“I take my responsibilities seriously. I did not lie” - UK politics June 23 on

🚨 The Irish government has confirmed plans to pursue an interstate case against the United Kingdom at the European Court of Human Rights, over its controversial laws effectively blocking any future prosecutions for Troubles offences

— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) December 20, 2023

UK responds: Irish position “on dealing with legacy issues is inconsistent and hard to reconcile with its own record. At no time since 1998 has there been any concerted or sustained attempt on the part of the Irish state to pursue a criminal investigation” https://t.co/gQENVQiYxJ

— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) December 20, 2023

It's grim up north and that's how we intend to keep it...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/20/disbelief-at-plan-to-fix-london-potholes-as-part-of-network-north-project

come on let's be fair here, they did send a few sacks of instant tarmac to Chickenley

sorry I meant "a few thousand" but that would be utter utopianism!

where else are we supposed to dig up gravel for us tea?

nice to see the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland bringing back the "nuke Dublin" years

I keep having mad dreams about moving to Ireland and everyone there hates me because I'm British. It has replaced my previous recurring nightmare of being responsible for a float of money in a bookie cash register and wandering off while an unruly mob helps themselves to it!

Shane McGowan seemed pretty popular, despite the London accent.

My brother before he moved to Dubai spent a few years in Dublin and all the family there fucking loved him because he's gregarious and likes to buy in rounds in the pubs and is better at chatting shit than me. I've always been treated well when I've visited there, but lack my brother's star quality!

talking of Shane MacGowan and also that ilx celebrity sightings thread, I knew this would happen eventually, but after living here for 2 years I went into a pub on Monday to find one of the 2 other customers in there was Julie Burchill. Who has of course written an article for the Spectator slagging off Shane MacGowan, surprising nobody.

She promptly left while we were at the bar. Could probably smell the woke off me or something.

I'd love it if it wasn't assumed that all white working class people are automatically all racists. Which was one of the thrusts of JB's article, Shane MacGowan was from a middle class family, not like real working class Irish diaspora like Morrissey or John Lydon where the racism is assumed and fine. I had this argument with this woman I work with who is posh as fuck when she read Lydon's autobiography and said well he's working class so of course he has these opinions and I said isn't that pretty fucking patronising to all the working class people who aren't racists? That did shut her up tbh. I was extremely unsurprised to find out at our xmas party last week that she's a terf.

See the 'polite' middle classes writing in The Guardian that Transphobia didn't have much to do with Brianna Ghey's murder.

It's basically not been mentioned anywhere.

Junior Doctors strike again

'Doctors in training as I prefer to call them walked out of our negotiations'

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins spoke to #BBCBreakfast about the 72 hour junior doctors strike in Englandhttps://t.co/YKYqO83Xrp pic.twitter.com/PDCwoRRDaI

— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) December 21, 2023

Is there some 4d chess reason why Atkins thinks it's a good idea to unnecessarily antagonise striking doctors, or is this just the Conservatives figuring that they're already doomed so there's no reason to bother hiding their petulance and bitterness?

some "you won't have Richard Nixon to kick around any more" kind of thing

Starmer, “I will restore standards in public life with a total crackdown on cronyism: this ends now.”

... talk about a hostage to fortune.

It's like a wink to the audience. That audience being the journos desperate to place him in power.

It’s handing those journos a stick to beat him with

Countdown to first Bernie Ecclestone-esque revelation starts here

lol yess this is leadership

Starmer says Labour will ‘meet fire with fire’ if Tories resort to dirty tactics during election

I'm old enough to remember his leadership election where he dogwhistled his opponent over her Irish Catholic background and refused to disclose his right-wing donors until the vote was finished. Gosh, I'm shocked he knows how to go low.

Interestingly some of the media hacks on twitter seem to be making mild fun of Starmer's "pull the growth lever" crap; despite what I said above it does seem that some are starting to get sick of his bullshit and their role in supporting it.

the "five missions" or whatever the fuck he's calling it this year, without being underlined by policies or significant spending commitments, it doesn't mean a thing. It's saying something when UK political hacks want to see more credibility beyond some very unpromising rhetoric there in order to stan for this cunt without looking like bigger wankers than they already are.

Curtice has said all party conferences are scheduled for early autumn. He expects the election to take place 14th November.

Which means there is quite a bit of time for the economy to improve. Inflation went down more than expected last month. There should be interest rate cuts by then. Housing market is expected to improve and weeks of 30-40 degree + weather would be forgotten by then.

