UK General Election 2017 - 8 June

[Waffdon]

No unilaterally declared indyref2 for Wee Jimmy Krankie.

:harold:

Shock horror.

It will never not be funny seeing mid 40 year old blokes typing Jimmy Krankie on the internet.

[niko_cee]

You can keep you mid pal.

[Waffdon]

You’re nae fooling anyone, Son.

[Boydy]

You English lot get really worked up about a nation you don't seem to like wanting to leave you and go it on their own.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Or not wanting to, 55-45.

[Luke Emia]

You English lot get really worked up about a nation you don't seem to like wanting to leave you and go it on their own.

I'm all for Scotland, Wales & NI all fucking off and doing their own thing. As long as they take their share of the national debt and have their own currency I see no problem with it.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Yeah, if they're that keen to do it then by all means fuck off, but all the proposed exit packages seem to involve England continuing to subsidise them for 100 years, so no thanks.

[Waffdon]

You English lot get really worked up about a nation you don't seem to like wanting to leave you and go it on their own.

It’s all very cute. It’s nearly as bad as the ‘Scotland beat England 1-1’ bantz they bring up as much as they feasibly can. An angry, racist country them lot.

[niko_cee]

I must have missed the addition of Scotch to the diversity monitoring form.

[Don]

They're not racist, they fight against racism at every turn. We'd be in a real pickle if we didn't have them doing so.

[Boydy]

Yeah, if they're that keen to do it then by all means fuck off, but all the proposed exit packages seem to involve England continuing to subsidise them for 100 years, so no thanks.
Reparations.

[Spikey M]

You English lot get really worked up about a nation you don't seem to like wanting to leave you and go it on their own.

Most of "us English lot" just want them to shut up moaning one way or another. Leave. Stay. I couldn't care less. Just stop whining.

[Boydy]

Stop voting fucking tories in then.

[Ian]

Yeah, Spikey.

[Spikey M]

Sorry lads, won't happen again.

[Lewis]

I don't want Scotland to go, and it shouldn't be allowed to either. You could close Holyrood forever tomorrow and what would they do about it? The 'nationalist' core - university administrators, neckbeards, and nineteen year old Celtic fans who type in their accents - aren't going to start blowing things up, so they would just go back to voting Labour and moaning within an electoral cycle.

[Ben]

University administrators are nationalist?

[Yevrah]

You English lot get really worked up about a nation you don't seem to like wanting to leave you and go it on their own.

I'm not overly arsed either way, but if they are going to leave (as has been said) it has to involve them going it on their own and not continuing to enjoy the bits they like. Which is another thing, the whole thing would be much more palatable if they were at least honest about the motivations and came out and said we're doing it because we don't like the English.

[Kikó]

Speaking from my select Scottish sample, it's definitely more about wanting Scotland to be an independent nation rather than English hatred that drives the desire.

[Lewis]

University administrators are nationalist?

There are very few actual Scottish nationalists under the age of seventy. The SNP are 'nationalists', and Scotland is just a conveniently packaged political unit for them to run. Ironic Scouse exceptionalism writ large.

[Waffdon]

Old people are selfish cunts though.

[Don]

1595376648261623810

:lol:

[Spikey M]

Are you saying the "gammon" is right, Taz?

[Lewis]

In other words, the 'safe and legal routes' are restricted to those people who need them the most (Syria, Ukraine, etc.), rather than literally anybody from somewhere shit. That sounds like a good system. Shame we can't actually implement it.

[Giggles]

There’s a big revolt slowly brewing here on imports :drool:

[Ben]

The Saj, plus 10 other Tory MPs, have announced they're not standing at the next GE. Why stand around to take a drubbing when you can go make bank in the private sector? God knows what weasels they'll cart out for the dead seats.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Saj would win Bromsgrove, so he's probably just had enough.

It could be really tight, Labour need such a massive amount of gains and there's still a while to go for Keir to bore people to death. Could end up being a Kinnock situation.

[Lewis]

I think Labour will end up with a small but workable majority (current polls are stupid), but there is something to be said for the Conservative Party being annihilated. It needs to be completely re-built or replaced, like it did in 2019 before Dominic Cummings saved them, and if they hang on to thirty-five per cent then they will just tell themselves it was Russia and carry on being pointless.

[Ben]

Bromsgrove is probably in the top 20 safe seats. It's the 11 others that are most telling. For example, Dehenna Davison (current poster girl for Conservative) is quitting at the next election citing family reasons but she's in Bishop Auckland which is historically always red so it's obvious she's jumping before getting humiliated and ruining her prospects.

As Lewis said, the Tories getting pummelled would suit everyone.

[Jimmy Floyd]

It currently encompasses two main schools of thought: the Faragistas who want low immigration, low spending and low tax (cloud cuckoo land at the moment, but there we are), and the people like me who are conservative in the sense they don't want radical reforms and want the state to stay out of people's lives, but they do want the state to pay for things, and are also fine with immigration.

One of those needs to purge the other set out of the party, and the losers need to go and join the Lib Dems / Reform headbanger party (delete as appropriate).

Part of the problem is that the Brexit people have literally no vision for the country beyond 'low taxes', and the non-Brexit people have literally no vision for the country beyond 'Brexit is bad / save our NHS'.

[Lewis]

Nobody of any use of standing down by the looks of things. Sajid Javid is a 'Big Name', but he hasn't ever done anything useful for it, and he probably thinks he might as well go and make some money instead of being some backbench muppet, which, because we have to pretend is a full-time job, you just get shit for making money on the side.

[Ben]

There's some names in there, like Davison, who could be something down the line and are being touted as such. Everyone of note in the party these days is either in Cabinet (and stepping down whilst in that role is not a good look), a past name like May, or one of those mentalists who always garners enough votes to stay in by saying edgy shit in the papers or online like Fabricant.

