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

Don't read the replies, never read the replies.

Have Peter Reid or Big Nev weighed in yet?

solid approach to ilx also

xp

'“I’ve had members of my association claiming universal credit and they’re shocked by how low it is,” says a Tory MP.'

Illustration, if needed, of how the Osborne-IDS cuts were enabled by a combination of wilful ignorance and tabloid scaremongering. https://t.co/FBTFYK3npw

— Jonathan Portes (@jdportes) August 21, 2020

it's actually higher at the moment because of covid. wait until it drops down to its normal rate again.

it's currently £102pw + change but is usually £82. if you are under 25 it is £85 normally £65.

if some of these arseholes wouldn't listen to the UN rapporteur, Corbz/McD and countless other good people who have been highlighting how fucking shit UC is, before voting for these cunts again, then it's sowing then reaping time I'm afraid.

Did the coronavirus write this? https://t.co/CjYvc6aJPe

— jewdⒶs // ייִדהודה (@jewdas) August 22, 2020

Well well well

EXC: Tom Watson held secret talks with Jo Swinson about standing for the Liberal Democrats in Lewes at December’s election. https://t.co/MGXCbUAbbl

— Patrick Maguire (@patrickkmaguire) August 23, 2020

That's paywalled but I'd like to know how that panned out and why it didn't happen given that Swinson would have taken virtually anyone on board at that point.

It's also done the unthinkable and made me look very very slightly more favourably upon Chuka Umunna for at least following through on it.

Was watching C4 news yesterday and a young Black activist from Brixton was complaining that he’d been presented an award last year by his local MP and the following week, the MP passed him in the street and didn’t recognise him.

xp in the replies

So was it @tom_watson that failed the candidates assessment! We were told someone did but no one will tell us who??? Come on Tom you know where you are much more wanted and where you will be more utilised!!

— Sadie 🌈🔶 (@sadietrent_92) August 23, 2020

If the story in the article is true then Watson decided not to stand on the promise of a peerage that was then turned down because he fell hook line and sinker for an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

The ongoing presence of Gavin Williamson has really obscured quite how comically bad Tom Watson is at Machiavellianism.

tbf he's comically bad in a number of areas

xxp can we not link that person here, thanks

Watson's forthcoming parliamentary thriller novel (of "ambition and betrayal" provisional title The House!) could be an intentional comedic masterpiece if he included his best material, but he is too much of a pompous prick to fess up to what a bumbling clown he has been, especially with his paedo-ring busting heroics.

The name was vaguely familiar but I hadn't actually made the connection as to he was and didn't bother to check, it was more to get the screenshot out there.

Killed the embed, there are so many of these accounts that it's difficult to keep track.

as much as a running joke Watson is, he still wielded enough power + influence to get Dawn Foster sacked from the Guardian. None of these wankers are ever actually amusing clowns.

baggymp was one of the great running gags tbf

i mean not so much running as jogging for a bit and stopping for breath but you know

He was listening to some classics last night tbf. Also need to point out the top message in his shoutbox is still someone calling him a cunt.

a lot of suspects in this thread

Tom is as fit as a butcher's dog now, fucking shitbird does 3 marathons before breakfast!

i know also body shaming jokes are bad but also Tom Watson is a tory cunt

i know also body shaming jokes are bad

It's never stopped a single ilxor from going there

(inc me, I might add, though I think I try to reserve it for footballers turning up for pre season)

you can't body shame Tom these days, he benches 180 (wtf that means) and he's that strong he can slice through an engineering brick with his hand.

xp not only sacked, but sacked by email while waiting to be discharged from three weeks in hospital for a massive epileptic fit and injuries incurred while having it.

He was transparently their main source of disgruntled frontbencher quotes going back maybe a decade but his influence and power - such as it existed - was predicated on being that guy. Now he's no longer in Parliament it no longer exists although it might be sufficient to get some coverage of his forthcoming Lanchestrian masterpiece.

