It’s a stupid hill to fight on. No disputing that.
Edgy rapper will be fine. But this is no different to, say, immigration issues, or trans rights, or whatever other wedge issue the fascists have made up and keep winning ground on.
It’s easy to say that Starmer should be unambitious and very selective with his battles when you’re not ever going to be collateral damage of him avoiding a ‘distraction’.
Im broadly in favour of Starmer so far. Lots of mistakes. Poor comms. But a willingness to do the horrible foundational work that doesnt necessarily win elections but the country actually needs. Going back to the comms piece on Kneecap he could have said something along the lines of "Personally I have problems with their overt support for a terrorist organization but Glastonbury has a long history of providing voices for dissenting politics and this is a core tenet of our culture". Would have still git hammered for it though,
Should he? I think it's broadly fine for the Prime Minister to say "I don't like the message this band are promoting and it would be better if Glastonbury didn't book them and the BBC didn't show them" but very bad for the Prime Minister to bring forward legislation to ban them.
FTFY. T'otherwise, good work.
Corbyn tried the left wing inclusive approach, that ended with a thumping Tory majority. Labour aren’t going back there anytime soon.
The point is Starmer needs to tread carefully because whether you like it or not this country is heading for a hard right majority at the next election. So all those left leaning getting outraged at pretty meaningless headlines and opinions should just be careful what they wish for.
As a white middle class family we will probably be ok under a Reform government, others won’t be so lucky. So that is why I can take him saying a shite group shouldn’t play at Glastonbury because it is a far lesser problem than what we are heading towards.
The Idiocracy is here!
Everyone thinks/reacts with their emotions rather than look at facts or even give themselves a chance to digest something.. Then onto something else. It forms Bias opinion whether we think so or not.
I was watching the Grenfell documentary and I was less angry at the for Profit Americans who didn't give a fig if their cladding was flammable and more upset at Cameron and his less regulations bullshit, which led to more politicians/public servants(?) not giving two shits about people's welfare just how do they make a profit. Regulations are usually in place for a reason and it is not to make money but it is to safeguard the standards for people, so that shit like this doesn't happen.
I find it interesting that that the Cameron government and people generally stayed away from this documentary. This, stripping of personal rights and Brexshit were basically under his watch and I assume he was receiving massive backhanders from big business (look at the Panama papers and also Iceland).
Theresa May, whatever you think of her (and it might be that you think her thick..I dunno), at least made an effort to take responsibility for the shit show that the Conservatives created in the 2010's.
Living in American for 30 years has left me adrift of a lot of British things and sometimes i need a reminder of things, like Grenfell, The Post Office shit... The BBC..
It's all rather depressing that we follow America into the abyss.
I am here now and it doesn't look very good at all. For some insane reason I think the U.K. has a chance. I am probably wrong.
Chicago: Naive.
I think any retrospective assessment of Theresa May is going to be incomplete without knowing where her 'red lines' came from*. It consigned Britain irrevocably to the hardest of possible brexshits, out of line with the marginal voting in the non-binding referendum, and contrary to many of the campaign assurances that led to that vote.
Probably just another mistake, eh?
* I have a view, and it's not that it was a mistake.
I haven't watched the documentary but was the cladding previously banned and that ban was overturned by Cameron?
This : www.thefpa.co.uk/news/milan-tower-block-fire-compared-to-grenfell from 2021 and this www.rics.org/news-insights/the-valencia-fire from last year suggests that it wasn't a uniquely British problem and certainly nothing to do with Brexit.
Not watched the film yet. Think I might find it a bit triggering so not sure I'm going to. The main issue with the 'cladding crisis' in the UK IIRC was that the manufacturers were allowed to do their own testing against the standards, and in addition some of them lied / didn't test properly. Resulting in some cladding manufacturers (Kingspan and Arconic notably) becoming untrusted by insurers and fire risk assessors.
Don't think anyone has ever said it was anything to do with brexshit. People have said that it was due to the regulatory framework that was defenestrated and defunded by the tories, along with planning and scrutiny. And it was.
There's lots of things that are global problems, because business (ie the big payers) are given pre-eminence over people. That our representatives have sold us out to business interests just like johnny foreigner should be no cause for celebration, nor a reasonable excuse. We should be better than that...and we were.
Yes. Let’s give up on inclusivity because one particular leader did badly.
Except he’s also following the right-wing line on immigration, on trans rights, I’m not enough in touch to be sure but I’ll wager that the unemployed and disabled aren’t seeing much sign of things improving for them. So all I see is someone ceding ground and effectively validating the ‘it’s them wot’s the problem’ conflicts that the right wingers want people voting on. That’s my issue here. Not these particular headlines, but the pattern. It’s not just the edgy rapper issue that he declined to even pass on, never mind push back. It’s not clear where he’s willing to draw a line and fight back.
I’m afraid that if the only way to keep reform away from power is to avoid fighting with them on anything difficult, if there is no appetite for a completely different approach, then y’all are heading that way regardless.
I think you missed the memo. The strategy is not to fight them in the media, social media, and paid for commentary, that they own. It's to fight them on the ground by actually doing stuff that improves things.
You might want to look at that, rather than what the beeb and talksport hourly bulletins focus on.
As I said before we are in a handcart gaining pace downhill with no brake.
There is no avoiding immigration, benefits, social health etc.
Immigration has been understandably avoided by successive governments because its massively contentious. But it plays massively now. There is a solution to be had that isn't utterly awful. I see no other option other than to grasp the nettle and build in as much decency as possible before either Reform or Toryform get in and push through something that is largely based on shade of skin.
The benefits bill is massive. I believe 20% working age economically inactive and an aging population. Fuck knows how you solve that other than trying to find reasonable ways of people being able to contribute according to their capabilities. I know folk who have claimed for decades who could have done something. I have to acknowledge my hypocrisy in that I was a signing on stoner in my youth. But here we are and Health needs paying for.
And we are going to have to rebuild our military massively. We can't trust the US and there are too many bad actors in the World who don't give a fuck about peace and love.
I have no good solutions.
Especially since the Centre-Left had absolutely no problem at all with continuously criticising Corbyn in extreme and often baseless ways.
Which gave you Boris. Yeah, you'd still have got Brexit, and certainly there would have been issues, inevitably.
But.
And I will be delighted if that works.
On the other hand, I feel there is common agreement that people keep voting against their own interests and I am not super optimistic that quietly serving those interests* is a winner.
Stable and competent, but unambitious, governance is a holding tactic. Biden did that for four years but the US dems never tackled the PR of it all and, well, generations of steady progress has been set on fire over a few months.
* but only for those people that the fascists aren’t explicitly going after. Their interests must be set aside so as not to cause a fuss.
