"we'll change the things that need changing and that's all we'll change": the paSUKification of post-brexit politics 2021

as mark says the govt appears to be quite relaxed about letting smaller energy firms fail. are farms who refuse to pay wages high enough to attract a workforce any more worthy of a bailout?

yes they’d need to raise prices. yes working people would then need bigger paychecks to pay for their weekly shop. don’t threaten me with a good time

going to end up with corn laws in a minute because if they raise prices above the level where imports are cheaper supermarkets will import and still not buy from them, then you really are into bullshit bailout territory just to keep British farms going.

Like NV says, Brexit promised the impossible (fewer immigrant workers, higher wages, same prices, no shortages) and now govt expected to deliver it somehow.

see also promise to level up but not to affect the south, promise to solve housing crisis but not to affect boomer property prices, promise to fund social care but not to make elderly pay etc etc

Know it's the Torygraph and it has Blair quotes in it but it's actually an ok piece that sketches out the scenarios.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/will-winter-lockdown-experts-set-three-scenarios-good-bad/

I baulked more at the Lolico quote, but at least it followed it up with a counter Lolico quote!

Those energy bailouts might be in the works https://on.ft.com/3CpCD9J

meanwhile the farmers are doing their own bailing. I got some serious country knowledge from a farm cattle herding lady the other day. She said dairy cows won't charge at you, herds of beef cows on the other hand need to be watched and might make a run for you. That makes perfect sense tbf.

It's maddening to read a story like that one in the Telegraph full of "It's reassuring that we haven't seen case numbers climb to higher levels" and "<in this situation> Cases start to rise again" when cases have been rising steadily for months (they've plummeted in the last week, but so has testing) and deaths have also been on the march - from an weekly average of 14.4 on the 20th of June to 144 last Thursday.

Some of the modelling did have case numbers at 100k but we've not been at half that.

Hospitalisations are around 6-8k for weeks and deaths have been around one to two hundred now since mid-July?

No signs right now that it will get as bad as last winter.

How it started How it’s going pic.twitter.com/QkkahKHCGt

— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) September 20, 2021

yeah, i'm getting worried that i'll miss christmas for second year running.

there's another anti-lockdown sticker on the bus shelter this morning, i will paraphrase: "If this was a real pandemic the government would be working 24/7 to stop it, the fact that they aren't means the danger isn't real". er, no...

I saw some classic Marsan comedy this morning. He's quote-tweeting the archbishop of Canterbury in defence of the bigot Duffield with the hashtag #disagreewell. The Disagree Well should be a Kurasawa revenge movie about an avenging samurai who throws melts and knaves down a deep well.

xp Haha yeah, there is definitely another option that's not being considered there.

Hospitalisations are around 6-8k for weeks

Sure, in that it was 6k at the start of August and it's over 8k now. They stopped rising as fast as they had - they shot up from 2k at the start of July then plateaued a bit for a fortnight after hitting 6k, but it's been heading upwards since.

and deaths have been around one to two hundred now since mid-July?

40 on the 15th of July, 75 a fortnight later, then 90, then 113, then 138 - it's been pretty consistent?

No signs right now that it will get as bad as last winter.

No, and that's good, don't get me wrong, linear is definitely better than logarithmic! It's just weird seeing big brains talking about things are getting better when things just aren't getting wildly worse.

(and of course how bad things get is also a function of government action and indeed populace traction)

I'm getting this from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare

I don't disagree but I see that as a successful vaccination programme that has allowed lockdown to be rightly lifted.

Part of me does think that some restrictions could've been kept going until we had more of the younger population doubly vaccinated, and that there were more restrictions on numbers during the Euros but otherwise things have definitely gotten better. I know that 100 deaths a day isn't great but compared to winter.

That report covers how things could get worse. Certain communities could see a rise, plus influenza could come back and overwhelm hospitals.

Dunno whether to post this on here or in the UK Comedy thread, but I have recently discovered that Alistair Campbell's daughter has a stand-up act, and judging by the panel show she was on it's entirely anecdotes about her dad being a wild and crazy guy and angry tirades against Jeminy Crumbyn (v topical); the benefactors of nepotism used to be more circumspect about this kind of thing?

she was on As Yet Untitled the other week, kept talking about her dad without saying who he was.

Yeah that's where I encountered her, for most of it I thought she must be the daughter of some old school comedian but then she starts talking about having her dad take her to Question Time (making one comment for the "die hard Question Time fans", an alarming concept if there's ever been one) and her lecturing her dad and John McDonnel on labour divisiveness (and then everyone stood up and applauded). Slightly salvaged by Babatundé Aléshé looking just as miserable having to listen to her as I was.

This sounds appalling.

The @LibDems smashing the blue wall 👊🔶 pic.twitter.com/PZ7QipQGZl

— Dominic Buxton (@DominicBuxton) September 19, 2021

oh gosh I'm going to end up looking up a clip of Campbell's daughter now on the panel show now just to experience the horror first hand.

