So today Johnson proposes “offenders chain-ganged in Hi-Viz publicly paying for their crimes” for antisocial behaviour.

Does that include loud altercations, and neighbors fearful of assault? I wonder

What an arse the man is.

More government by soundbite. Thats tomorrow’s Mail and Telegraph headlines sorted, stoke the culture war a bit more with a prod to the lefties, then promptly forget you ever said it.

Anyway… if he wants to address anti-social behaviour, maybe he should look to making absent fathers take responsibility for all their illegitimate kids?

if he wants to address anti-social behaviour, maybe he should look to making absent fathers take responsibility for all their illegitimate kids?

Genuine question as it keeps coming up – do we know that he doesn’t?

Anyway, can’t help thinking that investing in early intervention, education and vocational opportunities etc etc would be more effective than punishment after the fact. But won’t make the headlines in the Tory rags, obviously.

I’ve predicted it on the Brexit thread, but I’m willing to bet cash that the Tories will go into the next election with a headline policy of Capital Punishment.

do we know that he doesn’t?

What do the grown up kids have to say about it?

We don’t know about the younger ones… and I’m glad the press haven’t gone into that to be honest. Whether they’d be quite as thoughtful of the offspring of other politicians… I’m not so sure.

He did go to court to deny he was the father of one of his kids (on the record), and the rumours are that he has done the same again for another child of his (this time kept off the record).

He did go to court to deny he was the father of one of his kids (this ended up on the record due to a court case brought by the child’s mother), and the rumours are that he has done the same again for another child of his (this time kept off the record this also came up during the same court case).

Editing myself there… what I has said wasn’t correct.

Thanks kelvin, he really is an all round bellend

Theres a good reason he’s always moaning about being skint.

If you want someone to sign NDA’s as a condition of any legal settlement, then thats going to cost you big-time.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/may/21/boris-johnson-fathered-child-affair

“Thirdly, it is fanciful to expect the public to forget the fact that the man who is said to be the claimant’s father, and who is a major public figure, has fathered a child after a brief adulterous affair (not for the first time). Nor are they likely to forget the outline facts of the story including the identity of the mother.”

He’s ‘virtue’ signalling to the prats again with a typical ‘squirrel’.

Who’s been caught with his cock out now – whilst awarding public money to the cock recipient’s family members?

If you want someone to sign NDA’s as a condition of any legal settlement, then thats going to cost you big-time.

Maybe its the other halves who want it kept secret?

‘tough on crime’ nonsense is a pretty standard gimmick for parties that see themselves struggling in the polls, and while Tories still have a lead its more than halved in a few weeks, with Johnsons personal approval ratings tanking

I don’t think it’s just a “squirrel”… more about stirring up support amongst people who might be wavering after they got the football stuff so wrong. Someone somewhere misjudged the amount that the “turn them back at the beaches” and “stop helping others, look after our own” stuff would bleed into support for attacks on black British team members for standing up against racism. Most “it’s the foreigners causing all this” Brits are fully behind young British black players. They don’t see them as outsiders trying to disturb “our” way of life at all, they see them as our boys. So the right wing stuff needs reinforcing now in other, safer ways. Which means some showtime events around asylum seekers and criminals… while behind the scenes making a complete mess of the issues surrounding both, by hamfistedly reforming and defunding the criminal justice and asylum systems.

the Tories will go into the next election with a headline policy of Capital Punishment.

Nah I reckon it will be 50,000 more police officers or some other made up figure, which they won’t be held to and will be forgotten a month of two later. The old white knight trick has worked before and it will work again.

Cut the budgets, staff and generally make things worse, then step in like heroes to fix it!

In the same way that a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day, even Dan Hodges has got the measure of this one

This is why Boris succeeds politically. People have traditionally seen community service as an ineffective slap on the wrist. But the liberal Left will now scream “Chain gangs!!!! You monster!!!”. Tories look like they’re being tough on crime, when they’re not. Job done. https://t.co/NyQkWpAOAx

— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) July 27, 2021

I’m sure that Priti Patel will presently be focus-grouping public floggings

Christ! We’ve got a whole summer of this kind of shite to look forward to, haven’t we?

But the liberal Left will now scream “Chain gangs!!!! You monster!!!”

I don’t think anyone has said anything like this though have they? The only outrage is just at yet more meaningless ‘arsehole-signalling’.

