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

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

sturgeon whiffing GRA reform by sitting on it long enough for the culture to become as toxic as it is and then resigning at the best possible time for it to be contextualised as the inevitable result of a politician being vaguely trans-inclusive - go girl!! give us nothing!

— Siobhán Casey (@PolygonalShivs) February 15, 2023

Agree with Nashwan's point, except to note that KS's Labour is much, much more racist and discriminatory than JC's.

What are they going to write about at the Daily Telegraph now? They are absolutely obsessed with Nicola Sturgeon and the loathing they have for her is way off the charts.

She was unbelievably amateurish in trying to deal with Alex Salmond. If you’re going to stitch someone up good and proper, don’t have a series of meetings with your civil servants showing your workings !

And one less for Clarkson to hate. (was going to say loathe, but etc)

she did piss off a lot right-wing scumbags and terfs, but also she was frequently lionised by the dreaded English melts + FBPE's of the UK commentariat, who frequently made her a lock in for them pathetic fantasy GNU's they kept doing during the brexit meltdowns and seemed to have a very exaggerated sense of what a formidable and sharp politician she was.

... tbf that's in comparison to the dross in Westminster.

Jeremy Corbyn to stand as an independent if blocked by Labour https://t.co/iTkBLbWwYo

— The Guardian (@guardian) February 15, 2023

I know very little about Scottish politics but U.S. Twitter is being overrun with triumphant trans-bashers claiming victory. So how much of a factor was the gender bill in Sturgeon stepping down?

It wasn't one, according to Nicola Sturgeon.

She has been doing the job for a long time. The timing is unfortunate to say the least.

FUCK KEIR STARMER! pic.twitter.com/trnh0wGRAR

— Marlon Kameka (@MarlonKameka) February 15, 2023

Calzino leading the crowd in a cheery chant there.

I was there! just for 15 mins though, and earlier on. wish I'd been there for that bit.

let's get the tories out, because we have a LOTO here who is already well on the way to becoming as much a hate figure to the left and mostly everyone under 30 as Thatcher was in the 80's. He's done a good job of that tbf.

So how much of a factor was the gender bill in Sturgeon stepping down?

not much of a factor but it must have been 1) exhausting and 2) indicative of how Sturgeon became Scottish politics and consumed the vast majority of its oxygen. it speaks highly of her imo that she could see that bubble needed to burst.

Starmer gets a lot of criticism for trying to be all things to all people but to me Sturgeon has been just as guilty of this as a leader. Look at the GRA bill - the anti-trans brigade are pissed off because the SNP have tried to pass it, but anyone who actually respects trans people isn't going to vote for a party that dragged its heels on this, or allowed Joanna Cherry to maintain the whip. By trying to appease "both sides of the argument" (ffs treating trans people's rights to exist as an arguement is fucking mental isnt it) she's lost the support and respect of both.

Sturgeon's success is not because she's a great politician, it's because the bar is so low. Look at the potential successors within the party, never mind the UK political landscape at large. The SNP are not a radical party, we just live on an island where "let trans people live in peace" is seen as a far-left position.

Good from Mic Wright on Corbyn debacle: https://brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/fringe-interests