Tbh my children are not old enough to understand this but could you imagine explaining what’s gone on in the Government to a bunch of Primary school child each week, great example Bozza, absolute cretin.

Are we all wrong in this echo chamber? Is there something about the Tory government that we’re just not getting?

Basically yes. Or at least try not to accept that something is there.

Theres a lot of wishful “it has to change” thinking too. When clearly it can carry on for bloody ages yet regardless of the consequences.

Comes down to lack of opposition.
Even Cummings has now been more openly critical of the government’s actions over the last year than Mr “I support the government” Starmer.
He’s lead the labour party into irrelevance.

Are we all wrong in this echo chamber? Is there something about the Tory government that we’re just not getting?

I think it is almost like Stockholm syndrome. Saw some vox pops last night and the people were still happy with the government pandemic handling because “they did a good job in the circumstances”, “it was a really difficult thing to deal with” and so on.
They just seem happy to excuse the government for anything they do and keep supporting them. Seems ingrained that the tory party are the best.

Jeez, that survey.

Are we all wrong in this echo chamber? Is there something about the Tory government that we’re just not getting?

Nah…. we’re just ahead of the pack.

People aren’t that interested in politics and the Boris persona is still being bought and the people seem to ignore inconvenient facts that go against their beliefs/desire/fantasies.

There’s a tipping point but at the moment we’re nowhere near it and the opposition hasn’t hired Dom yet.

I think we underestimate the ‘never admit you were wrong / fooled’ bit. So double down and find reasons to support why you haven’t been fooled. Like the folk that get scammed out of their savings but don’t report it because the loss of face admitting you were scammed is worse than the loss of the money.

Which is the opposite of what smart people do – new evidence, new decision.

We were totally prepared to deal with a pandemic – as a country

Operation Cygnes or whatever it was called, and the lack of PPE in date ready to be used might suggest otherwise?

BBC Reality Check this morning looks at some of Cummings claims. The only one that concerns me is “we were told the public wouldn’t accept lockdowns” excuse. Sage minutes apparently suggest otherwise. Let’s be honest, lots of people, businesses and the Civil Service were 10 days ahead of the government.

Which is the opposite of what smart people do – new evidence, new decision.

Yep…

Man of the people + £800 per roll wallpaper != not man of the people.

Border control + Indian variant + allowing flights from India= Oh dear here we go again.

This from @IanDunt neatly summarises Dom’s tragedy pic.twitter.com/RXBqV5PeMF

— Captain Haddock (@JXB101) May 26, 2021

Sage minutes apparently suggest otherwise. Let’s be honest, lots of people, businesses and the Civil Service were 10 days ahead of the government.

Yep we’d watched the news, the covid figures and the data from wuhan.

I remember sat in the office when we were wondering when the government would do something as the numbers were not looking good,we were working from home a week before government advice.

It was definitely ‘this doesn’t look good situation’and when Italy closed its borders was the chilling realisation for me we were fkd.

dog eat dog

The aim of the tories, now supercharged by the economic idiocy that is Brexit.

The way to stay in power is to rig the whole society as a struggle. That way it is easy to create groups of ‘others’ for people to hate.

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/27/tories-britain-covid-dominic-cummings-pandemic-labour-media

This one lays into the whole political system. Labour supporting everything that the Tories are doing/not doing and a subservient media parroting Tory spin. Thankfully they’ve moved the reporting on a bit from it being the Dominic Cummings Show to actually looking at the details of what he’s talking about.

People get fooled/believe things for any number of reasons; because they feel the same way, because of experience, because they actually believe…

One of the biggest driving factors for this sorry state of affairs is that the media is controlled, and therefore the narrative is controlled, by a few generally pro-Johnson people. Whatever happens in government, however many people get ill or die, they can spin this to support a “They did the best they could” or “man of the people” narrative.

When the media turns against him, things will change. Until that time, the masses will be fed the message and they will believe it.

What kelvin quoted. You can’t make a career out of selling a lie and then have folk believe you when you feel like it. Maybe he should have put a slogan on a bus or something.

Yup, he’s probably in the main (especially where his account is corroborated with published advice and opposition calls at the time) telling the truth, but in terms of votes in future elections… it won’t matter, and he must know that. My assumption is that the pressure he is trying to create is with Conservative MPs, rather than people who have voted Tory recently (off the back of the new “reality” that is a direct result of the “take back control” referendum and the “get Brexit done” election). He is trying to unseat/diminish key Tories (and empower others), not to help get the Conservative party out of government.

