Free as a Dodo: UK Politics Welcomes 2021

Double the numbers registered for Universal Credit than there were last January I believe

recall reading last year they'd restarted the merciless sanctions regime that was such a big hit pre-rona. I presume they are taking a less gung-ho approach to it still or least I've not heard much about people on the sharp end of them so much recently - or perhaps it's just completely normalised background noise now.

I'll just say it's still possible to get sanctioned

Interesting stats from @Autonomy_UK - the South of England has been hit harder by unemployment than the North whereas rates were 50% higher pre-Covid. Unemployment tracker here: https://t.co/uqq1noyOj1 pic.twitter.com/ZCiX9smSON

— Dawn Foster (@DawnHFoster) April 20, 2021

What they mean by the South of England is London, which the Tories don't give a fuck about anyway.

I’d really like to think a minister briefing that he’s resignation-furious because Our Boys won’t be given immunity from prosecution for war crimes and genocide would be a wakey-wakey moment but I’ve assumed things like this a thousand times before, and they never are.

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) April 20, 2021

war crimes and genocide is a proud british tradition, it’s what make this nation great

it's not a war crime if you're in the right ffs

I’d totally missed this as well

Confirmed - Gvt to exempt torture, genocide & crimes against humanity from new protections against prosecution for troops.
 
MoD spox: “We have listened to concerns, & in order to send a powerful message to the intl community amendments will be made to the Overseas Ops Bill” https://t.co/cESLM4ziLL

— Lucy Fisher (@LOS_Fisher) April 20, 2021

I... am more upset by this than I expected to be.

Labour lauding Johnny Mercer for attempting to prevent British soldiers being tried for genocide and war crimes is disgusting. You’re being outflanked on human rights by Boris Johnson here. https://t.co/OxKi5XVlAp

— Dawn Foster (@DawnHFoster) April 20, 2021

I know we’re all bored of the BBC being terrible but...

Conservative MP Johnny Mercer has resigned as a defence minister, Downing Street has announced.

Mr Mercer said he had been "forced" to offer to resign over the scope of a government law designed to protect veterans from unfounded prosecutions.

British soldiers who served in Northern Ireland are to be excluded from the bill, which MPs will debate on Wednesday.

Why would anyone object to Mercer’s bill if it’s meant to protect from ‘unfounded prosecutions’? Why would you need to exclude Northern Ireland?

Overseas operations
Northern Ireland
Overseas operations

Etc etc

Justice.https://t.co/zOy6vtZ6sr

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) April 20, 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Lf0A3JuxjU

remember Jean Charles de Menezes, Kieth?

He could ask Cressida Dick.

Coincidence? I think not. H/t @SirPaulHartley pic.twitter.com/l7NiMAYYCb

— It's real 🍊 🍊 🍊 (@StefGotBooted) April 21, 2021

This is good from Wail Qasim

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2021/april/1782-deaths-but-no-convictions

Progressive politics 2021: Labour MP calls for Indians to be banned from entering UK, video approvingly tweeted by "March for Change," retweeted by "People's NHS" https://t.co/9IdK5Aq9gS

— James E. Baldwin (@james_e_baldwin) April 20, 2021

Not as much in the news as to whether Indians are vermin carriers but this episode is just awful.

A young woman called Phoenix Netts, was tragically murdered and today her murdered admitted to her crime.https://t.co/zaSMJcOWyL

— Hetty Halpin Wilde (@Henriettaspoon) April 21, 2021

“I think the Labour Party are the biggest bunch of cunts on the planet. They're selling everybody out, including themselves. They looked at Thatcherism in the eighties, and came to the conclusion that they weren't getting into power because they were too extreme! They became more and more bland, more and more watered down, until you can't tell the fucking difference. John Smith is a coward and a fraud, and deserves execution. The man's a disaster. Neil Kinnock wasn't any better.”

MSP never meant shit to me, but that Richey fellow seemed like he knew the score

Had me confused there as I was trying to think of a Member of the Scottish Parliament with the surname Richey.

oh yeah the appalling Welsh rock band MSP!

The Janet Street Porters

https://dominiccummings.com/2021/04/23/statement-regarding-no10-claims-today/

fucking hell his blogroll is full of lesswrong type shit

apparently people already know he's into this shit

"I couldn't possibly have deleted any incoming WhatsApps" says the brain.

