to believe but yeah i think there are a lot of milquetoasts who don't deserve a vote still wobbling around out there

The Chapo hosts were apparently out canvassing for John Cruddas in Dagenham - I can’t imagine that went particularly well but good luck to them.

dommy p's favourite uk politician, fact fans

my main thing is I can't even imagine them saying "cruddas" without chuckling

can't believe chapo have been melts all this time, smdh

keep digging you fucks

Cancer patients do not “really care” about longer waiting times for treatment because survival rates are on the rise, a Conservative candidate has claimed.

Chris Philp provoked gasps of astonishment when he also claimed that missed waiting targets – the figures are the worst on record – are because of the success in persuading people to come forward.

“The reason why waiting times for diagnosis are going up is because we are encouraging more people to get themselves screened, which is actually a good thing,” said the aide to the justice secretary.

He then added: “The outcomes, cancer survival rates, which is what people really care about – am I going to survive this terrible illness - they’re going up.”

Mr Philp also claimed the Conservatives were able to promise billions more for the NHS because “the economy is strong” – on the day it was revealed there was no economic growth for three months in a row.

one of the reasons we must never go back is that Cruddas was toward the left of the party in the post-Brown wreckage, this is how far Labour has come since 2015 thank fuck

very often "undecided" means "actually i *do* p much know who i will vote for but i'm not going to pre-own myself semi-publicly here to YOU as this or that Ultimate Expose™ is playing out in the media"

= "i don't have the firepower to rubbish this story which i suspect you will ask me about, so i'm saying I DON'T KNOW even tho i actually do"

really hoping that all this awful media coverage is generating a Shy Labour effect

Hoping to get a decent estimate of the number of first-time Labour votes within days of the GE.

Would like to think there is a million or more in there which could not only counter the drift from red to blue from Leavers and the Remainers branding themselves as "AbC" for whatever dubious reasons they muster, but surpass it. Obviously this may well not be reflected in the seats (ie Labour's overall voteshare increasing on 2017 slightly without getting them much closer to even 300 seats).