[Lewis]

Dehenna Davison doesn't belong in any party that claims to be even nominally conservative/right-wing, so that's one less melt to flush out in the re-build, which ought to proceed on actually being what they threatened to be in 2019 before cowardice and uselessness set in.

[Ben]

which ought to proceed on actually being what they threatened to be in 2019 before cowardice and uselessness set in.

Well we agree on this.

[Lewis]

It's not great timing given that the pandemic has proven everything he ever said about the government machinery, and it suggests that the Conservative Party intends to retreat into being a waste of space after Brexit (and wasting its opportunities); but the Labour Party still aren't winning the next election.

Quality call from me on Cummings Resignation Day (election prediction pre-dating recession). Who saw that one coming?

[Ben]

Brexit produced very few opportunities, or at least a lot less than we were sold.

And Labour probably will win now the Tories went into overdrive on the uselessness front.

[Spikey M]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63864192

This is some face turn he's attempting. :D

[Ian]

"It was an extraordinarily aggressive email which was unnecessary really as I was prepared to give a PPE contract to literally anybody if they offered me a fiver."

[Don]

Google trending searches informing me physios are now getting in on the fun and striking has tickled me. Where tf is this all headed? Presumably the majority aren't going to get what they want and they're not going to simply die down, am I gonna get my riots and thirst for anarchy met or what?

[Lewis]

I saw that driving test examiners are on strike. Isn't there a massive backlog on driving tests because they all spent the entire pandemic doing absolutely nothing?

[Jimmy Floyd]

Your riots and anarchy will only come about when the shelf stackers and petrol station attendants go on strike.

[Jimmy Floyd]

I saw that driving test examiners are on strike. Isn't there a massive backlog on driving tests because they all spent the entire pandemic doing absolutely nothing?

I work opposite a test centre, am on nodding terms with all the examiners, and can confirm they are a bunch of dossers who do fuck all.

[Waffdon]

1610761144943185949

Nazis did it first

[Boydy]

He's gonna end up with a general strike on his hands trying to pull that shit.

[Jimmy Floyd]

It's interesting listening in my office, literally everyone is dead against all the striking sectors. No sympathy whatsoever for any of them and think their demands are unrealistic/naive and the country can't afford them. I thought there would be a lot more support. Not sure what the polling says.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Looked up the polling. Nurses and ambulance drivers have strong support, teachers it's closer to 50/50, and then there's little support for the rail people, postal workers and all the others, with driving examiners being the bottom of the pile.

If labrador puppies went on strike the public would be about 94% in favour.

[Ben]

Way too many "I'm alright Jacks" in this country.

[Lofty]

The government briefs that the railway desperately needs reform because 'we need to get passengers back using the railway after covid'.

The head of the hospitality association said that the strikes have cost his industry £2.5 billion. Which is some feat because apparently no-one uses the train.

[Shindig]

If they want more people using the trains employers are going to have to get back to a full office week.

[Jimmy Floyd]

The RMT have been striking regularly for any reason they can find for as long as I've been alive, to the common man it's pretty meaningless by this point. Everyone else striking for pay because of inflation is a lot more of a departure if we're talking post 1980.

[Spikey M]

Way too many "I'm alright Jacks" in this country.

I think it's more bizarre than that. It's "well we're all struggling, but we're not all refusing to go to work, so get on with it!"

But they haven't stopped to think that the people in question are earning half of what they are whilst also doing a job twice as important. It's mental to me. Nurses should not be earning so poorly that they need food banks for fuck sake. And a 17% wage rise is a perfectly fair expectation when your wage has been stagnant for 10 years. It's actually pretty generous, because they're still nowhere near inflation over the last 10 years.

Everything is a complete mess. The next General Election can't come around fast enough.

[Ben]

Agreed. My wife is a Junior Sister on a surgical ward and there's no way she should be earning considerably less than me.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Social importance very different from economic importance, and therein lies the issue. The economy doesn't care if you live or die as long as there's someone else to replace your GDP contribution.

[Spikey M]

Agreed, and that's why Capitalism is fundamentally broken. That's not to say that Communism is the answer, obviously. That's just as broken.

The Scandinavians probably have it about right, but people would never vote for it.

[Lofty]

As Ian Hislop noted, usually the union comes out with a very high pay demand and the government negotiates it down. But this neo liberal incarnation of the conservative party are appalled by the notion of strikes and want to ban them, when they could have negotiated and settled it already.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Agreed, and that's why Capitalism is fundamentally broken. That's not to say that Communism is the answer, obviously. That's just as broken.

The Scandinavians probably have it about right, but people would never vote for it.

It's not just about capitalism itself but also about the fact that economically successful people are in control of social institutions (don't @ me, Marxists). We just lived through a period in which you were allowed to go and work on a building site but you weren't allowed to see your extended family. Mind you, it was mainly the marxist end of things cheering for that so lord knows.

[Boydy]

It's interesting listening in my office, literally everyone is dead against all the striking sectors. No sympathy whatsoever for any of them and think their demands are unrealistic/naive and the country can't afford them. I thought there would be a lot more support. Not sure what the polling says.
Isn't your office full of salesmen?

And boomer salesmen at that.

[Boydy]

I think it's more bizarre than that. It's "well we're all struggling, but we're not all refusing to go to work, so get on with it!"

But they haven't stopped to think that the people in question are earning half of what they are whilst also doing a job twice as important. It's mental to me. Nurses should not be earning so poorly that they need food banks for fuck sake. And a 17% wage rise is a perfectly fair expectation when your wage has been stagnant for 10 years. It's actually pretty generous, because they're still nowhere near inflation over the last 10 years.

