ForenSix Opposition - Politics in the Soon To Be Former UK in Autumn 2020

No you're absolutely right. xp

the spice will always increase and continue to flow

Gyac, yes I actually meant deluded rather than well-meaning but don't underestimate the capacity for self-deception among yr typical liberal Tory voter. It's the same with all those Cameron policy initiatives that seemed vaguely cuddly on the surface even as they were pushing ahead with austerity, that were aimed at the poor, or people who were particularly bothered about poverty, they were aimed at people who were inclined to vote Tory and didn't like to think of themselves as *not* caring about the poor.

the blair version literally depended entirely on the presence of a flow of tappable wealth from an financial and property sector, such as vanished for the foreseeable in 2008

That flow was coming back by 2012, but the will to tap it was no longer there. Whether it will survive covid is a different matter, but both financial and property markets seem artificially high at the moment.

Meanwhile this looks like an absolute disaster in the making even before you consider the talk of forcing students to stay in their accommodation for Christmas.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54292728

I entirely agree with Daniel RF.

You can generally look at a banality and think 'well, true, no-one can really disagree with that'.

Like 'I want what's best for Britain', 'I want our people to aspire - and to succeed', 'I want us to be stronger - but also fairer' - OK, if meaningless.

But this particular banality manages the unusual feat of stinking as soon as you look at it, by introducing a false idea of 'competition with the rest of the world' into the idea of wanting a better society.

i was going to post last night that the university situation has gone south even faster than i guessed it would

Not every town in the UK is especially welcoming of its student population at the best of times let alone when halls and campuses are acting as rona incubators that can't help but spill out into the wider community.

It doesn't seem even remotely possible to run a covid-friendly university campus and it's astonishing that no one appears to have thought this through.

i worried about the local/students tensions the other week, seems bound to go off at some point. this is the kind of shitshow that ought to affect Boris's base but hey nothing matters

i'm guessing there's a strong resentment abt being economically dependent at a transient sub-community with the unresolved conflict easily pushed into a contradictory hostility

(shrewsbury never a student town in this sense so i don't have a good born-and-raised feel for how the locals i grew up with wd have responded)

Wonder about the possibility of a rent strike in Glasgow (and perhaps other) unis as a response to an appalling state of affairs.

just doing a checklist of recent Starmer endorsements: Jeremy Clarkson, The Taxpayers Alliance, Maurice Glasman (a true conservative he says) and not forgetting Nigel Farage "heartily agreeing" with his BLM statement. And I think it is at least five of his ten pledges he has either reneged on or gives the impresses they've already been kicked into the long grass. How is a party activist supposed to even campaign for this guy on the doorsteps, perhaps either: yeah don't worry he's racist + tory af, or in BAME constituencies don't worry about the lip service to fascists and the absolute dearth of transformative policies - he's just playing out an electoral strategy.

peeling landlords and other minor bosses and cops away from claire ainsley's way-too-vague conception of the "new working class" seems like potentially productive praxis activism

(the idea that class warfare doesn't play these days is simply and also vastly false: A. bcz huge amounts of rightwing punditwork is disengenously tweaked class warfare, but B. bcz ppl at the sharp end of it exactly know who their very present enemy is)

I read "doesn't play" as "we will do everything in our power to make sure it doesn't play"

Farage used to make a point of praising Corbyn as well, it was a favoured shit stirring tactic of his.

Lab: we will be fiscally responsible.

Tories:

Sloping down if anything... blue = chosen, green = civil service recommendation pic.twitter.com/jD0jbJxNBY

— Chris Hanretty is staying home (@chrishanretty) September 24, 2020

Wonder about the possibility of a rent strike in Glasgow (and perhaps other) unis as a response to an appalling state of affairs.

You pay upfront - which is why some people have been shouting at the Unis on the suspicion that they wouldn't do anything until the money came in - when in fact they won't do anything at all.

Also this question-contains-the-answer from the BBC article.

"She's signed an agreement and paid a lot of money to stay there and what for? Now she is essentially imprisoned?"

it really is shameful, good job shame doesn't exist now

"You pay upfront - which is why some people have been shouting at the Unis on the suspicion that they wouldn't do anything until the money came in - when in fact they won't do anything at all."

Is this for the term or the year? Also I don't know if you can cancel the tenancy agreement or anything like that? Just a horrendous situation.

traditionally students pay a term at a time up front but i don't think the contract is easy to evade once you're in anyway

batten down the hatches lads it's gonna be a rough *checks notes* rest of our lives

#BlueLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/gwgxzDRIBd

— Cllr, Rev'd Gary Gray (@CllrGaryGray) September 25, 2020

Labour councillors being total dogshit, what a surprise.

