🗳️ After a quick scan of the news headlines, I can only conclude: Thursday can’t come soon enough.
We need to bin these desperate, lying, ineffectual grifters. Vote!
🗳️ After a quick scan of the news headlines, I can only conclude: Thursday can’t come soon enough.
We need to bin these desperate, lying, ineffectual grifters. Vote!
🗳️ I missed last night’s political debate between Sunak and Starmer, opting instead to enjoy dinner with friends.
Rather than getting frustrated with an evasive, prickly and out of touch Tory laughing stock spreading outright lies about the Labour party’s plans for government, I enjoyed a delicious tasting menu at ‘Six by Nico’ and tales from my friends' recent cruise on the Queen Mary 2 back from New York.
I think I made the right choice.
Four very different performances. John Swinney from the SNP was calm but fighting a losing battle with a largely English audience. Ed Davey was human, polite and seemed very genuine. Keir Starmer was competent, a bit awkward (isn’t he always?) but better than at previous similar events.
But Rishi Sunak stood out for me. He was simply dreadful. And bear in mind this is the Prime Minister, with an army of PR experts, spin doctors, media gurus and the like at his disposal. And he still managed to come across as an unlikeable, impatient and condescending tech bro who feels you just don’t ‘get’ his product.
He seems like a guy who’s never had to explain himself to anyone before. Someone who simply gets what he wants. Someone who surrounds himself with people who think like him (or know enough to act like they think like him) and has virtually no empathy for people who don’t share his background or world view.
He struggled to explain his ‘plan’ for national service, couldn’t explain how he’d make like better for young people and got particularly evasive when asked about his regrets. He was genuinely rattled by a couple of audience questions, looked puzzled and then angry and simply oozed impatience to get the hell out of there.
Like everyone else in the country (world?), he knows the writing’s on the wall. He’ll be out of a job in less than two weeks and nothing he can do will halt an inevitable landslide win for Labour and the gutting of his own party. After fourteen years of mismanagement, sleaze and ineptitude, it’s not a moment too soon.
The sad thing? I don’t think it’ll change Sunak one bit. Rather than wonder why he’s getting thrown out, he simply thinks the public are too thick to understand his ‘plan’.
🗳️ It’s like a game of fascist bingo…
Nigel Farage has praised the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate for being an “important voice” for the “emasculated” and giving boys “perhaps a bit of confidence at school” in online interviews that appear to be aimed at young men over the past year.
Of course.
When asked to list the best leaders in the western world, Farage named Hungary’s rightwing leader, Viktor Orbán, a “strong leader”, and his “friend” Donald Trump, the US presidential candidate.
The Guardian: Farage said Andrew Tate was ‘important voice’ for men in podcast interview
☀️ Successfully avoided another game of international kickball. Popped in my Airpods and lay out in the sunshine on my balcony. The streets below were deserted as everyone went in to watch “Ingerlaaaand”…. draw with Denmark.
Ahem.
And politicians wonder why the public has lost trust in them?
Another Tory candidate has allegedly placed a bet on the date of the election. And her husband is the Tory head of campaigns. Who has just gone on a ‘leave of absence’…
Tories gonna Tory.
From The Guardian:
The Conservative party has confirmed its director of campaigning Tony Lee took a leave of absence on Wednesday. His wife, Laura Saunders, is being looked into by the gambling watchdog over an alleged bet on the general election date.
We’re two weeks out from a general election, but at 6pm, instead of the news, the BBC is showing (wait for it) football. Turkey vs Georgia, to be precise. This country’s obsession with football is something else.
🇹🇭 Congrats to Thailand for recognising marriage equality 🏳️🌈
Thailand passes historic bill recognising marriage equality. Country on track to become third in Asia – after Taiwan and Nepal – to legalise same-sex marriage
I’m excited at the very real chance that the Tories will be decimated and kept out of office for the foreseeable. I’m worried that indifference and overconfidence will keep many away from the ballot box, making all this a pipe dream.
Fourteen years of mismanagement, chaos, underinvestment and culture wars have left the UK reeling from crisis to crisis. Schools literally falling apart, an NHS on its knees, isolation from Europe and a carnival of idiots taking turns occupying the most important roles in government. It’s been an absolute shambles and the Tories have most definitely put their party before the country.
Labour aren’t offering us the answers to all the problems, nor are they promising to pay for everything people want. They’re dealing with the mess they anticipate finding on day one. And while I don’t live and breathe what they claim to stand for, I’d take them in a heartbeat over the clowns running the show right now.
The Tories have had fourteen years to show us what they stand for, and they’ve done it with impressive regularity. They stand for rules for others, not them. They stand for making a profit from every possible opportunity. They stand for punching down on the most deprived, while leaving the most wealthy and advantaged free of any taxation burden whatsoever.
Pardon me my schadenfreude, but I’ve booked July 5th off work, so I can stay up all night to watch the results. While some of the biggest cowards (Gove, Leadsome et al) have already indicated they won’t stand, depriving us of the joy of watching them lose their seats, there are enough Tories left to be made unemployed that my night won’t be without some highlights of joy.
But once the excitement of election night is over, Labour will have a mountain to climb. How to address the underinvestment? How to repair relations with the EU? How can they do something about the appalling infrastructure and the state of public transport? Their to do list is incredibly long.
I don’t envy them.
Some of the Tories are already warning against a Labour ‘super-majority’ - which is in itself a nonsense, as the concept doesn’t exist in the UK system of government. But if Labour win a landslide, I hope they get more ambitious with their plans, to speed up turning the ship around and addressing the core issues like child poverty, crime and healthcare.
We’ve had enough culture war nonsense, enough ‘excitement’ and enough emphasis on personality.
I’d opt for stable and boring, morning, noon and night.
Bring on July 4th.
🗳️ These local election and by-election results are giving me life this morning.
Schadenfreude? Absolutely. I’m hoping the assorted thugs, bigots and idiots in Downing Street had a very, very sleepless night.
Next up: Sunak calls a general election and we wipe the Tories off the map.
Oh. It looks like the Tories are going to fuck up another infrastructure project. What a surprise. Sunak knows he’ll never have to depend on public transport. He’s above such things. He just hops in a helicopter…
“Ending the line at Old Oak Common is pretty much the definition of a railway to nowhere.”
HS2’s Euston station at risk as Old Oak Common emerges as potential London terminus
Just spotted that Tony Bennett has died
During a career that spanned seven decades, the crooner sold millions of records and won 20 Grammys, including a lifetime achievement award.
I was lucky enough to see him perform live at the Royal Albert Hall many years ago and was blown away by his energy and his sense of humour. He was a giant of popular music.
Spotted on my walk around Shoreditch this morning…
Of course these reactionary Tories are against anything that could improve working lives. They spread an over-simplified, fear-based message and propagate it with dark money from fascists in the US.
A rightwing lobby group that doesn’t declare its donors is spearheading a campaign to undermine the spread of the four-day week in the UK.
Rightwing lobby group campaigns to undermine UK four-day week, The Guardian.
Picturing Suella Braverman weeping into her coffee this morning:
“The court heard from UNHCR that Rwanda had a record of human rights abuses towards refugees within its borders, including refoulement – forced removal to countries where they are at risk – expulsions and arbitrary detention. The refugee agency warned that the Home Office would not be able to guarantee the safety of asylum seekers who were deported to the east African country.”