[Tubby Isaacs]

Ha ha ha. One more for Laura Farris.

[Yug]

This is straying into very dangerous territory

Ministers are considering proposals to ban MPs and councillors from engaging with groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil.

The plans, put forward by the government’s adviser on political violence, John Woodcock, say mainstream political leaders should tell their representatives to employ a “zero-tolerance approach” to groups that use disruptive tactics or fail to stop “hate” on marches.

Rishi Sunak and James Cleverly, the home secretary, are due to discuss the proposals as part of a review conducted by Woodcock, the former Labour MP who now sits as Lord Walney, a cross-bench peer...

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... protesters

Dealing with unruly mobs?

The proposals are politically convenient for the government because, if accepted, they would put further pressure on the Labour leader over his party’s stance on pro-Palestine demonstrations.

Several sitting Labour MPs have attended PSC events – including the former shadow chancellor John McDonnell and the MP for Poplar and Limehouse, Apsana Begum. Labour has refused to suspend MPs who have attended events, despite demands from senior Tories, because PSC is not a proscribed organisation.

Oh.

“We talk about Rishi’s cowardice and how long it took him to come out and stop the messages of hate that have been spewing from the likes of Lee Anderson and Suella Braverman,” they told the Guardian.

“But what’s the difference between what Labour has said and what the Tories have said on these protests? We can’t allow pro-Palestinian protesters to be dehumanised as a Labour party.”

Another shadow frontbencher said: “The anger we have seen is about the extreme asymmetry of this war. A totally dominant force against a relatively under armed opponent.

Perhaps we should stop MPs from engaging with the Conservative Party

A poll from More in Common commissioned by the Together Coalition found that a significant minority of the public hold anti-Muslim sentiments after a week of anti-Muslim comments by senior politicians dominated headlines.

If they seriously want to stop the hate they'll shut the fuck up. After all, they are the driving force behind this.

[Watchman]

Those set for Westminster include Aphra Brandreth, daughter of the ex-MP Gyles Brandreth, Katie Lam, former special adviser to Suella ­Braverman, and Luke Gardiner, a No 10 special adviser to Sunak.

Who else have they got? Hollo Holloway and Trevor Cleaver?

Isn’t there the little matter of actually being selected, and then getting elected, first

[Youngian]

What’s John Woodcock's qualification for the job, is he now in the loop after putting a Tory journalist up the duff?

[Andy McDandy]

Got the title after supporting Johnson's Brexit deal and telling voters not to elect Corbyn. In fairness, it looks like he and Isabel Hardman began their relationship when both were unattached.

[Spoonman]

Scrap plans to scan accounts of benefit claimants or risk new scandal, MPs told
Campaigners say ‘fully automated’ approach risks repeat of Post Office Horizon scandal

Plans for automated surveillance of millions of bank accounts to catch welfare cheats should be scrapped, campaigners have said, warning the approach risks a repeat of the Post Office Horizon scandal.

The Department for Work and Pensions is seeking new powers to require banks to trawl the accounts of millions of people who receive benefits in an effort to cut the £8bn currently lost annually to welfare fraud. The plan is close to being passed into law by parliament and will be “fully automated”, the government said. It is likely to use artificial intelligence to flag activity considered suspicious by the DWP.

The government said no decisions on whether a claimant was committing fraud would be made on the basis of the mass surveillance, but it would examine cases flagged as possible fraud or error “through our business-as-usual processes”.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... k-accounts

The whole thing is bad enough on its own,but with the "AI" buzzword seemingly being trusted to make it work means it's a disaster waiting to happen.

[Andy McDandy]

Human being makes the decision, on the available evidence. Which comes from software they're told to trust.

No, can't go wrong at all.

[MisterMuncher]

If this technology works, surely they could also use it to pick up millionaire tax evaders and money launderers.

[Tubby Isaacs]

People like that don't exactly stick all their money in the Woolwich.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Oh dear. Shouldn't this be a resignation offence?

[Philip Marlow]

The fact that someone known, even informally, as the ‘minister for common sense’ exists feels like some insane parodyland nightmare.

[kreuzberger]

Every night in the Marquee, the Greyhound, or the Hope & Anchor. 'alf a quid to get in and the same for a pint or three Blues, and then random liaisons with saucy girls in the St. Moritz before schlepping them back to the 23 quid-a-week apartment off Ladbroke Grove.

I'd go back to that in a heart beat.

[davidjay]

If ever there's a case of history being written by the winners it's that. Never mind industries being destroyed, mass unemployment and riots - let's concentrate on a wildly-exaggerated month or so from a decade earlier.

[mattomac]

People like that don't exactly stick all their money in the Woolwich.

The professional ones won’t either, they will go after the £10 discrepancy types, easy ones they always have done.

