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

No-Deal was always a hoax, says Tom in the Graun after deal is voted through parliament

this guy

You’ve wanted Brexit al your political life. You knew it was based on lies & false promises but rather than call them out you undermined those of us who did, because you wanted to hijack a right wing Brexit & turn it into a left wing one. You own this with Johnson & Farage. https://t.co/M9kthTsgZs

— Eddie Marsan (@eddiemarsan) December 30, 2020

Eddie Marsan is Unwell

Looking forward to checking out Francis Barber, Weetman, Rachel Riley and some other comedians reactions later when they've had enough wine.

RR is just a grifter, she won't care

Eddie was already a very uncomplicated lad and now his brane has melted

there's a lot of jobs where posting pished bullshit under your own name to a largeish Twitter audience would at least get you a disciplinary

*four years of losing your shit* It is what it is.

Well that’s that then. Triumph? Disaster? My view was that it’s like changing your broadband provider. A load of hassle, admin, paperwork & faff. And after all that, not that much will actually change. And your neighbours still have better speed. But it is what it is. Onwards.

— Ayesha Hazarika (@ayeshahazarika) December 30, 2020

nothing says "strong principles" like working for Times Radio

Stronger restrictions from midnight:

"Millions of people across England will be placed under the tightest restrictions from Thursday as the government aims to halt the rapid spread of coronavirus.

The Department for Health announced on Wednesday that large parts of the country would be moved into the highest tier of restrictions, which means non-essential shops, pubs and restaurants must close, as well as gyms and leisure centres."

No areas in Tier 2 now.

thank fuck there will be no large obvious vectors for the disease opening next week

981 new deaths recorded, fuck

Confirmed that primary schools are opening again

Except in these places (because this is how we release this information now)

Primary opening delayed in:
Barking and Dagenham
Barnet
Bexley
Brent
Bromley
Croydon
Ealing
Enfield
Hammersmith and Fulham
Havering
Hillingdon
Hounslow
Kensington and Chelsea
Merton
Newham
Richmond-Upon-Thames
Southwark
Sutton
Tower Hamlets
Waltham Forest
Wandsworth
Westminster

— Chris Smyth (@Smyth_Chris) December 30, 2020

Fucking hell

@ everything

And we still haven’t really seen the impact of the plague trains & Christmas mixing, right

guessing that the numbers are only going to be moving in one direction for the next week or so

Fucking hell

That's just the London boroughs affected. You can add on most of Essex to that along with bits of Kent, Sussex, Herts etc.

TH but not hackney, southwark but not lambeth. whatever.

It is how it is, they will go up before they fall. Infection rate in our ward has halved but the deaths always have a lag on the cases. Don’t know what else to say.

981 new deaths recorded, fuck

― kites aren't fun (NickB), Wednesday, 30 December 2020 bookmarkflaglink

One more day and we could break three digits. Magic.

its so nonsensical though. there are definitely boroughs that have a lot of crossing back and forth. i feel like inner london has v twinned boroughs almost. th and hackney, lambeth and southwark. camden and islington. etc

like its so numbers-ey. these areas are just adminstrative and maybe not the most useful way of thinking about concentrations of infection or potential vectors

The Ayesha person is dreadful.

JC has, as usual, magnificently shown all his critics to be corrupt criminals and pathetic pipsqueaks.

Tom Kibasi isn't mostly as bad as that one tweet would suggest. I don't get his enthusiastic support for KS, but on Brexit I think his judgment has often been quite fact-based and sensible, and his politics are way to the left of most KS supporters.

Like on gambling forums when people boast about their winning sports bets and people might call them an "after timer" if they don't ever post about them before the result. Kibasi going on No-Deal Hoax all week after it is completely certain No-Deal is not happening makes him a bit of an "after-timing" wanker!

Checking out the local school closures and openings, certainly looks very #scientific! pic.twitter.com/O08nkHlWbq

— Simon (@simonk_133) December 30, 2020

But Kibasi has been saying this about no-deal hoaxes for years.

I didn't know that, but I do tend to ignore him!

Kibasi is a strange one but tbftfdoippr he was saying no deal was a hoax at least 2 years ago https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/05/no-deal-brexit-eu

Kibasi: a sober Paul Mason?

he must have been on the spice as well if he thinks Starmer is useful!

It's hard to disagree with that.

More science.

So Gavin Williamson has told the large majority of London boroughs to keep their primaries closed, apart from... Greenwich, which it threatened to take to court two weeks ago for closing its schools. pic.twitter.com/yx5UeQrrXZ

— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) December 30, 2020

Labour going after Gavin Williamson as he said "overwhelming majority" would be back at school on 4 Jan, yet half a million primary school students will not do so due to London closures alone. Kate Green calling on him to "return to parliament this evening to correct the record".

