The General Election in the United Kingdom

[TheTeapot]

The Guardian's news reporting and actual journalism is normally alright, their sport coverage excellent, and their mobile app is the most user friendly of all news sites. 

But some of their opinion pieces are bonkers. And some of their commentators, regulars and guests, are also bonkers.

 

[The Voice of Reason]

17 minutes ago, TheTeapot said:

The Guardian's news reporting and actual journalism is normally alright, their sport coverage excellent, and their mobile app is the most user friendly of all news sites. 

 

Granted

[The Voice of Reason]

18 minutes ago, TheTeapot said:

But some of their opinion pieces are bonkers. And some of their commentators, regulars and guests, are also bonkers.

 

And some of their readers

[woolley]

4 hours ago, P.K. said:

My my.

So testy...!

I link stuff from the Guardian simply because it's very unlikely to be lies...

Certainly @La Colombe posts up stuff that the avid brexiteer will certainly find makes for uncomfortable reading but a broad spectrum of opinion makes for a healthy debate n'est-ce pas?

Mais oui, but original thought is infinitely better than interminably cutting and pasting Twitter/X ramblings that exhibit little grasp of the subject. There is no point to it. If we want that we can just go to Twitter/X, or the Guardian for that matter.

[woolley]

1 hour ago, P.K. said:

I have to say "sneering" is a new one on me!

 I find the facts that a wealthy nation like ours

The Guardian has always sneered. It thinks it's superior to those who read it and those who don't, while displaying no qualities whatsoever that might uphold its conceit.

"A wealthy nation like ours......." You keep telling us it's broke and on its knees. Make your mind up.

[woolley]

1 hour ago, P.K. said:

@Chinahand

I have to say "sneering" is a new one on me!

The very idea that I'm a Guardian obsessive or whatever is just nonsense. I get it that you're a right-leaning centrist and I'm a left-leaning centrist brought about by witnessing first hand extreme poverty in the UK. And I mean extreme. I find the facts that a wealthy nation like ours has more and more people dependent on food banks and that 30% of our children are living in poverty absolutely abhorrent. Because in a wealthy civilised society it shouldn't have to be like that. Because as I'm sure you know that a key measure of how civilised a society is comes down to how they look out for their most disadvantaged citizens.

It doesn't mean that I'm a socialist or any pigeon-holing crap like that. In fact I think that Labour's tendency to take a holistic approach to social welfare not only creates an underclass but is also prepared to nurture it forever so the cycle repeats itself ad infinitum to the detriment of all.

The thing that really gets me is that with all the shenanigans like brexit and so forth it's obvious that folks either don't know or don't care that in turbulant times it's always those with the least who suffer the most....

Back to the present trying to claim I'm a "typical Guardian obsessive" when I don't know any and probably neither do you is just a bit OTT.

There's some good stuff in there. Naturally, you ruined it before the end, but an improvement. Rejoice!

[wrighty]

11 hours ago, TheTeapot said:

The Guardian's news reporting and actual journalism is normally alright, their sport coverage excellent, and their mobile app is the most user friendly of all news sites. 

 

 

Crosswords are good too, and the online interface works particularly well.

[P.K.]

12 hours ago, TheTeapot said:

But some of their opinion pieces are bonkers. And some of their commentators, regulars and guests, are also bonkers.

Absolutely!

Makes for a refreshing read the way they try to offer alternative points of view that the reader can make their own minds up about.

[HeliX]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c978m6z3egno

Kid Starver's a Tory.

[wrighty]

14 minutes ago, HeliX said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c978m6z3egno

Kid Starver's a Tory.

I quite liked John McDonnell when he was Corbyn’s shadow chancellor. Didn’t always agree with what he said, but speaking as someone with free-market tendencies myself, he wasn’t always wrong, and he was always principled. 

[La Colombe]

On 6/25/2024 at 6:13 PM, La Colombe said:

 

I'll probably get another ban by whoever the far right MF moderator/s is/are but fuck it, good men to remain silent and that! Little Tommy Robinson has been arrested (again) on anti terror laws while trying to board a private jet to Dubai. 

 

[RecklessAbandon]

15 hours ago, La Colombe said:

I'll probably get another ban by whoever the far right MF moderator/s is/are but fuck it, good men to remain silent and that! Little Tommy Robinson has been arrested (again) on anti terror laws while trying to board a private jet to Dubai. 