Everything is a complete mess. The next General Election can't come around fast enough.
I wouldn't expect the current iteration of the labour party to change much.

[Boydy]

Actually, just seen in the news that Starmer is promising "a decade of national renewal".

https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/press-x-to-doubt-la-noire.jpg

[Jimmy Floyd]

Isn't your office full of salesmen?

And boomer salesmen at that.

I mean, someone's got to sell things.

[Boydy]

Salesmen aren't likely to be fans of trade unions though.

[Jimmy Floyd]

I'd never really thought of salesmen as right wing, but I suppose you're right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQsMFQZa8os (H/T Lofty)

[igor_balis]

I'd never really thought of salesmen as right wing, but I suppose you're right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQsMFQZa8os (H/T Lofty)

hahah I saw this linked on another forum the other day, do you lurk elsewhere Mr Floyd, or was this just part of your mandatory training

[Jimmy Floyd]

Nah, as mentioned Lofty (I'm pretty sure) linked it on here some time ago.

[Yevrah]

We need some radical solutions to this shit show really, which are never going to happen, but if they were I'd be looking at legalising cannabis to swell the coffers a tad and confetti visas for commonwealth nationals to get a work force going again.

Making all forms of strikes illegal is a terrible idea.

[Boydy]

Once again, you had the choice in 2019. It was mild social democracy or barbarism and the UK (heavily influenced by it putrid media) chose barbarism.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Is full-strength social democracy the one where people start getting rounded up and disappeared?

[Boydy]

Nah, I think that's when the markets are fully free like under Thatcher's mate Pinochet.

[Jimmy Floyd]

I'm going to Bolivia soon so I'll report back on el paraiso.

We don't need anything radical, we just need the boomers to go away.

[Spikey M]

Mortgages doubling, food price inflation in double figures, energy prices capped and requiring government subsidising, staganant wages, failing hospitals, strikes all over the place, Petrol companies lolling at everyone whilst boasting about profits, mega-corporations avoiding tax... etc, etc.

We do need something radical. Our system is broken. The gap between rich and poor continues to grow and is only speeding up.

[Don]

Will be fine once we stop the little boats. Oink.

[Jimmy Floyd]

A list of domestic policies that would make a significant dent in that list:

1) Major planning reform (i.e. the boomers go away)
2) Large hike in general taxation

And yet both parties seem staunchly opposed to both things. Is that because of Logan Roy infecting people's brains from his evil lair, or is it because both things would adversely affect the financial position of the entire political and media class and their friends?

I'm not even sure mega-corbz was proposing these. Perhaps he was on planning, I can't remember. His tax proposals were all about the rich which, even if effective, would raise fuck all in comparison to a large general hike.

[Spikey M]

Will be fine once we stop the little boats. Oink.

That part of his speech caught me completely off guard. Do people really think that has anything to do with everything that's going on? More reason to kill off the Boomers ASAP I guess.

[randomlegend]

Doctors are going to be striking too.

The media seem to be keeping it relatively quiet so far, but hospitals/the NHS have fully reached "collapsed" this winter. 80 hour waits to be seen in A and Es, 100+ patients in units designed for 30, ambulances adopting policies of just dumping people and leaving if they have to wait more than 15 minutes to offload because they desperately need to get back out to patients. People are literally dying in A and Es because they are so overwhelmed.

We are protected from the brunt of it in paeds, but you see it when it comes to the ambulance service responses. We had a baby the other day brought in by a GP in their car with them on oxygen from a cylinder because the ambulance was going to be 6 hours. 6 hours to get to a baby with severe respiratory distress and sats in their boots. They ended up needing the top end of respiratory support which can be provided outside of a PICU within 30 minutes of arrival and were on the verge of needing CPR. Quite possibly would have died before the ambulance arrived.

Had another child who needed urgent transfer to a neurosurgical centre because they had a bleed in their brain. Minimum 6 hours. If they'd bled again before the ambulance came there would have been almost literally nothing we could do for them.

Kid who'd had a seizure and after coming round had persistent one-sided weakness. Easily could've been a neurosurgical emergency. Parent told to drive them in as it would be quicker than an ambulance.

Etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

[Magic]

That part of his speech caught me completely off guard. Do people really think that has anything to do with everything that's going on? More reason to kill off the Boomers ASAP I guess.

100% they do. Leeches and if they were gone there would be loads of everything for everyone.

As a country we're finished. Independence please.

[Jimmy Floyd]

The little boats stuff is straight racism. We need every fucker we can get, especially people hard enough to run the illegal immigration gauntlet. I've just sat around at Christmas listening to my aunt complaining about the lack of white doctors in Birmingham, and upon a mild challenge the response is that she can't understand what Asian doctors are saying so it's a poor service being provided. Boomers just can't cope with brown skin.

[Yevrah]

Blaming it all on boomers seems to be massively over-simplifying the problem. Presumably a fuck ton of them voted Blair in and some morally decent reforms on the back of that, so I'm not sure why they're being singled out for all of the World's ills.

[Yevrah]

And major planning reforms are a piece of piss to do, but nobody actually wants to as the housing market would collapse and millions upon millions of people (not just boomers) will be absolutely fucked.

[Spikey M]

I had to explain how the "little boat" people and the "Asylum Seekers taking our benefits and bedsits" are not the same people a while back. She honestly thought they just stepped off the dinghy and got handed the keys to a flat and a Universal Credit claim.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Blaming it all on boomers seems to be massively over-simplifying the problem. Presumably a fuck ton of them voted Blair in and some morally decent reforms on the back of that, so I'm not sure why they're being singled out for all of the World's ills.

Because they have all the money and, collectively, a bad attitude.

