NPR

C69 wrote: ↑Sat Apr 22, 2023 11:18 am Tbh I suspect getting things done in government is going to be challenging after Raab's rants.
I suspect the Tories will be secretly pissed off Raab's infantile warblings and lack of self awareness.

Lobby wrote: ↑Fri Apr 21, 2023 6:12 pm

C69 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 21, 2023 5:15 pm

sefton wrote: ↑Fri Apr 21, 2023 3:31 pm

Classic avoidance tactics, Tarquin.

Bit low there Enoch.

I see Raab is playing the victim now on TV. Of course he knows that the people he bullied can't speak up beacuse they are still employed as civil servants.

Raab's pathetic claim that he was targeted by 'activist civil servants' seems to be following the Liz Truss KamiKwarzi playbook, and is specifically countered by the report into his bullying which states that the Ministry of Justice officials who submitted a joint complaint about Raab were “sincere and committed civil servants” who had “no ulterior agenda”.

Insane_Homer wrote: ↑Sat Apr 22, 2023 6:57 am Stupid activists making him bully them, burn em!

On March 26, as a group of officials and aides waited to go into the prime minister’s study to brief him, they heard him hacking away behind the door, repeatedly, coughing and spluttering. “He’s got Covid, hasn’t he?” they murmured to each other nervously before he called them in. But they went into the airless room nevertheless. “Cleo [Watson] brought in some Lemsip for him, as if that was going to help. I thought vaguely this isn’t what we should have been doing. We all knew he was ill.”

The previous day he had been due to meet the Queen for their weekly audience, with Palace and No 10 officials going back and forth about whether the meeting could take place in person. Johnson was eager not to be restricted by the new laws or his apparent symptoms, to the dismay of Palace officials deeply concerned at the risk of exposing the elderly Queen to the virus.

After some convincing, both from the Palace and Cummings, the prime minister agreed to hold the conversation by phone. The content of a prime minister’s audience with the sovereign is sacred, with no advisers in attendance and no official record of the discussion. The sanctity of this one would be easier to keep than most: afterwards the Queen turned to an aide and commented that she couldn’t hear a word of what Johnson had said, he was coughing so much. Had the meeting gone ahead as planned, the head of government would probably have given the head of state the virus, a scandal not even Johnson could have downplayed.

He was entirely unsuited to remote working and isolation, his early illness frequently breaking into farce. His fumbling constantly disconnected his iPad from Zoom and he was clueless as to how he could rejoin the meeting, so a series of connected iPads were set up. Once he had broken the first, he could grab the second, then third, then fourth.

dpedin wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 10:15 am That's all the fuckers gone but by god they have done some damage to the UK. A bunch of cunts every one of them!

C69 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 11:17 am A veritable blizzard of snowflakes

Diane Abbott has been suspended as a Labour MP pending an investigation into a letter she wrote about racism for the Observer, the party has said.

The politician said "many types of white people with points of difference" can experience prejudice, in a letter published on Sunday.

But they are not subject to racism "all their lives", she said.

She later tweeted to say she was withdrawing her remarks and apologised "for any anguish caused".

Labour said the comments were "deeply offensive and wrong".

The BBC has approached Ms Abbott for comment.

Simian wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 11:45 am

C69 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 11:17 am A veritable blizzard of snowflakes

I have a lot of sympathy for the Tory MPs. It must be really difficult to manage all these snowflakes. After all, no two are alike.

tabascoboy wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 11:49 am In other news, Labour have withdrawn the whip from Diane Abbott

Diane Abbott has been suspended as a Labour MP pending an investigation into a letter she wrote about racism for the Observer, the party has said.

The politician said "many types of white people with points of difference" can experience prejudice, in a letter published on Sunday.

But they are not subject to racism "all their lives", she said.

She later tweeted to say she was withdrawing her remarks and apologised "for any anguish caused".

Labour said the comments were "deeply offensive and wrong".

The BBC has approached Ms Abbott for comment.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics- ... gn=KARANGA

SaintK wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 12:17 pm

tabascoboy wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 11:49 am In other news, Labour have withdrawn the whip from Diane Abbott

Diane Abbott has been suspended as a Labour MP pending an investigation into a letter she wrote about racism for the Observer, the party has said.

The politician said "many types of white people with points of difference" can experience prejudice, in a letter published on Sunday.

But they are not subject to racism "all their lives", she said.

She later tweeted to say she was withdrawing her remarks and apologised "for any anguish caused".

Labour said the comments were "deeply offensive and wrong".

