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

Whenever I think of Kemi Badenoch I think of that period I was reading conservative home every day for the loonies in the comments

https://conservativehome.com/2017/12/21/interview-kemi-badenoch-im-not-really-left-leaning-on-anything-i-always-lean-right-instinctively/

Badenoch: “The escape from Colditz is I think probably the coolest thing any British politician has ever done.”

Bacon: “One or two lords escaped as well.”

Badenoch: “They were made lords because of their war service. So that we do have a lot of war heroes. But when you think about MPs, when I listen to MPs, again, I must sound so tribal, but when I hear a lot of the whining from the Opposition benches, you think about people like Airey Neave, and what they got done, and I just imagine if the current Parliamentary Labour Party and probably a few others on our side were in prisoner of war camps, they’d probably just die.”

ConHome: “Well Dan Jarvis would be all right.”

Badenoch: “Maybe, maybe Dan Jarvis. But I feel we are much softer as a generation, and that’s probably a better point to make, it sounds less party political. I think that we have gone a bit soft in terms of how resilient we are in dealing with adversity.

“And that’s not as politicians, but just the country as a whole. I don’t feel that we’re as tough as we used to be, if we had to deal with rationing or not having everything 24/7 immediately available.

She's one of the more enthusiastic, and genuine, culture warriors in the Tory Party.

i also enjoy thinking about Airey Neave getting done tbf

Idk for badenoch I always get the sense that it's just some dumb game and that particular slice of drivel does little to dispel that feeling. To be clear what I'm claiming is very much an instinct and thus fairly resistant to being disproven empirically.

Truss is also somewhat moot as her brain is clearly mush

What is a “Blueberry & Yuzu Blondie”?

Come on, Leon, why not offer a delicious Chelsea Bun!#ReviveTheChelseaBun pic.twitter.com/QLbhHQ8JC6

— Greg Hands (@GregHands) March 25, 2024

i only found out what a yuzu was in the last few days (courtesy lidl's japanese week) -- did everyone else (except greg hands) already know?

anyway they're really nice

I am going to have to try this.

Greg hands is the mp for chelsea obv. which is why he's being such a tit about it

We’re about the stage in the Tory lifecycle where we’re due a citrus fruit related autoerotic asphyxiation.

This time the fruit will be Yuzu.

Hi Ed!

I only know yuzu as the ingredient in ponzu

if Starmer was to expire from autoerotic asphyxiation, no doubt he'd be found with a british bramley apple in his mouth, not something foreign. It would be appropriate as well because he already has the skin complexion and build of a small overfed suckling pig.

the labour anonyvoter scandal is something where I initially thought: they do stitch-ups, yeah I know. But this isn't looking good for them or at least it shouldn't be in a functional democracy. I read there are potentially 30-40 selections that may be comprised by this system and there could be criminal convictions to follow the MET investigation, but again this would only happen in a functional democracy.

i wonder if members in the rigged constituencies will have grounds to bring a civil suit but let's be honest if you're still a member you've probably got Stockholm Syndrome so bad you can only speak Swedish

GS asked about Anonyvoter and Croydon and why results breakdowns are not provided.

Evans said - Anonyvoter publicity misplaced and misdirected. False and fake news to suggest Croydon East had anything to do with it. He didn't respond to why results breakdowns aren't provided

— Mish Rahman (@mish_rahman) March 26, 2024

That's all okay then

that's what I was thinking, but they are actually breaking the law here - I know, lol- but I thought this murky internal stuff they do can only be held to account by their own rules and regs. But I have heard ppl saying they could also be prosecuted by law in this case.

The investigation would reveal Evans awarded the Anonyvoter contract to a labour right mate and details of members were altered inhouse, and no other UK party uses this system. This should be a MAJOR scandal.

lol, Laurence Fox has announced he's voting Labour in the next GE

The other shoe is bound to drop re: David Evans eventually.

Feels true.

This place is the narrative arch of the long-90s - from industrial 'creativity' of the YBAs, attempts to brand criticality, to the destruction of any conditions that might produce anything 'creative' by successive neo-liberal brand managers. its maddeninghttps://t.co/RReINdkt11

— Arbeitology (@Arbeit_Fish) March 28, 2024

If only 'Ref' went away...or formed a coalition with Tories

🚨 Labour lead by 19pts (majority of 250)

🟥 LAB 40% (-4)
🟦 CON 21% (+2)
🟪 REF 16% (+1)
🟧 LD 10% (+1)
🟩 GRN 8% (=)
🟨 SNP 3% (=)

Via @YouGov , 26-27 Mar (+/- vs 19-20 Mar) pic.twitter.com/WzifhSRUyu

— Stats for Lefties 🇵🇸🏳️‍⚧️ (@LeftieStats) March 28, 2024

Reform took a while to filter through to the odds, but now

Conservatives to get Most Seats 17/2
Conservative Overall Majority 22/1 (out from 14/1 last time I looked)

nice lil "is there an election in my area" page

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8v36l6d54do

So we get to vote for someone called the Police & Crime Commissioner. Always important to have a foot in both camps.

