“I take my responsibilities seriously. I did not lie” - UK politics June 23 on

It's basically not been mentioned anywhere.

Junior Doctors strike again

'Doctors in training as I prefer to call them walked out of our negotiations'

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins spoke to #BBCBreakfast about the 72 hour junior doctors strike in Englandhttps://t.co/YKYqO83Xrp pic.twitter.com/PDCwoRRDaI

— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) December 21, 2023

Is there some 4d chess reason why Atkins thinks it's a good idea to unnecessarily antagonise striking doctors, or is this just the Conservatives figuring that they're already doomed so there's no reason to bother hiding their petulance and bitterness?

some "you won't have Richard Nixon to kick around any more" kind of thing

Starmer, “I will restore standards in public life with a total crackdown on cronyism: this ends now.”

... talk about a hostage to fortune.

It's like a wink to the audience. That audience being the journos desperate to place him in power.

It’s handing those journos a stick to beat him with

Countdown to first Bernie Ecclestone-esque revelation starts here

lol yess this is leadership

Starmer says Labour will ‘meet fire with fire’ if Tories resort to dirty tactics during election

I'm old enough to remember his leadership election where he dogwhistled his opponent over her Irish Catholic background and refused to disclose his right-wing donors until the vote was finished. Gosh, I'm shocked he knows how to go low.

Interestingly some of the media hacks on twitter seem to be making mild fun of Starmer's "pull the growth lever" crap; despite what I said above it does seem that some are starting to get sick of his bullshit and their role in supporting it.

the "five missions" or whatever the fuck he's calling it this year, without being underlined by policies or significant spending commitments, it doesn't mean a thing. It's saying something when UK political hacks want to see more credibility beyond some very unpromising rhetoric there in order to stan for this cunt without looking like bigger wankers than they already are.

Curtice has said all party conferences are scheduled for early autumn. He expects the election to take place 14th November.

Which means there is quite a bit of time for the economy to improve. Inflation went down more than expected last month. There should be interest rate cuts by then. Housing market is expected to improve and weeks of 30-40 degree + weather would be forgotten by then.

Of course there are other events I'm sure but from all this I would think a Tory recovery to a hung parliament would be a fair bet.

they are currently polling lower than the Major govt in the runup to '97, but that was a completely different election. This time the hatred of Tories is going to be mitigated to some degree by the apathy towards Labour and it's likely to be a low turnout imo. Looking forward to how embarrassing the Starmer campaign is going to be and seeing it get ripped to pieces by the left and right-wing media, it's going to be a bit like the Maybot sequel, not just in presentation but also in terms of dismal grey compromise policies that barely make a difference and nobody gives a fuck about.

I don’t think they’ll want to go around the same time as US elections.

Why would that matter?

they are currently polling lower than the Major govt in the runup to '97

Odds still continuing to drift, relative to mid October

out from 6/1 to 7/1 for most seats
and from 10/1 tp 11/1 for Conservative majority

(hung Parliament 9/2, forgot to check that before)

It's come up again recently, with the rise of the Reform Party, but I'd forgotten that another reason for the scale of Corbyn's GE defeat was that the Brexit Party didn't contest any seats won by the Tories in the 2017 election. Slight diversion, sorry.

in FPTP Starmer could conceivably get minus a million+ or even a couple of million less votes than Corbyn got in '19 and all the Labour grandees of the right won't be repeatedly calling it as the worst election result since the 1930's!

For the Tories their biggest issue is that there isn't anything to replace Brexit as an issue for them to rally around.

Small boats ain't no Brexit, for sure.

mad dog Jav invading the Falklands in the next few months would be a good result for them

the propaganda campaign for the war will heavily involve a lot of hamfisted attempts to reclaim the phrase "hand of god"

We shouldn't pay too much attention to polls this far out from an election, much of the electorate isn't paying attention at this point in the cycle and we shouldn't read too much into Trumps lead when there's such a long time to go until the election

Looking at the polls, its difficult to see the Conservatives clawing back much at this point, so close to the election

I have only ever been doorstep polled once, possibly it was IPSOS - can't remember. They only asked who I intended to vote for, there was never the question did I intend to vote.

I don’t think they’ll want to go around the same time as US elections.

Yes you would think, although increasingly can see how they might prefer this in a defeatist dead cat way re policies and doing real work, but it's more about whether their media chums want that workload innit.