I don’t think it even really matters any more, this far into the present culture war

As long as the Daily Heil’s readership can get behind is as the kind of thing that ‘upsets the snowflakes’ then job jobbed

I don’t believe for a single second Boris Johnson has any intention of doing anything about this. It’s just tickling the tummy of their hang’em and flog’em base.

It’s also worked as a dead cat to distract from them also proposing more stop and search and racial profiling

Is a squirrel the same as a dead cat? I can’t keep up

Is a squirrel the same as a dead cat? I can’t keep up

I believe a squirrel is a totally unrelated distraction whilst a dead cat is a sort of sacrificial ‘scandal’ which is 5% of the magnitude of the true scandal that is really going on.

So saying ’40 new hospitals’ is a squirrel because it is utter unbelievable bullshit.

Whereas Matt Hancock with his sweaty little mitts all over some tart’s buttocks is a dead cat, because the real story is the billions of quid he (and the likes of Truss) have dished out to their mates during a pandemic. A pandemic where every pound will be essential to the recovery, but billions have already been embezzled.

I may be wrong. But this current lot are such a bunch of incompetent crooks the distinction is probably lost on them too. But stick a Union Jack on it and say Labour like foreigners and the lumped proletariat will vote for you, so **** it and make hay while the sun shines.

BBC not impressed anyway

BBC News – Crime: Boris Johnson’s claims checked
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/57987932

anyone that thinks hes a good prime minister or has done a good job needs to get in the sea 😉

It’s interesting that nobody in the police force was consulted about any of the new lawnorder legislation and initiatives at any point, but various journalists were kept in the loop.

Government by Daily Mail editorial

So you end up with the police saying that its a load of unworkable cobblers, as in the case of stop and search its actually the opposite of whats required, but you get a great write up in the press so its all brilliant

As the Independent noted today: this is inevitably what happens when you put a second rate columnist in charge of running the country. All that matters is tomorrows headlines

On the very same day the Times flags up chronic ill-health in the over 40s, it celebrates ‘flaunting curves’ and Johnson’s dirigible daughter in Spanx.

 this is inevitably what happens when you put a second rate columnist in charge of running the country

Yep, when Johnson thinks of the telegraph as both his past and future employer, policy making by soundbite.

I imagine the police just ignore what the Fat Blonde Tosspot says because they know it will never happen and will be superceded in a week or two by more inane dribblings.

Just keep off of Priti Nasty’s shitlist and wait for some grownups to come along.

The Guardian: Thatcherism is the big Tory scam that still distorts our politics.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/05/boris-johnson-thatcherism-state-taxes-high-earners-poor

^^ Brilliantly written article which says absolutely everything anyone needs to know about Thatcher/Thatcherism.

It is so rare that the enduring Thatcher myth is ever challenged, all the more so by an article like that one which hits every nail on head.

And yet doing so is never less relevant because as the article points out it still distorts our politics and effects our expectations.

Politics is economics, and there are fundamentally no right and wrongs in economic models, just different priorities and expectations.

Thatcher’s governments were no less tax and spend governments than other post-war governments (higher in fact) just ones with a different set of priorities.

Ive been saying for a long time that 1979 was the year society died and we became an economy first country. She wasn’t interested in looking after neighbours in your street or affordable public transport. Make money for yourself and then make some more money, sod the rest.

Where is the old fly tipped sofa visiting in Jockland then?
I saw two blokes offloading a large fridge in Perth this morning.

The Guardian: Thatcherism is the big Tory scam that still distorts our politics.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/05/boris-johnson-thatcherism-state-taxes-high-earners-poor

^^ Brilliantly written article which says absolutely everything anyone needs to know about Thatcher/Thatcherism.

If he’s right, it is literally a policy of helping the well off and **** the not well off. What a sad state of affairs.

It’s a good article.

What she did was establish the ‘corporate welfare state’ where private institutions (paying fat dividends to shareholders) become dependent on the state through subsidies, grants, contracts and bailouts. As a prime example; it was due to the way that the rail network was privatised that allowed Richard Branson to refer to running the West Coast Main Line as ‘a license to print money’, as he hoovered up literally billions in government subsidies to run a private monopoly where actually providing a rail service wasn’t really a priority at all.

