Politics is currently a debate between two vaguely different middle management teams.
Keir Starmer Labour Leader
- Thread starter Damien
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Track and trace wasn't just an app that cost £37bn. That was setting up all the testing capacity across the whole of the UK for months on end, doing millions of tests, setting up hubs and hiring staff. I'm as anti this Tory govt as it gets but it's one of those lies that got pushed that the cost of T&T was just about an app. It was one part of a whole range of things. Yes corruption was involved and I'm sure further evidence will come out in time, but let's not perpetuate falsehoods like this.
what more need be said? how can you just take that, not you, but rhetorical "you", for granted and then say "let's not perpetuate falsehoods like this [idea of corruption]".
I diagnose it the demise of the traditional ballot, the tension of the "bullet" (protest/re-order), and the liminal, last chance, zone in-between.
Because you are literally saying the app cost more than twitter. That is categorically untrue, two wrongs don't make it right. Yes the govt handed out corrupt contracts for PPE etc, that is a separate thing to test and trace which was largely funded through NHS that was given extra funding to deal with testing capacity. If it was as simple as an app costing £37bn I'm pretty sure a lot more media would've been looking into that and found wrongdoing and corruption. They didn't and haven't.
I like one of the replies to the O'Brien clip: they don't want to be different from the tories, they just want to change places with them.
Definitions and facts are only temporary, haven't you been watching the news?
They did. Baroness investigated over the supply side which is the same fund. And then not a peep. Slush fund, for companies, some, that had no existence prior to the mandate or existed but sold cod and then became medical suppliers. The "golden lane" (vip). Private Eye went through it at great legnth and it was one giant fraud.
No, it's the UN's opinion.
He's just so uninspiring, as a leader, as a man. Even his lies aren't exciting or impressive.
Have you been living with your head in the sand?
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/uk-war-crimes-in-iraq-the-icc-prosecutors-report/
What did the Prosecutor say about war crimes in Iraq?
The Prosecutor found there is a “reasonable basis” to believe that members of the UK armed forces committed war crimes of:
Wilful killing
Torture
Inhuman/cruel treatment
Outrages upon personal dignity
Rape and/or other forms of sexual violence
So people's basic human rights are a waste of our time? Then the we wont use them so we don't need to repeal them line. The problem is Starmer has said he wants to keep them in place because of JSO. So he does intent to use them.
Lack of criticism or focus on the Tory government vs the endless attacks on Starmer as we get closer and closer to an election as a huge constituency here are terrified of a Labour victory.
We've literally got people freezing to death because of Tory economics but the usual "socialists" here couldn't give two shiny shites about any of that when they fear a Starmer premiership the most
Their enemy's enemy is their friend. They'd take a Tory victory tomorrow if they could.
Labour are on course for a big majority, ahead in all the polls. The ridiculous pretend left wing echo chamber created here by those bitter at the thought the Tories might lose the next election is hilarious. It'll intensity. Sunak could announce the slaughter of every first born tomorrow and Sweet Square will find 11 Tweets criticism Starmer to post just to make sure the focus here stays on where it needs to be.
There's zero balance. There's a lot about Starmer to criticise. But this thread is just relentless and indistinguishable of it was just run by pro-Tory Twitter bots with "lefty" in their bio in case anyone notices all they do is criticise Labour.
"Look how much of a cnut Starmer is today. Here's 9 Tweets underpinning this very fact. The last thing we want is this guy in power, right comrades?"
Stopping Starmer is the number one on the agenda. If a consequence of that is another Tory victory, they'll take it.
We've literally got people freezing to death because of Tory economics but the usual "socialists" here couldn't give two shiny shites about any of that when they fear a Starmer premiership the most
Their enemy's enemy is their friend. They'd take a Tory victory tomorrow if they could.
Labour are on course for a big majority, ahead in all the polls. The ridiculous pretend left wing echo chamber created here by those bitter at the thought the Tories might lose the next election is hilarious. It'll intensity. Sunak could announce the slaughter of every first born tomorrow and Sweet Square will find 11 Tweets criticism Starmer to post just to make sure the focus here stays on where it needs to be.
