Thursday 23rd May 2024

[refitman]

Morning all.

[refitman]

The complete lack of self-awareness would be amusing, if it hadn't already hurt so many people

[frog222]

Morning refit

Andrew Sparrow was up earlier than me -- https://www.theguardian.com/politics/li ... ws-updates

On R4 Nick Robinson grilled him, provided a few figures -- US grew7.8% and UK 1.8 (since before Covid iirc) but the little man robotically rambled on .

Finished off with Labour created the GFC ...

[RogerOThornhill]

Good morning.

Q: Keir Starmer says stop the chaos. He has a point, doesn’t he? Why should the Tories get another term?

Sunak suggests Robinson should not not focus on Liz Truss’s 49 days in office. He says he is happy to talk about the record over 14 years.

Labour had bankrupted the economy, they left a note saying and laughing about the fact that there was no money left.

[frog222]

lol

[RogerOThornhill]

Farage is frit I see...more interested in helping Trump than supporting the party of which he is a director.

[frog222]

[frog222]

dud !

[frog222]

https:/twitter.com/coldwarsteve/status/1793324426177446145

[refitman]

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Well that's a bit of a bugger, they're changing the address to x.com and now the links don't work.



[Edit]

If you edit the address to twitter instead of x it works but for god knows how long. Thanks Elon you dick.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Not sure what's going on with QT tonight. Last I looked Jess Phillips and Ash Sarkar were scheduled to be on but the lack of the usual panel line up on Twitter (yeah fuck off Musk) suggests Sunak has thrown a spanner in the works, or maybe they just forgot to post it.

[Edit]

According to the website it's Mark Spencer MP, Bridget Phillipson MP, Daisy Cooper MP and Tim Montgomerie.

[frog222]

R4 World at One -
Sunak: Vote Tory to send migrants abroad

versus

"Border Security Command "

I'm waiting for the Mirror Front Page "Starmer the New Top Cop"

[frog222]

[gilsey]

from the G.

'George Osborne, the Conservative former chancellor, has claimed that Rishi Sunak decided to call a summer election after the local elections at the start of this month. Discussing the announcement on his Political Currency podcast, which he co-hosts with Ed Balls, the former Labour shadow chancellor, Osborne said:

I am told by the people I’ve been speaking to that there was a wide circle of up to 40 people involved in the planning of this, ever since the local elections.

The prime minister made a decision after the local elections that he was going to go for an early poll. It was a pretty brilliantly-held secret. And a secret held from most of the cabinet and from a lot of the broader Tory family …

This is what Downing Street is thinking. Things are basically not going to get any better for the prime minister. Nothing is shifting the polls. They’ve tried a series of announcements from defence spending to national insurance, tax cuts – things haven’t shifted.

He’s often accused of dithering, of overanalysing things and not taking bold decisions. He’s taken a bold decision to shift the dial, to get the campaign underway to force the choice to make people focus on the argument.

The alternative of waiting through the summer was only going to make things worse because the mood in the country about ‘a time for a change’ would only have grown.'


So it turns out Rishi had realised he was on a hiding to nothing.

[gilsey]

[refitman]

I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that Labour are alienating their traditional base. Who could possibly have seen this coming.


Does anyone get the feeling that the alleged 'sensibles', aren't in fact very sensible?

[refitman]

Not sure what's going on with QT tonight. Last I looked Jess Phillips and Ash Sarkar were scheduled to be on but the lack of the usual panel line up on Twitter (yeah fuck off Musk) suggests Sunak has thrown a spanner in the works, or maybe they just forgot to post it.

[Edit]

According to the website it's Mark Spencer MP, Bridget Phillipson MP, Daisy Cooper MP and Tim Montgomerie.

Ooh, Montie being rolled out as the bigoted minority this week.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Here we go. Normal service shall be resumed this evening. Well if you can call it normal.

[RogerOThornhill]

Two of the audience who asked questions were Tory councillors apparently.

[frog222]

Roger -- you can't be too careful

[AnatolyKasparov]

lol

Not a credible source, unfortunately!

[frog222]

Haha !
One thing that occurred to me too is that better weather in the Channel Would not help Sunak -- MORE boats !