He's still occasionally rinsing the Giggs and Headie One bangers but the most notable thing from Baggymp's recent Last FM action is that he reloaded the Band of HM Royal Marines' Bugle Fanfare to mark VJ Day. I wasn't aware that any human being would actually do that even if they were so inclined, as opposed to, say, sticking the TV on.

so a HANG THE PEEDO?!?! mob has been yelling outside Buckingham Palace today or yesterday? my sympathies have never been more torn

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EgH2wSyXkAAul8X?format=jpg&name=large

lol! some Rona/5g truthers seem to be piggybacking their cause to the let's lynch a paedophil mob!

i assume these are QAnon adjacent tbh and if not they're still probably horrible fascists but then so's the monarchy, it's a score draw

Yeah they’re all Qanon people, great

oh aye!

Starmer has been attacking the govt on their competence. But Rachel Shabi made the good point that competence isn't the main problem, even if they were competent they still would be led by ideology and make the exact same decisions i.e huuuge privatised test and trace contracts for pals etc.. The only reason Starmer can only go for competence is because he's barely fucking different from these cunts, just owned by different paymasters.

Other than the vague idea of turning libraries into extra schools, is there anything Labour has proposed about how they should re-open? If so, I’ve missed it.

Lol

The UK is a country with a deep and lingering sickness in its soul pic.twitter.com/cTAOTaMqzN

— keewa (@keewa) August 23, 2020

Really what can you do with the likes of them? Listen attentively to their concerns?

any leader of the Labour party that ignores Teachers' Unions concerns while doing annoyingly non-committal and vague attacks on the govt without offering anything better, could do with some forensic scrutiny directed at themselves. Or if not a baseball bat directed at their head.

careful now

of course a soft padded one I meant, all in the spirit of the ilx polite discourse regulations act 2020

How will the National Trust cope without the subscriptions of 'Mr 13lls' and 'Plane Pimp'.

re National Trust, this curiously echoes something I think about a lot. Namely:

Why are membership organizations expected to police the public statements of their members?

Political parties (in practice mainly Labour, but in principle others) are assailed for having members who have, in a private capacity, tweeted something abusive (or sometimes things that are fine, but are falsely alleged to be bad).

Demands are made about their Disciplinary Procedures. Things must be speeded up. The fact that complaints are 'mishandled' is a scandal. The general implication is that these people must be expelled ASAP (though with the Con party I don't know if it ever happens).

Meanwhile ... the National Trust is also a membership organization. Will people demand that it TAKES ACTION about the people tweeting disdain for its anti-racist initiative? What if one of them becomes more fully abusive and starts using unmistakably racist language> Will it be imperative for them to be thrown out of the NT as quickly as possible? Will the NT be publicly shamed and attacked if this process is delayed? Or - as I imagine - will no-one notice or care?

The comparison also draws attention to an anomaly in perception: party disciplinary procedures tend to imply that it's a privilege to be in a party and people should be desperate not to be thrown out. But really, those of us who join political parties are doing them a favour and giving them money we could happily use elsewhere. Which is what these National Trust protesters are threatening to do.

I mean the National Trust is not really the same as a political party but if a group of members start posting deranged shit on social media, flaunting their membership, then it does quickly become a PR issue for the institution.

I'm not convinced that the above accounts are all real people let alone real National Trust members. The NT has attracted a number of negative news stories in the last couple of weeks - they appear to be heavily strapped for cash - and these have largely been in the right-wing press. Given the membership is likely to skew older and more rural it's probably becoming an unwilling vector for a bit of cultural panic about not very much.

I would have thought in pure attendance terms, National Trust properties that have reopened might have had an OK summer, given the number of people holidaying in this country, the generally good weather, and the fact that most of these places have enormous grounds. They might be attracting a different audience to normal and that's going to throw up opportunities for any malign actor determined to stir up fear and resentment.

if i was the NT i would simply not care about these type of idiots or the bots that impersonate them.

i guess last night i was having a brainstorm more about how a society ought to deal with people who will continue to insist on their "right to hate" and specifically to hate in public

They are doing the right thing, they have a membership base that is literally going to die off and they aren't going to improve it by pandering to these people, which means engaging more deeply with young people and being more honest about the history of these places and where the money to build them came from.

Younger people, perhaps, not just the under 30s.

the irony of the Tweet about "erasing history" was so intense i assumed it had to be a pile-on from somebody with no NT membership who just wanted a culture war skirmish