There's zero balance. There's a lot about Starmer to criticise. But this thread is just relentless and indistinguishable of it was just run by pro-Tory Twitter bots with "lefty" in their bio in case anyone notices all they do is criticise Labour.
"Look how much of a cnut Starmer is today. Here's 9 Tweets underpinning this very fact. The last thing we want is this guy in power, right comrades?"
Stopping Starmer is the number one on the agenda. If a consequence of that is another Tory victory, they'll take it.
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Brilliant analysis. All the people who are upset how right wing, flip-floppy and authoritarian Starmer is as a leader are silent on everything the appallingly cruel tories say and do.
You should write for a broadsheet.
James O'Brien is the most vulgar of centrists. While I often agree with him on many things, he's someone who never dares risking having anything other than a contrary opinion and the way he hulmiates thick callers is Jeremy Kyle-level entertainment. He wrote a booked called How To Be Right: ... in a World Gone Wrong, but he should probably read one called How To Be Right: ... without being a total cnut. Also, his podcast where he interviews famous people is a toe curling listen as he sucks up to every guest.
Starmer handled those kids very badly yesterday. As for Raynor, she should quit before she's inevitably fired. She never should have got in bed with this bellend, especially given how jealous it'd make Rachel Reeves who looks at him the same way Dorris did Johnson.
Really? Okay, lets use the Starmer thread to slag the Tories.
What is the policy that Starmer stands for that you believes will stop people freezing to death under Starmer?
What more is there to say aboout the tories? We all know they're completely self-serving and are breaking everything, often deliberately. But they're going to lose the next election and labour will get a free win.
As it stands, Labour will waste that chance with such a crap leader.
What is the major difference, economic, between the Tory government now, and the Labour government of tomorrow? Can anyone detail this for me in fine analysis? Election is about a year out. Curious.
And those negation of right/freedom to protest bills which came in under the Tories were, despite protests (public), entirely supported by Labour. You have two establishment parties and the difference between them is minute unless I am mistaken and there is a world of economic distance between the Tories and Labour which can be demonstrated? Why not repeal anti-people laws like curtailing the right to protest? It was called authoritarian when the Tories did it, rightly, and now it is something else because people don't want to attack Labour, as if they were a golden gift from heaven, sent to save the people from Tory/establishment rule.
Two parties, minute differences. Until someone can go line for line, policy-costed, and commitment for commitment, then I retain my skepticism regarding Labour as but a red tinted establishment party with tiny symbolic divergences from the blue-tint.
Q: Why won't you repeal the anti-democratic law?
A: (Avoiding Question) We'll focus on growing the economy.
Q: ...but the law you opposed and said you'd repeal?
A: (Avoiding Question) We're very different to Home Secretary, Blue-team...
Q: ...the repeal of that bill/law then?
A: (Continued avoidance/lying) We'll grow the economy and fight for Britain unlike the blue-team [a Johnson line as it goes].
l.o.l.
As for O'Brien. A product of the media apparatus parasitical "access" culture. Subtext for the juxtaposition: "[I have spoken with {insert person fools/media types think are worth associating with, for it gives them cultural capital within their own platforms} and I can tell you, what they told me - indicating my "access to them - distinction"] You are a fool/naive to assume that people I interact with and indicate my access to, for such is my parasitical "seagulls follow the trawler" job, and these people, red-team, assure me that you are a fool to doubt them, and thus let me announce with authority, by virtue of access, your lack of access and my own bonafides".
Therein lies the manufacture of consent, subliminal, as social fact, within the media apparatus. Likes of O'Brien are aware to a certain extent, but entirely "uninformed" regarding the broader sociological fact.
Chomsky: I'm sure you believe everything - journalistic intent - you say/write, but if you believed differently, [divergent frame from orthodox], you would not be sitting where you are sitting. That is the basic nuance of media types. Nothing to do with Marxism everything to do with basic structural/sociological facts.
For reference ^
That is O'Brien within the modern media landscape. Inculcation of establishment values and then incapacity to depart from them less they lose their membership ticket (not self-censoring, as Chomsky says, but the subliminal/institutional inculcation of loyalty to any given state system: you do not, at all, in establishment/legacy media, reach said positions without adhering to state-lines within a predictable degree of convergence/divergence.
