On a practical level as an ordinary Joe Public…

Keep mentioning ‘partygate’ wherever and whenever you can.

For example:

Buying beer at the supermarket? Quip to the checkout assistant about whether it would be enough for a No 10 after work lockdown pissup.

Just bring it up as and where possible. Keep the anger simmering and don’t let people forget.

This is why all the Rwanda crap has been pushed out like clouds of squid ink. It is to muddy the waters, obscure and distract. Johnson is (rightly) crapping his y-fronts about this.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who doesn’t caricature voters as ignorant racists.

42 vs 35 on a policy that is borderline Nazi.

Go us.

Local elections will be the real test tho

The closest real-ish test. The only one that really matters is a GE and we’re too far out yet.

Locals can be more tricky, there are plenty of Conservative councillors out there in rural places who have strong local backing due to their NIMBY appeasement when it comes to development etc.

But I hope they get a shellacking and that Johnson goes. I don’t buy all this stuff about Johnson being some kind of safety net vs the likes of Truss. If he goes now, there is plenty of time for a new leader to be exposed for what they are before the next GE. And there is also the charge on the Tories as a whole that they chose a man to be PM who is patently unfit for the job, broke the law and was ousted mid-parliament. This type of shitshow erodes public confidence in the whole party and that is a good thing.

You don’t keep one shit in power because you’re afraid of the next one.

Good to know, thanks.

I’ve done that ride a couple of times, so I’ve got a pretty good appreciation of how much of an ask it is. I just didn’t want to do one of those climbs and then roll down a recently tarmacked lane.

The first climb is doable in the saddle as is the third. Fitness depending. The middle one is a push-carry near the top. Old Cote Moor Top is epic once you’re up there. Love it.

^^^

Can’t say I blame you.

There was a time, not so long ago, when things like this Rwanda bullshit would have rendered you unelectable.

Now it is seen as a safe play to shore up a parliamentary majority.

FFS people.

😥

“In a speech this morning the Prime Minister will invoke the mean spirit of Brexit as he unveils a £120million scheme to send men who cross from France in small boats to East Africa, saying: ‘The British people voted several times to control our borders.”

The last time a reliable poll was taken, we were 52% arsehole

Very much so, it would seem.

Curious why he would need to set the record straight on something he swore he was telling the truth about… ???

Well, we all know the answer to that one.

The annoying thing is enough people don’t care, or actively approve of his lying so long as they think it suits them.

This really is not about whether Johnson is a bare-faced liar (he is), or whether he is fit to be PM (he isn’t). This is about how happy ‘we’ as an electorate are about it. Do we like liars so long as they bully vulnerable foreigners? Do we like liars because they indulge our fantasies about ’empire’ but 120 years too late?

Deep down this is about whether we are arseholes or not.

Boris to “set the record straight”obfuscate, obstruct, mislead, gaslight and tell blatant lies in an attempt to get off the hook

FTFY.

It’s pathetic. It is like a child who has been sent to their room and now creeps downstairs every five minutes to try a different tack they have just dreamed up, knowing they’ll fail but also hoping to wear the parents down until they give up sending them back up the stairs.

I think the slow drip-drip of fines is more damaging.

If I was Bozo (well, Carrie really), my best case scenario was having them all imposed in one go now.

It is maximum time until the local elections in May and the country will be marginally happier with a few days off work for most. Parliament is in recess.

What looks like a slow drip-drip (with probably the tamest offense first) is damaging because it goes on longer, stands more chance of seeping into the brains of the electorate and will hopefully lead to a series of defences that are then demolished one by one as the more blatant offenses come to light.

This is all damaging for the Tories in general too. And that cannot be a bad thing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61097076

A small tightening of the screw.

Oust the Tory (formerly known as UKIP) Party and you stop stuff like the Rwanda policy.

They got Al Capone on tax evasion. The ‘how’ is not important.

Partygate, partygate, partygate.

Big posters of Johnson and Sunak grinning and gurning with a caption underneath saying “THEY ARE LAUGHING AT YOU”

It’s what Cummings would do and he’s shown it works.

It was always just a matter of time before ants figured out a way to access the internet.

And they can type really quick too – if they stand on their hind legs and use the other four plus two antennae.

Spiders would have them beat, but they just aren’t organised enough. Although they are good with webs.