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) December 30, 2020

lol, at least the opposition are holding him to account :p

On what the government is thinking and what evidence they're considering, it is pretty clear they are prioritising labour discipline above all else. Over lives certainly, but also over capital accumulation during the pandemic.

— libcom.org (@libcomorg) December 30, 2020

Good analysis on government non-action. The thread it jumps from is incredibly grim, looking at another 20k deaths. Sadly we can say the NHS has pretty much collapsed, as in some people will not get access to care they need.

All we need now is for vaccine roll out to be bungled. I mean, who is going to give the vaccines, how much capacity do we have for this? I don't know, but I'd like to see reports.

Besides all that we are still learning about these mutations, too - 2020 is so not the end of it.

All paid for, I'm guessing.

MPs have voted to extend their Christmas recess until January 11, giving them almost an extra week away from Westminster

— John Stevens (@johnestevens) December 30, 2020

Thinking of this as the only glimmer of hope.

the highlight of this year, politically, for me, was the period of accelerated Revolutionary Time last summer. when self-active, Black-led, antiracist struggles from below changed what people believed was possible. when Minneapolis police station burned and Colston fell.

— michael (@Sisyphusa) December 31, 2020

<3

the struggle is always going on somewhere, whether we as individuals take time out or not

Sir Kieth Starmer: UK's best years lie ahead
https://i.imgur.com/2iz7HMt.jpg

ty xyzzpltru for the link framing this as a question of labour discipline. ive been struggling for a language to describe exactly that phenomenon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVvmeOtBYhg

still obsessed with this clip from after first lockdown about the "changes" you might see in high street shops when they reopen. anything that might have made real difference (limiting the concentrations of people in the same space, using barriers to protect staff or using one way systems) is offered as something that 'may' happen and not something that must happen or is even possible in a number of instances. the reporter is keeps breezily describing this new world order and at the end urging us all to head to the £££sales£££ but its so obvious that no physical changes will have even been made to the layouts of the shops, that nobody from head office who made the covid ready policies for stores has even visited the stores and certainly that nobody could expect say extra staff to make extra workloads associated with improving hygiene in stores possible. its clear that the idea that these chain stores would give an inch to put safety ahead of profits is not going to be on the table.

the absolute intransigence around properly modifying how businesses work is so insane. i still can't get over the corner shop by my house run by a retirement age woman who has not put up a screen at the counter and only just started wearing one of those face screens. the most obvious thing in the world seems that there should have been teams of people and funding to help small business get back open with guidance and accessible funds to help businesses introduce safe store layouts processes, etc etc. i know this is all much worse in businesses that aren't public facing especially factories etc. i spoke to teachers in the school i used to work in and they said that when they reopened it was still impossible to get handsoap and the school fought the union about this!

British PM Johnson's father applying for French citizenship https://t.co/VQLEOiv4wI pic.twitter.com/88Er4Fv1jP

— Reuters (@Reuters) December 31, 2020

the fact that click-and-collect is still being allowed says so much. We could easily go delivery-only and reduce unnecessary travel but the Gov't doesn't see a problem with people being encouraged to spend in a less safe manner if it helps the economy.

But on Wednesday the prime minister sounded a more concilatory note as parliament approved a new trade deal with the EU, saying: “This is not the end of Britain as a European country. We are in many ways the quintessential European civilisation... and we will continue to be that.”

Cunt.

working in retail the past six months has been grim - not just my own personal experience but the people I know in other business saying the same thing - you're using less manpower hours in your branch because you're not taking the same money, but you're expected to get the same level of tasking completed plus keep the place clean and sanitised, and manage the volume and flow of customers. And of course, the nature of it is that the customers who are going to physical stores are the ones who are least likely to take sensible precautions etc because anyone with half a brain would just stay home and order only what was necessary via the internet.

But on Wednesday the prime minister sounded a more concilatory note as parliament approved a new trade deal with the EU, saying: “This is not the end of Britain as a European country. We are in many ways the quintessential European civilisation... and we will continue to be that.”

Could detect some dogwhistles in this babble (European = white, which the UK will continue to be), but prob giving it too much credit.

whenever someone starts harping on about 'civilisations', you know they'll have the callipers out soon enough

Twitter relitigating Darien today is a preview of what’s coming with IndyRef II. Brexit proxy culture war with added patronisation, the Holyrood campaign is going to be grim too.

i love it when people take an active informed interest in history tbh oh wait

Tom D OTM.

I was wondering how the UK government would manage to fuck up the vaccine rollout, but even I didn't foresee them delaying the appointments for the second jab by three months against all expert advice. The Tory backbenchers are essentially serial killers at this stage, can't wait for everyone to vote them back in at the next election.