Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

General British politics discussion thread

18081838586390

Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 15,442 ✭✭✭✭Leroy42


    Aegir wrote: »
    Why would anti Iraq war protests suddenly become illegal?

    All public order laws are open to interpretation. That is not changing in the slightest.

    That is your reply to everything.

    So according to you this is a pointless gesture as the law doesn't change?

    You said earlier they were dealing with specific new issues. Which is it? Is the law changing or not?

    I'll help you out, it most certainly and definitely is.


  • Registered Users Posts: 17,831 ✭✭✭✭Strazdas


    Something a bit suspicious about Javid announcing via video he has Covid-19. Do people normally reveal to the public via a recorded video they have contracted the virus, a few hours after a positive test? It has all the hallmarks of some sort of 'dead cat' PR stunt.



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,242 ✭✭✭AllForIt


    You guyz here seem to be brainwashed into thinking in this kind of way. Like you've brainwashed yourselves.

    Since he's self isolating he can hardly do it via Sky News and it's not long ago since other politicians done it in exactly the way he has today. But you seem to have blanked that out of your memory for some reason.

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newslondon/matt-hancock-self-isolating-after-being-pinged-by-nhs-covid-app/ar-BB1cSThh



  • Registered Users Posts: 17,831 ✭✭✭✭Strazdas


    Why not just a short press release saying 'The Health Secretary has tested positive for Covid-19 and will self isolate for ten days'. It's a bit weird to see him appear on video almost as soon as he tested positive making a big announcement about it.



  • Registered Users Posts: 21,489 ✭✭✭✭Tell me how


    Maybe I'm being influenced by a degree of confirmation bias with this but I've felt even more than usual that support amongst certain BBC staff for Tory individuals is barely concealed.

    This tweet from Laura Keunnsberg is a case in point.

    This is her pushing her piece from yesterday in which she suggested that Starmer was taking a beating from Labour members. She retweet about the Javid news today but didn't pass any comment on it herself.

    This type of 'impartiality' came to mind when listening to the BBC Political podcast Newscast a couple weeks ago, on the day of the Batley and spen by-election. On that show they had Emily Thornberry and they spent the 30 minutes of the podcast trying to undermine Starmer and trying to get her to say he should resign if Labour had a bad result in the election. Interestingly the show title identified that they had won it but it was recorded before the result was announced so it was focusing on 'how bad were things in labour' more than anything.

    With everything going on with Covid, with the 'Levelling up' nonsense, with the dog-whistling of senior Tories to racists and with Johnsons role and performance throughout all of this she in particular seems to go out of her way to not talk about this. This isn't the first time this has been said on this thread or the Brexit one but I'm not sure how she is getting away with it, or maybe as I said, I'm just seeing what I want to see.



  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users Posts: 10,647 ✭✭✭✭martingriff


    When you mentioned KFC it reminded me of the protests when they ran out of chicken due to deliveries or something. There was a lady in tears saying she now had to go to burger king



  • Registered Users Posts: 10,647 ✭✭✭✭martingriff


    Didn't Johnston do the same. Properly showing they are doing what they have to as per the guidelines unlike the Health minister. So yes a PR exercise



  • Registered Users Posts: 13,023 ✭✭✭✭Joe_ Public


    I'm a bit mystified that a lot of people seem to be interpreting that kuennsberg piece with Starmer as another hitjob. It's nothing of the sort, rather an obviously very carefully choreographed piece of film in which the groundwork is being laid for the long anticipated purge of the left which now finally appears to be gathering speed. Of the 12 "former labour voters" cited in that film, at least one appears to have never been a labour voter at all. In general, i don't detect much animosity towards Starmer from kuennsberg and many of her colleagues, it's the labour left they have a visceral enmity towards and that will always be only thinly veiled.



  • Registered Users Posts: 17,831 ✭✭✭✭Strazdas


    But Javid is strongly pro-'Freedom Day' and thinks the economy should take precedence over anything the scientists are saying. There's something a tad suspicious (in my opinion) about the timing and with case numbers rising at an alarming rate.