Of course, he might want to achieve nothing more than to vent in public about people he’s grown to hate through proximity. It could just be that basic. Ranting about your old boss, and trying to avoid taking the blame for the horrific effects that have resulted from their personal flaws. “Not me guv, you want to have a closer look at those guys”.

He is trying to unseat/diminish key Tories (and empower others), not to help get the Conservative party out of government.

And it was pretty obvious where who thinks the future party leader is and clearly has his eyes on his next position

It’s tragic. This countries politics is now some kind of dysfunctional medieval court occupied entirely by a narrow caste. More Game of Thrones than a 21st century democracy

I actually having thought about it for while think Dom is just an anarchist.

He joined vote leave that was set up to smash the system. No after trying to break it from the inside he’s trying to bring it down from the outside.

You know what I don’t understand? How we’ve become so complacent.

Fifty years ago there was the Profumo Affair. The secretary of state had an affair with a young model and it was sufficient to bring down the government. Fast-forward to a few years ago, it came out that our then-current PM had (allegedly) stuck Little Dave in the mouth of a dead pig and the country gave a gallic shrug and went ‘yeah, sounds about right’. That, really, was the point where it should have been obvious we were screwed.

The opposition parties are both seemingly permanently tainted over similarly one-off failings. Can’t vote Labour (yes but Iraq War) and can’t vote Liberal (yes but Tuition Fees).

We’ve been screaming about ‘democracy’ for the last five years.

And now we’ve got this malevolent mendacious machiavellian maniac spewing his guts about all the lies, incompetence and deceit that those we’ve entrusted to look after us have been feeding us for years. The very dismantling of democracy. Time was, this would’ve driven people onto the streets with milk bottles, a canister of four star and an oily rag. Instead we’re looking up what time Lip Sync Battle starts.

the masses will be fed the message and they will believe it.

I’m reading about propaganda use before and during WW1- WW2  from both a allied and axis perspective, and the message that comes across time and time again, from both sides and from various sources is; They simply cannot believe how massively influential and successful it is, regardless of however dumbed down, overtly racist, or simply untrue their message is.

It’s really depressing. Even one of the most successful American WW1 propagandists (a journalist called Creel) noted that this raised serious questions about the viability and vulnerability of democracy and democratic systems, and this was 100 years ago.

The electorate give the the government they voted for an easy ride. Simple as that.

It’s takes time to turn the tide.

A focus on competence becomes a distraction. The real shit show is an ailing market driven economy. This is where you get the beliefs we’ve got.

Ideology comes first then competence. That’s a hard sell on an electorate that thinks politicians are all the same and see things through a narrow window.

Cummings is still a market libertarian all said and done.

You know what I don’t understand? How we’ve become so complacent.

I was taught to care by my parents. Their experiences, surprisingly, made them Tories, so I was by nature and nurture centre right at least.

But because I was taught to be interested I researched and questioned and took notice of what I saw going on around me, and I discovered that centre left is actually my “right” position.

Not sure how we teach independent thought to the masses though.

Comes down to lack of opposition.
Even Cummings has now been more openly critical of the government’s actions over the last year than Mr “I support the government” Starmer.
He’s lead the labour party into irrelevance.

^^Yup,I have said before, over this last year there were so many open goals missed/ignored by Labour.
It’s as if they didn’t want the gig,and are now waiting until after the fire sale so they can be asked to clean up the nasty mess ..

It’s as if they didn’t want the gig,and are now waiting until after the fire sale so they can be asked to clean up the nasty mess ..

I’ve been saying this for a few years now also. Would you want the gig in the current climate? I wouldn’t.

I have said before, over this last year there were so many open goals missed/ignored by Labour.

I’m pretty sure this was the same with Corbyn too, there were any number of times where the government had fluffed something massively but at PMQ, to quote Binners, he’d be talking about bus timetables instead.

I have to say that I watched Question Time last night and saw Emily Thornberry on, who’s normally a Rottweiller. She normally does a great line in absolutely cutting sarcasm. I was then completely mystified as she conspicuously failed to deliver any killer blows and basically allowed Grant Shapps to roll over while she tickled his tummy

Point of order, and it’s an important one, the affair did not nearly bring down the government, or even get Profumo to resign.

