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

They've buried the lede in that article that they are prepared to pay up to £280k specifically to get Osborne. There are people running much smaller, shittier, less complex and less politically fraught media organisations than the BBC for much more than £100k although not for three days work a week. Osborne was probably earning more than that at the Evening Standard.

But the job of the BBC Chairman isn't to run the BBC - it's to oversee the board, ensure editorial independence, and they can appoint and dismiss the Director General as well. It's largely ceremonial but also very powerful, and a job for which Osborne by his very nature is fundamentally unqualified.

This salary itself isn't about getting the best candidates at all, it's about attracting someone who can cement Tory hegemony over the BBC - a fact that should come as a surprise to precisely nobody.

It would also have the added bonus of keeping him out of Parliament where he might prove bothersome to the government.

More on the outsourcing of Government, this us on food parcels:

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/10/208m-food-box-rip-off-private-outsource-government-contract-covid-corona-virus

Does Labour have a position on the government pulling out of Brexit negotiations? I haven’t seen any of the senior ppl mention it but presumably they must have somewhere?

the position is "please vote for Kier"

Keir Starmer is not a leader of courage - but he may soon lead the UK
Peter Oborne

yeah.. but naw. Not even by default mate!

government of national unity featuring the Tory backbenches, Kieth and the usual suspects

nah he's still too human rights adjacent to ever be forgiven by the Bufton Tuftons

4 years ago I was doing trollies at Sainsburys on a Monday night. I left, worked hard and got a degree from the University of Sheffield. Now I’m doing trollies at Waitrose on a Friday night. Never give up 💫💯💎🛒 pic.twitter.com/ikCevoDVCy

— tom de silva (@t0m_deSilv4) October 16, 2020

tweet of the day is this one

That's good.

Peter Oborne seems uncannily sound these days.

Oborne is an old-fashioned Liberal Christian isn't he? Current gov committing every sin in the book

pic.twitter.com/ZiOlrNLPRJ

— Cynical Bathtub (@cynical_bathtub) October 17, 2020

yeah nice try Cllr Laurie Burton

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EkjKSEIW0AE4aZv?format=jpg&name=900x900

erm.. Telegraph hack political cartoonist otm tbf.

I thought farts died until I zoomed in.

dignity to the left of me.. farts to the to the righ...

CHILDREN

There is a probably an anti-lockdown agenda being angled at there that I would deeply disagree with, the cartoonist is bad obv, but the concept of a useless piece of human garbage as LOTO is otm. that it was re-tweeted by Hitch tells it's own story obv!

Feel good story of the year so far

Coronavirus: Tony Blair denies breaking COVID rules after trip to US https://t.co/AkzM5n1Pdm

— SkyNews (@SkyNews) October 17, 2020

"special dispensation" the fucking frequent flyers club have been the Rona's best friend right from the start.

He probably went skiing in February in Italy too.

The 9 voters in Stoke that Keir is going to win back pic.twitter.com/NnchuhlP6T

— the spectre haunting europe 👻📕 (@sheevpaIps) October 17, 2020

Andrew Adonis reminds me of Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes, tumbling off a waterfall, locked forever in a fatal embrace. Except Jeremy Corbyn hasn't noticed. https://t.co/TRJ5l6DR6m

— Jo Maugham QC (@JolyonMaugham) October 17, 2020

lol even the windmill has noticed how shit some of the Blairite debris is next to corbyn

The Mail on Sunday reports that an official inquiry has confirmed that MPs were drinking in a Commons bar beyond the nationwide 10pm curfew. Health Secretary Matt Hancock has reportedly refused to answer 30 times whether he was among the group flouting the rules.

The fox beater only really cared about Corbyn as far as his response to Brexit was concerned and even he eventually admitted it was proving counterproductive.

Adonis is a clown but he's also a highly partisan player in an internal Labour fight that most of the country doesn't especially care about right now.

Also for real the ongoing obsession with what MPs do and don't say on Twitter, as it it were the full encapsulation of all their political beliefs and priorities, is just another reason to nuke the entire site from orbit.

Twitter centrists still obsessed with Corbyn cos their boy isn’t doing well and we all know it? Well I never. Fuck Adonis, absolute joke of a man.