The BBC has approached Ms Abbott for comment.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics- ... gn=KARANGA

Thick as two planks if she thinks "I sent the first draft by mistake" is any kind of excuse!!
Another Corbynista to be deselected before the next election. Playing right into Starmer's hands.

C69 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 1:08 pm She seems to be a very troubled lady
She is not fit for public office.

_Os_ wrote: ↑Wed Oct 12, 2022 10:23 am I predicted on this thread a year ago that the BoE would become a battleground, we're now about to see who wins that battle. I've seen a few populist/nationalist shit shows, the civil service always becomes a battleground too and that's when the real damage gets done.

tabascoboy wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 1:15 pm

C69 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 1:08 pm She seems to be a very troubled lady
She is not fit for public office.

Slick wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 1:51 pm I don't know what is is for, but very unlikely to be for Sunak unless it's some kind of practice.

Slick wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 1:51 pm I don't know what is is for, but very unlikely to be for Sunak unless it's some kind of practice.

shaggy wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 2:09 pm

Slick wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 1:51 pm I don't know what is is for, but very unlikely to be for Sunak unless it's some kind of practice.

It is the King. Same cars as used for the recent funeral.

Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

SaintK wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 2:07 pm

Slick wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 1:51 pm I don't know what is is for, but very unlikely to be for Sunak unless it's some kind of practice.

One of the police on a bike said "It's the Prime Minister"
Most of those running were blowing out of their arses, particularly the one that stopped running and ended up 100m behind!!

Slick wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 2:12 pm

SaintK wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 2:07 pm

Slick wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 1:51 pm I don't know what is is for, but very unlikely to be for Sunak unless it's some kind of practice.

One of the police on a bike said "It's the Prime Minister"
Most of those running were blowing out of their arses, particularly the one that stopped running and ended up 100m behind!!

Even if it was, it's not normal practice as was inferred.

tabascoboy wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 2:12 pm

shaggy wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 2:09 pm

Slick wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 1:51 pm I don't know what is is for, but very unlikely to be for Sunak unless it's some kind of practice.

It is the King. Same cars as used for the recent funeral.

Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

18 seconds on the video, female PC says "It's the Prime Minister". Guy shouting at everyone is a bit of a loon though by the sounds of it

Slick wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 1:52 pm

C69 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 1:08 pm She seems to be a very troubled lady
She is not fit for public office.

She is very stupid and drinks a lot. Quite fun though.

The Home Office claimed there has been an increase in immigration offences by gig economy workers in London.

It said immigration officers carried out “extensive inelligence-gathering” ahead of the operation to identify “hotspots for illegal moped delivery drivers”.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: “Illegal working damages our communities, cheats honest workers out of employment and defrauds the public purse. As the Prime Minister has set out, we are committed to going further and faster to prevent the abuse of our laws and borders.

Happyhooker wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 12:31 pm Please god. At least then i could vote labour with a clear conscience. It sticks in my craw to have to vote for her

The letter was identical each time it was sent, three hours apart, and the suspended Labour MP made no efforts to revise it in the seven days after it was sent.
The fact that it was sent from her own email address – not from one controlled by an aide – suggests that she was entirely in control of the process.
The first time the email was sent, the JC understands, Abbott received an automatic reply asking her to send it again but this time with the addition of a postal address. She did this, leaving the text of the letter unchanged.

SaintK wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 10:02 am

Happyhooker wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 12:31 pm Please god. At least then i could vote labour with a clear conscience. It sticks in my craw to have to vote for her

Looks like she'll be a gonner. Submitted the letter twice and made no effort to alter it for 7 days and it was from her private e-mail account

The letter was identical each time it was sent, three hours apart, and the suspended Labour MP made no efforts to revise it in the seven days after it was sent.
The fact that it was sent from her own email address – not from one controlled by an aide – suggests that she was entirely in control of the process.
The first time the email was sent, the JC understands, Abbott received an automatic reply asking her to send it again but this time with the addition of a postal address. She did this, leaving the text of the letter unchanged.

_Os_ wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:43 amAbbott is a minor historically important figure (in other words will be remembered long after most other MPs), the UK's first black female MP who has been in parliament for decades. One of the MPs that receives the most racist abuse on a weekly basis and death threats too. It's obvious that Starmer wants to get rid of her because she's the target of abuse from the tabloids, Starmer is determined to please the tabloids and give them nothing to attack. As for her view that in the UK whites experience less racism on an ongoing basis than those who aren't white, isn't that just empirically true (most people in the UK being white)? It looks like fake outrage to me.