The secretary of state had an affair with a young model and it was sufficient to bring down the government.

Profumo had to go because he was caught lying to parliament (and some dodgy links via Keeler to a potential Russian agent, and it was Profumo or the government so Profumo had to go.

In the current situation the best chance of getting Johnson out is if it’s proved he lied to parliament, i.e. bodies piling up. It’s like getting Capone on tax charges not for being a mob boss, but it’s still effective.

Not sure how we teach independent thought to the masses though.

Shouldn’t be too hard. Just teach a basic module on political philosophy to kids. You really don’t need to learn much.

Democracy doesn’t work when so many are in poverty and so many are uneducated/uninformed. It is playing out very well for the tories.

Thankfully they’ve moved the reporting on a bit from it being the Dominic Cummings Show to actually looking at the details of what he’s talking about.

The issue is that the vast majority of the population won’t read those stories. We have to wait:

When the media turns against him, things will change. Until that time, the masses will be fed the message and they will believe it.

Looking at the whole setup with Tory donors in the media and business with what they are trying to gain it could be a very long wait.

Shouldn’t be too hard. Just teach a basic module on political philosophy to kids. You really don’t need to learn much.

And that’s the dproblem. To do that, you need money and time to teach kids this, which are both in the hands of the ruling party, which don’t want to upset the status quo. The same thing with AV/PR, or boundaries, or…

A party with a majority will never vote for anything that diminishes its ability to remain in power. Why would it?

In the current situation the best chance of getting Johnson out is if it’s proved he lied to parliament, i.e. bodies piling up. It’s like getting Capone on tax charges not for being a mob boss, but it’s still effective.

Most things that most of the Cabinet have said over the last couple of years have been provable lies. We’re way past the time that lying meant resigning, the idea that somehow the MP has done something to besmirch the ” Right Honourable” part of their title.

BJ went past lying to Parliament and lied to the Queen!
He’s been sacked from two jobs for lying.

Provable lies to Parliament would be met with the same shrug of the shoulders as everything else he’s done. He’s “just being Boris”, it’s what he’s like, it’s just the way he works, he means well, isn’t the vaccine rollout going well, look at that dead cat… Blah blah.

You know what I don’t understand? How we’ve become so complacent.
…
We’ve been screaming about ‘democracy’ for the last five years.
…
Time was, this would’ve driven people onto the streets with milk bottles, a canister of four star and an oily rag. Instead we’re looking up what time Lip Sync Battle starts.

I use my SIL as a barometer for this. I think you’ve massively overestimated the general populations level of interest. She’s by no means the least interested in the country and votes entirely on her own self-interest, personalities, family history etc rather than policy or future commitments. She believes that if she is successful in life, everyone else can be successful and that they should just try harder.

Just teach a basic module on political philosophy to kids.

Then you too can have regular riots down les Champs, occupied airport construction sites until the stupid project is abandonned, sobotaged toll barriers, heaps of manure in front of the town hall, tractors blocking the ring road and (God forbid) properly social democratics candidates in elections (as well as the neo right and extreme nutjobs you’ll find everywhere). Great innit.

But seriously, I absolutely agree, Molgrips, it’s one of the things that strikes me most when talking to young people in Germany, France and the UK, philosophy in school is ace.

Amongst other things I used to run a General Studies programme in a comprehensive school getting speakers from animal rights, Countryside Alliance, F o I, Palestinians, the occasional politician, ex chair of the Arts Council, a few academics, an ex-coke dealer, ex Chair of the Bar Council. Our centre’s papers were used as exemplars at the exam board. Killed off by the Tories.
Citizenship was another vehicle for stirring up an understanding of politics. Killed off by the Tories.

Time was, this would’ve driven people onto the streets with milk bottles, a canister of four star and an oily rag. Instead we’re looking up what time Lip Sync Battle starts.

panem et circenses

panem et circenses

Don’t be juvenal

Don’t be juvenal

👏👏👏

She believes that if she is successful in life, everyone else can be successful and that they should just try harder.

I know a few tories at work who think exactly that. When you give them reasons why some people may be a bit hampered on being successful and they have been successful mainly down to luck they quickly lose interest.

panem et circenses

Don’t be juvenal

Who said satire was dead?

[ hats off to you for that one Mefty ]