The brits are in for a rough ride

[WelshBloke]

This is the fourth time in a row the Conservatives have picked a new PM without consulting the electorate. They've broken the parliamentary system. If not deliberately, then through their degree of internal dysfunction,

Fourth time in a row the Tory PM has resigned in disgrace because they can't control their party as well!

 

[pmv]

Fourth time in a row the Tory PM has resigned in disgrace because they can't control their party as well!

I'm starting to think they've all worked it out between them so each Tory MP gets a turn at being PM for 15 minutes and so qualifies for the £115k a year for life 'office expenses' perk. Plus the increased salary and pension. Probably also involves agreeing to constantly fire and rehire cabinet ministers, so they can collect the £16k 'redundancy payment' each time they pass 'Go'.

There's also the 'resignation honours' thing, that also seems wide-open to being gamed - though I am not at all sure how 'formal' that system is (does a PM have to actually quit the job to be entitled to hand out gongs, or is that just a 'convention'?). If Johnson had come back as PM then resigned again, could he have had two resignation honours lists to hand out gongs?

Honestly, a party's MPs could make a small fortune out of gaming this system if they really put their mind to it. With just one parliamentary term they could all be set up for life.

 

[IronWing]

The simple solution to the honours problem is for Chuck to elevate everyone to the peerage. You could be PMV, Earl of the Bath, Rowhouse #10, Upper Downer Street, North Boggyport Heath, Wessex.

 

[WelshBloke]

Looks like all those people telling Matt Hancock to go eat a bag of dicks might get their literal wish come true! 😄

 

[WelshBloke]

I'm starting to think they've all worked it out between them so each Tory MP gets a turn at being PM for 15 minutes and so qualifies for the £115k a year for life 'office expenses' perk. Plus the increased salary and pension. Probably also involves agreeing to constantly fire and rehire cabinet ministers, so they can collect the £16k 'redundancy payment' each time they pass 'Go'.

There's also the 'resignation honours' thing, that also seems wide-open to being gamed - though I am not at all sure how 'formal' that system is (does a PM have to actually quit the job to be entitled to hand out gongs, or is that just a 'convention'?). If Johnson had come back as PM then resigned again, could he have had two resignation honours lists to hand out gongs?

Honestly, a party's MPs could make a small fortune out of gaming this system if they really put their mind to it. With just one parliamentary term they could all be set up for life.

I think that you're assuming a lot more competence on their part than they have!
They are certainly morally corrupt enough but I don't think that they could resist screwing each other over enough to organise it!

 

[pmv]

I'm struggling to decide which system is more broken - ours or that of the US?

Something reminded me the other day that May "won" (sort-of, with the DUP's assistance) the 2017 election based on endlessly repeating the mantra of "strong and stable". Since when we've had 4 Tory Prime Ministers (including 3 robots and a sociopath), 6 different Chancellors of the Exchequer and 7 different Health Ministers, a currency crisis, and a near-collapse of the NHS and the rest of the state apparatus. Thank God it's been 'stable'. Daren't think what instability would have looked like.

 

[Indus]

I'm struggling to decide which system is more broken - ours or that of the US?

Something reminded me the other day that May "won" (sort-of, with the DUP's assistance) the 2017 election based on endlessly repeating the mantra of "strong and stable". Since when we've had 4 Tory Prime Ministers (including 3 robots and a sociopath), 6 different Chancellors of the Exchequer and 7 different Health Ministers, a currency crisis, and a near-collapse of the NHS and the rest of the state apparatus. Thank God it's been 'stable'. Daren't think what instability would have looked like.

Atleast they have PMQ's which if nothing else is a weekly reminder to see how bad things are.

 

[pmv]

Atleast they have PMQ's which if nothing else is a weekly reminder to see how bad things are.

Can't imagine, though, a US Senator going off to participate in a reality TV gameshow, incommunicado, for weeks on end, while still collecting their substantial salary for the job that they aren't doing.