That said, it was staggeringly weird of no 10 to use him as the diversion this morning. It works with other Tories because they don't want to wreck their own house, but how often does this guy need to show he'll happily watch it all burn?

fascist party https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EzpSVspXsAE-8NJ.jpg

"Thermonuclear brilliance from the incomparable ¯\_( ͡ಥᴥ ͡ಥ)_/¯ 💩💩💩💩."

"Every time ¯\_( ͡ಥᴥ ͡ಥ)_/¯ 💩💩💩💩 writes something, I think 'THIS' is the best thing she has ever written. I wish I had that super power."

"¯\_( ͡ಥᴥ ͡ಥ)_/¯ 💩💩💩💩 delightfully comparing Boris Johnson’s phone to the containment reactor in Ghostbusters is my spirit animal."

"No one makes me laugh harder by speaking the unadorned truth than the brilliant (and perennially pissed off) ¯\_( ͡ಥᴥ ͡ಥ)_/¯ 💩💩💩💩"

Lynn, idea for a short story... Dr Jekyll and Marina Hyde, a thoughtful and knowledgeable newspaper opinion columnist discovers a serum that can transform her into a vapid wisecracker. Eventually commits suicide in horror that during one of her transformations into Hyde she knobbed piers morgan.

got to hand it to MI5 and the Graun - their collaborative ¯\_( ͡ಥᴥ ͡ಥ)_/¯ 💩💩💩💩 mind control project has been a huge success - hundreds of thousands of simps convinced that a third rate wit and establishment hack is both hilarious and anti-establishment

Jeremy Corbyn on Keir Starmer pub visit:

‘It’s a bit odd to be going into pubs, when we are supposed to be enjoying them outside’

lol! and the fucking blundering dickhead was posing with a pint (for the novelty of it) in Wales, where the pubs are all still closed

Did Calzino make those comments up? They're very good if so!

JC spoke out on KS? That's impressive. JC usually just lets people publish malicious, poisonous slanders about him and responds by smiling wryly and going to the allotment to grow a marrow.

It says much about JC, in a way, that you almost literally can't imagine him attacking KS, even though KS's treatment of JC has revealed KS to be a stinking pile of human garbage.

No I just saw the weekly ¯\_( ͡ಥᴥ ͡ಥ)_/¯ 💩💩💩💩 trending on twitter and copied them for the annals of ilx posterity

So they're real ??!

I know it reads like some malfunctioning bots or parody, but yep, all real!

Laura K doing quite a lot of anti-Boris legwork these days.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56890714

[COMMENT CENSORED]

Never interrupt your opponent while they are doing a killspree

Westminster voting intention:

CON: 40% (-5)
LAB: 37% (-1)
LDEM: 8% (+2)
GRN: 5% (-)

via @IpsosMORI, 16 - 22 Apr
Chgs. w/ Marhttps://t.co/RJJjJqA3VW

— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) April 26, 2021

Kieth gets an extra point for every 15 pints he drinks

but he got deducted a point after getting caught returning his pint of Guinness to the bar and necking loads of hard liquor shots once the photographers had finished.

Amazingly the 'cronyism' plan seems to be working due to the extraordinary stupidity of Boris Johnson and No. 10.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe jailed for another year and banned from leaving Iran

remember when Boris was FS and because of his blundering verbal incontinence a British citizen already in peril faced further charges in Iran. Well it just got even worse for her.

Wonder how/if the Telegraph are reporting that.

"I know why you’ve got to focus on this sort of stuff, but I really think, I really think that that is not where the public are, I’m talking to, today."

Johnson and others increasingly replying on 'people don't care about this' to excuse themselves. Doesn't seem like you would need to do that if the allegations were false.

Gove not denying it

The idea that he would say any such thing, I find incredible.

it seems Kieth unconvincingly drilled a hole into some wood with an auger bit today, at least it made a change from his downing pints in every boring looking whiter than white pub in England campaign. But still Bosch is a drill for melts mate, qualified people in the trades use Makita, DeWalt, Milwaukee - Bosch is a pure shit overrated brand for amateur DIY dabblers!

it's very hard to internalise that so many people who were killed by covid were set up to die from it years before the pandemic emerged, by austerity, privatisation, nhs 'efficiency' savings, by labour precarity. but there's no proper accountability without facing that imo

— michael wave (@SzMarsupial) April 26, 2021