[Tubby Isaacs]

Obviously both Musk and Farage are loathsome, but as Reform are a Ltd company it’s entirely possible Musk could buy it and ‘fire’ him. Which would be hilarious.

(Farage is currently the majority shareholder, but only by 3%. They’re all backstabbing shits so this would probably only be a minor impediment)

That would be very funny, but Farage is very popular with his supporters and no doubt with shareholders too. They're not backing Musk over Farage.

[Abernathy]

Musk seems to be trying to out-Trump Trump. In doing so, he has ignited a political firestorm in the UK in the most clod-hopping and ill-informed fashion. Badenoch, venal dimwit that she is, and her remaining cohort of fuckwits (Chris Felch) have jumped leaden-footedly onto the rolling Muskian bandwagon and are frantically thrusting their bodies backward and forward to try to make it roll faster. Farage seems (temporarily) to have fallen under the wheels, though he will bizarrely accrue some brownie points for declaring Yaxley-Lennon to be beyond the pale.

The whole thing is Fucking. Mental.

[kreuzberger]

Obviously both Musk and Farage are loathsome, but as Reform are a Ltd company it’s entirely possible Musk could buy it and ‘fire’ him. Which would be hilarious.

There would need to be a quorum representing a minimum of 75.1% of the shareholding. That is unlikely unless Farridge wants to cash in having paid himself an eye-watering dividend, which is not impossible.

[satnav]

Why do BBC keep referring to Elon Musk when talking about his ridiculous quotes? Just because somebody is very rich doesn't make what they have to say particularly newsworthy or believable.

[davidjay]

Why do BBC keep referring to Elon Musk when talking about his ridiculous quotes? Just because somebody is very rich doesn't make what they have to say particularly newsworthy or believable.

Because he is newsworthy, and because they're desperate to appear even-handed.

[Yug]

UK tyrannical government

I wonder if the news that from March Ofcom will have the powers to fine social media companies up to 10% of their global income if they fail to safeguard children on line has anything to do with this recent outburst?

Or is it just a case of consuming a month's supply of ketamine in an afternoon..?

[Oboogie]

Why do BBC keep referring to Elon Musk when talking about his ridiculous quotes? Just because somebody is very rich doesn't make what they have to say particularly newsworthy or believable.

I don't understand, please explain because it sounds like you want the BBC to report the quotes without telling us who said them - surely the identity of the Tweeter is the story, not because he is very rich, but because he about to be right at the top of US politics? I think that when a top US politician is calling for the USA to overthrow the UK government, we are entitled to know his name
Also social media and every news outlet in the country and beyond has named Musk why shouldn't the BBC? What purpose would BBC censorship serve?

[Bones McCoy]

Musk seems to be trying to out-Trump Trump. In doing so, he has ignited a political firestorm in the UK in the most clod-hopping and ill-informed fashion. Badenoch, venal dimwit that she is, and her remaining cohort of fuckwits (Chris Felch) have jumped leaden-footedly onto the rolling Muskian bandwagon and are frantically thrusting their bodies backward and forward to try to make it roll faster. Farage seems (temporarily) to have fallen under the wheels, though he will bizarrely accrue some brownie points for declaring Yaxley-Lennon to be beyond the pale.

The whole thing is Fucking. Mental.

It reflects the lack of talent and seriousness remaining in the tories.
And the void of talent and seriousness that BNP/UKIP/Reform never had.

Anybody paying attention will know that Musk blurt-tweets his branes, often in an ill-considered way.
There's no continuity to his emissions.
It's almost as if he recovers from a fever dream and decides to tell the world what teh pharmaceuticals were trying to say.

I accept he has a lot of money.
And that this passes as a substitute for good character, judgement and intelligence in Conservative / UKIP circles.
But any serious UK politician, or well advised unserious one, would know what to accept.
"I love (politician X, they is the best)" yesterday is followed by "Fuck (politician X) in their face, what a sell out", as night follows day.

Elton* may have cunning long-term plans.
But he's little more than a chaos monkey** at current affairs.

* Cos he's a rocket man - geddit!!
** A piece of disruptive software used to test system resilience by randomly breaking stuff.

[Youngian]

The whole thing is Fucking. Mental.

No democrat or patriot should have a problem siding with Nigel Farage MP against a foreign billionaire calling for his overthrow as the leader of a parliamentary party.
You know who's not backing him? Nigel Farage. He's flying to America again next week to grovel to Musk to change his mind and plead that he is chosen one after all.
I don't mind the British right losing their minds and imploding it's that Con/Ref will still register +40% in polls that is fucking mental.

[Crabcakes]

Given Musk seems to be wildly out of control at this point, and firing off threats to everyone, everywhere, I’m starting to wonder if he might soon have an “accident”.

