jakee

It is mind boggling that you think those two things are related. Though I’m not surprised to see you celebrating mass job losses. If it happens of course - Elon Musk says a lot of shit and a lot of it is bullshit. Enjoy the infestation of spambots if it does happen.

I don’t buy it. There’s a block of 16 blanked out names for Boris which Fawkes says are party board members etc. I’d have thought that most of them would be less likely than ordinary MP to vote for Boris since they had to deal with the fallout last time.

It's expenses that go to running an office - but I haven't seen anywhere that the office has to be a non-profit. Tony Blair gets paid hundreds of thousands of pounds per speech but still claims the full £115k in expenses and I'm going to assume it's all part of the same operation. In that sense getting paid the money directly, or using it so you can keep the money you are being paid all shakes out the same in the end. And I believe it may end up being more than £115k because the government also covers pension contributions for staff being paid with it.

For office expenses incurred while engaging in public life (which I assume mostly means paying the salaries of the people who write the speeches she'll be paid tens of thousands of pounds to give to various right wing thinktanks). I was wondering earlier today who would want Truss to be involved in public life anymore, or even how she deals with this. She's been a true believer in pure neo-liberal economics since she was a student activist, it's been the core of her entire political career, she finally lucked into the position of being able to do exactly what she wanted... and the free market slapped her down harder than if she'd been the ghost of Karl Marx. How will she deal with the realisation that her entire life has been a lie? Then I remembered it's 2022, so in a week's time she'll have convinced herself it's all the liberal media's fault, if she hasn't already.

Circling back on this, the 1922 Committee have come up with a very neat workaround on the rules - to get on the ballot a candidate needs the support of 100 other MPs. In the first 2022 Conservative leadership election () no candidate had 100 MPs support in the first round, and in the 2nd through 4th rounds only Richi Sunak did. So cue a weekend of horse trading until Monday morning comes, Sunak is the only qualifying candidate and there's no need to go to the members for a vote. At least that's what they hope will happen. Mordaunt might absorb the support of all the Trussites and wreck those plans, but I think she's been too obviously trying to play both sides for the last couple of weeks.

And I hope Labour would immediately tell them to fuck off and stand as an Independent. None of these arseholes should be allowed to get away with pretending they've suddenly found a conscience when the only thing they're really concerned about is their own majority.

Yesterday in PMQs “I’m a fighter not a quitter!” Turns out that was her last U-turn. Best bit of today, Boris reportedly believes it is “in the national interest” for him to stand in the leadership fight again. Boris, who is still facing an enquiry over whether he lied to Parliament in Parliament (he did), which is a mandatory resignation offence for a PM. Amazeballs.

Actually, sounds like the Whips may have resigned in protest at government ministers doing the bullying!

OK, not the Foreign Sec but more casualties already. After the Whips' office was fully mobilised to force Tory MPs to vote against a ban on fracking, the Chief Whip and Deputy Chief Whip have both been fired for bullying. Apparently they were screaming at, physically shoving and making MPs cry outside the voting rooms. I'm not even sure I care about the damage being done to the country at this point - as soap operas go it's fucking fantastic. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63322533

I didn't know you had it in you!

Liz Truss's Home Secretary has resigned (with a savage letter accusing the government of playing fantasy politics) - the shortest term of any Home Secretary in modern British politics. There are three Great Offices of State under the PM, and Truss has lost two of them inside a month and a half. She might as well go for the grand slam now and fire the Foreign Secretary before her own inevitable demise.

Sounds like the experts are saying this stuff is really difficult to predict.