Screaming at how the students at Parker House are dealing with the entire building having to go into lockdown and self-isolate after a covid outbreak pic.twitter.com/yPszI8xqvG

— Jordan (@livie_jordan) September 24, 2020

Boring Dystopia at its best

I watched the Scottish brief today. From the tone of the questions it seems the whole country should be more upset about students being asked to stay away from the pub for a couple of nights than the elderly and vulnerable being told to stay home and avoid family contact for over 3 months.

Most new daily cases ever in Scotland today. UK overall over 6600 new cases - only surpassed once in April.

October is going to bring brutal death numbers.

The real caseload was much higher in March/April though wasn’t it? They were doing barely any testing back then. (Not saying next few months won’t be grim but)

It's estimated that there were something like 100,000 cases a day at the peak, and as casual as people have been for the past few weeks they haven't been piling onto trains or going to gigs or sporting events.

I wonder how long it'll take before we get to the point where the progress made during the original lockdown has been wiped out (which of course means that the massive economic disruption during the spring has been, effectively, for nothing).

fuck that's a lot of coppers, maybe we do need some kind of blue lives matter movement!

Croydon shooting: More than 1,600 officers have been killed in line of duty https://t.co/d1i6wlkkv9

— BBC London (@BBCLondonNews) September 25, 2020

oh wait that's over the last ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY EIGHT YEARS ffs

lol there’s a stat about half the number being RIC members during the war of independence, a century ago

pouring one out for that Bow Street runner that got run over by a hansom cab chasing Jack the Ripper.

apparently it's since 1680?

fuck me,they'll be counting murdered medieval bailiffs as pigs next

The very bad tweet has now disappeared.

erm that’s 20 you mugs https://t.co/XJICn4azmk

— Rondelle Hobbs (@RondelleHobbs) September 25, 2020

(500 from the RIC, 1919-1921)

If only they had some other kind of motif to represent the number 10

right on cue https://www.ft.com/content/470cf7f4-59e6-47c1-9efa-ce634b7980d7

A majority of people want the Labour Party to prioritise its own pandemic policies over scrutinising the government’s response, new polling for the New Statesman has found. https://t.co/0bFGstiXIV

— New Statesman (@NewStatesman) September 25, 2020

Andrew Neil has officially quit the BBC and is starting his own news channel

As for the future, I’m delighted to announce I have accepted the post of Chairman of GB News, a new news channel to be launched early in the New Year bringing new perspectives to the news. I will also be presenting a new nightly prime-time show on GB News. Watch this space.

— Andrew Neil (@afneil) September 25, 2020

Keir Starmer is currently being destroyed by everyone on gogglebox for agreeing with the government on literally everything and then complaining about what they've done after the fact, they're all dumbfounded at why he won't say what he would do instead

— Lewis (@lewisandstuff) September 25, 2020

I avoid gogglebox like the plague, but it sounds like everyone on there tonight doing more astute political punditry than the so-called professional commentariat class!

Gogglebox people mostly nice to Jeremy Corbyn or at least not repeating absolute right-wing garbage IIRC.

the LibDems have voted to campaign for UBI. Bold move, but I wonder if the UK electorate have long enough memories to remember what happened last time they had an attractive flagship policy that was way to the left of a floundering gutless Tory-lite version of Labour.

MattHancock's “World-beating” “NHS” app doesn’t recognise tests carried out by the NHS or PHE - only those by private outsourced companies like Serco.

sounds perfectly reasonable if you are a demented Tory ideologue, but absolutely insane to any reasonable person.

Have to say that moving UBI into something akin to the political mainstream is important even if it is the LibDems doing it.

It's a weird one really in that a notoriously tankie publication like The Economist can be all in favour while socialist columnists are still handwringing about whether it can be really considered left-wing.

My guess is that UBI is like Modern Monetary Theory in that the pandemic will eventually force policy makers into doing it on the sly even as they're pretending they aren't.

Yeah just needs a rebrand. Obv I will never vote Lib Dem but this is a better move than Starmer's likely to make in his entire career

It's a weird one really in that a notoriously tankie publication like The Economist can be all in favour while socialist columnists are still handwringing about whether it can be really considered left-wing.

How is that weird? The Economist being onboard for something is pretty strong evidence that one should question whether it is left wing - or at least, whether there aren't ways to implement it with results that aren't in the interest of the left.

Theoretically the welfare state in Germany was created to stymie the Left but in the absence of guillotines you take what you can get

The question of whether it's sufficiently left-wing is secondary to the issue of whether or not it will benefit people. Or at least it should be.