ForenSix Opposition - Politics in the Soon To Be Former UK in Autumn 2020

yeah nice moves from Rayner

Rayner: What was the top priority for the cabinet this weekend? Restoring grouse shooting. It's good news for people like the PM's friend who paid for a luxury Christmas getaway to a Caribbean Island and funded his leadership campaign and just so happens to own two grouse estates

— Simple Politics (@easypoliticsUK) September 16, 2020

Guess now we know why we’re not seeing much of her.

Angela Rayner says she has a message from someone called Keir. He cannot go to work today because his family needed a test.

In new World Beating System news...

With some Londoners being offered local coronavirus tests only by entering an Aberdeen postcode, Matt Hancock has said that "people should take this seriously and not game the system"#MattHancock #TestandTrace #testing #Twickenham #governmenthttps://t.co/F4SR7pUrFp

— PublicTechnology (@PublicTech) September 16, 2020

love to game the system by doing a 1,100 mile round trip to get a covid test

It's gaming the system to pretend you live 500 miles away so it will offer you a test down the road, apparently.

Nev still speaking truth to power

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/sep/15/neville-southall-everton-keeper-boris-johnson-jk-rowling-loose-cannons?CMP=share_btn_tw

a genuine hero tbh

he's no Peter Shitlon!

I'm predicting a surge in the polling for Labour this and then when Keith the Cooler comes out of quarantine it'll dip back down to minus a few points behind.

Nev was always a real one tbf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XadLaAYKol0

"let's just level the playing field a bit"

(swings a lump hammer at Owen's right knee)

We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit.

Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period. https://t.co/Ecu9jPrcHL

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 16, 2020

Voting for Joe Biden now

A locked account I follow makes the excellent point that ofc the US doesn’t care that much about a trade deal with the UK, they don’t need to except as an extractive partner.

Going to need multiple ukpols threads at this rate

I’m hearing from a well-connected person that government now thinks, in absence of testing, there are 38,000 infections per day. Chris Whitty is advising PM for a two week national lockdown.

— Anthony Costello (@globalhlthtwit) September 16, 2020

A locked account I follow makes the excellent point that ofc the US doesn’t care that much about a trade deal with the UK, they don’t need to except as an extractive partner.

― scampo italiano (gyac), Wednesday, 16 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

We both follow this account too

Just stalking calmly as I normally do

👍👍👍

A good candidate for fucking off into the sun, here

Hey @joebiden would you like to discuss the Good Friday agreement? It is also called the Belfast Agreement so it doesn't offend both traditions. Did you actually know that? I was born in NI and I'm a Catholic and a Unionist. Here if you need help.

— Conor Burns (@ConorBurnsUK) September 16, 2020

Anthony Costello, thank you for your opposition.

I've been told by another insider I respect that Chris Whitty does not support a 2 week lockdown, so I'm pleased to correct the record.

— Anthony Costello (@globalhlthtwit) September 17, 2020

Also lol nothing matters

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/chris-grayling-ports-brexit-ferries_uk_5f625651c5b6ba9eb6e8ab0d

'No Ships' Chris Grayling To Be Paid £100,000 A Year To Advise Ports Company

Also the Mail putting the boot in (though this may partly be because the Sun has a several-page interview with Boris)

MAIL: Boris: we’ve failed #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/jEgWcHkEzj

— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) September 16, 2020

Grayling does have experience (of downing the odd bottle of tawny) tbf

That Mail headline suggests a bigger problem for the Tories, in that Johnson isn't just failing at delivering proper testing infrastructure, or failing to contain the rona. It's that he's failing to deliver for garden variety affluent middle-aged Tory voters what they want most of all from government - the ability to go about their lives in a perfectly atomised self-centred little bubble without anything really getting in the way. (That was part of the promise of Brexit as well, I'm sure).

Those people will probably turn out and vote Tory anyway but you probably don't want to piss off too many of them for the mood music alone.

It also suggests why the government might take a fundamentally dangerous approach to announcing a second lockdown.

Use of the phrase 'Good Friday', referring to the day that Jesus Christ was crucified before rising again, the most important event in the Christian calendar, may offend some traditions of Christianity.

it does bring back painful memories of the pubs not being open tbf

Ah now, we've abandoned that too, in the spirit of reconciliation and also because we really wanted to.

Why you gotta play that song so loud?
Because we want to! Because we want to!
Why you always run around in crowds?
Because we want to! Because we want to!

good to hear someone from the shadow cabinet calling for UC to be scrapped, you wouldn't be sure they were unequivocally opposed to fucking anything from the way forensick kieth talks.

are the pubs finally open on Good Friday? thank fuck for that

Christmas Day too, godlessness imo.

Ofcom has just told the 24,500 people who complained about a Black Lives Matter tribute on Britain's Got Talent to (I paraphrase) piss off because there's nothing to complain about. Well, they've taken eight pages to explain their reasoning but basically that's the gist of it.

— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) September 17, 2020

good job Ofcom

the real possibility of a pub lockdown over the Christmas period finally dawned on me the other day, i look forward to BAD THOUGHTS TRIGGER WARNING contemplating suicide along with the hundreds of thousands of other people living alone who won't be able to go see their families or indeed anybody else

Wasn't the Diversity thing the classic only a handful of people complained until the Mail (or whoever) ran an outrage piece about it a few days later and then thousands complained, most of whom probably didn't even see it?

As it happens:

Very few people complained following the original broadcast. Instead 96% of complaints about the show followed news articles *about the handful of original complaints*. Perhaps we need to stop outsourcing our culture war neuroses to television regulators on a weekly basis.

— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) September 17, 2020

Jim Davidson didn't like it and i wish i didn't know that

i'd be comfortable with everybody who made a complained being banned from watching TV for the rest of their lives

oh no

Boris's critics were right all along, says Toby Younghttps://t.co/8nw5m2tpbm

— The Spectator (@spectator) September 17, 2020

ET TU TOBE?

I feel like the Spectator and the Mail might struggle to come to the conclusion that if all these people were right in the first place, then maybe they were...?

NEW: Flutter, the gambling group that owns Paddy Power has hired former Labour deputy leader (and anti gambling campaigner) Tom Watson. Scoop from @alicemhancock https://t.co/STp02QYerj

— Matthew Garrahan (@MattGarrahan) September 17, 2020

At least it isn't bagging a column for The Observer

And I think to myself... what a wonderful world...

Flutter Entertainment, the betting group behind Paddy Power and Sky Bet, has appointed former Labour party deputy leader Tom Watson as an adviser to its board as the company seeks to improve its treatment of problem gambling.

Mr Watson, a vocal anti-gambling campaigner, will guide the company on best practice in its shops, marketing, customer service and anti-money laundering procedures.

Flutter said the final details were still being confirmed but that it had been in conversations with Mr Watson since late spring and that he would be paid a retainer of “less than six figures”.

lads i'd be happy to advise you about how not to make money out of people's misery for less than six figures

maybe start by not calling yourselves Flutter

The ultimate Matt Zarb-Cousin news story.

Less than six figures !!!???

£1,234,500 a year

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-54188766

Limiting pubs to 17 hour days. That'll do it.

Here’s the full clip of Jacob Rees-Mogg saying people speaking out about the difficulty of getting a Covid test should stop the “endless carping”. pic.twitter.com/vhUlimENa1

— Ben Kentish LBC (@BenKentish) September 17, 2020

Cummings will have this guy locked in a cupboard again if he isn't careful.

964 covid deaths confirmed today, it's a runaway train at the moment

Put this in my EU poll but we need it here too:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/31/the-left-brexit-economic-uk

While I do buy the remarks of the EU as a neolib castle that needs to change, and the slowness of the economic response from the EU (seen less about the vaccine program) there is not a word about Scotland or NI, or whether the EU will just leave the UK to its own devices (such as finance, huge assumptions that it will always be fine). The write-up on manufacturing and free movemnt is amazing, as if these were not part of UK policy directions (EU migration as just the latest set of migrations of low-wage labour from the likes of the Caribbean), and whether this will just not mean another set of shoddy migrations in a guest worker style scheme for farmers and the like.

It is true the left will need to re-orient policy that is more than just re-join though.

New International now!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EqliGDgXMAI4Ujw?format=jpg&name=900x900

that Joylon Windmill is so much better than the LOTO these days is not all down to some epiphany he had battering a fox to death in a kimono

mind like with Lady Caroline, people like this fucker will often posture left when it's so easy to outflank Labour. But the minute a left-wing leader shows up - they will show what they are really about!

Is Jolyon a hoax that has different people running the account or does he just occasionally spin a big wheel containing random behavioural prompts like "libel Owen Jones" and "boast about battering a fox to death"?

why not try living in a windmill

Really can't see what Britain gets out of this? Sounds like a maaaajor concession- the kind which were happy to wave guns around to prevent. Only beneficiaries seem to be the Spanish workers faced with job losses from a hard border. UK interest doesn't seem to have come into it? https://t.co/Fv7aia4mNT

— Tom Munday (@tommundaycs) December 31, 2020

I'd forgotten about that big old Gibraltar question and how it will pan out, so did the govt it seems but tbf you can't argue with the result.

xp delayed lol!

11PM - I can hear fireworks being let off by what I assume are Leave voting wankers.

It’s New Year’s Eve though

The fireworks went off at 11PM exactly, continued for five minutes, then stopped.

Happy new year one and all

deeply fucked up country when you think about it pic.twitter.com/JVLAXDOXLk

— c (@c15gg) January 1, 2021

Disaster capitalism and disaster medicine in one night.

Very concerning email sent out to staff at the Royal London Hospital this evening, detailing the extreme pressure the NHS is under.

It warns “we are now in disaster medicine mode. We are no longer providing high standard critical care, because we cannot.”

Via @JujuliaGrace. pic.twitter.com/C9LAcPIhQd

— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) December 31, 2020

for-n-sick in our mess age

Yeah it's time for a new UK Pol thread with extra sovereignty

caution: dyed-in-the-wool lexit opinion incoming but something to think about?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/31/the-left-brexit-economic-uk

There's been stuff to think about all down the line, tho I don't believe the "opportunities" outweigh what's been lost. There could certainly have been much better negotiated Brexits once the referendum happened, some of which might even have been better than the status quo.

The EU itself isn't all that, this is the main point.

The Imperial report on the new UK B117 strain is out. Very concerning findings, that highlight why we need to act on this *now*. These findings suggest that the situation within the UK is likely to get much worse than it is now. Here's why-

Thread.

— Deepti Gurdasani (@dgurdasani1) December 31, 2020

Many on the remainer left accept the EU has its faults, but they fear that Brexit will be the start of something worse: slash and burn deregulation that will make Britain a nastier place to live.

This, though, assumes that Britain will have rightwing governments in perpetuity

it will tho

always has

thats right

ok guys lock her up

Free as a Dodo: UK Politics Welcomes 2021