This reached its logical conclusion during the pandemic with the dishing out of £37 billion for a failed test and trace system to the usual suspects. Every expert was telling them that the money should be given directly to regional health authorities, because it would be far better spent with hugely quicker and better results, as these people were vastly experienced in this field whereas Serco, et al, had no prior experience at all

But their hardwired Thatcherite ideology would simply not let them countenance such a thing

Private good/public bad

And then there’s all those PPE contracts which were just a full on snouts-in-the-trough feeding frenzy…

“This reached its logical conclusion during the pandemic with the dishing out of £37 billion for a failed test and trace system to the usual suspects.”

This figure is thrown about all over the place as is “serco have been bunged £37B” but the facts don’t support it.

– £37B is the budget not the spend – and it’s for 2 years
– As of November last year the total spend was £5.7B with a run rate of <£1B / month
– >85% of the spend is on testing (of which we’ve done rather a lot compared to most countries)
– in the November spending update, Serco had only received 1.5% of the spend by that point
– for a failing system it’s been pretty good at alerting people of contact with someone infected – see “pingdemic” coverage
– contact rates for the “trace” element have risen consistently despite the refusal of many members of the public to answer the calls, share contact history or isolate when told to do so
– the “test” element has seen the UK doing more tests every day than the whole of the rest of Europe put together.
– The UK has done 248 million tests so far – double that off France and quadruple that of Germany

Eh?

You can quote stats all you like, but it’s been a total shambles from the off. A nice little earner for some, but a complete shambles none the less.

The only stat that really matters is the number of dead

It should never have been anywhere near a centralised private system. It should have been devolved to regional health authorities (as every single expert, worldwide, pointed out) from the very beginning and their budgets increased accordingly

But that could simply never be countenanced by Thatchers modern-day disciples and their private sector mantra (and crony contracts/gravy train)

As with pretty much everything in this country at the moment, evidence is valued very little, or actively suppressed, while its a cult-like ideology that trumps everything

She wasn’t interested in looking after neighbours in your street

To add a note of accuracy, the full, often misunderstood through being shortened, quote is:

“They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours.” – in an interview in Women’s Own in 1987

for a failing system it’s been pretty good at alerting people of contact with someone infected – see “pingdemic” coverage

The pingdemic is caused by the app, whi h is separate from test & trace

And the testing labs were run by Delloite services, they took our qPCR machine & kept them unused in a warehouse for 2 months last March, as the outsourced centralised project took months to setup.
The staff to run the machines were intitally volunteers from labs, but the shift system and v poor pay led to huge staff turnover & consistently unreliable system
Decentralised systems used elsewhere eg Germany & s Korea were able to get running far quicker and despite our greater number of tests we were less able to contain our peaks than others, our death rate reflected that.

The tragedy is that the UK had the labs, staff & equipment already running in Universities & research institutes across the country, but the government decided to centralise it all & take the equipment from then & then recruit their own staff on crappy wages, the result was that our labs were well below the standard required

Undercover reporting showed abysmal practices that would get you fired from any lab I’ve worked in

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56556806

The UK has done 248 million tests so far – double that off France and quadruple that of Germany

perhaps they understand the concept of Test and Trace.

So anyway yeah, the Thatcher myth is based on the Big Lie of ‘small government and low taxation’.

If it’s said often enough people will eventually believe it.

So successful was it that the Labour Party felt either incapable or unwilling to counter it.

In the case of self-serving Labour politicians such as Blair it simply suited their agenda.

The bloke can’t even keep himself dry with an umbrella.

To add a note of accuracy, the full, often misunderstood through being shortened, quote is:

While the longer version paints a somewhat “less” harsh version of the quote. You have to read it in context. Her underlying philosophy was simple, her govt wasn’t interested in helping people that couldn’t help themselves, either through poverty, ignorance or chance of geography. So If you couldn’t “do your duty”, the government weren’t coming to your aid.

It’s still a shitty message.

It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours.

By which she meant lobbing a couple of tins of beans into the donations trolley for the local food bank rather than, say, have a functioning welfare state

Don’t disagree with those ^^ sentiments but the irony of course is that Thatcher massively increased the role of the welfare state by, for example, creating millions more unemployed and parking those with disabilities on a permanent life on benefits.

She didn’t care as long as the super wealthy privileged class which she had married into didn’t pay for it and everyone else did.

And of course that those who fell victim to her economic policies were blamed for their own misfortune, not her.