"we'll change the things that need changing and that's all we'll change": the paSUKification of post-brexit politics 2021

The train system here in the UK is truly baffling for anyone coming from Europe, I know doing this "where I'm from it's normal to have things be good" thing is nagl but it's truly stunning how fucked the UK is on this.

all these people effectively defending a dysfunctional and nationally loathed railway system that is even becoming too expensive for some of the polprofs who are attacking Burnham, they are cracked. If he'd booked in advance, it would have been £250. Shit, I can remember paying well under a hundred for a 2 adults 1 child for a Nauman exhibition about 15 years ago. I don't know if I'm remembering this wrong, but I think the adult day returns were around £30.

As someone who uses the railways to travel to and from the north fairly regularly it's true that if you are booking a ticket online these almost comically extortionate high end prices are always flagged up, but who the fuck ever takes any notice of them? Does anyone ever buy these tickets? I don't know why the train companies even bother with them. Here's a tip, if you're travelling north from London, you can usually get a train to Crewe for £9 (ditto return journey). Of course the train companies will still try and screw you by bumping up the price for any subsequent journey you might have to take from Crewe or else they'll make sure you can't make connections in time.

This is the thing though, rail is private so the companies that run it screw a lot of ppl over. Online prices for journeys across Euro countries are so much cheaper.

Obv there is a lot of horror at what Burnham got in his replies but twitter can really aggregate a lot of Armed Forces/Blitz Tories and weirdos. Polling is pretty consistent on what should happen to these companies. Not that it will.

if you need to take a train somewhere at late notice those prices come into play. so basically targeting people with family emergencies, job interviews etc. the fact that most of the time most people will take action (sometimes complicated action) to avoid paying those prices is not really the gotcha that the pissants shouting at Burnham think it is

also the cost of commuter tickets looks insane to me, maybe people should travel to and from work during off peak hours idk

Lots of the people who travel last minute are on expenses and because that is a circular Venn with well-off people who could get results if agitating for cheaper rail (but don’t because some third party is paying) they really don’t see the problem.

Yes, I suspected that was the case.

Real shame.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/22/ed-balls-rules-out-political-comeback-for-labour-in-wakefield-byelection?

I once heard from a big beast expert that there is no shame in a bb totally shitting out at the prospect of an anything slightly harder than easy challenge.

This is so unrepresentative of the private rental sector that it may as well be fake news lmao. https://t.co/wHfnJ6mSKs

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) April 23, 2022

There's a thread for this sort of shite from the Guardian. I would imagine the purpose of this article is to reassure those numerous Guardian readers who are also landlords that they are not scumbags after all when, of course, we know they are.

from the Oliver Eagleton book:

Previous DPP Ken Macdonald: Hey let's get this young hotshot human rights lawyer called Kieth in to advise on this case of the anti-GRT hate mob in Firle who have been burning effigies of gypsy children in a caravan with the reg-plate PIKEY 1 and possibly also involved in arson attacks on the local travelling communities. Surely a strong case for incitement to racial hatred.

Young hotshot human rights lawyer called Kieth: No their actions were not intended to stoke prejudice, nor serious enough to merit legal sanction, scrap the charges.

this "PIKEY 1" caravan with the effigies was paraded through the village before being ignited by molotov cocktails.

The landlord shit is like I'm sorry maybe you're not a cunt but in your role as landlord you've donned cuntitude I'm sorry I don't make the rules

just physically eliminate them all - even the nice ones! I'm not interested in nuancing parasitic scum

rats, flies, mosquitoes, and ...landlords

something something Circle of Life

i remember that effigy incident. but i remember it being in crewe. but i never knew that kieth was responsible for failing to prosecute!! why is everything so exactly, perfectly shitty.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FQ90fveXsAUuYld?format=jpg&name=medium

check out this from a Telegraph piece on dense Tory halfwit Frank then! tbf he'll still never be as utterly reprehensible as Gary Neville.

going to back into that new Kieth book again later, do some hardcore hate-reading!

For the last time, I am not a duck. I merely look and quack like a duck and also have been one my entire life

Basically, he's not stood for parliament

The ballot paper's come over and I've put my cross next to the Tory candidate.

Not real, as acknowledged in the replies to the tweet it originates from:

Hahaha! Well remembered. Forgot about that one. #Ingsyhttps://t.co/ce28MccTz1

— Sean (@shornKOOMINS) April 22, 2022

it's fantastic news that there are still prem players that down pints and get obsessed with pub fruit machines in the 2020's!

even if it's fake

after May kiboshed the McKinnon extradition, such was Kieth's utterly pathetic lapdog relationship with the US AG, Eric Holder, he furiously got straight on a plane to Washington to plead with him that the outcome wasn't his fault and that hopefully it wouldn't sour their friendship going forwards, and also from McKinnion's ma:

I couldn't understand it. Kier Starmer had written six books on human rights. I had such faith and expected so much more of him as DPP, but when I made a point of speaking to him after the session there was no trace of understanding.
"I'm feeling very uncomfortable", said Mr Starmer. "Speaking to you is making making me feel very uncomfortable".
Did he have any idea how that sounded to me, when he was supporting the extradition of my son to some foreign hellhole?"

not to speak of an unfortunate non-white and "extremely vulnerable" autist like Talha Ahsan who was extradited to the US under his watch for briefly having a very negligible connection to an Islamist website and served a 6 year sentence there for nothing really.

sorry for repetition, but I just really despise this cunt and people are saying you have to vote for him "to get the tories out"

1/5 🧵BREAKING! We’ve won - the @ukhomeoffice
has officially announced that it is going to abandon Channel pushbacks in the face of legal challenges from us, @pcs_union, @Care4Calais & @FreefromTorture. ✊💥 pic.twitter.com/7aA6C3njoX

— Channel Rescue (@ChannelRescue) April 25, 2022

if you find yourself thinking the news is absurd - you're not alone

Take a break from Twitter and spend the evening with the writers we turn to when we’re overwhelmed by the 24-hour news cycle and need to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

oh no

I don't doubt there will no shortage of laughter from the appalling audience

Absurdity? Twitter has you covered on that front too.

For the blocked pic.twitter.com/e1zPrbE7O1

— Philip Proudfoot 🟨🟥 (@PhilipProudfoot) April 26, 2022

if you find yourself thinking the news is absurd - you're not alone

Take a break from Twitter and spend the evening with the writers we turn to when we’re overwhelmed by the 24-hour news cycle and need to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

― conrad, Tuesday, 26 April 2022 00:28 (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Found my birthday present @Sharivari

Sounds like something somebody who secretly wants to go see Marina "oh my sides" Hyde would say

So, the UK is currently one of the very few countries in Europe without a noticeable fascist minority party; UKIP/Brexit Party were kinda that but seem to be pretty much over. Obviously I'm not making the case that this puts the UK in a better place compared to its European neighbours but I'd like to explore why this is. Is it about:

a) The conservatives successfully stealing far right talking points while maintaining a veneer of respectability

b) The overton window having shifted so far to the right in the UK that far right parties can't position themselves as sufficiently anti-establishment

c) Other factors?

A and b, IMO. But also UKIP did their job of pushing the Tories further to the right. Once their talking points and policies were adopted, there was no further need for them.

yeah their big successes as a right-wing pressure group made them electorally irrelevant

I wonder if Baron Hyde talks in her column style at these public events, with lots of prepared devastatingly witty wordplay

There's plenty of far right Tory MPs, even if the party itself gets away with not being considered far right. Plus you could argue that the far right are actually on power in one part of the UK.

Wouldn't rule out the Reform Party causing a stir before the next election. What's left to pressure the Tories about? Well, capital punishment for one...

at the height of UKIP rising Ch4 did a what if drama about Farage winning an election and starting a mass deportation program, can't remember much about it other than it was bad and like the Tories/Republicans he had right-wing BAME people (or possibly just one) in his cabinet to deflect accusations of racism. The fact that the Tories were actually running a real mass deportation program at the time seemed to be lost on the writers.

I recall Nick Griffin saying the reason the BNP got wiped out is because people didn't need to vote for their racist policies when UKIP existed. Now people don't vote for UKIP because the Tories exist.

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

There's plenty of far right Tory MPs, even if the party itself gets away with not being considered far right.

Yes but this applies to establishment/centre right parties in plenty of European countries too, there's always been fascists in, for example, the German CDU/CSU. I'd say traditionally during the latter half of the 20th century far right politicians had to pick between joining the establishment right and becoming a domesticated fascist with his "ain't I a stinker?" moments or sticking to the far right and accepting you won't get anywhere close to power for a long long time. Now that's no longer the case ofc.

another big factor is FPTP making it much much harder for minor parties of any type to get any real electoral foothold, even at UKIP's 2015 peak they were only able to get a single seat in the House of Commons despite having significant portion of the vote. they very much filled the same sort of role as the more outright fascist right-populist minor parties in the rest of Europe though

Wide scale protests are the only way to stop this now.

Much of the left’s attention today will rightly be on the abhorrent & repressive policing bill and its restrictions on the right to protest. But some ought also to be on the government’s seizing control of the Electoral Commission in the Elections Bill yesterday.

— James B (@piercepenniless) April 28, 2022

BREAKING 🚨🚢: Contracts obtained by ITV have revealed P&O replacement agency staff will be paid just £3.94 an hour - to work 12-hour days, 7 days a week.

— Trades Union Congress (@The_TUC) April 27, 2022

meanwhile

https://www.ein.org.uk/news/nationality-and-borders-bill-become-law-labour-decides-it-would-be-inappropriate-house

Labour Lords whipped to abstain on blocking the Nationality and Borders Bill. now that's what i call opposition

kinda gutted at having to boycott P&O as it's my preferred route out of Hull but the thought that the ferries are probably terrifyingly unsafe ameliorates it a bit