[Magic]

Blaming it all on boomers seems to be massively over-simplifying the problem. Presumably a fuck ton of them voted Blair in and some morally decent reforms on the back of that, so I'm not sure why they're being singled out for all of the World's ills.

It's them and their children. Basically England. Hence independence from normal Island.

[Spikey M]

Blaming it all on boomers seems to be massively over-simplifying the problem. Presumably a fuck ton of them voted Blair in and some morally decent reforms on the back of that, so I'm not sure why they're being singled out for all of the World's ills.

I can't find the tweet for the life of me now, but they are the problem. 90% of it. They are sitting on jobs, property and money in a way that their predecessors did not. See Jimmy's bosses for examples. They are supposed to get old and retire.

This shows some of what I mean, though the other tweet I saw was much better and shows how the transfer of wealth from old to young has pretty much stopped entirely:

1287839669003022337?t=Uoe3a6LPSCrGiBRQ3n_xTw&s=19

[Ben]

>$15tn in pension entitlements. :sick:

[Spikey M]

It's like money became Pokemon cards for Boomers and they completed the set.

[Yevrah]

Why am I looking at a graph about 'murica?

[Spikey M]

Because I can't find the one about Britain. It was predictably similar though.

[randomlegend]

Just driven past A and E on the way into work and there's 20+ ambulances waiting to offload. At midday on a Thursday.

[Lewis]

I had to explain how the "little boat" people and the "Asylum Seekers taking our benefits and bedsits" are not the same people a while back. She honestly thought they just stepped off the dinghy and got handed the keys to a flat and a Universal Credit claim.

They get put up in hotels and whatever else is available at the cost of billions a year (and that is only the direct hospitality bills), and they all come from countries that, statistically speaking, make them overwhelmingly likely to be massive drains on the country once they inevitably aren't deported. To say the Treasury won't allow childcare reform over a billion here and there, they seem awfully complacent about those costs.

[7om]

Just driven past A and E on the way into work and there's 20+ ambulances waiting to offload. At midday on a Thursday.

I’m on A&E rotation this month and it looks shit. All the juniors off sick so they had me, two other fourth years and fifth year doing clerking. What is the actual attraction of emergency medicine. It’s a constant wave of shit in massively ill-prepared environments.

[Don]

I think it's to do with helping people in need. Obvs not that important when you can leave that work to Zimbabwean nurses and do TikTok dance vids instead. Scum.

[SvN]

My friend who's a nurse used to work in A&E. He was it was more interesting than the alternatives, and the time flew by.

[Magic]

My friend who's a nurse used to work in A&E. He was it was more interesting than the alternatives, and the time flew by.

"He" :harold:

[Spikey M]

I've got a male friend that's a care worker and one of my other mates lols at him and say that's a birds job too.

I haven't asked him, but I reckon he'd feel similarly about a husband gently washing a kickboxers spaff out of his wife's finest French Knickers tbf.

[Giggles]

What are the actual deifinitions for Boomer, X, etc?

[niko_cee]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Generation_timeline.svg/langsimple-435px-Generation_timeline.svg.png

[randomlegend]

As if they've called the current lot "generation Alpha" :lol:

[Giggles]

Generation fuckwit.

[niko_cee]

Should have gone Generation Ze.

[Spikey M]

Generation Pronoun

[Giggles]

Genderation.

[Shindig]

I wouldn't chuck it all the boomer's way. Of course the younger lot will have accrued less wealth in their pensions/property. And the Silent Generation are either in care or bossing Jimmy around.

In 30 years, we'll be the bad guys. :cool:

[Boydy]

1612243923396886530

The press in this country needs to be razed to the ground.

[Ben]

Corbyn is long gone and he's still living in their heads.

[Jimmy Floyd]

I'm firmly in the anti-Corbyn camp, but is it really a story that someone organising a strike is left wing?

The Times is a shockingly pro-government rag at the moment to an almost chilling degree.

[Boydy]

They're far better at holding random members of the public to account than they are anyone who actually wields any power in the country.

[Spikey M]

The world is confusing enough at the moment, can you two not start agreeing on politics to make matters worse?

[Jimmy Floyd]

I think me and Boydy would be pretty good at running a brutal dictatorship. I'll get the trains running on time, he can order the murders.

[Pepe]

Yevrah can be in charge of commissioning giant statues.

[Spikey M]

I'd be useless, so just give me Minister of Health

[Jimmy Floyd]

Lewis will be the chief of secret police, with his massive files on everyone. phonics can design the website.

[Kikó]

No way we can get him out of the hospitality industry at this point.

[Boydy]

'Hangover effect' remains after mini-budget chaos but mortgage shock is over, BoE governor says (https://news.sky.com/story/amp/hangover-effect-remains-after-mini-budget-chaos-but-mortgage-shock-is-over-boe-governor-says-12788260)


"It is going to take some time to convince people that we are back to where we were before," he said.

Yeah, it absolutely will take some convincing given my mortgage is still likely to go up by about £150 when I remortgage this summer.

I fucking hate this cunt. Hope he gets strung up from a lamppost when the revolution comes.

[Spikey M]

Is he yet to answer why the interest rates were kept at 0.25% for more than a decade after the last financial crisis, robbing us of the ability to slash rates now, when we usually would? I'm all for dragging Liz Truss, she's a horrible, useless cunt, but the BofE have had more than a hand in this shambles.

[niko_cee]

I don't really understand it, but the idea of the BoE coining £3.8bn off that whole Truss crisis business strikes me as odd. Have they just robbed that straight from the pension funds who were forced into the buying scheme or what? How does a financial disaster end up with a £3.8bn profit?

[Spikey M]

This is really testing my memory of something I learned a long, long time ago, but - Essentially, the BofE create the money for loans / bail outs out of thin air. When the money is repaid, it is "deleted", dissolved, errr uncreated(?). Whatever the word is. But the interest paid on the loan remains. It's possibly something to do with that. Who knows. The whole thing is bollocks anyway.