It's in incidents like this you can start to work out how Starmer will attempt to govern. There'll be a large bloc in his party that hate him from the get go.

Raggs wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:52 am

_Os_ wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:43 amAbbott is a minor historically important figure (in other words will be remembered long after most other MPs), the UK's first black female MP who has been in parliament for decades. One of the MPs that receives the most racist abuse on a weekly basis and death threats too. It's obvious that Starmer wants to get rid of her because she's the target of abuse from the tabloids, Starmer is determined to please the tabloids and give them nothing to attack. As for her view that in the UK whites experience less racism on an ongoing basis than those who aren't white, isn't that just empirically true (most people in the UK being white)? It looks like fake outrage to me.

It's in incidents like this you can start to work out how Starmer will attempt to govern. There'll be a large bloc in his party that hate him from the get go.

If she'd stuck purely to the current day, she may have been half right. Even then, it may have been pushing it. However the moment she started trying to pick examples through history to suggest it's only been blacks that have suffered from racism (as she chooses to define it), it became a massive pile of bullshit.

Raggs wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:52 am

_Os_ wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:43 amAbbott is a minor historically important figure (in other words will be remembered long after most other MPs), the UK's first black female MP who has been in parliament for decades. One of the MPs that receives the most racist abuse on a weekly basis and death threats too. It's obvious that Starmer wants to get rid of her because she's the target of abuse from the tabloids, Starmer is determined to please the tabloids and give them nothing to attack. As for her view that in the UK whites experience less racism on an ongoing basis than those who aren't white, isn't that just empirically true (most people in the UK being white)? It looks like fake outrage to me.

It's in incidents like this you can start to work out how Starmer will attempt to govern. There'll be a large bloc in his party that hate him from the get go.

If she'd stuck purely to the current day, she may have been half right. Even then, it may have been pushing it. However the moment she started trying to pick examples through history to suggest it's only been blacks that have suffered from racism (as she chooses to define it), it became a massive pile of bullshit.

_Os_ wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:43 am The defenestration of Corbyn and now probably Abbott looks bad to me. Stalinist control freakery. I don't share their politics, but it's telling that Blair could tolerate both of them but Starmer cannot. Starmer's New Labour mk2 will be less tolerant of difference than New Labour mk1 was. People you disagree with can also be right sometimes, they were both right on apartheid and the Iraq invasion, when not all their fellow parliamentarians were.

It's similar to how Johnson/Cummings purged the Tories, and the outcome was worse governance. It's an example of how elements that are found in Proportional Representation systems are forcing their way into the UK's FPTP system, the political culture is changing but not the systems which that culture acts in, and the UK is ending up with the worst of both PR and FPTP. In a PR system the party bosses have a lot of power, because an MP's place is dependant on where they are on the party list, a party boss can strip an MP of their seat (this is why many PR systems opt for some seats to be constituency linked, and the remainder to be a top up from a list to make it proportional). When entire wings of a party are being purged like this by party bosses, and a party turned into something much narrower, it's exactly how parties in a PR system work. But it's not a PR system, so there's very little chance of forming a new party to represent those purged views which is able to get anywhere.

Both Corbyn and Abbott are examples of FPTP working as it should, whatever they are they have strong constituency support and haven't been parachuted in, they also speak their mind even if it's against the party. If they can be purged from a party and replaced by someone parachuted in, it ends up weakening the entire FPTP system. Obviously it's not the case local branches are selecting candidates of their choice, then those candidates are being elected as MPs and are directly accountable to their constituents first, and freely speak their mind as MPs (as they did when winning branch support). Instead party bosses have outsized control in candidate selection, parachuted candidates become MPs, they are then just yes men/women because they fear being purged.

Abbott is a minor historically important figure (in other words will be remembered long after most other MPs), the UK's first black female MP who has been in parliament for decades. One of the MPs that receives the most racist abuse on a weekly basis and death threats too. It's obvious that Starmer wants to get rid of her because she's the target of abuse from the tabloids, Starmer is determined to please the tabloids and give them nothing to attack. As for her view that in the UK whites experience less racism on an ongoing basis than those who aren't white, isn't that just empirically true (most people in the UK being white)? It looks like fake outrage to me.

It's in incidents like this you can start to work out how Starmer will attempt to govern. There'll be a large bloc in his party that hate him from the get go.

