Saturday 1st & Sunday 2nd February 2025

[refitman]

Morning all.

[refitman]

It's almost like the Tories never left. Is IDS hiding under a table somewhere?

[Frog222]

Whoops ! Trump's new commissars have blocked every bloody thing --
https://www.fbi.gov/
But they havent got around YET to censoring Google and Co --

Willie Sutton FBI.gov
https://www.fbi.gov › history › famous-cases › willie-su...
When asked why he robbed banks, Sutton simply replied, “Because that's where the money is.” On February 15, 1933, Sutton and a confederate attempted to rob ...
-------------------------------------------------------

So why tax the rich and corporations ?

The answer is above

[Frog222]

Is the NYT going to be declared an Enemy of The People, adding to the MSNBC CNN PBS list of those he's already attacked, in addition to individual journos such as the brilliant Rachel Maddow --

[Frog222]

Around the time of Black Monday, the Wall St Crash of 1987 I discovered a secondhand English bookshop close to where I worked in Paris . One of my 'finds' was a tatty copy of "This Couldn't Happen Here " by Sinclair Lewis 1935.

" a cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America. "

First review --
" Worse, Windrip "in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts - figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely wrong" which is of course pure "Drumpf on Twitter." "

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/113 ... appen_Here

[AnatolyKasparov]

Is the NYT going to be declared an Enemy of The People, adding to the MSNBC CNN PBS list of those he's already attacked, in addition to individual journos such as the brilliant Rachel Maddow --

Unfortunately, the NYT more than played its part in "sanewashing" Trump before the election.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Would you look at that, we've gone a thousand years into the future and we're still dealing with exactly the same shit.

[refitman]

This is a really good video on how detrans scare stories are being used to drive bad legislation. It also has a great section on the Cass Review (from 19:24), that demonstrates just how garbage that 'scientific review' is. It's pretty clear that it's been used by Labour (Streeting in particular) to drive a bigoted agenda

[refitman]

Would you look at that, we've gone a thousand years into the future and we're still dealing with exactly the same shit.

Well, we might not look terrible against the Ireland rugby team by then.

[refitman]

3 police cars outside my house, because the guy who was on the roof is back again. He broke him mum's window some more, got into the building and tried to get on the roof again.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

It's almost like the Tories never left. Is IDS hiding under a table somewhere?

To be fair to IDS he was such a moron that he failed to heed the warnings when insisting everyone on sickness/disability benefits were reassessed and broke the system. It took years for them to fix it and the upshot was people like me were left alone for ages which was the exact opposite of what he intended.

He also never proposed anything as appalling as this...

Under one option being considered, the universal credit “limited capability for work or work-related activity” category would be abolished, which would require claimants to make preparations for work and see them lose about £5,000 a year.

Which would catastrophically impoverish every single sickness/disability benefit claimant in the country because we're all being forced onto UC this year. To even hint that they're considering an act of such repulsive cruelty is in itself utterly repugnant. It's far, far worse than anything the Tories were proposing and as for IDS, he actually made UC more generous for sick/disabled people, I'd have been better off if I'd moved onto it voluntarily, so in fact it's utterly unfair to smear the man's good name by comparing him to Reeves or Kendall.

[refitman]

Waiting for AK to claim this is good actually.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Well, we might not look terrible against the Ireland rugby team by then.

We?

I thought we looked pretty good against Italy despite a second half wobble.

[refitman]

Oh, it was definitely the 'royal we'. Lovely hat-trick by Huw Jones.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Waiting for AK to claim this is good actually.

I'm not claiming any such thing.

But it is equally true that all this is, so far, rumours in the right wing press.

[refitman]

Waiting for AK to claim this is good actually.

I'm not claiming any such thing.

But it is equally true that all this is, so far, rumours in the right wing press.

It would certainly help if Labour weren't teaming up with The Sun, who last I checked was a part of the right wing press.

But I'm sure Kendall et al will be along any minute to disavow these reports.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I'm not claiming any such thing.

But it is equally true that all this is, so far, rumours in the right wing press.

Rumours they have had every opportunity to quash yet refuse to do so. And the reason said rumours keep appearing in the right wing press is that's who Labour are choosing to brief while they wilfully avoid engaging with disability and welfare charities.

I was reading a bloke from the disability charity Scope a few days ago who said the lack of communication with this government is the worst they've ever experienced.

Why do you think that is?

[AnatolyKasparov]

Briefing the right wing press is part of the political "game", so they aren't going to disavow this stuff regardless. There may also be a degree of expectations setting involved, if they (rightly or wrongly) see some degree of cuts as unavoidable.

But at the end of the day, a government is judged primarily on what it actually does - and to the extent its words matter, they count for a lot more if said in public on the record rather than unattributably briefed by anonymous "sources" to selected media outlets.

And this was in the Times, whilst that is a bit of a joke paper these days it is still given some degree of credibility by Westminster insiders. But before now, I have seen the likes of you (Sky and refitters) use the TELEGRAPH for anti-Labour stuff. Seriously, you might as well quote Weekly World News

[refitman]

Ha, so it's either true, in which case fuck disabled/poor people, or it's false, but fuck them anyway and let them panic. What a BRILLIANT tactic to get anyone but the right on your side. Political geniuses at play!

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Briefing the right wing press is part of the political "game", so they aren't going to disavow this stuff regardless. There may also be a degree of expectations setting involved, if they (rightly or wrongly) see some degree of cuts as unavoidable.

Just out of curiosity, why do you think they aren't briefing the left wing press or engaging with charities? What's the rational behind that?

[AnatolyKasparov]

I genuinely don't know. But it will all come out in the wash.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Ha, so it's either true, in which case fuck disabled/poor people, or it's false, but fuck them anyway and let them panic. What a BRILLIANT tactic to get anyone but the right on your side. Political geniuses at play!

'Punching the hippies' innit. Not only do they not give a shit the Labour right actively enjoy expressing their supposed toughness by punching down, we've seen it all before.

And the tragedy is the country is calling out for a government tough enough to tell the truth, tell them that sickness/disability benefits are at the same rate they were 15 years ago, tell them that the current increase has to be taken in the context that they're rising after a decline since 2010 in the face of massive NHS backlogs. Tell them that even the DWP's own figures show a rising and falling 'churn' (as they call it) over decades which show what's happening at the moment is nothing unusual.

But unfortunately we don't have such a government. We're stuck with this shower of shite.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

And it's not just benefits, they're piss weak when it comes to just about anything if it no longer fits with their desperate scramble for growth. Who gives a shit about wildlife or our criminally polluted rivers when there's giant industrial chicken farms to endorse or building companies to placate. Never have I seen a party promise so much then almost immediately shit on those promises once elected. And that isn't hyperbole, just look at the polls, they're running neck and neck with Farage for fucks sake while on political panel shows like QT their MPs are faced by a wall of bemused angry silence or laughter. It took the Tories nearly 14 years to get to that point, Starmer's Labour have managed it in 6 months.

[refitman]

Reeves’s Heathrow third runway report was commissioned by London airport

The chancellor is under fire after a study cited as evidence for expanding the terminal to boost the UK’s economic growth was ordered by Heathrow itself

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... on-airport

[Sky'sGoneOut]