[phonics]

It's almost like 'The Market' is completely fake and nothing matters outside of not pissing off the wrong people.

[Boydy]

It's almost like 'The Market' is completely fake and nothing matters outside of not pissing off the wrong people.

That's the crux of it.

Spikey's talking about how they'd normally be cutting interest rates now up above but they've raised them and will do so again in the near future.

[Lewis]

It's almost like 'The Market' is completely fake and nothing matters outside of not pissing off the wrong people.

Took me a year to get this annoyed about job rejections.

[phonics]

Took me a year to get this annoyed about job rejections.

I was working for a NASDAQ company where it was openly discussed how to defraud the market to hit profit objectives while you would still be living at your Mums in Hull for another 4 years you absolute loser. I was sitting in all hands meetings where we were taught how to legally price fix products while you were writing history nerd shit where the only people who bought a copy was a blood relative of yours. Congratulations on being yet another in a long line of anti-government Conservatives whos entire livelihood relies on it that thinks they know more than everyone else. Pathetic.

[Lewis]

Was that between failing a major interview on ethics and agonising over a hundred grand a year because Boeing are bad? Weird that you never did anything.

[Don]

TTH-ers on the ropes today.

[phonics]

1) I failed the interview on ethics over 10 years ago because mine were stronger than the test wants. Devestating own

2) What agonising did you see? I said I'd take it. I know the worlds a load of shit and I just go along with it. Meanwhile you spend a decade in your mums attic until you got into the real world and convince yourself that you're the smartest one in the room because you're the only one in it.

[Lewis]

I'll be honest. I'm lost for a response here. What a weird seethe.

[Pepe]

I thought that phonics' job was to draw logos.

[phonics]

It's amazing the places it gets you into.

[Pepe]

Someone cleans NASA's toilets.

[Ben]

This is really testing my memory of something I learned a long, long time ago, but - Essentially, the BofE create the money for loans / bail outs out of thin air. When the money is repaid, it is "deleted", dissolved, errr uncreated(?). Whatever the word is. But the interest paid on the loan remains. It's possibly something to do with that. Who knows. The whole thing is bollocks anyway.

That's my understanding of it too.


Spikey's talking about how they'd normally be cutting interest rates now up above but they've raised them and will do so again in the near future.

Because we've got ourselves into quite a unique (for the West, anyway) situation with both high inflation and a recession. They've decided tackling inflation is more important.

[Lofty]

If it helps my brother in law works at Boeing and I can confirm he's a penis.

[Boydy]

That's my understanding of it too.



Because we've got ourselves into quite a unique (for the West, anyway) situation with both high inflation and a recession. They've decided tackling inflation is more important.
Yeah and tackling inflation over preventing recession benefits the rich more than the poor (or less the poor and more labour - in the class sense, not the useless political party sense). Tackling inflation, and probably causing a recession in the process, will keep wages down. Who pays wages? Inflation is still unpleasant for everyone sure but it'll normally be followed by pay rises (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64290162) and organised labour flexing its muscle. Who hates that? Inflation also diminishes the value of debt. To whom is debt owed?

[Ben]

I completely agree with you.

[Kikó]

I'm here for the chimp out.

[niko_cee]

Not sure about the debt bit, inflating debt away is way better for 'the rich' as they tend to own the assets inflating in value and have more access to debt as well. Doubt they worry much about the value of their debt dropping.

[John Arne]

Not the UK, but the VN President just "resigned" following Covid PPE and repatriation flights scandal in which a number of his inner cycle were implicated and recently sacked.

[niko_cee]

Did you manage to find a market for that?

[Magic]

'Hangover effect' remains after mini-budget chaos but mortgage shock is over, BoE governor says (https://news.sky.com/story/amp/hangover-effect-remains-after-mini-budget-chaos-but-mortgage-shock-is-over-boe-governor-says-12788260)



Yeah, it absolutely will take some convincing given my mortgage is still likely to go up by about £150 when I remortgage this summer.

I fucking hate this cunt. Hope he gets strung up from a lamppost when the revolution comes.

Sounds not too bad, some of us are looking at a £450-£500 increase on a fixed rate, slightly less on tracker. :(

[John Arne]

Did you manage to find a market for that?

Unfortunately not :(

[Spikey M]

1616503923350638601?t=bqWvgBu9nQ8PWf0BQggKdw&s=19

:D

[randomlegend]

How are they so fucking stupid? Literally filming yourself breaking the law and posting it online.

If any public figure who wasn't a politician did that you'd have Tories bealing for them to be banned from driving FOREVER, with their hands cut off to make sure they can't hold a steering wheel just to be sure.

[Spikey M]

I see Zahawi is in trouble for tax dodging as well.

Operation "just shut up and keep your nose clean" is going well.

[Don]

It's a nonsense but I did greatly enjoy a gammon on the radio this morning defending him with a "what if he came under attack and his exit from the vehicle was impeded by wearing a seatbelt?"

Edit: Rishi, Nadim is a dirty dirty fuck you could spot from the state of his oily over-shaved skin and noncey glasses long before he made it into major power.

[Lewis]

He should pay it publicly with the change he has lying around and then keep doing it. No surrender.

[Lofty]

Like a naff Quadrophenia.

[Ben]

I see Zahawi is in trouble for tax dodging as well.

Operation "just shut up and keep your nose clean" is going well.

He's "agreed" to pay some back to keep out of hot water.

I wish I was so rich that I could tell HMRC whether or not I fancied paying tax this month.

[Don]

The dirty little midget has gone and crowbarred the member of parliament for Islington North into his final response to Starmer on holocaust memorial day/week/month/year/millenium.