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,532 ✭✭✭swampgas


    Possibly he wants to distance himself from the decision to open everything up on Monday, regardless of whether he agrees with it or not. Or he may have simply caught Covid-19 again. I agree it looks suspicious, but then again everything they do looks suspicious!



  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users Posts: 17,831 ✭✭✭✭Strazdas


    Another theory might be that he is saying "Look at me, I have the Delta variant and I'm absolutely fine, just a tiny bit under the weather" (in order to defuse alarm about the rising cases numbers).

    I don't think it's particularly important whether he has or hasn't got the virus, but you'd always immediately suspect a PR stunt with any Tory minister whenever they announce anything.



  • Registered Users Posts: 13,023 ✭✭✭✭Joe_ Public


    Would you adam and eve it? Gove, Sunak and Johnson were all "randomly selected" for a testing pilot that means they don't have to self isolate if pinged or returning from a non green list country. Meant Gove was able to go to the football match. What an incredible stroke of luck that was. Meanwhile, over 1.5m of the general public have to isolate because they are mere plebs and the pilot isnt open to them.



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,532 ✭✭✭swampgas


    Looks like They have backtracked on that now: there must have been some backlash. From the Grauniad:

    U-turn: Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak will now isolate

    Boris Johnson is to isolate at Chequers and will not take part in the pilot daily testing programme, a Downing Street spokesman said.

    Rishi Sunak, who was also pinged by NHS test and trace, will self-isolate rather than taking part in the daily testing pilot, contrary to a statement released by Downing Street earlier on Sunday.

    The chancellor said on Twitter: "I recognise that even the sense that the rules aren’t the same for everyone is wrong."

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/jul/18/coronavirus-live-boris-johnson-isolate-contact-sajid-javid-athletes-test-positive-tokyo-olympic-village



  • Registered Users Posts: 13,023 ✭✭✭✭Joe_ Public


    Ye gods. That must be smashing their own record for quickest u turn ever. After Jenricks lamentable efforts to defend it on marr earlier, looks like they saw the writing on the wall and immediately launched into damage limitation mode.



  • Registered Users Posts: 16,935 ✭✭✭✭A Dub in Glasgo


    The fact they attempted to use that same pathetic excuse Gove used shows how corrupt these guys really are



  • Registered Users Posts: 13,023 ✭✭✭✭Joe_ Public


    You'd have thought the cummings debacle would have alerted them at this stage to the fact that nothing infuriates the public more than the sense there's one law for them and another for a small privileged elite, but here they go again anyway, blundering into it with eyes and ears firmly shut. The sense of entitlement is off the charts, they learn nothing and simply assume they can get away with any old nonsense to fob the little people off with. And probably having a good laugh about it at the same time.



  • Registered Users Posts: 11,035 ✭✭✭✭J Mysterio


    Outrageous behaviour.

    When hospitalisations begin to climb, the NHS is overun, deaths increase and there is a new vaccine resistant Johnson variant... what then?

    They need to be held to account. Unbelievable stuff. Leadership!



  • Registered Users Posts: 18,921 ✭✭✭✭BonnieSituation


    Poor Jenricks.


    Himself and Schapps always get wheeled out to defend this nonsense and then get promptly shat on from above when the inevitable U-turn happens.



  • Registered Users Posts: 17,831 ✭✭✭✭Strazdas


    Total lack of leadership. Cummings suggested that Johnson is a total shambles and changes his mind 50 times a day, lurching from crisis to crisis and firefighting left, right and centre. The British public may as well have elected their local binman or traffic warden as PM.



  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 19,254 Mod ✭✭✭✭Sam Russell


    When you U turn quickly, it is called spinning, particularly if you do it often enough.


    .



  • Advertisement
  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 19,254 Mod ✭✭✭✭Sam Russell


    Empty post - this new version?



  • Registered Users Posts: 17,831 ✭✭✭✭Strazdas


    Interesting bit of analysis on RTE a while ago that 'Freedom Day' is aimed solely at Tory backbenchers and the right wing press - all about them keeping them happy and on board.

    Thus we have the bizarre situation where even considerable numbers of Tory voters are uncomfortable with the ditching of masks, ending of restrictions etc.



