love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

for all that i occasionally criticise the discourse itt, it is helpful to reassure myself, reading the replies to Crerar's tweet up there, that at least this is not the rest of the uk politics discourse

the lack of physical distancing is even more apparent in that video, another incredible victory for labour's pr team

starmer is just a dork, worse than miliband

Complete fucking dimwit.

when I google "SS haircut" all the barnets look like kieth's can someone explain me this

sorry to link to the express but apparently it's a morrissey thing:

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1273030/labour-news-keir-starmer-pmqs-shadow-cabinet-the-smiths-spt

Keir Starmer's love for Morrissey and The Smiths exposed

KEIR STARMER has been obsessed with Manchester-based rock band The Smiths since university - to the point that his inspiration for his haircut comes from the band's former frontman Morrissey, a senior barrister who has known Sir Keir for many years has claimed

So not too far off with the SS comment then.

Oh dear.

my search did lead me here...
https://machohairstyles.com/best-nazi-haircuts/

50 Dashing Nazi Haircuts – Smart Military Inspired Looks For Guys

Omg. I already knew Barristers are mostly human garbage, and that this slimy turd is no exception. But couldn't predict he would be this bad!

That pathetic little thumbs up:
“You did it. You pulled your very own pint”

good to see that the uk government is no closer to achieving competence as we cruise towards a six-figure covid death toll

The prime minister’s spokesman said that the government has now abandoned attempts to provide a daily figure for the number of individuals being tested for coronavirus. Early in the crisis the government did publish daily figures for the number of individuals tested, alongside figures for the number of tests carried out. But the figure for the number of individual figures became increasingly embarrassing because, as the government intensified testing to meet its target of 100,000 tests a day by 1 May, the gap between the number of individuals being tested and the number of tests being carried out became ever larger. (On 30 April, when the government hit its target, 122,347 tests were carried out, but only 73,191 individuals were tested.) In May the government stopped publishing daily figures for the number of individuals being tested. Officials said that the government would resume publishing this figure once it had found a way of ensuring that the statistics were robust, and that people were not being counted twice. But today the spokesman said that that goal has now been dropped. He explained:

DHSC [the Department for Health and Social Care] will no longer publish the number of people tested daily any more, and will instead publish the number of daily tests processed. This is because the daily people tested statistic only counts new people being tested. For example, someone who was tested in February, and then tested again this month, would be counted once. Considering hospital and care home staff will now be tested on a regular basis, we don’t think this statistic would be an accurate reflection of the amount of daily testing that is taking place.

Test and trace statistics published weekly will include the number of people who have been tested.

But when the spokesman asked why it was not possible to change the system so that it could count a person being tested on a given day, even if they had been tested before, the spokesman was unable to give an explanation. He was also unable to explain why the government has continually given a figure for the number of testing kits sent out, but no figure for the number of testing kits sent out that do not get returned.

He was also unable to explain why the government has continually given a figure for the number of testing kits sent out, but no figure for the number of testing kits sent out that do not get returned.

I think he's the only person in the country who doesn't already know the answer to this.

xp Keir Starmer already shared his fave group: Orange Juice.

That is not Starmzy’s hand or body. He was never in the same room as that pint. In this essay I will

Starmer is just a dork and at the same time worse than the guy who did the racist mugs! This is also better than UK pol discourse outside of this thread.

In 1921, 30 Labour councillers were imprisoned for their resistance to govenment policy that would disproportionately harm the poor. Minnie Lansbury caught pneumonia in her cell and died.

These days Labour councillors want applause for only shutting down one library, not two. https://t.co/6LqO0nn9y0

— Dan Fisher☭ (@DanFisha) July 6, 2020

wtf @vittleslondon called this pic.twitter.com/UX67cWrOiJ

— jonathan nunn (@demarionunn) July 6, 2020

> 122,347 tests were carried out, but only 73,191 individuals were tested

yeah, because each testee had two nostrils, both of which had to be tested, in the same way they counted each individual glove as a separate piece of ppe.

and yet people were still repeating the amount of the money given for the arts as if it was accurate and real when it'll turn out to be neither of those things, again.

re: unconscious bias training, it's an extremely silicon valley technocrat solution, and it measurably doesn't work/makes things worse.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/why-is-silicon-valley-so-awful-to-women/517788/

Shelley Correll, the faculty director of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford, gave her first unconscious-bias talk, at Cornell University, in 2003, when, she says, the topic was mostly of interest to academic departments. Now, she says, demand has spiked as tech companies have adopted the training. “Virtually every company I know of is deploying unconscious-bias training,” says Telle Whitney of the Anita Borg Institute. “It’s a fast and feel-good kind of training that helps you feel like you’re making a difference.”