[Ben]

Nothing changes.

[Don]

I'm liking the idea the BBC director and Zahawi scandals and their unveiling possibly being part of a running battle between Rish and Boris. Probably nonsense but it feeds the hunger for drama.

[Lewis]

Holocaust Memorial Lifetime. I have a small - but not disrespectfully so - memorial in my flat.

[Yevrah]

It's a shame for him, but Rishi is clearly a massive wet blanket. The next election cannot come quickly enough.

[Ian]

A shame? He's a soppy little nerd and it was, at best, a bit weird that he wanted the job at all.

[Ben]

Not to mention a proper manlet. In fact, a lot of world leaders are manlets. I wonder why.

[Yevrah]

The shame bit was a figure of speech, but now you mention it it is a shame for us all as we have another two years of aimless governing.

[Jimmy Floyd]

I doubt they'll manage to last that long, some other scandal will trip them up.

[Ben]

He's fucked himself with Zahawi now as well. He should have just sacked him yesterday but now he's let PMQs pass so he'll either have to sack him later but it looks like Starmer bullied him into it, or he doesn't sack him and they add another "rules don't apply to us" scandal to the list.

[Jimmy Floyd]

It'll turn out he has done the same thing and that's why he hasn't sacked him. Boris Johnson will then return and win five straight elections.

[Boydy]

1618525343832211456

Lol

[Spikey M]

If this were a computer game you'd just hit quit and do not save, followed by an angry email to Fry the developers demanding a patch.

[Luke Emia]

Yep I've heard more and more of this needing to cut taxes in the press the past few days. I'm not sure that resonates with most of the country though. Personally I would probably pay more tax if I knew the money was being well spent(rather than rinsing everything through as an expense). I think a good proportion of the country would be happier if rather than a bullshit idea that doesn't really help anyone they came up with ideas as to how to spend the money they do have better.

[Spikey M]

Tax cut = price rises. We are living through inflation that hasn't been seen since before Maggie started personally opening up miners heads with a truncheon. I don't understand how people's memories are so short. Or - more likely - how it's possible to be so transparent about your own self interest and maintain a career as a politician.

[Jimmy Floyd]

A lot on the Tory benches know they are out next time and a lot of them probably need the money badly. If I were Rishi Sunak I'd call an election, then resign, abandon them to their fates and become a national hero. But no.

Even for those who aren't personally in trouble, there's a sort of visceral need to cut taxes because it's what they're in politics to do and they sense there won't be another Tory PM to do it for a while.

[Ben]

Is it election time yet?

[Lewis]

Prioritising tax cuts goes back to half of them not really understanding what Thatcherism was, so they see it as an easy solution to all of the economic problems caused by things (planning, productivity, etc.) that would require actual governing. Much like how subsidy is seen as the other solution to everything, even subsidised demand running up against government-induced shortages.

[Yevrah]

While tax cuts are probably a bad idea (definitely in the way Truss did them), this all once again ignores the elephant in the room that none of this is going to change anything for the better while Europe is on a war footing/it relies so heavily on Russian energy.

Chuck in the absolute fisting that appears to have been made of the Brexit 'opportunities' and we're simply not addressing the actual problems.

[Spikey M]

Didn't Thatchers success cone from completely reinventing our economy? From barely functioning industrial units to "Services"?

I'm not sure I trust any of this lot to reinvent our economy. They'd end up bringing back feudalism.

[Lofty]

From what I understand that is the crux of it, copying Thatcher's homework forgets that privatisation has largely been a costly failure for tax payers and service users, there's barely anything left to privatise except the golden goose.

Similarly copying Reagan's homework overlooks the part where the dollar is ubiquitious as global currency and perceived as safe by almost everyone so good for hoarding assets. No-one outside of Britain thinks it's a good idea to do that with sterling now it's value has cratered, we voted for chaos and our last prime minister needed help to find her way out of a room she'd not long entered, appointing a chancellor who lolled as he crashed the markets.

They need a clunking fist Brown style gold sell off plan but the optics would be terrible and condemn them to the political wilderness for decades.

[Lewis]

A lot of what Thatcher did was 'obvious' insofar as the problems and solutions had been identified twenty years beforehand, which was also why it was very harsh in some cases, because it was all twenty years over-due. The remarkable thing about her was simply that she managed to do it, where every previous Prime Minister had looked at the unemployment forecasts and thrown another billion at the already failing *anything* industry.

This is what I was saying through the Liz Truss interlude. If companies can't do anything because Cambridgeshire County Council won't let them expand their laboratory space, and energy costs never go down because we won't commit to new energy projects, what good is two pence off your corporation tax?

[Boydy]

Is that lab space thing a real issue?

[Lewis]

There was a Financial Times (https://www.ft.com/content/397a75aa-3047-432e-8664-d1974fbb05df) thing about it over the summer, and the government also canned the potentially brilliant 'Oxford-Cambridge Arc' because they didn't want to upset local MPs. Levelling Down.

[Boydy]

Ffs.

[Lewis]

It's this (https://unherd.com/2020/09/the-plot-against-mercia/) again. The most famous example was Jaguar having to buy Daimler out in 1960 purely to acquire the nearby Browns Lane factory, because the government had told them that if they wanted to expand they had to move production to Scotland or somewhere stupid. Stupid government.

[Spikey M]

Zahawi gone. Only, what, a week and a half of fucking about? Nice.

[Ben]

I hope for Sunak's sake his intention was to make himself look as weak as possible, because he's nailed it.

[Ben]

Just seen Boris saying Putin threatened to bomb him. Kremlin have denied it obviously. Now I wouldn’t normally believe him but I have to side with Vlad on this one.

[Spikey M]

They're probably both lying somehow.

