like the queen this thread will never die: in which we ALL resign (ourselves to disgusting miseries to post-boris politics 2022)

due to staffing issues

OG shitposter MP Jared O'Mara convicted of fraud in support of his cocaine habit.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-64512690

his main crime it seems was committing fraud in such a stupid and transparent manner that it doesn't take too long for the trail to get chased up. He should have got some tips from Streeting and Cooper on how to court dark money/private health/big bookies donors, he could have paid his coke dealer off in no time.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/09/former-sheffield-hallam-mp-jared-omara-jailed-for-four-years

4 years! Can they prosecute everyone else who submitted fraudulent claims now please?

Nah, House of Lords for them.

99% of them are fucking compromised and bent as fuck, mostly within the rules of course. Also Jared got shopped to the police by his own chief of staff before he could rectify his whoopsy daisy absolutely accidental mistake honest guv claims, that doesn't usually happen I don't think.

Think the lesson here is that if you're going to be an obnoxious prick AND a corrupt MP then your best bet is to join the Conservative Party.

it's working good for 30p Lee

TFW Jeremy Corbyn correctly identifies you as an absolute danger

In a July 2019 statement, O'Mara said he had never been reinstated to the party, and that Corbyn had made "false reports about me being a mental health danger around parliament" after O'Mara had complained about not being able to arrange a meeting with the former's office.

can you remember when his political career peaked? Lots of people waiting to see if he has managed to get on a train for a parliamentary vote during the prorogation. I doubt he even remembers it tbh

"Wrexham at least could boast an international-class pick'n'mix in Woolworths. And Rhyl briefly had a monorail."

This last fact is remarkable.

I visited Wrexham last summer and found a notable church which a local church warden type was proud to present as one of the greatest of its kind in Britain. Most striking to me, outside it was the grave of the original Yale, a Wrexham fellow who gave his name to Yale University by giving it a big donation centuries ago.

The Woolworths, on the other hand, must have been long gone.

hard to appreciate looking at Rhyl today but it was a massive holiday destination back in the 60s and 70s, pretensions to rival Blackpool

yes when i was growing up the north wales coastline was like the med you could drive to

(then cheap package-holiday flights to spain kicked in)

just heard the Jared O'Mara case framed as "he tried to finance his cocaine habit with taxpayers money" - "one rotten apple" is it, lol.

these fuckers:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/10/far-right-demonstrators-clash-with-police-at-liverpool-hotel-housing-asylum-seekers

I hope the Scousers end them.

This is incitement, and chances are it will get people seriously hurt. They know whose buttons they're pressing when they do this and what the outcome is likely to be pic.twitter.com/70zzkEJiBZ

— Tom Blackburn (@malaiseforever) February 11, 2023

scumbags. And all the bleating you get about safety concerns for MPs and the toxicity running within our politics boo hoo hoo. These arseholes are effectively encouraging lynch mobs to attack asylum seekers.

That guy Gullis in particular is a real piece of work.

70 pupils in Stoke-on-Trent walked out of school on Thursday to protest The Discovery Academy's 'disgusting' decision to install barriers in front of the loos so students allegedly can't access them during class time.

https://t.co/lxBVExzlLM

— Metro (@MetroUK) February 11, 2023

labour today really going after these tory ministers splashing out on hotel rooms during their *check notes* work trips, rooms which run to over, now make sure you’re sitting down, *checks notes* £200/night.

no way that’ll come back to bite them, right?

i didn't notice that story, must've been because of all the noise coming from the shadow cabinet condemning fascist lynchmobs

Yvette Cooper ought to be apologising for her own bigoted rhetoric while May was creating a hostile environment that was hostile enough for her liking

🖋 Which minister's department spent £59,155 buying stationery at Banner from 22 February to 2 April 2021?
 
Despite only spending £1,470 at the same company for the other 325 days of the year?
 
