Politics Thread!

[Rhythm]

Yes, because motorways are not (by any means) the most dangerous part of the road network, and 70mph on most motorways in good conditions is not even remotely dangerous. And as almost everyone understands this, it makes the judgement of those that don't questionable.

Any need for the personal dig? Like it or not we're all sharing the same road space and governed by the same rules. Whilst I'd love to see speed limits lowered by 20-30% I'd take "existing rules being enforced" if it happened.

Your post does cover something really important that's missed by, what, 95% of the driving population? The whole "good conditions" piece. 70mph is (supposed to be) the max in good conditions. Meaning anything other than 100% visibility and low-to-no wind means people should be driving slower than that. But most fucking don't.

Back to the politics of it all, the talk this week was all about whether Braverman fucked up by asking for help/advice about her ticket when the real issue should have been that we now have a Home Secretary who's broken the law. Getting a speeding (or parking) ticket should be a badge of shame, not something to dismiss as "normal".

Edit: I've not been driving too long, about 20 years. I did get a ticket about 5 years ago. I missed a temporary sign on the A66 when adjusting my limiter. I took the speed awareness course but it was filled with idiots claiming they'd been "wronged" somehow. The ex-coppers running the course were bemused AF when I owned up and said "yeah, I'm here because I fucked up"

[Dio]

Clearly there are very strange things in our speed limits on some parts of the network. There are many dual-carriageways with parking spaces and side entries that are very dubiously 70mph safe. Nobody should object to actual enforcement of the rules that exist (assuming those limits aren't crazy).

But suggesting the motorway (and all) speed limits should be 55mph immediately puts you into the "I'm a loony who hates cars" bracket and any sensible points you make will then be ignored. I wasn't intending it as a personal insult, because I had got the impression from your message that you basically kind of agreed that even by making the suggestion you were putting yourself into that category.

(License nearly 35 years, never endorsed, no speed awareness courses. Never hit a moving object, although I have encountered some stationary ones. I take safe driving seriously).

[skab]

Strange that most German motorways have no speed limit they do not have any more accidents than, say, UK.

Around 50% have a speed limit. And the rest is usually congested. So it's not that much of a free speeding space here as you might think.

Stats say that's untrue - 20% higher when measured per capita, 13% higher when measured per car.

Also remember that there's a lot of traffic on our streets, mainly because they are transit routes connecting many other European countries. So if there's an accident on a German street, chances aren't bad it was caused by, say, a run down lorry from Lithuania.

[merman]

Net migration hit a new high.

It’s not like the Tories have spent he last thirteen years saying they would bring it down (to tens of thousands), then lied about Brexit being able to “take back control of our borders”, signed trade deals that increased migration, failed to deal with the asylum backlog* and then put the focus on “small boats” and penalised students who have come here to study...


*That also hit a record high, 172,000. Or TEN TIMES what it was in 2010 when they took power. Housing refugees on former air bases DOES NOTHING to solve the problem.

[Orava]

Interesting difference between Finland's and Sweden's NATO applications, whilst Finland is now a member Sweden is still in a limbo blocked by Turkey (there are a lot of Kurds living in Sweden). I think Finns take a more 'real politic' view of things and try not to be the moral police.

[Dio]

Sweden also have much less incentive to compromise given the lack of a 500-mile land border (and Finland's rapid accession).

[KlaxonCow]

Here's that footage of Jacob Rees-Mogg openly admitting that his party quite deliberately attempted to gerrymander the vote - commit election fraud - by introducing voter ID:



His lament is that they didn't think it through well enough - as it might do well to exclude the Labour-voting poor, but it was also quite good at excluding the Tory-voting elderly as well - and it actually bit them on the arse.

His lament is not at their unethical criminal behaviour. It's that insufficient thought was given to its "unintended consequences". Not that gerrymandering an election ought to be beyond the pale, but that you've got to be careful, whilst rigging the vote, that you don't also accidentally take out a big chunk of your own voters too.

It is utterly remarkable that Jacob Rees-Mogg can openly say this, with no hint of shame (only lament that it didn't work), but that such an open public confession triggers no action - nor even condemnation - whatsoever, in the wider town square or in the media.

"Voter ID" was not to end any non-existent epidemic of election fraud. It was a purposeful means to commit election fraud instead.

[Harlequin]

Here's that footage of Jacob Rees-Mogg openly admitting that his party quite deliberately attempted to gerrymander the vote …

As Anni my penultimate ex pointed out elsewhere, 'gerrymander' is a USAmerican term referring only to abusive fiddling with constituency boundaries. This seems more an attempt at plain old voter suppression.

[KlaxonCow]

As Anni my penultimate ex pointed out elsewhere, 'gerrymander' is a USAmerican term referring only to abusive fiddling with constituency boundaries. This seems more an attempt at plain old voter suppression.

Fair enough. Let's just call it "voter suppression" then.

I was just employing the word that Jacob Rees-Mogg was using.

But, of course, what matters is the act itself, not what it's called.

"A rose by any other name..." and all that jazz.

[KlaxonCow]

So, government commissions Covid inquiry.

Covid inquiry asks for Boris's WhatsApp messages.

Government weirdly refuses to provide evidence to its own inquiry, and tries to sue its own inquiry.

Boris says "ah, I don't mind, I'll hand them all over myself, if you like".