[Spikey M]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64452995

:lol:

[Ben]

Who would have thought trickle-down economics wouldn't work?

[Spikey M]

They still have 2 years left. It's just going to be interesting to see how bad they can make it at this point.

[randomlegend]

Who would have thought trickle-down economics wouldn't work?

Who would've thought - when every person with any economic or business background was saying Brexit would fuck us economically - that Brexit would fuck us economically.

Truly unforeseeable.

[7om]

So after all the sanctions thatve been put on Russia to cripple their economy, it turns out they’re going to do better than us. Someone explain that to me.

[Spikey M]

So after all the sanctions thatve been put on Russia to cripple their economy, it turns out they’re going to do better than us. Someone explain that to me.

https://i.ibb.co/6R4V1LW/3936-2624-2-68645049-jpg-gallery.jpg

[Yevrah]

Pork markets.

[Kikó]

So after all the sanctions thatve been put on Russia to cripple their economy, it turns out they’re going to do better than us. Someone explain that to me.

Most of the non Western world still trades with them?

[Spikey M]

Most of the non Western world still trades with them?

So are we, albeit indirectly. We will be buying Russian gas via a third party. Coming to a Panorama special soon.

[Jimmy Floyd]

My mob are selling to Russia through back channels, as I imagine everyone in the western world is doing. It's pretty simple: the Russian organises a potemkin company in Turkey or Armenia, you sell to them, nothing to do with Russia on the paperwork, then the Russians take over from there.

[phonics]

Can't believe we haven't sold enough Jam and Lemon Curd to Indonesia to offset Russian steel and gas. The Blue Passport does look nice though.

[Ben]

My wife has one, it's virtually black and flimsy as fuck. Got my EU-adorned version until 2027. :cool:

[Ben]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-64573457

Didn't take him long. I'm sure this appointment will end well for the Tories.

[Jimmy Floyd]

I haven't yet got into the electoral nerdery that I so love (far too early) but currently I reckon they're in danger of hitting double figures in terms of seats.

[Spikey M]

Thing is, he's probably right in that you can survive on 30k without needing food banks. The problem is that - once again - they are showing that they have a very 1900 attitude towards the plebs. If we can survive, we should stop moaning. What do we want luxuries like holidays and coffee shops for?

It's funny, the economy was all these cunts cared about a short while ago. Now that pay rises are required to sustain it....

[Lofty]

I still love that Jack Monroe reckoned she was going to sue him and attacked him for his 30p meals despite that being her niche for years.

[Lewis]

He's thick and not from the South East. If he was in the Labour Party they would be tipping him for high office.

[Ben]

Here he goes again:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64580487

Not the most tactful fellow. What does Sunak gain from having a maniac like this in a prominent position? He's hardly got a huge following and could very likely lose his seat at the next election.

[Don]

Self-sabotage from within the ranks is literally the only explanation.

[Magic]

Don't you just know this is why millions of people will vote Tory? Sadly your country is full of frothing fucking lunatics determined to take you back to the stone ages.

[Don]

The Jared O'Mara plotline is worth a giggle. Let that be a lesson for promoting these rat-looking specimens to positions of power.

[Ben]

Don't you just know this is why millions of people will vote Tory? Sadly your country is full of frothing fucking lunatics determined to take you back to the stone ages.

Populism is great until you massively misread the room constantly for the past two years or so. They're unravelling and it's great to see. Classical "small c" conservatives must be cringing themselves all the way to a decade of irrelevancy.

[Spikey M]

Here he goes again:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64580487

Not the most tactful fellow. What does Sunak gain from having a maniac like this in a prominent position? He's hardly got a huge following and could very likely lose his seat at the next election.

It's not outside the realms of possibility that he's the best they have left.

[Magic]

Populism is great until you massively misread the room constantly for the past two years or so. They're unravelling and it's great to see. Classical "small c" conservatives must be cringing themselves all the way to a decade of irrelevancy.

Brexit. Populism works, especially when people are fucking miserable and have nothing to look forward to. This is when kicking those underneath you is rampant.

[Ben]

It's clearly not working anymore though. Some clueless charlatan parroting the death penalty won't turn any tides, he's about 30 years too late for that to even be any kind of vote winner. These fucks will get punted into Opposition next year and will only return when the Brexit lunatics desert and the party can pivot back to its traditional conservatism.

Brexit invented Crash TV politics here and now people have seen what a fallacy it is, it'll die.

[Lewis]

Which years were the ones marked by 'traditional conservatism', and how were they different to now?

[Lofty]

Which years were the ones marked by 'traditional conservatism', and how were they different to now?

Hug a hoodie better together Cameron years.

[Jimmy Floyd]

'Traditional conservatism' is anything Tory that people remember not having a visceral hate-reaction to before the culture war dividing lines poisoned everything.

Not sure when that started. Definitely after 2010. I want to enshrine this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtW3QkX8Xa0) as the British culture war ur-text.

[Lewis]

We had about two living under the threat of 'populism' before the pandemic, and since then we've had record immigration (legal and illegal), hosing money at every problem, unilateral Culture War disarmament, and a stupid foreign war that has heralded a return to government by George Osborne via backbench non-entities not liking who the membership wanted as leader. This is 'traditional conservatism', and the incoming Labour government will be mostly the same except for putting Lenny Henry on coins.

[Boydy]

1625440333193523200

This really doesn't seem like a great line for Labour to be taking.

There was another one the other day about the PM's stay in some hotel somewhere costing whatever amount. Someone else worked out the per person cost given the probable size of his team with him and it was pretty reasonable. Unless you want the leader of the country to be staying at the Premier Inn or something.

