Thursday 22nd September 2022

[refitman]

Morning all.

[frog222]

Morning refit

The Times --

[gilsey]

Layla Moran drawn the short straw here, this is a must to avoid. Don't do it sky.

[gilsey]

[AnatolyKasparov]

JRM getting lots of stick from his own MPs over fracking, responds by suggesting its critics are paid by Putin.

Sure that will go down well both inside and outside the Commons.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Yay!

Majority of UK public agree with liberal views on race and sexual identity

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... nnual-poll

A majority of the public agree with so-called woke positions on issues such as racial equality, immigration and sexual identity, according to the latest annual poll of British social attitudes, in the latest sign that once-marginal liberal views are increasingly mainstream.

Although such issues are used by Conservative politicians and the media to fuel “culture wars” and whip up antipathy towards a supposed politically correct cultural elite, the survey shows the balance of public opinion in Britain has shifted in favour of more inclusive attitudes over the past 20 years.

These suggest a rapid and significant shift in attitudes in Britain over recent decades. “As a country we are as liberal as we have been at any point since this survey started in 1983,” said the political scientist Sir John Curtice, a senior fellow at the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), which carries out the survey.

[refitman]

[refitman]

[gilsey]

Sigh.

(re EdM)

[AnatolyKasparov]

Its still a remarkably stupid thing to say though, and I fear there is more of that sort of stuff to come from NW-I.

Dunno if she gets thrown out of the party, but her time on the NEC could be rather short.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Don't do it sky.

Thanks for the advice Gilsey but I've already been out in the rain to get the required grape based ranting fuel so it would be a shame to waste it.

[refitman]

Its still a remarkably stupid thing to say though, and I fear there is more of that sort of stuff to come from NW-I.

Dunno if she gets thrown out of the party, but her time on the NEC could be rather short.

Cor, imagine having the temerity of being left-wing *and* Jewish.

Come on AK, they're accusing her of being anti-semitic and a self-hating Jew.

[tinyclanger2]

I'm partial to a bit of grape based ranting fuel myself

[refitman]

Lol. Lmao

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Oh dear, poor old Toby, what a shame. I must say though I am somewhat surprised that such a champion of free enterprise should be taking issue with a private company choosing to withhold its custom. As far as I'm aware PayPal is not an essential service and as such is free to do business with whomever it pleases as long as it doesn't flout any anti-discrimination laws. Last time I checked it wasn't illegal to not wish to be associated with a clown who spreads dangerous disinformation and conspiracy theories for money.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Well even I wasn't expecting N W-I's stay on the NEC to be that short tbh.

Of course if she had run an honest campaign (ie shown what a total crank she actually is) she would never have been elected anyway.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Does anyone know if Claire Fox has had a stroke? I'm not trying to be funny or horrible, she looks like she's shrunk and is struggling to use one of her arms.

Edited: She's fine, she was just slouching.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Thank you for watching it so we don't have to, this week more so than most.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Question Time review from Grimsby. They've got a snazzy new set but it's the same old shit.

For the Tories we had Brendan Clarke-Smith. Brendan spent the entire programme looking like he was smelling a particularly unpleasant fart. Nobody else appeared to be suffering from this malady, just Brendan. Which leads me to believe either he has a particularly acute sense of smell, possibly due to him being the result of a human/dog hybridisation experiment, or he's constantly disgusted by his own self. Which given his previous antics would make sense, however this evening Brendan was on his best behaviour. Other than claiming to be 'neutral' about fracking in his own constituency Brendan had absolutely nothing of interest to say about anything. Largely it would appear because he was clueless when it came to the details of anything his government is proposing.

For Labour we had Wes Streeting. Wes was so polished he was positively gleaming. Every question answered immaculately and efficiently. Like a well oiled machine. So what's the problem? The problem is would Wes pass a reverse Turing test? If you were to compare Wes' responses to those of a computer would you be able to tell the difference? My answer would be no. Every utterance was pre-prepared, you might as well shove a punch card in his back and watch him dance. There was no sign of human spontaneity, of wit or humour. When asked at the end about something to look forward to this Winter he almost did a Star Trek robot 'does not compute' meltdown before reverting back to his programming and going on about the social care levy being cut. It was painful. I've made this criticism many times about Labour panelists being robotic but apparently whoever is coaching them is failing to pay heed. Maybe it's C3PO. It's definitely not Johnny 5 from Short Circuit or this wouldn't be happening.

For the Liberal Democrats we had the lovely Layla Moran. As ever Layla was splendid and wiped the floor with everyone and she was the best. Seriously though, this was one of her least effective appearances in as much as she wasn't afforded a lot of time to talk and kept being interrupted by Fiona Bruce but whether it be about the cost of living or even fracking she spoke passionately like a normal human being in stark contrast to the above.

For the Revolutionary Communist Party we had Claire Fox. As you may have noticed above I was genuinely a bit worried about Claire for while, which is not something she would reciprocate. You see all Claire cares about is Claire. That look of constipated discomfort she has on her face all the time is not for you or me. It's a sneer at us, at anything civilised liberal people attempt to achieve. We appear to cause her constant pain which I'm extremely happy about. She offers nothing beyond transparent and utterly predictable contrarianism and the fact Johnson rewarded her grift with a place in the house of lords is almost funny. Tonight she kept going on about lockdowns as if she had some kind of mental stutter. Cost of living crisis? Lockdowns. NHS struggling? Lockdowns. Ukraine? Lock...oh no wait, she made that about sovereignty as a brexit swipe at we remainers.

Finally we had economist Gerard Lyons. Gerard is a Policy Exchange alumni, advisor to Johnson and now Truss. Apparently it's now fine to borrow billions of pounds to facilitate tax cuts for the rich and it won't be inflationary and everything's going to be fine. Yay.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

@Willow

The FT was bought out by a Japanese company (Nikkei?) sometime after the 2015 GE so these days have zero stake in propping up economically illiterate "trickle down" Tory dogma.

Thanks. Indeed, the FT is owned by Nikkei.