_Os_ wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 12:17 pm

Raggs wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:52 am

_Os_ wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:43 amAbbott is a minor historically important figure (in other words will be remembered long after most other MPs), the UK's first black female MP who has been in parliament for decades. One of the MPs that receives the most racist abuse on a weekly basis and death threats too. It's obvious that Starmer wants to get rid of her because she's the target of abuse from the tabloids, Starmer is determined to please the tabloids and give them nothing to attack. As for her view that in the UK whites experience less racism on an ongoing basis than those who aren't white, isn't that just empirically true (most people in the UK being white)? It looks like fake outrage to me.

It's in incidents like this you can start to work out how Starmer will attempt to govern. There'll be a large bloc in his party that hate him from the get go.

If she'd stuck purely to the current day, she may have been half right. Even then, it may have been pushing it. However the moment she started trying to pick examples through history to suggest it's only been blacks that have suffered from racism (as she chooses to define it), it became a massive pile of bullshit.

Her wording seemed ham fisted to me, I'm just trying to get at the point she definitely was making and not trying to invent a load of stuff she wasn't saying at all.

It's clearly something she's invested a lot of her life into and done a lot of reading and thinking on. She seems to have forgotten that not everyone has, and randomly selecting stuff without a fuller explanation doesn't really work. I suspect her full argument looks something like: the concept of race in its modern form was constructed during the colonial era to oppress people who weren't white generally and black people particularly, over centuries this led to structural underdevelopment and exploitation of black people, the legacy of this lasting into the current day, and pretending this isn't the case perpetuates racism. It's a well known argument.

It all looks like a bad faith attempt to get rid of her to me. Everyone in the Labour party understand what she's saying, but some are pretending they don't understand. Al Jazeera's multi part documentary on Labour (ignored by the UK media) also showed that Labour officials have a bit of a racism issue, Abbott herself being the subject of abuse in internal communications.

_Os_ wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 12:17 pm

Raggs wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:52 am

_Os_ wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:43 amAbbott is a minor historically important figure (in other words will be remembered long after most other MPs), the UK's first black female MP who has been in parliament for decades. One of the MPs that receives the most racist abuse on a weekly basis and death threats too. It's obvious that Starmer wants to get rid of her because she's the target of abuse from the tabloids, Starmer is determined to please the tabloids and give them nothing to attack. As for her view that in the UK whites experience less racism on an ongoing basis than those who aren't white, isn't that just empirically true (most people in the UK being white)? It looks like fake outrage to me.

It's in incidents like this you can start to work out how Starmer will attempt to govern. There'll be a large bloc in his party that hate him from the get go.

If she'd stuck purely to the current day, she may have been half right. Even then, it may have been pushing it. However the moment she started trying to pick examples through history to suggest it's only been blacks that have suffered from racism (as she chooses to define it), it became a massive pile of bullshit.

Her wording seemed ham fisted to me, I'm just trying to get at the point she definitely was making and not trying to invent a load of stuff she wasn't saying at all.

It's clearly something she's invested a lot of her life into and done a lot of reading and thinking on. She seems to have forgotten that not everyone has, and randomly selecting stuff without a fuller explanation doesn't really work. I suspect her full argument looks something like: the concept of race in its modern form was constructed during the colonial era to oppress people who weren't white generally and black people particularly, over centuries this led to structural underdevelopment and exploitation of black people, the legacy of this lasting into the current day, and pretending this isn't the case perpetuates racism. It's a well known argument.

It all looks like a bad faith attempt to get rid of her to me. Everyone in the Labour party understand what she's saying, but some are pretending they don't understand. Al Jazeera's multi part documentary on Labour (ignored by the UK media) also showed that Labour officials have a bit of a racism issue, Abbott herself being the subject of abuse in internal communications.

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 12:16 pm Note also the examples are all from abroad. She knew exactly what she was writing.

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 12:16 pm

Raggs wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:52 am

_Os_ wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:43 amAbbott is a minor historically important figure (in other words will be remembered long after most other MPs), the UK's first black female MP who has been in parliament for decades. One of the MPs that receives the most racist abuse on a weekly basis and death threats too. It's obvious that Starmer wants to get rid of her because she's the target of abuse from the tabloids, Starmer is determined to please the tabloids and give them nothing to attack. As for her view that in the UK whites experience less racism on an ongoing basis than those who aren't white, isn't that just empirically true (most people in the UK being white)? It looks like fake outrage to me.

It's in incidents like this you can start to work out how Starmer will attempt to govern. There'll be a large bloc in his party that hate him from the get go.

If she'd stuck purely to the current day, she may have been half right. Even then, it may have been pushing it. However the moment she started trying to pick examples through history to suggest it's only been blacks that have suffered from racism (as she chooses to define it), it became a massive pile of bullshit.

Note also the examples are all from abroad. She knew exactly what she was writing.