And given there's already stuff going round about how much Starmer spent on chauffeurs as DPP, it just seems like they're making a rod for their own back. But, as Jonesy says, they have no fucking ideas, the useless cunts.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Expense fiddling / excessive office spending is a very weird attack line, as MPs in every party do it and will always do it, so you'll only end up hoisted by your own petard.

[Ben]

Yeah this is stupid. The Telegraph will unearth Lammy expensing Mars bars in record time if this gathers pace.

[Yevrah]

I read a bit of this the other day and saw that some money had been spent on USB sticks. The definition of nothing to see here.

[Lewis]

The Prime Minister should have their own jet and stay in the best hotels. They get a shit salary and live in a dump.

[randomlegend]

Given what useless cunts they are a shit salary and living in a dump is more than they deserve.

[7om]

Turgeon has gone. Is this because she couldn’t answer the question of whether that rapist bloke is a woman or not?

[Yevrah]

Even speaking as someone who thinks the trans activism stuff has run mad, it can't be that, can it?

[Gray Fox]

Did see something on Twitter that she was caught having an affair and managed to hush it for a while, but is getting out now before it all comes out.

[Waffdon]

Mhairi Black. Here We Go.

[Lewis]

The SNP have peaked so she wants out before it looks like she let it all collapse.

[Waffdon]

The most successful politician in British history. What a man (woman?)

[Ben]

SNP is finished. Labour rout 2024.

[Waffdon]

Doubt SNP fade away. Probably 30-40 seats.

[Spikey M]

The most successful politician in British history. What a man (woman?)

If you're the leader of a single issue party and you fail in your objective then I would say that's rather unsuccessful.

[Waffdon]

She wasn’t in charge when it failed. Dominated ever since she took over.

[Lewis]

SNP is finished. Labour rout 2024.

I think this is a large part of it. Even though Labour are barely a unionist party in any worthwhile sense, and their plans for further devolution are an embarrassment worthy of assassinating Gordon Brown, if they're going to win the election then Scottish Conservative voters might as well go with them to knock the SNP off a bunch of seats and set them back twenty years.

[Ben]

Scottish Tories are apparently delighted at the news, which seems a bit optimistic to me. I don't see how they manage to flip the urban seats given their current perception. As you say, they'll likely just revert to Labour.

[Spikey M]

She wasn’t in charge when it failed. Dominated ever since she took over.

Failed to get independence. Failed to get a referendum. Failed trying to get the Courts to allow it.

Dominant indeed.

[Waffdon]

Correct.

[Alan Shearer The 2nd]

:groove:

[Giggles]

Who will free Scotland now?

[Manc]

Isla Bryson.

[Lofty]

The SNP peaked with this:

https://i.ibb.co/4Njbsk3/Smackeroonie.jpg

[Giggles]

The main story on bbc is about a fucking glacier :harold:

We really are in the gobshite generation.

[Jimmy Floyd]

The SNP have peaked so she wants out before it looks like she let it all collapse.

As soon as Boris Johnson got the tin tack, the writing was on the wall. Their only hope of revival now is if he (or someone like him) gets back in.

As the last few hundred years have shown, the Scot's willingness to do a deal that suits his pocket is far greater than his willingness to re-enact the battle of Bannockburn. The deal in this case will be with Keir Starmer's Labour.

[Spikey M]

The main story on bbc is about a fucking glacier :harold:

We really are in the gobshite generation.

It's about Sturgeon on the UK site. The dog walker somehow STILL second. And this (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-64648815) a very on trend third.

[Giggles]

It's about Sturgeon on the UK site. The dog walker somehow STILL second. And this (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-64648815) a very on trend third.

Forgot about the shit international version. We have - glacier (still for generation idiot), cave boy dies, Berlusconi, Barney reboot.

[Spikey M]

Forgot about the shit international version. We have - glacier (still for generation idiot), cave boy dies, Berlusconi, Barney reboot.

I remember being on holiday in Spain when Catalan held their illegal referendum. I basically couldn't get any news from back home for a week, because it was just hundreds of articles about whether the Basque lot were going to kick off and if the airports were safe.

I don't know why they bother. Nobody in Spain gives a fuck about the BBC other than Brits on holiday, and they're not on the BBC for Spanish politics.

[Giggles]

I only ever use it for soccer or to see what you lot are saying about Boydys shower.

[Shindig]

The thing that freaks me out most about BBC abroad is how ad-supported it is.

[Giggles]

One of the most intrusive sites going. I’ve been pulling my wire to sites with less popup ads.

[Ben]

Don't you lot use ad-blockers?

[Giggles]

Don’t use enough sites that need them or will take them.

[randomlegend]

https://i.imgur.com/a7YZa4w.png

Junior doctor strike ballot results :drool:

[Spikey M]

All I take from this is that 21 doctors are too retarded to complete a voting slip properly.

[Boydy]

They're GPs in training.

[Ben]

716 spineless cunts.

[7om]

Good. £14/hr for an F1 is an absolute disgrace. Don’t care about the public perception or the inevitable media backlash.

[Don]

ChatGPT can replace the fucking useless wankers as it is.

[7om]

Health Secretary saying he’s very disappointed :drool:

[Kikó]

All I take from this is that 21 doctors are too retarded to complete a voting slip properly.

Surprised it was only 21 considering GP standard handwriting. [Classic doctor joke]

[Boydy]

They're GPs in training.


Surprised it was only 21 considering GP standard handwriting. [Classic doctor joke]

Ffs.

[randomlegend]

There's an inverse relationship between how neat a doctor's handwriting looks at a glance and how legible it is in my experience.

[Boydy]

1627790089483952128

Jesus christ.

[Ben]

That's pretty much poverty in London is it not?

[Spikey M]

Comfortably out earning a doctor. :cool: / :cab:

[Yevrah]

That is absolutely ridiculous.