Of course there are other events I'm sure but from all this I would think a Tory recovery to a hung parliament would be a fair bet.

they are currently polling lower than the Major govt in the runup to '97, but that was a completely different election. This time the hatred of Tories is going to be mitigated to some degree by the apathy towards Labour and it's likely to be a low turnout imo. Looking forward to how embarrassing the Starmer campaign is going to be and seeing it get ripped to pieces by the left and right-wing media, it's going to be a bit like the Maybot sequel, not just in presentation but also in terms of dismal grey compromise policies that barely make a difference and nobody gives a fuck about.

I don’t think they’ll want to go around the same time as US elections.

Why would that matter?

they are currently polling lower than the Major govt in the runup to '97

Odds still continuing to drift, relative to mid October

out from 6/1 to 7/1 for most seats
and from 10/1 tp 11/1 for Conservative majority

(hung Parliament 9/2, forgot to check that before)

It's come up again recently, with the rise of the Reform Party, but I'd forgotten that another reason for the scale of Corbyn's GE defeat was that the Brexit Party didn't contest any seats won by the Tories in the 2017 election. Slight diversion, sorry.

in FPTP Starmer could conceivably get minus a million+ or even a couple of million less votes than Corbyn got in '19 and all the Labour grandees of the right won't be repeatedly calling it as the worst election result since the 1930's!

For the Tories their biggest issue is that there isn't anything to replace Brexit as an issue for them to rally around.

Small boats ain't no Brexit, for sure.

mad dog Jav invading the Falklands in the next few months would be a good result for them

the propaganda campaign for the war will heavily involve a lot of hamfisted attempts to reclaim the phrase "hand of god"

We shouldn't pay too much attention to polls this far out from an election, much of the electorate isn't paying attention at this point in the cycle and we shouldn't read too much into Trumps lead when there's such a long time to go until the election

Looking at the polls, its difficult to see the Conservatives clawing back much at this point, so close to the election

I have only ever been doorstep polled once, possibly it was IPSOS - can't remember. They only asked who I intended to vote for, there was never the question did I intend to vote.

I don’t think they’ll want to go around the same time as US elections.

Yes you would think, although increasingly can see how they might prefer this in a defeatist dead cat way re policies and doing real work, but it's more about whether their media chums want that workload innit.

British journalists and media love covering US elections above all else, so I imagine they won't want to be forced to cover a boring old UK election.

he's spent SO much time and effort and burnt so much goodwill from actual voters to try and get the Murdoch papers to endorse him, and here we are. really funny you have to say pic.twitter.com/qm9rmuEolq

— wariotifo (@wariotifo) January 9, 2024

lol, they don't even credit him for his night courts endorsement, having a vulnerable Asian autistic man extradited to the US on fabricated terrorist charges, for ruling that racist Lynch mobs require no police investigation etc...etc... all his greatest hits as DPP should actually make him a top bloke to The S*n

Reading the odd piece on Kids Company as a window on what this country is like if you aren't born on the right side of the tracks.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/09/the-hidden-life-of-camila-batmanghelidjh-why-was-her-exoneration-so-widely-ignored

xp - the worst of it is Starmer may become PM but he'll be bullied by the press just like that. Shame, such a top bloke

they'll keep doing this at least partially because he's encouraged them to do it

the party fucking loves this shit it's like a kink or something

media/tories: you caused a financial crisis through welfare spending!
labour: yeah we kind of did didn't we that one's on us

media: you secretly called a racist lady racist!
labour: yes we did and it just goes to show how terrible and out of touch we are

it's so weird how this is their whole thing now and maybe the problem with corbynism was they just couldn't get it off during that period

What about the rest of the IT/management consulting which receive government contracts resulting in projects that aren't delivered on time, are poorly thought out in the first place and -- though consequences aren't as catastrophic as this -- fail?

Fujitsu will be 'held accountable' legally or financially if the public inquiry finds it blundered in the Post Office Horizon scandal, Downing Street has said https://t.co/iDKJcicpms

— ITV News Politics (@ITVNewsPolitics) January 9, 2024

If government built in IT servicing of its own again it would bankrupt a lot of the private IT service sector, stocks would tank, and you would make a lot of Tories in SE England weep.

So it won't happen.

the report has been posted and some of the code, albeit reverse engineered, looks terrible - reversing the sign of a number by taking it away from itself twice...

PDF Download - https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/file/871/download?token=gDkssh69

(the report = a report from 1998)

terrible that Fujitsu willfully decided to prosecute and imprison hundreds of innocent people