Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Short-term. It's always short-term. They never think about the day after tomorrow.

I assume he is getting rid of Triple lock.

As that’s the only way you could lower it to precovid levels.

Andy McDandy wrote: ↑Wed Oct 16, 2024 9:42 am I'd have marginally more respect for them if they said "What I meant to say was...", and acknowledge a poor choice of words, or loss of nuance; rather than an attempt to rewrite reality.

Yeah, that would be a better, but it's clearly what she meant to say.

Laser focus on policy, not starting rows.

Badenoch says she would offer JK Rowling peerage

Insane. Even though Rowling started out with an arguable position (women are women partly because of their experiences growing up as girls and young women), her demonstrable lack of rational thinking skills has led to doubling down and adopting ever crazier stances. This is not the sign of Upper House material.

Tubby Isaacs wrote:Laser focus on policy, not starting rows.

Badenoch says she would offer JK Rowling peerage

Services to literature*, or services to bigotry? Both are equally valid.


*Ok, she's not exactly Dickens or Steinbeck, but she did get a lot of people reading, including a fair few adults who hadn't picked up a book since they left school.

No doubt to be followed by Sir Graham Linehan

Jenrick's offering a tired and familiar Faragist line of free market small statism and boo to foreigners. Badenoch trawls the wierder fringes of the culture war right. She does appear to have a strong dislike for Farage and much more unlikely to approach Reform for an electoral deal than Jenrick.

Youngian wrote: ↑Thu Oct 17, 2024 1:47 pm She does appear to have a strong dislike for Farage and much more unlikely to approach Reform for an electoral deal than Jenrick.

Like repels like. Jenrick seems to just take any position if it’ll help him win. Badenoch seems to have her arrogance and loathing baked in, and doesn’t want old fag ash muscling in on her turf.

Her position is "I'm black and a woman and I've made it; what's your excuse?". Overlooking the work done by previous generations, or why she had to face challenges others might not. It's all about personal toughness and looking for a fight. But nothing too scary or risky. Who's weird? They'll do.

The Guardian are doing live updates of the leadership debate. In his opening remarks Jenrick bemoaned the fact that there were not enough homes for young people trying to get on the property ladder. This seems a bit rich from a bloke who owns at least three houses.

He then delivered these brain farts.

The biggest applause of the night so far, in the studio of Conservative voters, is for Jenrick calling to take money from the foreign aid budget to spend on defence.

“Let’s invest more in our armed forced, let’s get up to at least three per cent,” he says.

In a follow-up question, he is asked about the Chagos Islands. It is a “disgrace”, he says, adding that he believes it has been done so that “David Lammy can feel better about himself at a north London dinner party”.

“I would not sell out our overseas territories,” he says.

You really can't complain about migrants coming to the country if you are proposing big cuts to the aid budget.

Why the fuck are these people still talking so awkwardly about North London, just a few short months after they were reduced to just nine MPs in the capital at the General Election?

It's reached a point now where it seems genuinely weird and unpleasant.

Arrowhead wrote:
It's reached a point now where it seems genuinely weird and unpleasant.

To quote my missus when I say something she regards as somewhat obvious, "are you new?". The Tories ARE weird and unpleasant, otherwise they wouldn't be fucking Tories. I realised this as a teenager in the 1970s. These two arseholes are just the latest in a never ending procession of Tory arseholes desperate to show off their lack of empathy and compassion as something to be admired. Goes down well with the members, apparently.

Tells you something about the weirdness of the current British right that they still dream of being appointed governor general of a remote colony wearing a feathered pith helmet. Even if it's uninhabited. Just themselves, their other half and a butler serving dinner for one in evening wear.

See also the obsession with titles and awards.

Youngian wrote: ↑Fri Oct 18, 2024 8:29 am Tells you something about the weirdness of the current British right that they still dream of being appointed governor general of a remote colony wearing a feathered pith helmet. Even if it's uninhabited. Just themselves, their other half and a butler serving dinner for one in evening wear.

Yet ask why it's inhabited and you're the woke librl trans agenda.

Team Jenrick (via Danny Kruger) are on to "Labour hate the countryside", and objecting to "Chinese made solar panels" in the countryside.

Matthew Holehouse
‪@matthewholehouse.bsky.social‬
Interested to learn how it is the pro-farmer policy to legislate as to how farmers may or may not use their land; or why a self-styled Thatcherite would pursue a policy of import-substitution

https://bsky.app/profile/matthewholehou ... utkltuza27

Instead of Brexit reducing the cost of our shopping baskets through tariff-free food imports from the Prairies, the Tories now want to increase state food subsidies above those allowed within the CAP. I clearly don't understand these traditional country ways.

Isn't the post Brexit policy a genuine improvement?

Jenrick and the Telegraph are now going after Starmer for taking down an inferior copy of an Elizabethan painting and putting up a Paula Rego picture of the Virgin Mary.

Leftwing cultural embarrassment apparently. Oliver Dowden thinks this is "philistinism", the wrong thing for visitors to see. Because none of these visitors will have heard of Paula Rego or something.

This'll get the young graduates back. While the rest of us might be surprised how this fits with Sir Keir being a snobby elitist.