[AOB]

If this technology works, surely they could also use it to pick up millionaire tax evaders and money launderers.

They could. And they could also use it to identify people who don't claim benefits who should (£19.5bn* as of last May including £7.5bn Universal Credit). But they won't.

*https://policyinpractice.co.uk/report-m ... each-year/

[Yug]

Fuckwit is as fuckwit does

Michelle Donelan, the science minister, has apologised and paid damages after accusing two academics of “sharing extremist views” and one of them of supporting Hamas.

In a statement posted on X, the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology said she had deleted a tweet and letter published last year, and accepted what she termed a “clarification” from one of the academics, Prof Kate Sang at Heriot-Watt university in Edinburgh.

Sang launched a libel action against Donelan after the minister published a letter to the UK Research Institute (UKRI) which urged it to cut links with Sang and another academic, Dr Kamna Patel of University College London. Donelan had described her “disgust and outrage” at their appointment to an expert advisory group to Research England on equality, diversity and inclusion...

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... bel-action

The sooner these cunts are voted out of power, the better for everybody.

[Abernathy]

From The Grauniad today :

There are cultural trends forbidding the conclusion that it is already too late for the Tories. Labour’s paranoid fear of squandering its advantages, bolstered by a historic expertise in self-sabotage, is one. Another is media appetite for narrative twists, fed by recent memory of intense volatility. It feels safest to assume that no bet is safe.


Balanced against those judgments are the facts of life in Britain in 2024. It is a battle to get simple things done in a degraded public realm. Almost everyone feels poorer today than they did when the Tories took power 14 years ago. It is a long time to be cycling through phases of dizzying crisis and glum stagnation.

Spinning around without going anywhere is the most nauseating motion. People are sick of the Conservatives. It is a feeling deep in the gut that won’t be shifted with a sugar-rush tax cut, especially if it comes at the expense of public investment.

Opinion surveys indicate stronger demand for spending on knackered services than tax giveaways, even among Tory voters. People may not be following the exact mechanics of the rule-bending, column-shuffling trick that generates the “headroom” for Jeremy Hunt to “afford” lower headline rates of taxes, but they intuit that the money has to come from somewhere. They have bumped along rutted roads that used to be smooth carriageway. They can’t see their GPs and wait all night in A&E.
The projections of future spending that let the chancellor declare himself obedient to fiscal rules are a fiction. Forcing the curve of public borrowing relative to gross domestic product on to a downward trajectory by 2025 would involve a squeeze on budgets that would, if enacted, destroy services that are already struggling to function.

It might be technically possible to wring another 20% of savings out of the justice department, but not with courts and prisons worthy of a developed country. In theory, the Treasury could further reduce central government grants to local authorities, but only if it wanted to drive more of them into effective bankruptcy.

Activating section 114(3) of the Local Government Finance Act – the emergency trigger that councils pull when they can’t make ends meet – used to be an exceptional event. It happened three times last year. A recent survey of councillors found nearly one in 10 expected to hit that threshold in the next financial year. More than half saw it coming within five years.

Hunt may believe there is money to be saved by shrinking incapacity benefits, and that claimants will then be nudged back into the labour force. The actual cost will be people with chronic health conditions sliding deeper into poverty and despair. That puts more pressure on the NHS, which is already raiding its capital budget to plug shortfalls in day-to-day spending.

The chancellor’s game of fantasy accounting is played by rules that allow him to balance the books by tipping the country towards social insolvency. But he knows that will be Labour’s problem soon enough.

TL:DR : Jeremy Hunt is a massive cunt.

[Andy McDandy]

The fuckers just can't help themselves.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/ma ... -challenge

TL/DR: former Tory MEP, now in the Lords, claims that a contestant on University Challenge, who happens to be a hijab-wearer, chose to dress up in the colours of the Palestinian flag and have an octopus mascot on the show as a sly bit of antisemitism. Demands the student be expelled from university and arrested. Student gets fucking death threats.

Student takes her to the fucking cleaners. Among other things, the episode was filmed in March 2023, several months before the October 7th attacks and subsequent conflict.

I wrongly alleged that Ms Gorgianeh chose one of the most disgusting antisemitic symbols, a blue octopus, as her team’s mascot which I held her responsible for. I accept that these allegations were completely false and unfounded. I made a grave mistake in making those posts and I should not have done so.

Is it just me, or is there a hint of "Well, what did you expect me to think, they had a blue bloody octopus!" there?

Seriously, I wish these cunts would just feel a scintilla of the fear, distress and pain they subject others to.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I'd forgotten about that. Delighted to hear it.

There's a PPC (for Huntingdon) who seems to have got off lightly as well. "How did Amol Rajan not spot it?" Because it was bollocks, and I bet this chap wouldn't have thought about it till he heard about it on Twitter.

[Andy McDandy]

Obese-Jecty?