Yes, Minister had a positively rose tinted view of government competence compared to this. It was also centred around the idea that the civil service got on with the job of running the country while elected politicians just fluttered around the edges. You can't have a Yes Minister where Sir Humphrey is fired in the first scene. What we need is Armando Iannucci to come back from the states and make a new series of The Thick of It. I've just seen that Kwarteng went to Cambridge, so you might want to lie low for bit

I thought you might have got what you wanted already given that Jeremy Hunt is now PM in all but name but no, Magdalen College Oxford I'm afraid. But seriously this morning's events are seismic. Unprecedented. I don't think the country has seen anything remotely like it. The new Chancellor has scrapped almost every single measure in the mini-budget (which was Liz Truss's core mission statement representing her central political beliefs) except for lifting the cap on banker's bonuses. He has even rolled back the scope and duration of her energy bill support plan (calling it irresponsible) when the energy support plan was the one thing she pointed to as an unqualified success over and over and over again in response to any criticism of her mini-budget. This after reports that his meeting with her over the weekend dissolved into a screaming match - which he evidently won. A Tory MP on a BBC discussion panel was just asked if Liz Truss should step down and he said what was needed was to give Jeremy Hunt some time to see if his new measures work, and we should give Jeremy Hunt the space to develop his new economic policies. He didn't mention Liz Truss once partly because he knows she's not really in charge and partly because he knows the mere mention of Liz Truss being involved in future economic policy risks scaring the markets into another meltdown. Every official public statement since Truss ran from the stage on Friday after sacking Kwarteng has been made by Hunt while Truss is in hiding. It's incredible. The whole thing makes Trump's administration look competent - and they tried to make a virtue out of having no idea how to run a government. It's kinda like Trump's attempted Muslim ban, but that was a small part of immigration policy that was immediately blocked by the courts. This is core economic policy that was blocked by her own government. Satire must be dead now - what can anyone say that's more absurd than the truth?

How should I know? But after two threads and countless posts dissing any film with a gay story thread, female lead or too many non white actors it’s more than clear that they do.

Mate, I think we all know whose code is glitching.

No, you didn't only agree with it. You considered her to be the 'adut in the room' because of it. How many followers of British politics do you think consider Truss to be adult in the room right now? How many of them would say she's demonstrated a tendency to make rational, evidence based policy decisions?

This isn't worse than anything else they've been doing, but it feels so symbolic of their entire war. "Russian soldiers have shot dead a Ukrainian musician in his home after he refused to take part in a concert... intended by the occupiers to demonstrate the so-called ‘improvement of peaceful life’ in Kherson” Russian troops kill Ukrainian conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko

I wonder if Brent can remember how long it took for GHWB's 'read my lips' speech to come back and bite him. I'm genuinely curious at the comparison, because the time gap between Truss's conference speech saying this "First of all, we will lower our tax burden... The Conservative Party will always be the party of low taxes. Cutting taxes is the right thing to do morally and economically." And her new Chancellor saying this "some taxes will have to go up"? 10 days.

The crazy thing is it doesn't even matter if he thinks he can. The only thing he's complaining about is the timing and Biden didn't choose the timing, the Saudis did. If OPEC+ cutting production is going to result in worryingly high energy costs for US citizens then it is objectively right for Biden as US leader to try and persuade the Saudis to delay and/or reconsider the cut. That has nothing to do with whether the midterms are around the corner or not.

Says the guy currently being duped by the Saudi regime.

In the other thread you already have going on to complain about films that make you uncomfortable, you never explained why you think having a female lead makes a film woke. Care to try?

Then how come no government, regardless of political affiliation, has seen through it before? I have this general sanity check that I like to apply. If you think you’ve come up with an incredibly obvious idea/solution and it seems like no one whose job it is to think about these things has ever thought of it before….. there’s probably a good reason for that.

Nice to hear you have such a high opinion of America’s men and women in uniform. But look, for ‘follow the money’ to work you have to follow it from the source, not just to the destination. Where is the money source intent on paying people to confirm global warming? It can’t be political, because in the USA for the past 30 years no matter who controls the WH, House and Senate the science has said broadly the same thing. It’s not just an American thing, because in every country the science says broadly the same thing. If the money is so obvious to you then tell me where it’s coming from, not just where it’s going.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t been getting pregnant