Lol I never vote for that shit on the basis that whoever wants to do it should be discouraged

Split that Commish! /tomhaverford

pic.twitter.com/i4LMUzoTT9

— DUP (@duponline) March 29, 2024

Aw Jesus, that is horrible.

Prosecution is a ahocking assault on Unionist culture

Orange Bastard In Nonce Shocker

"In the 1980s he ran the constituency office of Enoch Powell, the former Conservative MP". sounds lovely.

I'm a yank obv but wonder what UK folks think about this take: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1774030136737730661.html?

My job is related entirely to foreign students in the UK, and yes there has been a sustained assault on them as a ploy to get immigration figures down, already we have almost zero EU students, and this year masters-level students are significantly down due to new restrictions on bringing their families over.

Just ridiculous

Allergic to the economic argument for migration, but yes it's accurate as to what is happening. We will all be a lot poorer in all sorts of ways as routes for migration are shut.

In some ways the Tories are throwing the economy under the bus for the next government but it's unlikely Labour will do anything #provemewrong

I don't like economic arguments for anything but it pisses me off that the people who make economic growth their only stated goal are still doing this despite the obvious damage to the economy. Even by their own rules it's stupid and only harmful to the country.

Housing capacity (that is affordable for students en masse, let alone working graduates) is so bad this is the inevitable knock on effect.

I mean we all know that there is loads of unused housing around the UK including London, so I don't see that as an excuse.

fwiw the account in question belongs to someone who most likely agrees with you all about the economic arguments, but is just trying to get at how dumb and cruel the policy is.

Not to mention that compulsory education standards have been in decline due to government policies for years, so if the claim is that easier access to university places should improve life opportunities for British students they might want to start there. Not that I'm expecting sense from anyone, this argument is just theoretical.

i know the attack on humanities degrees as lacking practical utility is hardly just a UK thing, but the sustained assault here seems to be accelerating of late. this twitter thread has been shared by cunts far and wide

If you’re shocked by the £800k taxpayer-funded Shakespeare study, then I’ve got more bad news (although knowledge is power 💪) 🧵

Here are other examples the Arts and Humanities Research Council has funded (with our money):

— Charlotte Gill (@CharlotteCGill) March 24, 2024

Thought that stuff was silly, grifter twitter rubbish. There is nothing Gill can do about academic studies if the uni sector was in a healthy state.

The main attack on UK uni sector really started with tuition fees and the managerialism that came into the sector. Ultimately, that's driven by questions as to how a thing like a University functions within society, but that is a bit out of bounds for this discussion.

I don't read it as grifter rubbish considering that she works for the Mail and I hear about something like this every other week

https://www.change.org/p/save-arts-humanities-and-social-sciences-subjects-at-the-university-of-kent

I shouldn't have looked but hey, didn't take long to get to the nub of it: 1) decolonising; 2) queer and trans; 3) Islam. One senses it's not the money that's the issue.

To me, that falls into a constant noise made by the press about what goes on in Universities: what kind of courses are taught, by whom, what are they for, how do they prepare the young for work, and so on xp

Like I say, it's my job, so I have more awareness of it for sure, but it's absolutely the case humanities departments are being gutted all the time these days.

fwiw the account in question belongs to someone who most likely agrees with you all about the economic arguments, but is just trying to get at how dumb and cruel the policy is.

You see, there's this group of people who are known as Tories...

oh come on man lol, i am not that thick

you can look him up, he is very much “my team” iykwim

tbh, it’s kind of silly to position the hypothetical international student with dependents a someone with a great first degree to wants to study at UCL but has a young kid. They exist but if that was the typical profile it’s hard to imagine the government would be legislating to stop them.

The last fifteen years of student migration policy has been a back and forth between liberalisation and curbs, either because the government is really bad at tweaking things to get the intended outcome (making the U.K. a competitive place for attracting international students) without the unintended outcome (a lot of people who are mostly motivated by permanent migration opportunities) or , more likely, because that outcome is basically impossible to dial in.

The current restrictions come on the back of the opening up of post-study work opportunities, the removal of which were one of the main reasons applications from outside of China and the EU tanked. The goal was to divert some of the young graduates who are currently going to Canada, predominantly, towards choosing to study in the U.K. with the carrot of a couple of years of work at the back end and potentially a route to a longer-term stay after that.

It did kind of work to an extent but the perception, at least, was that the majority of the people who found the offer compelling weren’t really looking at getting work experience post-study, long-term migration was the goal and study, often ‘low-quality’ business admin, etc, degrees was a means to an end. In a lot of cases, they were much older than the target profile and already had established families. The percentage of visas granted to dependents went up from a couple of percent to 24% and would likely have gone higher. iirc in some major sending countries, applications from dependents were higher than the number of applications from students.

There has always been a huge amount of arbitrage and (outright fraud) in international student migration as it’s basically the only option available to a lot of people who want to live in the U.K. There probably isn’t really a lot you can do to stop it, it’s the price of having a competitive education sector. I doubt Labour will take a particularly different approach. You can probably expect a liberalisation in three years followed by a reactive curb in five when the ‘wrong sort of students’ come.