And those negation of right/freedom to protest bills which came in under the Tories were, despite protests (public), entirely supported by Labour. You have two establishment parties and the difference between them is minute unless I am mistaken and there is a world of economic distance between the Tories and Labour which can be demonstrated? Why not repeal anti-people laws like curtailing the right to protest? It was called authoritarian when the Tories did it, rightly, and now it is something else because people don't want to attack Labour, as if they were a golden gift from heaven, sent to save the people from Tory/establishment rule.
Two parties, minute differences. Until someone can go line for line, policy-costed, and commitment for commitment, then I retain my skepticism regarding Labour as but a red tinted establishment party with tiny symbolic divergences from the blue-tint.
Q: Why won't you repeal the anti-democratic law?
A: (Avoiding Question) We'll focus on growing the economy.
Q: ...but the law you opposed and said you'd repeal?
A: (Avoiding Question) We're very different to Home Secretary, Blue-team...
Q: ...the repeal of that bill/law then?
A: (Continued avoidance/lying) We'll grow the economy and fight for Britain unlike the blue-team [a Johnson line as it goes].
l.o.l.
As for O'Brien. A product of the media apparatus parasitical "access" culture. Subtext for the juxtaposition: "[I have spoken with {insert person fools/media types think are worth associating with, for it gives them cultural capital within their own platforms} and I can tell you, what they told me - indicating my "access to them - distinction"] You are a fool/naive to assume that people I interact with and indicate my access to, for such is my parasitical "seagulls follow the trawler" job, and these people, red-team, assure me that you are a fool to doubt them, and thus let me announce with authority, by virtue of access, your lack of access and my own bonafides".
Therein lies the manufacture of consent, subliminal, as social fact, within the media apparatus. Likes of O'Brien are aware to a certain extent, but entirely "uninformed" regarding the broader sociological fact.
Chomsky: I'm sure you believe everything - journalistic intent - you say/write, but if you believed differently, [divergent frame from orthodox], you would not be sitting where you are sitting. That is the basic nuance of media types. Nothing to do with Marxism everything to do with basic structural/sociological facts.
For reference ^
That is O'Brien within the modern media landscape. Inculcation of establishment values and then incapacity to depart from them less they lose their membership ticket (not self-censoring, as Chomsky says, but the subliminal/institutional inculcation of loyalty to any given state system: you do not, at all, in establishment/legacy media, reach said positions without adhering to state-lines within a predictable degree of convergence/divergence.
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This post is very much a "don't look at Starmer, look over there", throwing a dead cat on the table post.
What a terribly inaccurate take on the reality of Starmer lying to get elected as Labour leader and then back tracking on every single pledge he made.
The criticism of Starmer is a problem 100% caused by his actions, nothing else.
But don't worry the Tories are still getting slated too, and rightly so.
Sadly the options in British politics right now are very poor. You can choose a last
liar or a liar.
Tory economics executed by an authoritatian purger.
.
How could anyone not be inspired by that.
Don't get me wrong, I will vote for them at the next election because they are the only alternative to the Tories where I live. My hope is a hung parliament and a move to PR. Then I'd never vote for such a right wing party again.
Housebuilders are currently sitting on landbanks of around half a million building plots.
They don't build because they are artifically keeping prices high.
Reeves thinks that giving them more building plots, this time on greenbelt, will change that.
Shes an idiot.
They don't build because they are artifically keeping prices high.
Reeves thinks that giving them more building plots, this time on greenbelt, will change that.
Shes an idiot.
Up until every single pledge had been broken and we entered double figures of purged members, MPs, mayoral candidates and councillors, I would've said the same.
Unfortunately Keir has burnt any goodwill many had left for him now.
He's going to put the cold on notice.
She's not an idiot. She's bought and paid for and is treating us like idiots.
I assumed that first one was satire at first. Feck me it's like they're doing everything they can to lose my vote.
It would seem you're projecting your single mindedness, most of us banging on about Starmer have several hundred posts in the Westminster politics thread criticising the Tories.
