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

Tories are rattling through these.

BREAKING BAD NEWS: today Gvt launch their attack on the Human Rights Act. Detail to follow, headlines are:
1. Stripping away right to family & private life. This will hit everyone wanting to protect their private data, fight an eviction, secure LGBT equality, resist surveillance

— Martha Spurrier (@marthaspurrier) December 14, 2021

hi mr “we’re not a ‘papers, please’ society” - dis you?

think he just meant the 'please' part

I bet the "Boris done a quiz" crew will be all over this, no worries

hi mr “we’re not a ‘papers, please’ society” - dis you?

Typical Tories though, they'd have the plebs in leg irons if they could but don't try putting any sort of restrictions on them and theirs. If they could get away with going back to only allowing property owners to vote they would.

Labour on the HRA:

This is little more than an attempt to wage culture wars because they’ve surrendered from waging war on crime

xp they probably can

xp so mass abstaining is the only patriotic way forward for the party of the people?

“They aren’t even being properly authoritarian like we would”

Great that that’s the attack when they pull this shit, really something to get behind

I can't wait till the next election and CCHQ does a vid with a soundtrack of Kieth pledging to protect immigrants in 2020 over a pic of him bending the knee. And then any temporary gains he's made, illusory or maybe even real. Gone in one fell swoop!

Right again

Tonight I will oppose both compulsory vaccines for NHS staff, and the introduction of vaccine passports. Both measures are counterproductive and will create division when we need cooperation and unity.

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) December 14, 2021

Any of the other non-Tories against given a more explicit reason than that? Lucas gave the same.

tbh I did not look too hard...my own MP made their case well

The legislation for mandatory jabs has worrying implications for our overstretched & understaffed health service.

It’s no way to build confidence & consent.

If the PM can’t build vaccine confidence because he has lost moral authority, he must make way for someone who can.

2/5

— Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP (@BellRibeiroAddy) December 14, 2021

BREAKING: 10 cops to jump you in the supermarket aisle and force you to buy giant coucous instead of wholemeal https://t.co/2EGW9GXCxF

— michael (@Sisyphusa) December 15, 2021

The Tory MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham asked a fixer to find him work with a Saudi employer, describing himself as the most “pro-Saudi” member of parliament and boasting that the Saudi leader, Mohammed bin Salman, “has stated that Saudi has no better friend in UK than me”.

In one message, Kawczynski said: “I am looking for a position with a company as non exec director or adviser/consultant. Obviously my passion for Anglo Arab relations (is) something which could help a company with relations in the UK or Middle East. Not sure what remuneration I am looking for but you are such a good negotiator!!! Best wishes Daniel.”

In another, the Tory MP asked the fixer for paid work on a conference related to Saudi Arabia’s regional foe, Qatar: “Promise you will push for good remuneration too for me … I need it to pay school fees!

Tory MP needing ‘to pay school fees’ pleaded for lucrative Middle East work

lool at this 8ft tall yeti and his "passion for Anglo Arab relations"

they shouldn't have kids if they can't afford the public school fees

He doesn't want to be a burden to the taxpayer

Quite an interesting piece on the Shropshire by-election that ends up going all over the place.

Earlier this year, an episode of the ‘Antiques Roadshow’ made headlines because it was watched by more people than the BBC’s Olympics coverage, with an audience of 4.7 million. The British equivalent of the brilliant US show ‘Queer Eye’ is ‘The Repair Shop’ - which, rather than being about mending people, is about fixing up their heirlooms. It’s watched by about 10% of the British public.

The antiques trading game show ‘Bargain Hunt’ is more popular than ‘Dr Who’, while ‘Fake or Fortune’, ‘Money for Nothing’, ‘Salvage Hunters’, ‘Antiques Road Trip’ and the aptly named ‘Flog It!’ captivate an army of pensioners every day as they are encouraged to dream of the possible treasure left in their attic by some long-dead relative.

Surely no human society can ever have been so obsessed with flogging off relics of its glorious past than Britain today. And it’s no wonder. As a country we don’t really produce wealth, we sell the dwindling assets of the empire, whether tangible trinkets, access to offshore havens, public-school educations or reputations to those who need theirs laundered.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/why-do-the-tories-have-a-chance-of-winning-north-shropshire/

But its politics are totally alien to Perthshire.

Uh right. North Perthshire voted Liberal, then Tory for 70 years, and now it votes SNP - because Tories in the area have decided they quite like the idea of an independent Scotland, they're still Tories though.

Just catching up on this by-election discourse and there is surely no way the Lib Dems are taking this seat.

lol that bullshit... it's happening again. The Labour candidate is the most Tory looking motherfucker with a red rosette I've seen in long time.

the Guardian reporting that the Libdems are the bookies favs when they finished a remote third in '19, with 12% less of the vote than Labour.

as the betting currently stands it's 8/15 for a Tory hold, that 11/8 on the Libdems seems ridiculous.. lol Labour 66/1.

Bookies know.

They just do.

Having said that - if the Guardian are saying they are fav, then they are misreading those odds.

it was two days ago tbf on them and the odds might have changed since. But also possibly not.