  • Registered Users Posts: 11,035 ✭✭✭✭J Mysterio


    Grotesque, unprecedented, bizarre, unbelievable.




  • Registered Users Posts: 21,489 ✭✭✭✭Tell me how


    Excellent article here on the state of play in UK and how it got to this point. All very sinister when laid out like this even if many here won't be surprised when reading it.

    The politics of lies: Boris Johnson and the erosion of the rule of law

    This paragraph itself is very apt not only when considering Johnson but also the US version of the incompetent leader who thankfully, for now at least anyway, is in the past.

    "In any case, the actual lies are only part of the problem; the bigger issue is the blurring of the truth behind the bullshit, as the American philosopher Harry Frankfurt deduced as far back as the 1980s. If you lie, you must know the truth, and keep an eye on the facts as your reference system. That way, truth ultimately retains its validity. The bullshitter, on the other hand – and Frankfurt believed this to be key – is indifferent to the truth; he simply takes liberties with truth and facts. He is not interested in “reality”. He is only interested in making his claims stick. He manipulates everything to suit his cause, in order to hide the fact that he is up to no good. He obscures the facts as points of reference and by so doing undermines the political culture of a democracy that depends on the distinction between what is true and what is false."



  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    What the fûck were they thinking? Pretty much the only thing that has ever threatened Johnson's support within his party and his standing in the polls was the Barnard Castle rules-for-the-plebs-but-not-for-us business. How could he possibly think that this "pilot programme" shîte wouldn't be met with universal outrage? This u-turn was (a) absolutely inevitable and (b) wholly avoidable. It defied understanding why Johnson would do this to himself; there was no possible scenario in which it wouldn't damage him.

    Someone is losing his touch, I think.



  • Registered Users Posts: 17,831 ✭✭✭✭Strazdas


    Did the Javid thing blow up in their faces? There was no need for him to make a big dramatic public announcement he had Covid, he could easily have covered it up and the media would have been none the wiser (it's the middle of summer). Instead the whole stunt seems to have resulted in terrible publicity for Johnson.



  • Registered Users Posts: 13,023 ✭✭✭✭Joe_ Public


    Its bad enough what they did but trying to cover Javids positive test up would have been multiple times worse. It would have been reckless and stupid beyond belief and with no hope of remaining uncovered. Questions would inevitably be asked where Javid was, assuming he wouldn't have been stupid enough to carry on his business as normal, and then they'd ask about the pm and other close contacts. It would be barnard castle levels of fury again, possibly even worse.



  • Registered Users Posts: 17,831 ✭✭✭✭Strazdas


    But apparently he didn't even wait for a PCR test result before making his video address to the nation. I can't help think this was some sort of a Tory publicity stunt that went badly wrong. Even if Javid tested positive, he could have made a lowkey announcement by press release, followed all correct procedures and self isolated for a week or ten days. Johnson being forced into a public U-turn about isolating at Chequers and taking a huge amount of flak can not have been part of any Tory script.



  • Registered Users Posts: 13,023 ✭✭✭✭Joe_ Public


    Ah right, though low key announcement is a bit different to cover up as previously alluded i think! Possible there was some kind of publicity stunt going on, i don't really know, but not sure it alters the equation appreciably anyway. Javid was positive, his close contacts including pm and chancellor were pinged, and they wanted to get out of it any way they could. Reporters were going to ask questions whatever way it went down and I think the sooner uncovered for Johnson the better as it enabled them to limit the damage. As things transpired i can only conclude they believed either no one would cop on to it or they'd buy the lame story about how they'd been "randomly selected" for a testing pilot if they did.



  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users Posts: 17,831 ✭✭✭✭Strazdas


    The whole thing was a bit odd. Javid said he conducted a test on himself at home on Saturday morning and within a couple of hours posted a video announcing to the nation he had Covid (without even waiting for a PCR result to confirm it). It has the hallmarks of some sort of a PR stunt which went wrong (even if he actually has Covid) as it ended up with Johnson being attacked from all sides yesterday. It's possible that Javid didn't think through the implications for Johnson having to self isolate when he released the video.



Advertisement