Mailwatch(ed) Forum

John Crace double bill. First, yesterday:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... music-died

Then Monday:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... just-about

It may be weeks, it may be months but Boris is toast. And the Tories would spend the time fighting each other to the death. While the country is on its knees. At a standstill. What a legacy. Johnson must be so proud.

Mr Crace doesn't seem overly impressed with Thursday's speech in Blackpool

Olives, bananas, train ticket staff … Big Dog Boris takes a grotesque Blackpool ramble


https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... icy-vacuum

We've been here before though, haven't we?

Endless commentators saying with every new outrage that Trump couldn't possibly survive any longer... and yet he did, right to the end.

Also, note how everyone is now talking about the confidence vote? As if by magic... the parties have been forgotten.

Boiler wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 11:53 am We've been here before though, haven't we?

Endless commentators saying with every new outrage that Trump couldn't possibly survive any longer... and yet he did, right to the end.

Also, note how everyone is now talking about the confidence vote? As if by magic... the parties have been forgotten.

Of course they haven't. They're all part of the same story, and the chancers and fuckwits will still deny their having any significance, and anyone with a brain will remember them as emblematic.

Marina Hyde, Marina Hyde
Twice a week she's waspish and snide
She won't give the government an easy ride
Queen if the wry aside, it's Marina Hyde!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ng-service

This week Marina wonders why the government is not just shit, but shit at explaining itself.

Despite his best efforts to look busy – now more than ever – Johnson hasn’t been. Yet the country has rolled on, after a fashion. One inference is that real power has increasingly migrated away from No 10 Downing Street. Maybe they should have a leaving do for it.

The prime minister resembles little more than a sort of deranged front-of-house figure – radiating the mad bonhomie of a restaurant maitre d’ assuring diners that the kitchen is not on fire, even though they can see the smoke belching out of the door.

Bizarrely, meanwhile, everything is required to aspire to emulate Netflix. Ministers started a few months ago, by claiming the profitable Channel 4 should be sold off to compete with the streaming service. By this week, the health service was being urged to upgrade from its supposedly Blockbuster-esque current state to something more befitting “the age of Netflix”. The British government appears to be the last entity to know that Netflix is built on eye-watering debt, is arguably an overall driver-down of quality and is losing subscribers fast. How can they not know any of this? How can they not care to know it?

I rest my case re: Netflix.

BTW: do read around re: Palantir.

Aaron “cunt” Banks has lost his libel case agains Carole Cadwalladr. Good.

Brilliant news. So pleased for Carole.

Suing a journalist instead of the publisher is almost unprecedented, the vindictive little shit. Did Banks’s brief warn him that a story in the Guardian has already been cleared by their clued-up lawyers? Probably but Banks would think he knows more about libel law than know-nothing solitictors.

Just took a peak, can't see a word about it so far in the right wing press. Funny that.

Youngian wrote: ↑Mon Jun 13, 2022 11:01 am Suing a journalist instead of the publisher is almost unprecedented, the vindictive little shit. Did Banks’s brief warn him that a story in the Guardian has already been cleared by their clued-up lawyers? Probably but Banks would think he knows more about libel law than no-nothing solitictors.

Banks was suing over remarks Carole made in a TED Talk.

Crabcakes wrote: ↑Mon Jun 13, 2022 10:29 am Aaron “cunt” Banks has lost his libel case agains Carole Cadwalladr. Good.

Excellent news. What a good woman she is. What a shit he is.

This is great news.
I hope that this means other Russian assets won't be able to hide their dodgy business behind legal threats.

Rosvanian wrote: ↑Mon Jun 13, 2022 11:05 am Just took a peak, can't see a word about it so far in the right wing press. Funny that.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... lladr.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61782578

...Mr Banks congratulated the investigative journalist on winning, but said he would "likely" appeal against the court judgement.

You lost. Get over it.

***WARNING! FOOTBALL/SOCCER REFERENCE AHEAD!!***

Just to add, I see the usual brown-nosers & fellow travellers on Twitter are claiming it as a victory as Cadwalladr withdrew her defence from the comments she made concerning Banks at the TED talk in question, with no damages awarded as he essentially hadn't been defamed by her comments.

Now I don't know about the rest of you, but claiming victory in a libel case with no damages (or something like a token £1 worth) awarded to you because you essentially had no good character to be defamed by such comments is right up there being a Brazillian football fan straight after their 2014 World Cup Semi Final vs. Germany claiming that their team weren't that bad because Oscar scored a goal.

Spoonman wrote: ↑Mon Jun 13, 2022 5:35 pm https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61782578

...Mr Banks congratulated the investigative journalist on winning, but said he would "likely" appeal against the court judgement.

You lost. Get over it.

That likely is doing so much heavy lifting it’s probably qualified for 109 kg class at the next olympics.

Crace on Patel and the deportations.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... portations

But Priti Vacant was acting unusually coy on Monday afternoon. Offered the chance by the Speaker to make a ministerial statement, she declined. And when Lindsay Hoyle instead offered the opposition the chance to turn Rwanda into an urgent question, she ran for the hills.

Maybe it was all just too mundane for her and she couldn’t contain her disappointment that more people weren’t going to suffer. After all, it was unlikely to have been from a surfeit of remorse as that would require something approximating to a conscience.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -authority

John Crace on Lord Geidt, the human vacuum.

To him it is still a mystery why there has been such interest in his job since the Convict has been in office. It was almost as if he was auditioning for a job in standup.

Geidt pressed on. A masterpiece of nihilism. The last word in futility. Existential despair reconfigured as rapture.