bojo is king, brexit is on, stuff is fvcked, tomorrow starts here -- new govt new thread new battle

There is either a complacency over the NHS or maybe a lot of the public that have been let down over decades of deindustrialisation aren't bothered enough about free healthcare when so much else has crumbled

A bit of both but probably more the former - a mixture of 'they wouldn't dare touch it / they wouldn't dare touch something that affects me' with not being able to imagine what it would be like with it gone. Complacency coupled with inability to imagine.

Also I am thinking the manager vs care worker dynamic

Its broader and less literal than that, the managers don't have to be in your place of work, the managers are everywhere, its the managers that made it that there's no one answers when you call the bank anymore. Its the managers who fucked up the last place you worked. and the one before that

the Red Wall seats are probably gone forever now is defeatist nonsense.

Red wall seats are far from gone, but prob need to differentiate between Red Wall seats (Preston, Blackburn) and RedGrey seats (Blackpool)

£3.6 bn Towns Fund?

thats goes straight into the hands of......bureaucrats and expenses

Appreciate the sensibilities of the creatures of the night may be a bit different, but lol, what the fuck Rentoul

It’s simply incredible that we have a national press that covers the full range of permissible opinion from “Immediately deport the foreigners” all the way to “Don’t call the man deporting the foreigners a baboon”, and nobody involved thinks this is weird or bad. pic.twitter.com/eSsDKW3MAc

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) January 15, 2020

"thats goes straight into the hands of......bureaucrats and expenses"

good job tbf - i find the prospect of improving/adding infrastructure to this shithole horrifying. it's shithole status is its main USP!

Also I forgot the bit where Corbyn literally held up a document saying the NHS was on the table in any US trade deal. The result was that people didn't believe him, or didn't give enough of a shit to let it affect their vote.

To paraphrase the Laura K response - 'sure, the document says what it says, but why would the government do anything that was unpopular?'. One thing that seems quite apparent is that it's extremely difficult for the left to turn fear into votes without the apparatus of the tabloid press behind them. Where a huge amount of the culture war stuff seems to have been effective is in seeding the idea that the left (or 'the youth ' in general) complains about everything and exaggerates how bad the situation is. The more focus there is on climate change, excess deaths under austerity, the danger to the NHS, the risks of no-deal Brexit, etc, the more you're going to run into a brick wall of 'well, i'm sure it won't be as bad as you're making out'.

Exciting news for @BooksSphere as the @LittleBrownUK imprint is set to publish a fiction début from @tom_watson —the former deputy leader of the Labour Party has penned a political thriller called The House, with co-writer @RobertsonImogen. More here: https://t.co/mJCiyQGHI0 pic.twitter.com/GTh3tsa9d9

— The Bookseller (@thebookseller) January 15, 2020

you spoil us Tom. I'm only just getting to grips with your diet book - it's all I've been eating since 5 minutes ago!

I guess he’d know all about ambition and betrayal.

he could have probably done with paying a bit more attention at the machiavelli finishing school for all he succeeded in gaining from 10 years of continuous plotting + backstabbing!

The more focus there is on climate change, excess deaths under austerity, the danger to the NHS, the risks of no-deal Brexit, etc, the more you're going to run into a brick wall of 'well, i'm sure it won't be as bad as you're making out'.

From people who would secretly like it to be a bit like that because they resent their parents for admonishing them as spoilt because they didn't fight in the war

Can't miss a target if you abolish a target. Christ. https://t.co/NXyGonbczH

— James B (@piercepenniless) January 15, 2020

Targets are made by managers and bureaucrats innit

I didn't realise how bad that had got till last year when I spent 2 and a half hours waiting for an ambulance that never came after alex had a bad epileptic fit and fell into a wall. If it wasn't for people bringing out a blanket and a cushion and an off duty nurse giving us a lift home it would have been a much more terrible experience.

Sure sure thing:

NEW: Lisa Nandy will strongly defend freedom of movement in a speech this afternoon, saying: "We should have been bold enough to defend free movement, and the opportunities and benefits it brings... I believe in free movement."

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) January 15, 2020

This crown ain't big enough for the both of Rigby and Kberg

@BethRigby
What is fascinating (and impressive) about Johnson - and reflected in his big election win - is the amount of clear water he’s put between his administration and the past 10 years of Conservative rule. The strategy is to always look forward, never look back #PMQs
12:09 PM · Jan 15, 2020

more reason that the UK is not the US - there is essentially no mainstream British publication which would be bold enough to say e. g. "the BBC has it in for Corbyn", despite ample evidence over four years. but one CNN debate and this is what The Nation runs with https://t.co/9QYFAozqqo

— ld 🐐 (@l_a_dunn) January 15, 2020

Jfc

Labour leadership contender Jess Phillips has called for a citizens’ assembly on how Britain should tackle climate change, to help restore trust in democracy. The public should be more directly involved in determining the policies Britain should adopt to tackle the climate crisis

— AirportWatch (@AirportWatch) January 15, 2020

i think it's gonna take more than that to restore faith in democracy tbh

Yeah we definitely need more posh focus groups that'll sort it out!

Maybe it's time for a comtade's assembly.. You're fired!