But there’s a problem. Unconscious-bias training may not work. Some think it could even backfire. Though the approach is much more congenial than the “sensitivity training” popular in the 1980s and ’90s—in which white men were usually cast as villains—it suffers from the same problem: People resent being made to sit in a chair and listen to somebody telling them how to act. Forcing them to do so can provoke the fundamental human urge to reply: No thanks, I’ll do the opposite.

Worse, repeatedly saying “I am biased and so are you” can make bias seem inescapable, even okay. People feel more accepting of their own bias, or throw their hands up, figuring that nothing can be done.

They may even become more biased. A 2015 study by Michelle M. Duguid of Cornell University and Melissa C. Thomas-Hunt of the University of Virginia demonstrates the peril of normalizing bad behavior. Stigmatizing certain behaviors, such as littering and alcohol abuse, makes people realize they are acting outside the norm and has proved to be a powerful way of changing these behaviors. Conversely, messages presenting good behavior as a social norm—“the majority of guests reuse their towels”—can make people embrace this behavior.

https://newrepublic.com/article/156032/diversity-training-isnt-enough-pamela-newkirk-robin-diangelo-books-reviews

Newkirk proposes that diversity initiatives have met so little success in these areas because they diverge in ideology and intent from civil rights–era programs that sought to put the nation on a track to racial equality. Rather than agitating for social reform, today’s massive diversity industry functions instead to shield institutions from discrimination litigation and public scrutiny.

By contrast, she argues, Great Society programs such as the Civil Rights Act and Higher Education Act led to significantly increased numbers of African Americans in many public schools that had once been almost exclusively white, as well as within colleges and universities. Though that’s true enough, it’s also here that her diagnosis of the diversity industry’s deficiencies falters. Simply put, while Lyndon Johnson and other architects of Great Society reforms may have sought to create a “racially just and inclusive nation,” as Newkirk puts it, the actual measurable successes of those programs weren’t the result of a “moral imperative” so much as they were the result of public policy. And the former without the latter, which is essentially what Newkirk offers, poses little threat to today’s ineffective diversity industry.

While ruminating on one’s internalized prejudices may require some psychological heavy lifting, there’s little evidence that it helps produce or sustain material change. And though whiteness educators like DiAngelo may employ the radical-sounding language of critical race theory, self-reflection is ultimately a much easier undertaking than working to build a durable political coalition that actually has the leverage to remake society.

rupa... waht

Scary incident in South Ealing. Luckily everyone unscathed.

Makes this proposed madcap scheme that will gridlock the hood and cause mayhem for emergency vehicles even more ludicrous. Please object https://t.co/5SjhNV4Xns https://t.co/KwO6Er7Knj

— Rupa Huq MP (@RupaHuq) July 5, 2020

Starmzy has already been to Paul McKenna who managed to hypnotise him into believing his voice sounds like Redd Pepper rather than Kermit. But he's still a fucking tory twat!

he's already aced unconsciousness training

"we will seize your blood-drenched ill gotten-gains" just quoting my latest fave poster on tankie-forum.com

i've been on an unconscious bias training. i lost faith when they trotted out the "95 percent of brain activity is unconscious" factoid. but i did share a table with a guy who worked with vic and bob, so it wasn't a complete waste.

maybe an unclear line for some people between unconscious and unacknowledged

Wera Hobhouse: If you served in the coalition and describe yourself as centre-left, you must repudiate your involvement with that government.

If only Starmer Labour could have remembered the failings of Milibandism rather than trying to repeat or build on them, as Swinson learned the hard way - there isn't that much of a market for tories in disguise when the real thing is on offer. The Libdems suck shit, but at least there seems to be a genuine sense of things being up in the air with their leadership campaign as opposed to a cakewalk by the right of the party like happened with the labour leadership travesty.

although I can't believe the glacial pace of their leadership campaign, are they saving the bombastic announcement for 2024?

it's not like anybody will remember who the leader is until then

Feel like Johnson might really have fucked up with today's care home comments. Way too transparent in their blame shifting.

The Labour leadership campaign has aged as well as a plate of milk in the Gobi. I just wished members and RLB would have realised at the time that this was a desperate fight to the death, rather than the all this "lets just be civil and support your local team man" bullshit that prevailed. RLB is a good person but was weak and guileless when strength was required, it still makes me angry.

xp remember the first few months of the Trump administration when every other day people were like "he's gone too far this time"?

if one thing RLB will have learned is that there is no point playing the game with right of the party, because they are hypocrites and many ways worse than tories.

Tbh I think unconscious bias training can work in particular circumstances but the person doing it has to be particularly receptive and approaching it in good faith and often doesn't work when they don't. It's likely to go down badly with some Labour MPs. One of the things that should be abundantly clear from the last few years is that people who strongly regard themselves as progressive, whose self-image is built around it, can react very badly and defensively when it's pointed out that perhaps they aren't.