Through twitter you get to see how MPs vote and what they say about it. That can be useful if you take a look at this country's garbage politics but yes I don't care what Joylon or Adonis or that class of people have to say about anything.

at least through the medium of the twitter website I now know Rachel Reeves is "smashing it/knocking it out of the park" on Marr without spoiling my morning by watching it.

Twitter on Sundays is the absolute worst. I don’t know if it’s lack of news, too many Sunday shows or what, but without fail it is hideous.

"everyday is like sunday" not a complaint but a (fash) promise

Lol erm there is not much on Sundays beyond these Sunday shows. It's when Parliament is off and not making horrible laws so idk it's ok to me.

Vicky Blake, UCU: 'I think it has to be about fees, and that is disgusting. The longer universities can keep the students there, the more money they are entitled to. It is grim when you patch together what is probably behind all this.'

— automnia (@aut_omnia) October 18, 2020

The picture of RLB above reminds me that I like RLB.

Sunday:

pic.twitter.com/OZSxNdxJQX

— dinosaur (@dinoman_j) October 18, 2020

xp

I still feel angry that the RLB campaign didn't seem to realise they weren't in some ordinary leadership contest, and they were tamely losing a life or death struggle against the right wing of the party and ceding control back to them for decades. They should have played as dirty as Kier did while he was playing at being a soft-left unity candidate even though everything in his recent history revealed he was a reactionary tory cunt to the core. They might have still lost but at least they could have gone down fighting. I agreed with Perry Anderson's take on this (with the added big Marxist professor words!).

my main consolation is she'd still have lost. a ton of Crumhorn's left following are desperate to believe in narratives of reasonableness

Happy Sunday

Are you joking me. The Covid symptom tracker app has partnered with Samantha Cameron's fashion brand to try to sell me silk face masks? Is this a sick joke pic.twitter.com/irQF9HWSzs

— Ana Kinsella (@anakinsella) October 17, 2020

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EkmDd1EWMAEeKAk?format=jpg&name=large

We're gonna need such big gulags

lol in what way is Tory campaigner, Ian "bestiality is best" Austin in any way like a centre-left pm from New-Zealand?

Knowing which MPs individual politics journos belong to is really helpful in trying to work out what’s actually going on at any given point, so the guy has done us a favour here. pic.twitter.com/c5nlrLrnbt

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) October 18, 2020

I bet Creasy was one of the top leakers during the Corbyn era. Great when MP's claim to be on your side then undermine their own party by leaking to right-wing rags purely for reasons of factional spite and selfish careerism.

Creasy, Watson, Hodge, Chuka. And that’s just to Guardian/Obs.

“A national two-minute doorstep silence.” pic.twitter.com/Zwk7wgxrnQ

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) October 18, 2020

if it wasn't bad enough seeing that goofy aryan brat in a fake RAF uniform now this preposterous coordinated nationalism from the Mirror apparently getting cross party support. what next? melt down all the copper pipes in yr house to make a giant tom moore statue on every suburban street.

my most gammony neighbour's just had his flag* replaced in time, he'll be scanning the doorsteps for traitors

* it had become increasingly tattered over the past few years and was basically in shreds. I was beginning to think he'd abandoned it and was making some kind of point on the state of his once beloved Union

I have to agree with Calzino about RLB's campaign. I still need to read the Perry Anderson article properly.

Greater Manchester reportedly running out of hospital beds and already at maximum capacity in some areas. Did this happen anywhere during the first wave?

I’m sure they converted loads of rooms and beds for first wave to catch the demand, I haven’t heard if they’re doing the same this time though?

they converted a lot of care homes to mortuaries too

I've seen some headlines/regurgitated press releases about Nightingale hospitals but I'm not sure where in the country they are or whether they're being used.

This is all going to get vey nasty, not just the obvious immediate public health disaster but the political blame game is going to get much more blatant. There are already reports that Johnson wants to go for a national circuit breaker but feels he can't because Starmer has already suggested it. We're at that level of infantilism now.

definitely some hospitals reporting at capacity in the first wave, mainly iirc around London. I don't *think* any of the nightingale hospitals were used with live patients. They are all ready to be opened but the issue will be in staffing them