Free as a Dodo: UK Politics Welcomes 2021

I think GB News is likely to be anticipating changes from Ofcom too, like allowing political advertising and easing some of the impartiality restrictions.

ah that’s interesting. that was one of the things i was going to call out. didn’t realise they were thinking of changes.

Depends on the new chair, I think. If it's Dacre, then whee.

NEW: Gavin Williamson confirms that children without a laptop have been added to the “vulnerable” list who are entitled to go into school, as per below.

Could conceivably mean that in some instances, half the children are at school and half are at home and teachers might need to be teaching in both realms simultaneously?

i can't see dacre doing it in a million years (another good one to come back to when he's appointed). Put Dacre in a nominally important oversight role for the ongoing telecoms changes, Huawei, OpenReach and 5g governance?

I originally thought Dacre was a spoiler/troll like Moore but by all accounts they were in fact deadly serious about Moore so fuck knows.

I thought a lot of teachers were in both class and virtual class simultaneously, in order to support the kids of key workers ?

sure, but i'm assuming the numbers of pupils in class would've been lower and would've freed up some resource for online teaching. begs the question what students with no access to computing and no right to school attendance have been doing up to now though

(sorry for my hypothesizing, i realise it's of no good use to anyone)

I originally thought Dacre was a spoiler/troll like Moore but by all accounts they were in fact deadly serious about Moore so fuck knows.

― stet, Wednesday, January 6, 2021 7:18 PM bookmarkflaglink

Yeah quite. I didn't realise that about Moore which is just O_o but of course also not.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErFU4fxXEAAFesL?format=jpg&name=large

lol .. the great white hope of the soft left.

guess it's good we're getting our very own fox news huh

The Queen was blameless, the particular combination of jewels she wore constituted Epic Shade towards Trump, there were several of us who Couldn't Even, as I recall

Oh I'm dreading all the right-wing lunatics getting maximum airtime on a daily basis

not that it matters when we have the BBC I guess

Starmer's refusal to back the other old guy was a tacit endorsement of Trump imo

i think at some point not making money is a problem in tv, especially if it points to a lack of audience, which would also indicate a key failure of engagement. it is of course possible to make studio based opinion stuff very cheaply, but i don’t see this becoming a fox news vector. tbh that audience is well served already.

Murdoch's right-wing talking-head cable channel in Australia gets a viewership of 50-70k. Their youtube posts get over 5 million views from conspiracy theorists and headbangers worldwide. The broadcast channel is just to give legitimacy to the influence-peddling.

I realise that the political left does not have the financial resource to compete with this far-right media challenge, but I nonetheless think that the best thing the left can do is to work on building its own media.

with the shouty hyperbole of The Canary and the terfy swagger of The Morning Star!

There are one or two alternatives.

Solidarity with the british gas workers striking for the next 5 days. Fire & rehiring on lower contracts needs to be made illegal

Yup. Just a horror show.

Re: left-wing media. This is what the likes of Novara are doing. Tribune and its networks with Jacobin in the US. It is being formed, it won't get as many figures, but yes it's about who watches it and where do they end up in terms of power.

NEW: Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Frances O'Grady have written to Labour and TUC members urging them to volunteer in the national coronavirus vaccination effort: https://t.co/qz3eNy6XSd

— LabourList (@LabourList) January 7, 2021

Because working for free is what Labour are about now?

Larry Elliott here, he leaves it to Chakrabortty to join the dots on the failures that are coming our way.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/07/boris-johnson-economy-revive-vaccine

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/06/britain-covid-shot-industrial-base-uk-manufacturing-national-security

There are one or two alternatives.

Novara, New Socialist, Tribune - I like all of these to varying degrees but can't imagine any of them reaching ppl beyond those already onboard.

I misread that Labour call - it's more like campaigning-style volunteering than the "work for the NHS" volunteering I read it as. Starmer is good not bad now.

that would be bad reading because the only way Starmer could be good not bad is if he jumped into a vat of piping hot sulphuric acid!

speaking of bad, another Johnson presser this evening. Haven't seen so much of him in ages

Strong Harold Shipman energy here pic.twitter.com/Mh29Ddelp4

— Alex Christofi (@alex_christofi) January 7, 2021

I think the new left media, though their reach is of course small, do have some influence on opinion. TBH my own views are different now from what they were 4 or 5 years agp, partly as a result of them. Maybe that's true for others, and maybe that filters through somewhere.

It's quite good for political figures - RLB for instance - to engage with them rather than eg the Observer.

Allies of the Chancellor Rishi Sunak say the reason he has been reluctant to argue publicly against opposition demands for increased public spending is that he no longer believes Johnson will resist requests for more cash.

be an idea to make some demands for cash then, eh?

is Marcus Rashford available?

Is this Clap For Heroes thing happening tonight? Worrying echoes of Help For Heroes in the name. If so I may have to schedule a playthrough of Metal Machine Music (Side 4) for 8pm.

Solidarity with British Gas workers - striking against attempts to fire and rehire them on worse terms.

They're defending themselves and taking a stand against a practice that should be illegal.

The company must get back to the table and resolve this through negotiation.

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) January 7, 2021

He's been hacked!

Watched a harrowing report on hospitals struggling with doctors and nurses at breaking (this uclh, no ordinary hospital) point. If any nurse gets anything out of the clapping business then good tbh.

Re: left media

I mean this as an observation not a criticism or endorsement but clearly one aspect of the left media landscape (& something that has implications for plans for any Momentum media fund) is that Momentum seems to increasingly see itself as a producer of left media. pic.twitter.com/Mgb5RlZ93R

— Tom Gann (@Tom_Gann) January 7, 2021

The neighbourhood WhatsApp has ruled there is to be no clapping tonight, especially after some staff at the hospital nearby chimed in and said “yeah we’d much rather you all stayed inside and obeyed lockdown tbh”

just checked my neighbourhood WhatsApp and there were 21 messages, all about a minibus that keeps (legally) parking in our street, so guess we aren't doing the clapping this time.

clap for minibus

would take a single message in there to instigate a "boo at the minibus" down most of the street. it's most often parked outside my house and I honestly dgaf tho

Is it yours?

maybe if it's abandoned there for long enough it will be? though not sure what i would do with it.

You are never going to unleash your inner Ron Dixon without your very own "Moby"!

1162 deaths today

i have had little exposure to brigadiers in my life. are they all like this?

oh another press conference ... can't take these anymore and be fucked if I'm interrupting To Catch a Thief for that poltroon!

yeah, don't switch to it if you're not watching. it's of minor interest because it's not the usual gang - it's got the army guy in charge of vaccine distribution and the CEO of the NHS. He has just had a satisfying if sexist pop at the covid-deniers and the army guy seems to be frowning at covid, the nation, the world.

is the Byline Times any good or just an embarrassment like Canary?

i have had little exposure to brigadiers in my life. are they all like this?

Any bets Boris got him to purposely dress up in the whole camo gear?

Excellent report on the deal uk-eu deal.

Which is to say that #Brexit impact is not really about 'delays at the border'...it's the permanent, structural disadvantage of UK businesses vis-a-vis EU counterparts. i.e Those 'non-tariff barriers' that @BorisJohnson said did not exist (in a universe of alternative facts)/12

— Peter Foster (@pmdfoster) January 7, 2021

Whole thread is worth reading that leads us to being poorer. No idea what the political ramifications could be, as we are crashing into it.