Quick look and you have 8 posts in there and over double in here banging on about comrades and the hard left.
Your rationale isnt some clever 4D chess it's basic flag waving for centrism. The same arguments have been parroted for years (at least since Ed) on here always in the same high and mighty presentation. It's boring and most would rather discuss the substance of Labour policy and it's statements over the head in the sand approach you demand.
Maybe he'll pledge to keep people in the cold, that'll sort it sharpish.
Labour Leader in wanting to say something he thinks middle-Britain and soft-Tories will like shocker. "I hate [insert thing considered liberal which GBNEWS might replay]". Solid stuff.
A big reason for that is the ridiculous planning rules that kill the profitability of many building sites. Get rid of those and you'll see much more incentive to develop those sites.
What planning rules are making these plots unprofitable to build on? And why did companies buy the plots on the first place knowing that?
There are endless certificates, features and pointless red tape you have to go through now.
Building a block of ~100k inner city flats for an affordable housing scheme? You have to install an EV charging point for every flat. Never mind that no fecker who lives there has a car or could afford an EV, and there aren't enough parking spaces for every flat anyway.
Or renovating an old building into apartments? You're going to need to pay some fecker to come and sit in the roof for a week to look for bats. And you're going to need to wait 6 months because they only mate in certain seasons. And you cant so much as lift a screwdriver until they've given you the all clear.
I even heard of a major city council refusing itself planning permission for a new block of flats recently
There are endless certificates, features and pointless red tape you have to go through now.
Building a block of ~100k inner city flats for an affordable housing scheme? You have to install an EV charging point for every flat. Never mind that no fecker who lives there has a car or could afford an EV, and there aren't enough parking spaces for every flat anyway.
Or renovating an old building into apartments? You're going to need to pay some fecker to come and sit in the roof for a week to look for bats. And you're going to need to wait 6 months because they only mate in certain seasons. And you cant so much as lift a screwdriver until they've given you the all clear.
I even heard of a major city council refusing itself planning permission for a new block of flats recently
So it comes back to the second question. Why buy the land in the first place?
I can't speak for every company but in my EV charging point example, that regulation appeared midway through the build and it added about 10k per apartment to install.
Has anyone ever considered rent-as-mortgage?
The premise being that if landlord has >20 properties, and the tenants are there for >2 years, and their credit is good, they pay the bills on time, and are saving, simultaneously, for a mortgage, which most of the mortgage simultaneous savers (if not all, barring live-with-parents) find themselves in, then the public option is such that the private landlord, via banking arrangement, must accept a public-stimulus (think whatever scheme you like) payment which the bank underwrites. So that the rental average/median over those two years, with projections, back and forward over ten, (propery pricing), is what the landlord receives as capital-release whilst those renting pay the mortgage via already existing rental payment capacity (Fordist: workers afford to buy the cars they make; renters afford to buy/mortgage the homes they rent). If you do this as a novel scheme, taking 30,000 of the best situational-credit renters, with respect to landlord/government scheme/private, you free up the money which is simultaneously saved by the renters (impossible position) and put "new houses" on the market immediately whilst freeing up capital on the private, speculative, landlord side. The demand is such that the government guarantee to the banks, which provide capital release to the landlords, - it is such that there is no risk involved (check supply/demand and credit scores).
I don't see any loser in such a scenario. Policies like that are what I do not see labour, even think tanks, bothering with. Friendly to business, necessary for renters. It's actual centrist policy. Bit of Thatcher, buy your council house, etc., with a bit of FDR/Atlee (Keynsian central guarantees).
The objection might be: landlords do not want to sell. But then reduce the number of stock you hold in said market (for you are being offered market value - it's not a tax-the-rich schme - to address a legitimate housing crisis which supersedes any given market interest when the entire body-politic is underpinned by it). Inflationary controls via limited release relative to overall housing value.
The Tories had a retrofit the hospital - new hospitals they called them - scheme which was nonsense. But this is of that except it genuinely promises to work, if done with nuance and no nonsense.
The government, via banking arrangment, could even have a credit union rate of interest (.5%) or something even lower and you see a return. There are ways to solve the crisis which don't necessitate mass building of houses immediately and which free up capital in waves to keep inflation down.