On the one hand, he’s pissed off enough governments/powerful individuals that there’d arguably be a queue of 007-a-likes. On the other, he seems to also be getting a taste for power. And while Uncle Vlad likes his assets to sow deliberate chaos he also likes to be able to control them, and doesn’t like anyone starting to enjoy the idea of being in charge themselves. And people he considers a liability tend to have an unfortunately high rate of falling out of windows or finding themselves on regrettably flammable aircraft…

[Youngian]

Of course, Musk doesn't criticise Putin or any other autocratic.
If the dubious longstanding claim that British security services don't carry out assassinations is true than make Musk a rule worth breaking. Or contract it out to Charles Calthrop.

[Andy McDandy]

Must admit, given the shite Trump is spouting right now, I wondered if the plan was for Trump to be retired on ill health grounds, Vance to take over, then Musk to come up as his VP, like Gerald Ford, but with the switch stuck on cunt instead of twat.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Musk can't be VP, because he was born abroad. Even the current Supreme Court might struggle with that.

[The Weeping Angel]

Given Musk seems to be wildly out of control at this point, and firing off threats to everyone, everywhere, I’m starting to wonder if he might soon have an “accident”.

On the one hand, he’s pissed off enough governments/powerful individuals that there’d arguably be a queue of 007-a-likes. On the other, he seems to also be getting a taste for power. And while Uncle Vlad likes his assets to sow deliberate chaos he also likes to be able to control them, and doesn’t like anyone starting to enjoy the idea of being in charge themselves. And people he considers a liability tend to have an unfortunately high rate of falling out of windows or finding themselves on regrettably flammable aircraft…

Maybe his body will pack in. Either way him dying would be very funny.

[Samanfur]

Why do BBC keep referring to Elon Musk when talking about his ridiculous quotes? Just because somebody is very rich doesn't make what they have to say particularly newsworthy or believable.

Unfortunately, news values dictate that what any recognisable sleb has to say is instantly more newsworthy than any of us. And in the age of social media giving anyone a megaphone into the void, the bar for what classes as a sleb is lower than it's ever been.

Musk is famous partly for being rich and partly for being a massive controversialist - eternally the ten year old playing up at the back of the class for attention.

What grates on me more is the prescriptive versus descriptive news argument that means that traditional media outlets, needing to fill space, hungry for clicks and worried about potentially missing something, will now automatically class a large amount of social media content as newsworthy because a lot of people are engaged with it.

Musk gets on my nerves because there're so many rich people with enough class to keep their privacy and enjoy their lives without trying to affect anyone else's - but we have to have reports on this halfwit's every drug-addled brainfart, because he's the ultimate Anglosphere trifecta of rich, white and male, and good news is seen as boring.

The Musk story feeds on itself now, but I genuinely wonder how many people would consider him consequential if they hadn't been fed stories that he was in the first place.

[Andy McDandy]

Most people don't have an X account or drive a Tesla. Plenty of them see him as a shorthand for "young and successful", much as Richard Branson was in the 80s and 90s. Remember at all times the core terrestrial TV and newspaper audience - 60+ C2DEs. They think the internet's a magic box and he's a wizard.

Money's a handy universal metric. It's quantitative and you can't really argue with it.

[Youngian]

Musk’s utterances are more news worthy than Zuckerberg or Larry Ellison for eg for a couple of reasons; he’s a senior member of the next US administration and his ramblings are fucking insane.

[Oboogie]

Musk is not a 'sleb', in a fortnight he will be a senior minister in the US government, arguably the second most powerful man on earth. That is why the world's media are reporting his words.

[Samanfur]

Quite, but hopefully, you can understand my point of view that before his political and media profile started becoming consequential because his words had been promoted as a rich sleb, he was just a rich sleb running his mouth off on social media.

I agree with Andy's points. Like Trump, Musk is a stupid person's idea of a smart person. He's never invented anything himself, but he's used his family's money to buy smart people's businesses and employees, and ostentatiously waved around the trappings of the money he's made out of it.

Musk's no genius or visionary. The only difference between him having outlandish ideas and my three year old doing the same is that when he decides that he wants to build a toilet that runs on ice cream, he can order a few hundred actual inventors to try and make it happen.

[AOB]

I'm doubtful from Trump's body language or facial expressions when he's with Musk that he even likes him. Would rather have him inside the tent lobbing things out than vice versa, I suspect. He's used Musk and his X megaphone to help get back in, I just wonder if he can sustain 4 years of keeping one step ahead of him, although if or inevitably when) there's a fallout I'd guess Trump would win out because if their joint supporters were forced to pick one then it won't be Musk despite his public mouthpiece platform.