Tuesday 31st October 2023

[refitman]

Morning all.

[frog222]

Plucky little Israel displaying its democratic credentials for all to see,

well done Channel4 --

[gilsey]

Good morning.

This morning Richard Holden, a transport minister, was doing the broadcast round for No 10 and he had to defend the government’s handling of Covid in the light of the evidence revealed at the inquiry. He argued that the WhatsApp revelations were just “tittle tattle”

When you're in a hole, stop digging, is always good political advice.

[gilsey]

Starmer says he is not suprised by the level of support for a ceasefire. People want to alleviate the suffering. But he says he has asked if a ceasefire would be right if it would allow Hamas to carry out further attacks, and if it would not bring back the hostages. And so that is he s not calling for a ceasefire, he says.

But

Everybody knows that the death toll from continuing the massacres in Gaza far, far exceeds any possible deaths from future Hamas attacks, and the former is certain while the latter is hypothetical. As the young woman said on Newsnight last week, where's the balance, how many Palestinian children have to die to for one Israeli child?

Everybody also knows that continuing current policy won't work on its own terms, Hamas can't be eradicated and Israel's future security can't be guaranteed.


Israel's govts over the years have played a blinder, getting this ongoing support, no matter what, from Western countries.
Collective guilt for the Holocaust now inextricably combined and intertwined with capitalist interests.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I must say I'm enjoying Cummings' performance at the Covid enquiry.

So far we've learned that everyone in the government and civil service were useless idiots besides him and those he brought in. That government is actually a complete sham, ministers are powerless figureheads, cabinet meetings are scripted farces, and that all the power lies with the cabinet office and no10, which during his time were almost completely dysfunctional.

He called cabinet ministers 'useless fuckpigs', 'morons' and 'cunts', and we haven't even got to the really good stuff yet.

[refitman]

[refitman]

Possibly some good news?

[AnatolyKasparov]

Government has tried to say it was all the fault of the train operating companies, though - who were just doing as they asked!

[RogerOThornhill]

Good afternoon.

What with everything else going on, I now have a rotten cold and confining myself to barracks for the time being.

I notice GB News bigging up a conference in London for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. So who's involved with the ARC?

https://find-and-update.company-informa ... 5/officers

Paul Marshall
Legatum

Who just also happen to own GB News...and I notice that Tim Stanley doing a bit of sucking up this morning in the Telegraph - that's their next target of course...

[AnatolyKasparov]

Surely the main takeaway from the Covid inquiry so far is that the Tories have as much contempt for their main voting bloc - older people - as everyone else?

[Sky'sGoneOut]

So after sitting through the rest of Dominic Cummings' evidence what did we learn?

The answer is not much that we didn't know before.

First and foremost Dominic would like everyone to realise that he's a hero who near single handedly, against all the odds, saved countless thousands of lives by persuading Johnson and recalcitrant civil servants in the Cabinet Office that a lockdown was necessary. He grudgingly admits Patrick Vallance may have had a small part to play in it, but only as his side kick.

Dominic would also like it be known that he's never wrong about anything. Even when his own words are quoted back at him as evidence of his wrongness he's still not wrong because we're asking the wrong questions.

Dominic is also incapable of making mistakes. Even helping put an inept buffoon who he knew wasn't fit for office in No10 wasn't a mistake because Corbyn would somehow have been worse and testing your eyesight with your wife and kids in the car is a perfectly normal thing to do.

Outside of the fantasy world that exists only in Dominic's fucked up head, I would suspect most observers would conclude they were watching an arrogant, thin-skinned, bitter little abusive, misogynistic prick. A loathsome creature so devoid of self-awareness that he could sit in front of an audience, indulge in his delusions of grandeur, and somehow this time we would all get it. We would all appreciate his true genius and prostrate ourselves before him in thanks because he saved the universe.

But no, despite explaining how he saved us all under impossible circumstances the only gasp he received was not in appreciation, it was when he was quoted calling a female colleague a cunt while saying he'd like to handcuff her and get her fired.

Dominic Cummings, misunderstood genius, or piece of shit? I'm leaning towards the latter.

Though on the plus side he turned up in a shirt which didn't fit and clearly hadn't been ironed, which did impress me.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Its even clearer in retrospect than it was at the time, that this government got very very lucky with the vaccines.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Its even clearer in retrospect than it was at the time, that this government got very very lucky with the vaccines.

Not the government. Us. We got lucky with vaccines. Listening to Reynolds, or Cain, or Cummings there was no government, it was a chaotic shambles of infighting and backstabbing with an insane bloated Lovecraftian toad presiding over the chaos.

Cummings today spent his time highlighting shortcomings in the operation of government, which is all well and good, but what did it matter when the Prime Minister was (according to all of them) not up to the job?

You can present all the latest scientific data you like to someone but if they're more interested in getting good press in the Telegraph you (and by extension we) are fucked.

If there's one thing this enquiry has established beyond any doubt it's that Johnson was worse than any of us feared and that's according to his own advisors.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Ironically while discussing Cummings I've been feeling like shit all day so I took a covid test about an hour ago and it says I'm positive.

Yay. Do your worst Covid. Destroy my organs. I can guarantee I'm way ahead of you.

[Sky'sGoneOut]