The problem with using it as a reaction to things like the BLM interview is that that interview was an entirely conscious move. Team Starmer know full well that Labour has a problem with a certain type of male voter and have been going all out to address that. To their credit they haven't gone down the full legitimate concerns route but instead that's manifested itself in proudly showing his esteem and admiration for the police, the army. You can't face both ways on this, it becomes impossible to appeal to people who see them as institutions of state protection without fundamentally alienating those who see them as institutions of state violence (often directed at people like them). It's all conscious, they've made the calculations here.

Thing is, what is Brand Starmer at the moment if not an attempt to appeal to people's unconscious biases ('you can just imagine him standing on the steps of Number 10' etc). It certainly isn't about policy or vision yet. So yeah, more Brand Starmer here. He's powerful and forensic and can run Boris Johnson ragged at the dispatch box and also do more press-ups than him. He's a serious man for serious times but can also have a laugh with Piers Morgan - Jeremy Clarkson said he could vote for him! He's a distinguished human rights lawyer but also prosecutes rioters (see my previous paragraph). Lots of boxes ticked there. He's a metropolitan liberal who loves Europe and immigration who marched against the Iraq War but is a friend of the forces.

It's been obvious for a while now that the next election will be fought on turf that's economically expansionary and probably redistributive but also socially authoritarian. Suspect they know they've overclocked on one side now so you'll start to see a drip of announcements to calm soft-left nerves.

Also does anyone know anything about how he made the transition from being a respected human rights/defence lawyer to Director of Public Prosecutions? Feels like a move made with one eye on a political career to me.

It's been obvious for a while now that the next election will be fought on turf that's economically expansionary and probably redistributive but also socially authoritarian.

Need BernieVardy for this not KermitFrog

(tho i think the other half of this as social/cultural is overstated and thats why they keep running into trouble. It's more psychological than social or cultural)

It's more psychological than social or cultural

like when the manifesto was accused of being tmi ?

he can put the ball on the penalty spot but can he put it past the keeper

It's an appeal to the psychological bit as well. A nudge and a wink to different groups that he's on their side really, they'll see. Not like the other guys, who hate people like them.

https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/1/590x/Keir-Starmer-1305876.jpg?r=1594060452854

"A nudge and a wink" and a thumbs up.

Also does anyone know anything about how he made the transition from being a respected human rights/defence lawyer to Director of Public Prosecutions? Feels like a move made with one eye on a political career to me.

aiui, it wasn't much of a shift for him. He was an advisor to the PSNI and ACPO while a human-rights lawyer and saw the reform of the CPS as an extension of his broader interest in making sure that the state functions effectively and more fairly.

I've said before obviously but the psychological is more about "this is what we're going to do" and believing in that the resolve is there otherwise its all cartoon shanks and no wounds

He's doing the opposite of that. He loves BLM on Wednesday he hates BLM on Thursday, this tells people there's nothing there. Need to pick your position and when under fire say "it is what it is pal, next question". There's nothing social or cultural about this

he felt quite strongly at the time that people committing minor benefit fraud should be doing the same amount of bird as a nonce, because that would be a fairer society, that's what I love about this guy *thumbs up*

Saying "this is what we're going to do" is one thing, getting people to believe you can do it is another. The Starmer approach so far is based on trying to convince people of the latter - in a vague, unqualifiable sense - than the former. Johnson has years to decide on what he was going to do so it was ready to go at the precise time he became PM - bears repeating that the 2019 campaign was less about Johnson differentiating himself from Corbyn and more about putting distance between himself and Theresa May/David Cameron.

That works well when you're in opposition (or seen to be, in Johnson's case), but less so when you've been the incumbent for four years and have bungled it every step of the way, which is what Starmer's banking on. Might come as a shock to the system if/when Trump wins in November.

Saying "this is what we're going to do" is one thing, getting people to believe you can do it is another.

100%! The saying is not enough, it's about believability. Its no good just saying you want to score a goal

Might come as a shock to the system if/when Trump wins in November.

You think Trump wins? 10 weeks ago I'd have thought 50-50 but he's got a lot of work to do (especially if capital has decided against him)

I've talked to a few people who voted Tory and admitted they can't stand Johnson and two of them basically said they did it because they had to stop that dangerous extremist Corbyn. The media campaign against him and CCHQ FB stuff worked all to well for them. It will work against Starmer as well.

Trump will win because he's been the incumbent for four years and has bungled it every step of the way. See also Johnson in 2024.

Believability....getting the people who believed in Tories alleged assurances about NHS in their red wall, the people just looking for an excuse to not vote Labour and feel less guilt about it, the people Stockholmed into thinking their area will get more money if it turns blue.

by the time of the next election they'll have some good videos of Starmer trying to triangulate himself into every position and never saying anything and often showing insanely hypiritical contradictions + just generally looking like a very unlikable slippery fucker, he's toast and might as well pack in already.

lol hypocritical