British journalists and media love covering US elections above all else, so I imagine they won't want to be forced to cover a boring old UK election.

he's spent SO much time and effort and burnt so much goodwill from actual voters to try and get the Murdoch papers to endorse him, and here we are. really funny you have to say pic.twitter.com/qm9rmuEolq

— wariotifo (@wariotifo) January 9, 2024

lol, they don't even credit him for his night courts endorsement, having a vulnerable Asian autistic man extradited to the US on fabricated terrorist charges, for ruling that racist Lynch mobs require no police investigation etc...etc... all his greatest hits as DPP should actually make him a top bloke to The S*n

Reading the odd piece on Kids Company as a window on what this country is like if you aren't born on the right side of the tracks.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/09/the-hidden-life-of-camila-batmanghelidjh-why-was-her-exoneration-so-widely-ignored

xp - the worst of it is Starmer may become PM but he'll be bullied by the press just like that. Shame, such a top bloke

they'll keep doing this at least partially because he's encouraged them to do it

the party fucking loves this shit it's like a kink or something

media/tories: you caused a financial crisis through welfare spending!
labour: yeah we kind of did didn't we that one's on us

media: you secretly called a racist lady racist!
labour: yes we did and it just goes to show how terrible and out of touch we are

it's so weird how this is their whole thing now and maybe the problem with corbynism was they just couldn't get it off during that period

What about the rest of the IT/management consulting which receive government contracts resulting in projects that aren't delivered on time, are poorly thought out in the first place and -- though consequences aren't as catastrophic as this -- fail?

Fujitsu will be 'held accountable' legally or financially if the public inquiry finds it blundered in the Post Office Horizon scandal, Downing Street has said https://t.co/iDKJcicpms

— ITV News Politics (@ITVNewsPolitics) January 9, 2024

If government built in IT servicing of its own again it would bankrupt a lot of the private IT service sector, stocks would tank, and you would make a lot of Tories in SE England weep.

So it won't happen.

the report has been posted and some of the code, albeit reverse engineered, looks terrible - reversing the sign of a number by taking it away from itself twice...

PDF Download - https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/file/871/download?token=gDkssh69

(the report = a report from 1998)

terrible that Fujitsu willfully decided to prosecute and imprison hundreds of innocent people

imagine if they'd fucked the code up in a way that allowed sub post-masters to pocket grands of excess cash every week. Horizon would have been flagged up as not fit for purpose in weeks.

Of course.

Or, if it had nominated etc

Disabled widower from Caerphilly, 78, prosecuted for not insuring a car he no longer uses.

He's not coping after his wife's death and his papers were destroyed in a flood

Convicted via Single Justice Procedure, court bill: £106

DVLA didn't read this letter. pic.twitter.com/65z8TkStDB

— Tristan Kirk (@kirkkorner) January 10, 2024

I wish sir kid harmer a very don't ever sleep again as his predecessor comments on the trial in the hague. Funny that we'll now have 2 Labour PMs in a row that have been complicit in war crimes/crimes against humanity.

Real Labour Values

(ugh sorry forgot about G Brown but anyway)

When reports of Batmanghelidjh’s death emerged last week, it was alarming how many people admitted on social media that they had been unaware she had been exonerated by the high court nearly three years ago..

same here. The kid's company piece was a sad read. I think I might have harshly judged batmanghelidjh for doing chummy meetings with Cameron at the time and thought she was probably a grifter.

same, but i think there's something cautionary there about the nature of charities and the kinds of grift most of them seem comfortable engaging in

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67950501

"Sir Keir Starmer says he wasn't aware of the three Horizon cases brought against sub-postmasters by the Crown Prosecution Service when he led it.

The Labour leader was director of public prosecutions from 2008 to 2013.

Asked by the BBC if he should have been more curious, he said the CPS handled four million cases in that period."

xp

oh hell yes, but I also had some invaluable help from Carer's Count. Some of the frontline workers/volunteers for charities are really good people. I just feel strongly they i: they shouldn't exist ii: Charities that are easily neutered by the UK govt through waivers signed under threat of funding withdrawn are not a good model for a charitable organisation. iii: Some of these fuckers are grifters.

hah hah!

"I was too busy shielding Sir Jimmy Savile from the cps at the time"

Lol