On the night of the Batley + Spen byelection the last hour betting market moves for Labour suggested they might do better than expected. But that was a tight marginal, it will take a hell of dissatisfied Tory voters swing to overturn a 22k+ majority.

if Labour do finish 3rd with a lower vote share than 2019 what feeble excuses shall be used?

meanwhile that open democracy piece on north shropshire isn't very focused at all

i: the author is from perthshire which he can describe easily w/o resource to careful research, so first we get a lot abt perthshire, which we are then asked for set aside bcz actually shropshire isn't very like perthshire (correct but you see the problem)
ii: the author can wield some highly general and somewhat stereotypical research abt the english countryside, but makes a poor fist IMO of establishing why how and when shropshire (and north shropshire in in particular) might have diverged
iii: there's a fair amount on recent changes in farming (fair enough) but very little indeed on the history of other industries (ironbridge in in shropshire = the birthplace of the industrial revolution, which yes of course mainly moved elswhere but… )
iv: there's a breif and typically handwavy bit on the english revolution as failing to disperse aristocracy and how landowning works as a result -- again i'd like to see how typical or untypical shropshire was/is here…
v: there's a little on the county's recent conversion to more or less a network of small dormitory towns and villages (likely very true but again the dots are only very vaguely joined up)
vi: and finally as a treat there's some funny knockabout material re the antiques roadshow, which fails to to distinguish between defensive anti-woke hoarding and flogging everything off lol and prefers to lean into the take: "why the great british bake-off proves we're all fascists now" (there's genuinely an interesting story to these secondary rings of the economy of course -- you could write an excellent explainer for the marxist term "value" using the antiques roadshow as a lens -- but this aint it sorry)

these are all then patchworked together into a diagnosis but it feels extremely unconcrete to me, a poster who grew up in this mysterious land -- not unfamiliar exactly but much more fuzzy than it needs to be

caveat: i haven't visited my birthtown since 2010 or been in close contact w/someone keeping track of local matter since probabgly 2000 (when my parents' world began to dwindle courtesy diverse illnesses), so my own actual factual spideysense is at best anecdotal HOWEVER as an editor i protest

Antiques Roadshow, etc, are doing well as a percentage of viewers, because most of the old people aren't watching sky/netflix/whatever, they are sticking to the old channels.

I was hoping you would comment on this mark

xpost obv

One of the biggest Hail Mary requests I've done on here, but - would anyone in North Shropshire (Owestry ideally, can travel from Shrewsbury) be willing to help me cover the by-election tomorrow?

Would be compensated of course - please RT/fire at some locals if poss

— William Kedjanyi (@KeejayOV3) December 15, 2021

this could have been a good opportunity for you to mix a homecoming with a bit of work, mark

i do actually have friends still in oswestry lol HOWEVER

She got the sack

I have a Fever, a Cough and a team member has tested positive for COVID yet my boss wishes to force me to come into work when I’m not only physically unwell but could be carrying a disease which is highly transmissible.

Hospitality eh? pic.twitter.com/bl1ldgaYeb

— Rachael (@baylis_rachael) December 15, 2021

Was this bit of genius posted?

Whoever added Sir David Attenborough’s voice over to this is simply genius! A must watch & share clip! pic.twitter.com/AL7jB32Jk0

— The Political Rants (@vinod_d007) December 14, 2021

Lib Dems North Shropshire internal polling:
CON: 40%
LDEM: 39%
LAB: 12%
REF: 4%
GRN: 4%
DO NOT VOTE Labour or Green.
There is only one party to vote for.

VOTE LIB-DEM

A vote for Conservative, Labour or Green is a vote for Owen Paterson.

this "internal polling" reads like fanciful bs seeing as Labour have finished 2nd 5 out of the last 6. It's unfortunate for Kieth that most of the members/voters that wouldn't fall for this grift have been told to fuck off.

xp

if that's blown yr mind, god help us when you discover led by donkeys!

Work colleague is from Shropshire, his dad plays tennis with the chair of the Wem Conservative party who’s told him he’s voting Lib-Dem.

LibDem odds have gone as short as 10/11 now!

The North Shropshire betting has gone haywire in the last hour. pic.twitter.com/RnHi4OGFNq

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) December 16, 2021

and 4/7 now!

If you had a vote in that election, for whom would you vote?

Personally: I wouldn't wish to vote for KS's Labour. I don't like the LibDems but it seems a relatively logical alternative to the unpalatable act of a vote that gives support to KS.

If you'd like to vote against the government, but hate KS, as Calzino and I do - then why not vote LD?

Thus, KS's direness might be shedding votes in that direction?

The alternative would be to vote Green, Shropshire Socialist Front or whatever - fine, I respect that and might do it.

I’d stay home

There's a Shropshire Socialist Front?

I certainly hope so!

there may be but they're not standing

Labour coming 3rd would be very funny at least and an indication of how well Starmer's strategy is going down with so called swing voters in the Tory heartlands. I mean if 2019 was one of the worst electoral results for Labour, as he keeps saying - how does he excuse getting less votes and getting voted into third place by the very voters he has been trying to appeal to for the last year and a half.

the Shropshire CPGB- ML last updated on twitter in october 2015 and on facebook in july 2016

a sad hiatus in marxism-leninism mao-tse-tung-hoxha-bains thought