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

little in-depth knowledge of the sector, and susceptible to a glossy presentation or outright misinformation,

This is the general assumption from people i've spoken to in the sector. ACE has no real experience of 'nightlife'. The other factor is that the money could have been given to local organisations, like the Mayor's office, with a closer link to the sector but that would have complicated the message of centralised government generosity towards the arts.

It also would have entailed giving at least some of the decision-making power to Amy Lamé and I'm not sure that's much better.

I'm reliably informed that she's unfairly maligned!

I don't know anyone involved in London nightlife who has anything good to say about her at all, although that might be a product of giving a prominent individual a grandiose title with little to no real power.

It's partly that, partly her remit not being 'nightlife' as such, but everything that happens in London at night like transport, healthcare for shift workers, etc.

> Khan is also an easy target for the government for all the obvious reasons and they'd calculated they can pick a fight with him without any real downside

coincidently in the post today i had shaun bailey, crime-fighting youth worker, and candidate for london mayor, telling me sadiq had personally closed all the police stations and taken 8500 police off the streets.

his 9 point plan is 1-7 crime, 8 youth services, 9 emergency budget to combat crime

#drilly4mayor

I know people who have little good to say about her based on her activities pre Nightlife overlord

Comes across as a complete chancer and I always hated duckie

I published her in an anthology I did when she was still working shifts at First Out and had just started Duckie, which I’ve still never been to! She was also on the books of the Ugly Agency for appearing as a ‘big girl’ in adverts where required. I liked her a lot back then, but having given her some really good opportunities in feminist or feminist-adjacent projects I ran, I can say that since becoming a citizen and realising she can therefore Do Politics, she has seemed in a particular hurry to make friends more useful than me, plus anyone who turns their FB page with all their real friends into a ‘public figure’ page can’t really read the room.

"Did the honorable lady just call me scum?"

Conservative MP Chris Clarkson clashes with Labour's Angela Rayner as he accuses the opposition of "opportunism" over Covid restrictionshttps://t.co/TdtTBgBeWn pic.twitter.com/aP9JRXKVZ9

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) October 21, 2020

keep it forensic, Angela.

i believe him, he's probably heard the word a lot

I don't think even the most ardent Conservative supporters would have expected this after the last few days 😮 https://t.co/KO8dxDAmc3

— Election Maps UK (@ElectionMapsUK) October 21, 2020

take it easy Kieth, you're killing 'em

weird that the nation doesn't seem to be uniting behind an characterless opposition leader who offers them nothing and has no discernable ideas or ideology

pure speculation but i feel like a Labour Party that had kept some of the economic agenda and attitude from the Corbyn years and was attacking the government on their failures and demanding more action on protecting jobs and lives would be doing better than this shower of shit

meanwhile, i see that prof john edmunds has told the science and health select committee that there's no way we're getting out of this wave of the rona without tens of thousands of deaths, which seems like the kind of thing that a government should probably be held to account for unless lol nothing matters

those Tory numbers don't look drastically different to what you'd expect from the perma-Tories plus maybe a bit of "support the government during a national crisis" thing. the failure is all Labour's

i'm vaguely surprised that support for labour is as high as it is tbh

savantacom res might be an outlier, but I bet Keith will be sweating on those other polls dropping over the next few days. He might need to start thinking about his leadership style, or just resign and then take up some nice hobbies like tombstoning or drunken skiing

hell of an achievement to lose three points of support while facing off against the most patently incompetent government the uk has had in living memory, which is quite an achievement in itself considering the last decade of tory rule

Meanwhile in the House of Lords

Sadly inevitable vote result with Labour abstention

Amendment for rights of UK citizens to live with EU spouses/partners and children in own country lost 168-254.

— Natalie Bennett (@natalieben) October 21, 2020

wt actual f?

They heard December’s message from the electorate loud and clear, I guess. I keep thinking about that twitter thread about the problem with Corbyn being that he valued the lives of people who weren’t white and/or British, and it keeps feeling truer all the time.

there's no other reason to abstain is there?

this fucking country

meanwhile, we don't oppose for the sake of it

I had to take my toddler for a COVID test earlier this week - it was a depressing and deeply infuriating insight into just how incompetent and *blatantly* corrupt the UK's out-sourced testing set-up is.

— Louis (@Louis_Allday) October 21, 2020

I think that amendment being defeated means it’s officially a right lost- like I, an EU citizen, have the right to live in any of the 27 & my British spouse can come with and mooch off my citizenship? Is that right?

Cementing this as a right would basically create a two-tier system where EU spouses could live in the UK without meeting further requirements but non-EU spouses would still have to go through income checks, etc aiui.

wrt the poll, it'd be interesting to see national polling on Burnham's position specifically. I have no idea whether it's a net negative for the government to be picking these fights.

just heard some Barnsley sounding female vox pop on R4 "at least we aren't holding the govt to ransom like Manchester are.."

I can’t remember who said it but around the time of the last election someone pointed out how much British politics is driven by resentment towards the nearest town or city slightly bigger than yours.

i believe that was sigmund freud

3pt gain for having a pop at Manchester and hitting 209 deaths/day then

26,688 positive cases today lads, fucking thrilled

3% is pretty standard margin of error stuff tbh.

I heard radio woman as well but heard it as "at least we aren't being held to ransom like Manchester"

Oh right. Always good to hear they are happy with their lot in Barnsley!

Ludicrous.

NEW: On the 'scum' comment directed towards Tory MP Chris Clarkson, Angela Rayner said: "I apologise for the language that I used in a heated debate in parliament earlier."

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) October 21, 2020

Such offensive language in the mother of all parliaments, begad! What was she thinking about

Ha, no guarantee I am correct, I was on my way out at the time.

And waiting for me downstairs was another Tory mail-out, this time complaining about sadiq's congestion charge, or London tax, as they are calling it, and the closing of Hammersmith bridge, which is also sadiq's fault.

no question she's been told to apologise

She was never going to be the attention seeking vain knobhead tha Watson was as a deputy leader. But I think Starmer both doesn't like nor trust her and is doing his upmost to marginalise her for the time being. She now might realise what a dream boss the "IRA twat" was!

Everyone knows feeding hungry children is a top priority. I'd like to see UC boosted.

But if the economy and currency collapse, the poor will be devastated.

To go from feed 1 in 9 kids at Christmas to currency collapse is some sensationalist bullshit when you've managed to pay for half the country to have a fucking nandos every Tuesday night for a month.

Difficult to see why any once currency would collapse when the entire rich world is both borrowing and printing gigantic sums of money.

The UK doing that while simultaneously creating a sudden and acute shortage of goods via a No Deal Brexit might do it though.

Brutal week. Even if the polling went 10% lower the mandate is four years.

astonishing how many lives Tory MPs have voted to ruin this week alone, out of sheer spite. And it's only Wednesday pic.twitter.com/gwnXQNgcdk

— tom (@malaiseforever) October 21, 2020

God, when you see it laid out like that...

Meanwhile this thread might answer at least some of ShariVari's question upthread.

On the Manchester showdown, Brits think Andy Burnham and Boris Johnson are driven by...

Burnham: 38% interests of Manchester / 35% party politics
Johnson: 33% interests of the country / 38% party politicshttps://t.co/WZTRu8en8g pic.twitter.com/eWvyNoGodh

— YouGov (@YouGov) October 21, 2020

The Scottish and Welsh governments have pledged to extend free school meals over the holidays up to and including Easter 2021. English pupils will be the outlier in Great Britain.

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) October 21, 2020

Waiting for YouGov poll to show 78% of over-70s blame the parents