In addition Danny Finkelsein --- " Then there is Rwanda. It is quite possible, in fact highly likely, that once the policy gets going properly, it won’t stop the boats. Holding an election after the policy has been introduced but before the hottest part of summer, when more boats might come, has many attractions to Sunak, not least in suppressing Reform."

So Sunak will campaign on what he assures us might have been ...

while I'm not honestly sure if Labour has come out all guns blazing against the Tory Austerity ???



Beginning with two planted questioners was totes brilliant too

[frog222]

[frog222]

ALL audiences must be carefully vetted !

[refitman]

Thanks to Sky, X links will now embed properly

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Thanks to Sky, X links will now embed properly

Thanks but I just did a bit of googling, you had to do the forum surgery.

[frog222]

Testing !

[frog222]

Merci !

[AnatolyKasparov]

I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that Labour are alienating their traditional base. Who could possibly have seen this coming.

i suppose we shall find out how true that is on July 5th won't we.

But please, giving credibility to vox pops? Despite our differences, you *are* better than that.

[frog222]

Of course no idea of how 'random' these are, but very sensible !

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Question Time came tonight from Coventry with an audience who demonstrated that if Labour think they're in for an easy election campaign where they just need to keep their heads down they've got another thing coming.

For the Tories we had Mark Spencer. If you want to know what we're going to hear repeatedly over the next few weeks Mark pretty much spelled it out. We need a strong economy, the economy is turning a corner, it's growing faster than the U.S and EU. The problem is of course to run a campaign on that you have take the last financial quarter in isolation and ignore the rest of the last 14 years, so Sunak's gambling we're all moronic amnesiacs. Not only that but as Mark found out to his cost tonight even someone as lightweight and sympathetic to the Tory cause as Fiona Bruce can rip it to shreds in seconds. Not that it made a difference to Mark he just shrugged and carried on regardless, although to be fair he looks like you could hit him in the head with a sledgehammer and he'd barely notice. I suspect the only way to hurt Mark is to deny him pies.

For Labour we had Bridget Phillipson. Oh dear, where to start. I think it's best to begin at the end when the loudest applause of the evening came after a Labour supporting chap expressed his obvious frustration at Bridget's complete inability to answer any of the questions besides offering vague promises and platitudes. For the first time in a long while a Labour MP faced an almost complete wall of silence from the audience. Not because Bridget was performing particularly badly, I'm happy to say her robotic routine is a thing of the past. She simply couldn't/wouldn't answer the questions. All we got were recognitions of problems without offering any specific solutions with an unhealthy dose of managing expectations. Don't get me wrong, I have some sympathy for Labour's position, without 'seeing the books' they've absolutely no idea what's possible, but people are crying out for something to hope for and if the audience this evening were anything to go by Labour need to begin offering something rather than keeping schtum while asking us all to hope for the best.

For the Lib Dems we had Daisy Cooper. Daisy was excellent, clearly the audience favourite, and you know why? You guessed it, she answered the questions. Even the one about arresting Netanyahu if the situation came to it. Of course it's easier to answer such questions if you're unlikely to be anywhere near power next month but it was noticeable that the further to the left she went with her answers the more applause she received. At one point we had Daisy saying we should be taxing companies like Amazon more while in response Bridget said we had to keep the UK attractive to business, guess which reply went down better in a city where Amazon workers are on strike? We all know the Lib Dems are shameless political chameleons and Iet's not forget Clegg fucked off after his political comeuppance to go and work for Facebook so we really shouldn't be taking any lessons from them, but it just goes to show how vulnerable Labour are to even centre left criticism, so far have they moved to the right.

For shouty right wing arseholes we had Tim Montgomerie. Tim began by shouting about how the entire Western world was in peril, then shouted about how the water companies should be nationalised, then shouted about how many crap universities there were despite lacking the requisite guts to name any of them when challenged, then shouted about how the ICC were antisemitic because they were singling out Israel. As evidence for the latter he asked why the ICC hadn't issued an arrest warrant for Putin when anyone paying even the slightest attention would know that they had. Dickhead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internati ... ova-Belova

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Hmm...lot of stuff on Twitter about Tim Montgomerie being pissed because he was slurring his speech.

I remember hearing him talk a few years back about having a condition that makes him slur and causes him difficulty walking.

Not cool people. Not cool.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Unless of course said condition was being an alcoholic.

Anyway, bit racy this one. Apparently the Obamas are fans.