Or maybe Trump going back to work full-time on The Apprentice, while still being President? Even he didn't try that one.

Seems as if there's a inherent flaw in the way a parliamentary system works, in that MPs don't have employment contracts, it's just presumed their "employer" is their constituents as a collective, and thus they can spend their time any way they wish during their term, and the only way they can be 'fired' is if those constituents choose to vote them out come the election.

Until then there's no rules about what they can-and-can't spend their time on, and it comes down to a kind of 'honour system' to prevent them taking the piss. Even when that Labour MP got sent to prison there was no 'rule' to prevent her continuing to be an MP, and be paid as one, while she was in prison.

Surely-to-God his constituents will kick Hancock out next election?

 

[biostud]

A new favorite channel.

 

[pmv]

Yup, things are looking very very bleak. Twelve years of Tory government and the country is in a deep hole. Though I couldn't get through that video because from the start it gives an ideologically distorted account. It's not all about the COVID response, some of the underlying causes go back all the way to May 1979, others just to the last round of entirely-uncesssary economic self-harm that was austerity in 2000. Still more is because of the kamikwazi budget.

The reason why so much money was wasted during the pandemic was because of the ideological commitment to doing it all via the 'private sector'. Billions was thrown away on private sector failures like the track-and-trace system or handouts to fraudsters. Truss and kamiKwarsi then made it far worse with their disastrous budget.

Right-wingers, like that guy in the video, try to blame it all on lockdown, as if it the economy would have been better if tens of thousands more had died, while liberals, prefer to go on and on about Brexit exclusively, because that way they can elide their own responsibility for the deeper roots of it (the Lib Dems having supported austerity all the way) even though Brexit was just the icing on the cake.

 

[pmv]

I can't help but suspect that the "Supreme Court" (irritates me that they renamed/reconstituted the Law Lords as that - as if genuflecting to all things American, even the things that don't work) ruling banning the Scottish government from holding another independence referendum without the explicit permission of the UK government, is going to be a huge gift for the SNP and the independence cause in the longer run.

It seems to me that saying you can't even ask if you want to leave makes Scotland look like a hostage rather than a partner. If I were Scots it might flip me to voting for independence if I ever got the chance.

(As it is I'm supremely agnostic on Scots independence - it's up to them, and I can absolutely see why they'd want it, given how things have played out over the last few decades, but I still find most Scots Nats I've encountered to be irritatingly self-rightous to the point of bigotry...all nationalism, even the 'progressive' type, has a dark side, that eventually comes out)

 

[pmv]

This sort of thing is why the country is now in a deep financial hole - not the lockdowns.

Lady Mone is accused and still the Tories won’t come clean about PPE. What are they hiding? | Angela Rayner

Ministers have learned nothing from earlier scandals, says Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner

www.theguardian.com

We learn that PPE Medpro was given £203m to supply face masks and sterile surgical gowns at the height of the pandemic. Lady Mone, a Tory peer, referred PPE MedPro to the Cabinet Office in May 2020, five days before it was even registered as a company. She contacted the then ministers Michael Gove and fellow Conservative peer Lord Agnew, offering to supply PPE – for a price. Lord Agnew referred PPE Medpro to the “VIP lane”, fast-tracking the bid for public contracts.


It now appears that tens of millions of pounds from those contracts ended up in offshore accounts connected to the individuals involved.

We know that 25m surgical gowns, for which the government paid PPE Medpro £122m of our money, were subsequently rejected after inspection. They were never even used.

This government has written off more than £9bn alone on PPE that was procured with public money and then deemed unfit for use – unusable, overpriced or undelivered. These were the gloves, goggles and gowns that were needed on the frontline in the NHS and care when nurses were left wearing bin bags instead.

As families struggle to make ends meet, taxpayers are still paying £770,000 every day on the storage of PPE that is unfit for use. That’s enough to put more than 36,000 children into part-time nursery care. It represents billions wasted through downright incompetence and sleaze.