The premise being that if landlord has >20 properties, and the tenants are there for >2 years, and their credit is good, they pay the bills on time, and are saving, simultaneously, for a mortgage, which most of the mortgage simultaneous savers (if not all, barring live-with-parents) find themselves in, then the public option is such that the private landlord, via banking arrangement, must accept a public-stimulus (think whatever scheme you like) payment which the bank underwrites. So that the rental average/median over those two years, with projections, back and forward over ten, (propery pricing), is what the landlord receives as capital-release whilst those renting pay the mortgage via already existing rental payment capacity (Fordist: workers afford to buy the cars they make; renters afford to buy/mortgage the homes they rent). If you do this as a novel scheme, taking 30,000 of the best situational-credit renters, with respect to landlord/government scheme/private, you free up the money which is simultaneously saved by the renters (impossible position) and put "new houses" on the market immediately whilst freeing up capital on the private, speculative, landlord side. The demand is such that the government guarantee to the banks, which provide capital release to the landlords, - it is such that there is no risk involved (check supply/demand and credit scores).
I don't see any loser in such a scenario. Policies like that are what I do not see labour, even think tanks, bothering with. Friendly to business, necessary for renters. It's actual centrist policy. Bit of Thatcher, buy your council house, etc., with a bit of FDR/Atlee (Keynsian central guarantees).
The objection might be: landlords do not want to sell. But then reduce the number of stock you hold in said market (for you are being offered market value - it's not a tax-the-rich schme - to address a legitimate housing crisis which supersedes any given market interest when the entire body-politic is underpinned by it). Inflationary controls via limited release relative to overall housing value.
The Tories had a retrofit the hospital - new hospitals they called them - scheme which was nonsense. But this is of that except it genuinely promises to work, if done with nuance and no nonsense.
The government, via banking arrangment, could even have a credit union rate of interest (.5%) or something even lower and you see a return. There are ways to solve the crisis which don't necessitate mass building of houses immediately and which free up capital in waves to keep inflation down.
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Is an EV charging point required for every flat? Is that a general rule or only for specific sites? The vast majority of flats don't even get a parking space, let alone a charging point. Surely it's not physically possible to do it in a lot of cases?
There needs to be a plan, whatever it is, called "in-depth" macro policy. An election which is "Labour points to Tories; Tories point to Labour" - that's entirely useless. EV, whatever, NHS, healthcare, housing, climate. The entire agenda, nuanced, micro to macro, has to be up for public debate. For once in the miserable decade beginning 2013(ish), policy with substance has to take central stage (not Brexit/Scotland/Trump/whatever). Just everyday, normal, body-politic, future planning stuff with actual details, charts, figures, and a grand tour, as per the 19th century but made much easier with so much broadcast apparatus. Without that, what is the point?
The symbolics of electioneering is dead. The politicians are the last to understand it. Thus "tree-huggers" (term used, as Mick Lynch, whatever else about him said, to "triangulate" along media apparatus relative to focus groups). That is the dead centrism. That's George Bush prior to 9/11, the Kerry/Bush election, the Cameron/Milliband election, the death of Clintonism in 2016. They are overusing symbols for a base that needs structural overhaul. And it's not going to work.
For a different thread, but DeSantis is Bush pre-9/11 meets Guiliani post-9/11 with Palin rhetoric for an evangelical base thrown on top (symbolic shite). No substance. Culture wars = lack of any actual ideas. Caricatures.
The symbolics of electioneering is dead. The politicians are the last to understand it. Thus "tree-huggers" (term used, as Mick Lynch, whatever else about him said, to "triangulate" along media apparatus relative to focus groups). That is the dead centrism. That's George Bush prior to 9/11, the Kerry/Bush election, the Cameron/Milliband election, the death of Clintonism in 2016. They are overusing symbols for a base that needs structural overhaul. And it's not going to work.
For a different thread, but DeSantis is Bush pre-9/11 meets Guiliani post-9/11 with Palin rhetoric for an evangelical base thrown on top (symbolic shite). No substance. Culture wars = lack of any actual ideas. Caricatures.