 

Was he using his Irish passport?

Wasn't the arrest under the Anti-Terror laws because he showed a banned film to thousands of people?

[John Wright]

6 hours ago, RecklessAbandon said:

Was he using his Irish passport?

Wasn't the arrest under the Anti-Terror laws because he showed a banned film to thousands of people?

He was arrested at Eurostar Folkestone. Not sure it was an actual criminal offence. The ban on showing the film about a Syrian refugee is subject to a civil order not to be shown and he was in breach of that.

There were civil contempt of court proceedings from a previous showing. He was spotted trying to travel to France after the showing in London last weekend.

There is now a warrant as he didn’t appear at the high court in London this morning. Apparently the police reminded him he had to be in court, but had no power to stop him. So they gave him unconditional bail, and he got on the train.

[P.K.]

Rachel Reeves has been accusing the tories of lying about the state of the UK's finances to the extent of a £22bn black hole. This naturally caused ex tory Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who everyone trusts of course, to refute this claim. Hunt is right to do this as apparently it's only £21.8bn...

'Bean counters' get their revenge, as Reeves unveils spending audit.

 

Two years ago the "bean counters" at the UK's top economic institutions were just about to come directly into the line of fire.

Liz Truss’ Conservatives were plotting a full frontal attack on the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), planning to sack the bosses of the former and abolish the latter altogether.

Things have now come full circle.

Treasury officials effectively penned a 20-page blame-sheet, cataloguing spending anomalies, as ammunition for the new chancellor, launching her own broadsides in parliament on Monday.

Then just after Rachel Reeves published her audit of spending, external, the OBR released a letter, external. The independent forecasters were unexpectedly backing up - in public - the chancellor's central contention that she was left a dire fiscal inheritance.

The OBR has made clear there were billions of pounds of spending pressures that it did not know about when preparing its last forecast in March.

The spending was only revealed to them last week, the letter said, and given the “seriousness of the issue” the OBR has launched a review into the March forecast to assess the “adequacy” and “assurances” provided by the Conservatives.

If you couldn't be arsed to download and read the PDF from the OBR to the Treasury here is my executive summary:

"WTFHBGO???!!!"

[Non-Believer]

44 minutes ago, P.K. said:

Rachel Reeves has been accusing the tories of lying about the state of the UK's finances to the extent of a £22bn black hole. This naturally caused ex tory Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who everyone trusts of course, to refute this claim. Hunt is right to do this as apparently it's only £21.8bn...

'Bean counters' get their revenge, as Reeves unveils spending audit.

 

Two years ago the "bean counters" at the UK's top economic institutions were just about to come directly into the line of fire.

Liz Truss’ Conservatives were plotting a full frontal attack on the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), planning to sack the bosses of the former and abolish the latter altogether.

Things have now come full circle.

Treasury officials effectively penned a 20-page blame-sheet, cataloguing spending anomalies, as ammunition for the new chancellor, launching her own broadsides in parliament on Monday.

Then just after Rachel Reeves published her audit of spending, external, the OBR released a letter, external. The independent forecasters were unexpectedly backing up - in public - the chancellor's central contention that she was left a dire fiscal inheritance.

The OBR has made clear there were billions of pounds of spending pressures that it did not know about when preparing its last forecast in March.

The spending was only revealed to them last week, the letter said, and given the “seriousness of the issue” the OBR has launched a review into the March forecast to assess the “adequacy” and “assurances” provided by the Conservatives.

If you couldn't be arsed to download and read the PDF from the OBR to the Treasury here is my executive summary:

"WTFHBGO???!!!"

What happened to the Conservative Party as the party of financial responsibility, the natural party of Govt, the party of law and order?

How could a party with this reputation elect such as Boris Johnson as its leader with both his previous and subsequent records?

That a conservative (with a small "c") country such as Britain could deliver such a damning electoral verdict surely points to the answers. The Conservative Party no longer has any of those attributes. It had become a testimony to greed, self-service and self-entitlement, believing that it was aloof to the electorate. It has always had these traits (think Aitkin and Archer) but never before had they been allowed to rise to the levels of the Johnson administration and Sunak failed to purge it.