And now government threatens to remove Boris's legal funding if he "undermines" the government's stance:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65801103

But, they claim, threatening to remove his public funding is not coercing him and he's free to do what he likes, as long as he pays for it himself.

Because it's concerned about "value for money" for the taxpayer. Except, wait. If Boris complies with their demands, the taxpayer is paying. But if he doesn't, then he's got to pay for it himself? So better taxpayer "value for money" is defined by your compliance to the government's unprecedented stance to take legal action against the inquiry that they themselves set up.

What the fuck is going on? And why are they so desperate to not have the inquiry see Boris's WhatsApp? Particularly because Boris himself is not bothered.


I reckon that "the smoking gun" they're worried about is that Rishi said something to Boris during Covid - he was Boris's chancellor and in charge of the cash in that period - that they are desperately panicking does not become public knowledge.

Like maybe Rishi texting Boris, and saying something a bit beyond the pale like "no, you're not getting the cash, Boris. I'd rather all the poor people dropped dead of Covid than spend the cash, as I really fucking hate poor people!" - and they're in full-on "PANIC!" mode that Boris will gladly hand it over. That Boris is even very keen to hand it over. He'll probably tell them "look at this message in particular", as he hands it over. Because Boris knows it'll sink Rishi like a lead balloon and he doesn't like Rishi much anymore for nicking "his" job. He won't snitch, per se... but if the inquiry asks him to hand it over then, hey, that's technically not his fault, right? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Something like that.

[tufty]

Yeah, the very fact that the mop-headed buffoon is offering to hand over the messages implies that he, at least, believes there is more in there that is damaging to his political enemies than there is which is damaging to him. The government's stance on this does appear to back that up, and for once I am finding myself saying "Go on, Boris. Do it!"

[merman]

“I got a new phone, can’t open the old one because it’s a security risk” - Boris on Thursday.

By Saturday evening, in time for the Sunday papers, he is ready to hand over ALL the messages. While Rishi counters with, “reveal anything bad about the Government and me, Boris, and we won’t pay your legal bills”.

Which of course is actually the taxpayer paying to defend Boris.

But hang on, we have a new runner in the race - the COVID inquiry is looking into Rishi’s Eat Out To Help Out scheme. Because he apparently didn’t consult the scientists, and the pattern of infection in several areas was made considerably worse by people eating out...

[KlaxonCow]

In fairness, "Eat Out to Help Out" might have made some sense if, like, they were doing it now, or last year, to aid the post-pandemic recovery.

As hindsight has shown, the premature "phew, it's all over now" - as if any pandemic blows over in a couple of months and just vanishes - was perfectly ridiculous.

Which, of course, the SAGE scientists would have absolutely told Rishi. If he'd ever bothered to consult them.

The scheme, at the time Rishi brought it out, was an obviously insane "spread vector".

In fact, I think he was damned lucky that it wasn't vastly worse, as it probably should have been when you're actually paying people taxpayer money to congregate in groups indoors. With the generally piss poor / non-existent ventilation that exists in the UK, to boot. It should have been worse. Not sure how he got away with it so lightly, compared to how bad it really ought to have been, to be honest.

[KlaxonCow]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ms-inquiry

Cameron-Osborne austerity years cost UK dearly when Covid struck, says TUC

Union body claims policies left Britain ‘hugely unprepared’, in report before opening hearing of inquiry
[...]
Paul Nowak, the general secretary of the TUC, said: “In the NHS and social care, funding cuts put staff levels in the danger zone. Cuts to social security pushed many more people below the poverty line, leaving them more vulnerable to infection, and cuts to health and safety left workers exposed to rogue employers who cut corners and put their lives at risk. Austerity cost the nation dearly.”
[...]
The British Medical Association has described austerity previously as “Covid’s little helper”. Prof Sir Michael Marmot, a health inequalities expert who will provide evidence to the inquiry, said in late 2020: “We were in a very bad state – and then came the pandemic.”

Whilst, sure, the TUC is hardly a neutral part in all this.

But it's hard to argue against their hypothesis being simply true.

Whilst Tories might want to argue about making trade-offs, "doing what's right at the time" and so forth, to mitigate the charge, I don't think there's any leg to stand on to claim it's not basically true.

And that this is the fatal flaw of the "conserving of the status quo" that conservative ideology is based around. That it presumes everything's just going to always stay the same forever. It fails to take into account that, over time, things decay, disasters strike and, ultimately, "entropy wins". That you have to actively maintain the infrastructure or it will naturally crumble away beneath you.

That you've got to build robustness and "head room" into the infrastructure, so it can take a failure here and a failure there, but still remain standing. Running it on the very edge constantly - in the name of "efficiency" and saving a buck - means that the slightest sneeze can cause outright collapse.

[Rhythm]

Gah! So much anti-benefits rhetoric doing the rounds and it's annoying AF. Especially as the largest single benefit claimant group in the UK are actually wealthy people.

"Wah wah wah, why is so much of my money going to poor families?", cry the Tory rags. Completely discounting that the largest bulk of those payments actually go toward paying the mortgages of BTL landlords.

My partner's disabled, gets full allowance from the govt. It's meagre AF and she's not allowed to use the housing part of it to go toward a mortgage. But of course the landlord who "kindly" rents her the place gets to pull the benefits straight to him via her bank account.