Be Excellent To Each Other

No, fuck that twat.

They're all twats, though. It wouldn't matter anyway, they'd just do whatever Cummings tells them to.

There must be one or two that he doesn't have nude photos of....

Whilst I always try to separate the human from the job, it's very hard to be generous in Johnson's case. Like Gordon Brown he connived his way throughout his life to reach his position without knowing what to do with it, yet unlike the last Labour PM he hasn't grasped the opportunity of the pandemic in the way Brown did the financial crisis. Hindsight will be far crueler to him than it has been to his predecessor-but-two.

I secretly hope that in time Johnson will wake up every day for the rest of his life wishing he had sent that other article.

Don't forget that Gordon Brown did this to people's pension pots. And Tony Blair's attempt at reform just made it worse. Didn't affect me personally, but I remember people approaching pension at the time finding that they would end up with nothing like the amounts they should have had. I still think that it it was a criminal act and Brown should have faced charges over it.

But the precedent was there from Lawson's similar (the same, I've read, allowing for inflation) act. And the Conservatives took it a step further, by allowing companies to not pay in when times looked good, and funds looked fully funded. Turns out, if you don't pay in regularly, you're never going to get that growth opportunity back. More harmful in the long run.

Then he was a twat as well.

And still is!

Boris Johnson gets the Downfall treatment

Nicely done, this one.

Very nicely done indeed.

To be fair to her, it talks about the last 15 years being a shitshow. Not really surprising when each Home Secretary we’ve had for a generation has been some kind of militant authoritarian. I’m not sure if it’s the office or just the sort of people who gravitate towards the job.

I'm not kindly disposed to her enough to give her a fair go

I’m torn. Her politics are awful, but WoC face a lot of abuse in politics, so I try not to attack her as a person.

She is a terrible, terrible person who has (wants to?) introduce(d) rules that would not have let her parents into the country. Which I personally think makes her a worse person than if she wasn't the daughter of immigrants. Nothing at all to do with her skin colour though,

No, but there will be some who do, so I’m always careful who I’m siding with.

I think she’s a cunt.

Like the rest of the Tory party.

Misogyny. Shame.

Congrats. You showed me good.

Happy Christmas - rail franchising is over



This doesn't mean immediate nationalisation as the fixed-fee system means that whilst most train operators are still in private hands, they only get a set amount from the government. So this will provide some stability whilst they work out what the heck to do next. Probably more centralised control (even more than now!) but like London buses and Overground services still remaining privately-run because Corbyn.

For some reason the phrase 'dead hand' leapt out at me from that quote. Is this an actual phrase? I've never heard it, anyone know what it means?

In this context - not innovating, not doing anything. Whether you think this is a characteristic of government depends on your political beliefs.

I travelled around the UK on the trains a lot in the late 80s and through the 90s (up until I moved to the IOM in 1996), and it was amazing how quickly things went downhill following privatisation.

Fucking batshit stupid idea from the outset.

It's fucking idiotic because any fool could see that it doesn't actually work with the normal principles of capitalism.

Normal business: "There are many other companies out there offering the same products and/or services so I'd better do good stuff for a reasonable price or people won't give me their money."
Train company: "Literally no other company can offer this service and lots of people have no choice but to use it. Also, my right to exploit this situation--and my responsibility for maintaining it--will be stripped from me in a few years regardless. There is no incentive at all not to make as much money as possible and fuck all the customers."

Capitalism is an incredibly well engineered system that delivers greater value to the customer in a much faster time frame than any other system. It's just that people misunderstand it, and think the customer is the user...

That's probably because the people in question have better things to do with their time than to learn about economic models over which they have no control and which are imposed on them by their government and/or global corporations who are happy to cause death and destruction in their wake as long as they're making huge profits.

I'm at once amused and disgusted by the banks' behaviour relating to the WCM777 Ponzi scheme. Suspicious Activity Reports were generated but fuck all appears to have been done to stop the cash being moved around on the banking merry-go-round where no doubt they all got a cut. Then again, a lot of the individuals involved are probably rightly worried that they'll end up bludgeoned to death or swimming with the fishes if they blow the whistle.

Kinell. Panorama last night really blew the lid off the shit show that is banking, bribery, corruption, money laundering and Russian "investors" contributing to the Tories and paying prominent UK politicians tens of thousands of pounds to have some one-to-one time with them. Why the hell did that lady pay for TWO tennis sessions with Boris? Maybe he's expanding his family empire into Russia.

Yeah, I saw that. Absolutely fuck all will come of it. The Tories have completely normalised it all now. Not even a story.

ERG stalwart (and big MaliA fan (citation available)) Philip Davies MP is only 48! And also married Esther McVey today.

Just woken up to hear the shocking news that Donald Trump isn't a very successful businessman.

His support base won’t care

Somewhere approaching half of US citizens would vote for Hitler as long as he was the Republican candidate

I think some people definitely will care, hopefully enough to help swing the election. But for the rest the American Dream now is that if they work hard then they too can be the gold-toilet-owning, tax-dodging piece of shit. It seems like relatively fewer people over there think in terms of society.

Plus a good chunk won’t entertain the idea that it might be true.

FAKE GNUS!

It's the $400m debts that fall due in a couple of years which are the most interesting part of it all. Think of the hold an unscrupulous foreign power could have over someone with that.

Win lose or draw, when he leaves the White House...

Giphy "right to jail":
https://media0.giphy.com/media/MEdXzJwmTvjpw79Gig/giphy-loop.mp4

Edit: Fuck you, giphy

This is what I wanted

Apparently, he's spent $70000 on That hairstyle.

That money poorly spent.

I have spent £8 on haircuts this year.

We can tell

It's £8 more than I.

You scamp

If you can't get enough of the ongoing US election clusterfuck, the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford is hosting a series of free public webinars on various aspects of it all. I watched the first one yesterday on the state of the campaign and found it fascinating.

Details here

https://www.instagram.com/p/CGcyX2SjAld ... 1q2n1xdwi1

I think it’s been quite widely known/believes that they used casting agents to fill roles of attendees outside the key demographics in these rallies, but (if these screenshots are genuine) it’s still quite shocking to see it laid out so blatantly.

Their MP might have voted against free meals during school holidays, but at least deprived parents in North Oxfordshire can keep their kids' minds away from hunger by designing her Christmas card.

This article came out the same day as the vote, coincidence fans!

and he's anti-Semitic/adjacent.

The palace intrigue this week is that Cummings is off at the end of the year. He's probably superforecasted what'll happen when the soft smelly stuff he's spent so long planning and being known for finally hits the whirring spinny thing.

His departure is one thing ticked off my Christmas list......... UNLESS he does a Trump and refuses to leave.

Could you get busy putting more things on your Christmas list? It's surprisingly effective. And the first day of Christmas has come so early this year.