The Political Thread

[karlos]

You are correct, Tjm.

There is something extremely worrying going on.

It might seem over the top to some but many institutions will come out of the covid mess either utterly changed or dismantled completely.

[Tjm86]

If we had PR - like Australia does - we could have a much less racist and nakedly capitalist government - like Australia does.

Quick check Prof .... is that sarcasm?

[Professor Bear]

If we had PR - like Australia does - we could have a much less racist and nakedly capitalist government - like Australia does.

Quick check Prof .... is that sarcasm?

It pleases me that no-one can tell anymore.
But: Yes and no.

It might seem over the top to some but many institutions will come out of the covid mess either utterly changed or dismantled completely.

Don't get me wrong, the Tories would privatise the NHS in a heartbeat, but they're probably possessed of just enough self-preservation to know that if they do it too quickly, some of them will die.  I do not mean this in an abstract political career-type sense, I mean if people saw a privatised NHS watershed moment before them, they'd go for the ones that did it with pitchforks and hammers and literally murder them dead - there is a reason so much of our stuff was still nationally owned even after Thatcher's tenure.
History shows us that whether for good or bad, too much change in one go galvanises people into proactive groups that push back against that change (going back to Thatcher again, she was ultimately undone by the Poll Tax Riots), and it's far too easy to organise a mob these days, especially when there is already a mob in most cities right now still protesting the George Floyd murder, still buzzing on that torn-down monument high and angry as all heck at authority in general.

Having said that, the current crop of Tories may be deluded enough to think they can do it and get away with it, even though some of them have had actual mobs show up at their homes in recent times.  The days when a Tory chancellor (Howe) can deliberately create 3 million unemployed just to drive down union membership and then get away with it are long gone, but I think this lot might actually be dumb enough to think otherwise.

[Tjm86]

The way things are shaping up though there is a pretty good bet that 3 million unemployed is going to look fairly lightweight.  The figures are already pretty scary and that's before furlough ends and companies mass produce P45's.  It's not just the retail sector either which was already taking a hammering long before the pandemic kicked in.

I would agree though that this shower are arrogant enough to think that they can get away with it.  Not to mention enough to have a bash at taking out the NHS.  Not in one go to be sure but I reckon it won't be long before we're back to the pre NHS days of healthcare being an unaffordable luxury if we aren't careful.

[Professor Bear]

These Russian chaps that keep popping up are - I presume - keen to make a point about sex work, and how the recession will almost certainly see a drastic increase which in turn will have knock-on effects on sex trafficking, which won't stop in the face of local competition and will likely just become cheaper and more unsafe for its victims.  Fair play to our Russian chums for bringing up this often-neglected area of discussion, which is surely invaluable in examining the effects of both a global recession, and the increasing commodification of human beings.

[Funt Solo]

Yes - let's have three cheers for our new US Chinese Russian overlords, and their caring exposure of the plight of the world's sex workers. And double-glazers. And roofing contractors. And suppliers of heavy plant equipment.

Gip-gip ura! Gip-gip ura! Gip-gip ura! Da zdravstvuyet rossiya!

---

Meanwhile: England sees Scotland have a terrible time with algorithmic grades and backtrack quickly to save their reputations with the electorate. What does Prime Minister Boris Johnny-Breath Johnson Seneschal Dominic Eye-Test Cummings do in response? Why, he's no fool - he quickly stops the same thing happening in England, thus avoiding embarrassing scenes such as students burning their results papers outside parliament.  Oh, no ... wait ... he's a rich twat, so instead he shits all over the poor and claims it's coming up roses. It is: for those elite bastards from Eton. The algorithm says they're all terribly clever and will one day run the country. Huzzah!

[Funt Solo]

And there's the government U-turn. What a sorry mess: it's like Scotland, Wales and NI figure it all out first and warn England, who smugly don't heed the warning because SMUG only to have to backtrack days later when they come to terms with the fact that the provinces know how to govern.

[shaolin_monkey]

...when they come to terms with the fact that the provinces know how to govern.

If only they'd copied the provinces in terms of COVID management too.

[JayzusB.Christ]

And just when you thought Steve Bannon couldn't be more of a gobshite.

[Rately]

And just when you thought Steve Bannon couldn't be more of a gobshite.

Ruh roh.

Trump really knows how to pick his advisors. Be quicker naming the ones who haven't been charged / convicted of crimes. We can but hope that Nigel Farage is sitting very uncomfortably this morning.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Here's what the frog-faced Coast-Watcher General in question had to say.

Very sorry to see my friend Steve Bannon go. His political brain will be hard to replace.

Who cares if he's a corrupt conman? He's a fellow white supremacist, and that's all that matters.

[Rately]

Here's what the frog-faced Coast-Watcher General in question had to say.

Very sorry to see my friend Steve Bannon go. His political brain will be hard to replace.

Who cares if he's a corrupt conman? He's a fellow white supremacist, and that's all that matters.

Vile people.

Political brain? As I read the article, it just reaffirms all we ever knew about Bannon. A vile, right wing grifter who manipulated people to his own end, then discarded them. Any wonder him and Trump made such grim bedfellows.

When you actually read about him asking Trump to side with the White Supremacists in Charlottesville, it just still takes the breath away that such people exist in the world.

[Professor Bear]

Bannon's grift was telling people their wages are low because of immigrant labor, or their favorite videogames/comics suck now because they've got women/minorities in them - re-framing changes in conditions so that they never came from the effects of capital interests, but instead were always the fault of outsiders intruding in spaces where they didn't belong.  By using left-wing rhetoric to launder right wing solutions, Bannon excelled at making people across political lines believe they were an aggrieved party, rather than stuck in the same boat as their supposed "oppressors", and the damage he's done to Western society is incalculable.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Doubt he'll get a pardon either, now he's on Trump's shit list. Not that anyone Trump pardoned was worth a fuck.

[JayzusB.Christ]

OK, that's unfair. The dead people he's pardoned seem OK, and I don't know the story of all the living ones. But all of them I know anything about are a collective waste of oxygen.