 

[pmv]

Grrr, now the Tories are trying to associate strikers with Putin. We're back to "The Enemy Within" rhetoric. They really have no shame.

If anyone has "played into Putin's hands", it was the Tory party, when they picked the economic wrecker Truss to be PM.

Tory chairman’s ‘NHS strikes help Putin’ claim dismissed as ‘ludicrous’

Nadhim Zahawi urges nurses to call off strikes and negotiate but union says it is ministers who are refusing to talk

www.theguardian.com

 

[pmv]

He hasn't exactly got 'the common touch' has he?

Seems he thinks Trading Places was a documentary.

‘Do you work in business?’ Sunak mocked for ‘excruciating’ exchange with homeless man

PM filmed asking man if he would like to ‘get in to’ financial services during visit to London shelter

www.theguardian.com

The prime minister visited a shelter on Friday, where after a brief exchange he asked the man whether he worked in business. The man replied that he was homeless. Sunak then discussed his background in the finance industry and asked if it would be something the man would “like to get in to”.


The man replied: “I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t know, I’d like to get through Christmas first.”

He explained that he hoped a charity would find him some temporary accommodation so he was not on the street for Christmas.

 

[darkswordsman17]

He hasn't exactly got 'the common touch' has he?

Seems he thinks Trading Places was a documentary.

‘Do you work in business?’ Sunak mocked for ‘excruciating’ exchange with homeless man

PM filmed asking man if he would like to ‘get in to’ financial services during visit to London shelter

www.theguardian.com

I saw Tweets about that and was like "whoTF is this guy?" figuring he's maybe some finance dudebro social media "influencer" based on how woefully out of touch he was. And he's the UK PM, just wow...

 

[Moonbeam]

I saw Tweets about that and was like "whoTF is this guy?" figuring he's maybe some finance dudebro social media "influencer" based on how woefully out of touch he was. And he's the UK PM, just wow...

And he probably hasn't the faintest idea what an ass he is.

 

[mikeymikec]

I'm struggling to decide which system is more broken - ours or that of the US?

It can be both, in the sense that we can see how fucked their system is and our conservatives are still trying to emulate it.

 

[brycejones]

He hasn't exactly got 'the common touch' has he?

Seems he thinks Trading Places was a documentary.

‘Do you work in business?’ Sunak mocked for ‘excruciating’ exchange with homeless man

PM filmed asking man if he would like to ‘get in to’ financial services during visit to London shelter

www.theguardian.com

Let them eat cake.

 

[KMFJD]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1610761144943185949

that will not be a wise decision, so they will do it of course

 

[misuspita]

UK seems poised to be a monarchy..... But the XIV century one...

 

[pmv]

Where's the "Grrrr..." ineffectual rage reaction emoji?

 

[misuspita]

What I really don't understand is the passivity of the public. No rage whatsoever, no throwing of eggs at the politicians, or putting them in a literal garbage bin... Just... Nothing.

It's like so many issues seen in the last years rendered them unable to react in a violent way. Cause the polite way, is definitely not working

 

[fskimospy]

As I think pmv mentioned the most fucked up part here is that if an election were held today the tories would lose in a landslide but they are legislating as if they have majority support.

 

[SMOGZINN]

What I really don't understand is the passivity of the public. No rage whatsoever, no throwing of eggs at the politicians, or putting them in a literal garbage bin... Just... Nothing.

It's like so many issues seen in the last years rendered them unable to react in a violent way. Cause the polite way, is definitely not working

It's the 21st century way of handling protests. Give them so many outrageous things angry over that they burn out from exhaustion protesting it all. Then you can do the really sinister shit and the public is so burned out from the protesting of all the other stuff that they can't build up a good head of steam to be properly pissed at the really important stuff.

 

[hal2kilo]

As I think pmv mentioned the most fucked up part here is that if an election were held today the tories would lose in a landslide but they are legislating as if they have majority support.

Conservatives always claim a mandate, even if they just squeak by.