Citizen’s assembly worked in Ireland and I assume that’s where they got the idea from, but it wouldn’t work in this country.

referenda seem to work in Ireland as well...

that citizens assembly in full

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.dailymail.co.uk%2Fi%2Fnewpix%2F2018%2F05%2F14%2F16%2F4C3AA76D00000578-5727397-image-a-20_1526313276868.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

Checking in on that focus group and...

Christ pic.twitter.com/ZhnMLdRe3P

— How Upsetting (@HowUpsetting) January 13, 2020

Public participation in decision-making is potentially very good and important but this feels more like ‘i don’t have any policy ideas to share’.

speaker 1: we need to tackle climate change by closing our borders and taking care of ourselves first and foremost
speaker 2: yes, it's got to be machine guns at dover immediately

it would be ok if you could believe for a second that the section of people used are truly diverse and representative and would actually be listened to if they said what the fucking itinerant all-listening melt twats actually didn't want to hear!

increased democratic accountability is good, asking people questions about issues they don't really understand is not good, asking questions not predicated on "if we don't do something radical we're fucked" is...well, anyway, we're fucked.

Yeah, Citizen's Assemblies are good if there's a general feeling of "you and I disagree but in the larger picture we're all in this together" but I don't see that in the UK as much as Ireland where we're all in it against the Brits

Time left in chapter: the rest of your life.

why don't we start a crowdfunder to acquire enough highly enriched uranium to build a working nuclear device and detonate it under my sofa at 11pm on january 31st so i never need to see facile remainiac bullshit like this ever again

Why don’t we start a crowdfunder to hire the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to play the EU anthem ‘Ode to Joy’ on a boat on the Thames and light up the London Eye with the EU flag at 11pm on January 31st as a touché to the Big Ben bongs for Brexit. pic.twitter.com/x2ulqdZXzr

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) January 14, 2020

.@lisanandy how come the website https://t.co/JEwUYZTwFx redirects to yours? Not a great look to be stealing to Tories dodgy election tactics tbh 🤷🏻‍♀️

— Fianna Hornby (@fiannahornby) January 14, 2020

Nandy playing by the dirty and low tory book of no rules.

DAVID GRAEBER: The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers!
PARTIES OF ADMINISTRATORS: *wriggles its way out of the jam even more easily*
GRAEBER: Ah! Well. Nevertheless,

just passed mike gapes in the street he appears to be growing a beard

Sad to hear he had to lay off his personal stylist, but times are hard

vivid video presents BEARDED GAPES vol 4

😢

He's gotta grow a baldy ponytail now as well, he'd look the biz!

Zarah Sultana made her maiden speech today, and she’s not melting.

Five more years of Tory rule is almost enough to make me despair.

But we can't despair.

Because if we do, then the climate emergency will become the climate catastrophe.

In my maiden speech, I called for a Green New Deal to escape disaster capitalism – and build socialism. pic.twitter.com/LtcxBPk3KF

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) January 15, 2020

Now, I know that the convention for maiden speeches is to avoid saying anything that Members opposite will find very disagreeable, but I cannot do that, because my generation has only ever faced a future of rising rents, frozen wages and diminishing opportunities. For my whole adult life, I have only known Tory Governments who wage war on working-class communities like mine, cutting our services, underfunding our schools and hospitals, and saddling me and my generation with tens of thousands of pounds of student debt.

yeah that was a hell of a debut.

she doesn't sound ready to melt at all ✊

I looked on her Wikipedia page and I died when I read she was born in 1993.

She's positively ancient then, only 20 years younger than me!

hopefully the lame-o membership might take note and notice the difference between a genuine commitment to socialism and not just playing a game to be a fucking trojan horse.

sorry I'd managed about 30 odd hours without slagging off the great white melt... small steps first!

New @Survation /@LabourList poll for Labour’s next leader:

Rebecca Long Bailey - 42%
Keir Starmer - 37%

After 2nd prefs:

Rebecca Long Bailey 51%, Keir Starmer 49%.

Given RLB campaign v late in starting that’s hugely impressive. People not blown away by Starmer.

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) January 15, 2020

sorry to retweet this nobber but I just saw some good news!

fuck me, zarah sultana knows how to make an entrance - what a speech

I reckon she talks about socialism with a genuine belief in it, some of these fuckers in the PLP spit the word out with a forced grin on their face, but they despise everything it represents.

R. Long-Bailey: 42%
K. Starmer: 37%
J. Phillips: 9%
L. Nandy: 7%
E. Thornberry: 1%

feeling this tonight, but how was there such a surge when she hasn't even done owt?

She hasn’t declared at the time, Andrew Fisher’s take on it worth a read.

(Then again most betting at this point in 2015 put it as a two-horse race between Burnham and Cooper)

*shudders*

Came here to post about Zarah Sultana, am gratified. You feel like some hope is justified with entrants like her in the party. And then you remember how many of the PLp want to inflict Jess Phillips on us.
But the cajones of Sultana. Outloud mentioning climate fascism, and the right solution international worker solidarity to it, to the benches opposite. Brave doesn't even begin. Heroine.

yeah. show me a word of that speech that's wrong!