It was bad enough when they became politicians and journalists, but comedians? Come sweet death, take me now.

If only more of them became comedians

Ayesha Hazarika went the route of failed political advisor>failed stand-up comedian>presenter on right-wing talk radio. Maybe it's not family nepotism keeping her in jobs, but it sure helps to be from a posh background and be a vocal critic of the left.

Rachel Connolly had a good piece on the LRB blog a while back about the awful wave of comedy nepotists.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2021/april/funny-voice-videos

omg I didn't know Will Hislop was a thing, this should never have happened.

does he look like a self-satisfied thumb, like his dad?

no he's got a full head of hair it seems, but lol that won't last

but self satisfied looking .. check

I believe the term these days for the likes of Will Hislop is spiritually bald

Well now

Who knew Boris Johnson used to get his climate change info from, anti-vaxxer, Piers Corbyn. 😲 pic.twitter.com/B1OgQjx4gS

— Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 (@Haggis_UK) September 20, 2021

I think BJ actually admitted consulting Piers in his capacity as a climatologist/weather eggspurt in an interview a couple of years back and was even quoting him iirc. But his rep then was more as Jez's oddball brother rather than arch anti-vaxxer nutjob and conspiracy theorist etc. Even though he was probably talking the same shit back then

*Blasting 'This is the End' at ear-splitting volume*

Current figures suggest that Labour's 199 MPs comprise just 0.05% of the membership.

If the Electoral College is re-introduced, that same 0.05% of members would then have **33%** of the votes in a future leadership election. Utterly absurd. https://t.co/ZtSIQzpU2Q

— Stats for Lefties 🏳️‍⚧️ (@LeftieStats) September 20, 2021

Kieth willing to open himself up to a leadership challenge from the (lol) right that he will certainly lose would be a win to him really. That was the whole point and ultimate aim of his leadership project as soon as he realised he was massively unpopular and a complete dud with the electorate he's aged about 15 years. Hence the embarrassing display when he won B+S by 120 odd votes, he knew he could at least finish off his project then. And that was the last chance for even a melt soft-left candidate to realistically challenge him before they re-introduced electoral college.

I think if the Unite leadership went to the right this would pass. Don't know if it will now

that sounds like good news, can the Unite vote be decisive here?

Don't know really. I think that was the calculation during the Unite leadership election.

forcing people to work from home at a time of rapidly increasing electricity bills, i feel, might become a bit of a Problem that needs addressing

— 𝔐𝔞𝔤𝔫𝔢𝔱𝔰 🧲 (@PerthshireMags) September 20, 2021

Unite’s Sharon Graham has urged Labour MPs to publicly speak out against a return to an electoral college for leadership elections: pic.twitter.com/BackkZlNap

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) September 21, 2021

just imagining how much bullshit Unite's response would have been if Coyne won.

lol, Pimilico Plumbing has been sold for £100m to some giant US equity fund. That seems like peanuts really, but plumbing companies don't have many physical assets beyond a yard, an office, a fleet of vans and a Rod Stewart wig.

Ally of Keir Starmer says of this intervention: “This will help other unions decide that they don’t want to be vassals of Unite anymore.”

it's amusing that they were trying to spin Graham's victory as a good result for Starmer only a month or so back

And what do you think that's going to do. V clear the course has been set and they'll do as much as they can between now and the next election.

I would like one of the journalists with access to Keir Starmer to ask a few serious questions about his various promises of unity, a common social programme, an end to internal faction fighting & so on after the evidence of recent months.

— James B (@piercepenniless) September 21, 2021

CONFIRMED: Keir Starmer is pushing for a move back to the electoral college for electing Labour leaders

As reported, it means ditching the 1-member-1-vote scheme. The default would be 1/3 MPs, 1/3 unions, 1/3 CLPs ... but TULO/Starmer may negotiate different make-up altogether

— Rachel Wearmouth (@REWearmouth) September 21, 2021

maybe Bush should do a fact-checking audit on Kieth and count his lies rather than counting phantom policies. Because he did deny this was on the cards a few months back.

Bastani going on about "hope lessons are learnt for the next 10-20 (hope it's the former)" provoked some grim lols, heating will be unaffordable for many this winter.

If I was going in to my first major conference as leader, having failed to set out any kind of agenda in the preceding 18 months, I probably wouldn’t want it overshadowed by a massive row over who gets to choose my replacement but credibility isn’t Starmer’s most pressing problem, I guess. It’s money. Donors need to be reassured that their investment is secure in the long term.

yeah OMOV was probably the only thing keeping the big donors away after Corbyn was finished off.

Just spoke to two key Starmer allies who are philosophical about early union opposition to electoral college

Even if it doesn't pass, coming close would demonstrate to the public that "everything that went wrong in 2015 is over"

getting a bit of early copium in like as if a defeat wouldn't make him look even weaker, perhaps this isn't going to go well for them.