🚀 You'll see spending rocket in March in ➡️ https://t.co/ujdIr20IWR ⬅️ pic.twitter.com/Lt5DhAqFss

— Labour Press (@labourpress) February 13, 2023

what is the rationale behind this line of attack, what am I missing? Why is supposed to reflect badly on the department of health that they spent a relatively high amount of money on stationery over the course of one month and a low amount on stationery for the rest of the year, are we supposed to infer something other than they bulk buy a year's worth of stationery in one go? I guess I could understand making this your line of attack as some last-ditch act of desperation if you're facing electoral oblivion, why would you do it when you're 20 points ahead in the polls and likely to be in government in the fairly near future, surely you're just creating a rod for your own back?

they want to demonstrate that we are all in this together in preparation for another 5 years of hard austerity. But while people with health conditions die in cold houses, government ministers get their budgets for stationery and art deco prints heavily scrutinised by the dept of sensibleness. They are fucking idiots and I genuinely hope they don't win the next GE.

is the idea that the extra spending in March is because it's the end of the tax year and they don't want to have a surplus left because that could mean a smaller budget next year, so they blow it on stationery, and if they were procuring stationery in an efficient manner then there'd be a more steady spend over the year? But it's such a small amount relative to how much the government spends.

well yes. I don't know what the focus groups are telling them, but I think most people understand that government department budgets are a drop in the ocean.

the office budgets of govt depts I meant obv

is this specifically a Labour right thing, where they've internalised the criticisms of Lab being spendthrift and economically irresponsible to the point where you get this kind of counterproductive pedantry over any expenditure? It reminds me of the arguments when the Corbyn leadership was proposing free parking at NHS hospitals, and people were complaining about how the money could be better spent on medical treatment, or the obsession with means-testing. Also policy-wonk focus on minutiae.

This "spending money on any old crap at the end of the financial year because we've got to use up the budget" is standard practice in the public sector. Why else would we have got an email at the start of the week saying we're getting new staff lockers when no-one wants them and there's nothing wrong with the ones we already have?

it's already going right back at them as the Tories point out that the government procurement cards were brought in by the New Labour govt.

The answer to all these questions is that the Labour right are fucking clowns, even on their own terms

OTM

NEW: After losing their arts funding @OldhamColiseum have with “great regret” entered a staff consultation period and plan to close their doors on March 31st 2023: “the current financial situation is not sustainable for the running of a full-time theatre” pic.twitter.com/VEYEvrAX8J

— Minnie Stephenson (@MinnieStephC4) February 14, 2023

Bus strikes are over.

🚨NEW: Over 1,800 bus drivers employed by Abellio in London have won an 18% pay rise following strike action.

— Taj Ali (@Taj_Ali1) February 13, 2023

"The Labour Party I lead today is unrecognisable from 2019. There are those who don’t like that change... To them I say in all candour: we are never going back. If you don’t like it, nobody is forcing you to stay."

ok Kieth

breathtakingly arrogant to say and believe that the way things are now is how they always will be forever. how stagnant. kinda says it all about his worldview tho.

to Kieth, in all candour, I'd like to say I hope you get a terrible disease and your nuts drop off.

trying to think of a person I hate more, nobody comes to mind

Nicola Sturgeon resigning.

the terfs are going to be even more insufferable now

xp Jesus, the transphobes are going to be (even more) insufferable about this

snap

Whatever you may think of Sturgeon, she pissed off all the right people.

chief political correspondent Nick Eardley reports that a source close to first minister said: "She's had enough."

She needs a better line than this though.

I think Sturgeon has been one of the better UK politicians in recent times.

I note once more, reading their comments, that KS and Hodge are disgusting scumbags.

really about the worst possible timing given that there doesn't seem to be a reason beyond she's getting tired of the pressure of the job etc.

she gave lots of very valid reasons for leaving in her speech. i am very sad she is going (even though not an SNP fan) but after listening to what she said, think she is absolutely right to go. she is such an iconic and thus polarising force in Scotland. literally everyone in Scotland has made their minds up and has a very strong opinion about Nicola Sturgeon and in some ways that is a barrier to changing minds on independence.

gonna take slight comfort in this overshadowing Labour granstanding over pretty basic changes made since 2020 that a somehow sustainable Corbyn-led gov would've presumably also made

I can see why she'd choose to do this, my main concern is it's a victory for the current terf momentum