Bollox to partygate.

No chance. That is exactly what Bozo wants.

The way to bring him down is to drive a wedge between him and his Brexity supporters. Keeping hammering on about him laughing at them obeying lockdown rules is the way to go. Many of them would rather save the money on the Rwanda nonsense and machine gun the dinghies in the Channel instead.

Partygate is what has the bastard worried so Partygate it is.

The best way to stop stuff like the Rwanda policy is to oust this nationalist-populist shitshow by any means possible.

Cruel, inhumane, and a total waste of vast amounts of money, which will achieve nothing other satisfy a few right-wing columnists and Tory MPs and enough Leave voters to try to shore up his public support

FTFY.

Scary between us and the USA how out of nearly 300 million people what arseholes we have ended up with in the last few years.

We’re spoiled rotten. The UK especially, but also the US has a standard of living that is way out of whack with what we actually produce, in terms of tangible goods.

But instead of being thankful for this and seeking ways to spread this standard of living more equitably and gradually our electorates said “no, **** everyone else, they can’t have any of it”. But what they had actually been conned into doing was opening ourselves up more to a race to the bottom with the developing world. The harder you try to grip sand, the more falls through your fingers and all that.

Selfish, entitled pricks with delusions of grandeur based on past ‘glories’. Easy prey for the disaster capitalists.

Go us!

“They’re all as bad as each other” will be the line of choice for some from now on – then they’ll vote Tory anyway.

My BiL has become a bit Brexity of late. He trots out “They’re all as bad as each other a lot”.

I consistently say that Keir Starmer was a QC who prosecuted terrorists in very sensitive and complex cases whilst Johnson was being fired from the Times for making shit up.

Then he typically gets a bit aggro and starts harrumphing a lot and the subject gets changed.

Life is too short sometimes.

We’ve got numerous ant nests etc in the garden. I stop the missus from digging them up. Occasionally I lift the rocks gently with the kids and watch them. They do zero harm and are really quite interesting.

We also have a large Laburnum that the kids have always called ‘The Buzzing Tree’ because it is properly loud with bees for about a fortnight in June.

Wildlife has a hard enough time without us chasing ‘perfection’ in our little patches.

Leave them to it. My parents house (late 60s Jelson job) had masonry bees that I used to watch occasionally as a kid 40 years ago. The house is still there.

If you’re really bothered about them in your brickwork then wait until they’ve gone in autumn and slap a bit of mortar in.

I cant believe we have a criminal running the country.

Why not? It has been highly likely since 23rd June 2016. What kind of person would deliberately implement a policy that is damaging to the vast majority of the population? An idiot, a crook or an idiotic crook – that’s literally ‘it’.

I’ve one customer who couldn’t sing BJ’s praises enough a year ago – absolutely hates the man now, has said he will abstain any election whilst he is prime minister.

Note – will just not vote, still can’t bring himself to vote for anyone else. He is part of the problem still, just not in as big a way as the bellends/fanbois.

We’re getting to the point now that the Tory party, in refusing to condemn Johnson and defending this lawbreaking, is debasing itself in the same way as the Republicans are in their refusal to condemn Trump

Yes, but both parties have already debased themselves by engaging in stupid populism that is to the detriment of their electorates….. and won. The Tories twice. The Republicans once with one pretty narrow defeat. Why are we always assuming that they are ashamed of their debasement of themselves? They get well paid for it and that is all they give a fig about. The Tories purged all their ‘conscientious’ one-nationers.

Acting like boorish thugs appeals to enough of the electorate in the UK and the US. Why would they change tack?

Thatcher only really started with the vacuous populism stuff near the end, swapping flags on tables and getting shirty about ‘my fish’ and ‘my oil’. I suspect there were two main reasons for this:

1. Her leadership was looking stale and vulnerable as ‘the status quo’ is always liable to be perceived as ‘boring’.

2. She knew that the rampant consumer credit boom caused by deregulation (as well as the sell-off of nationalised industries) was unsustainable and likely to go ‘pop’ inside the next parliament.

Which bring us neatly back to rampant inflation – the highest since 1992. No one dares breathe it, but what do we reckon we could take off of the 7% rate if Brexit hadn’t happened? I reckon 2-3%, but no one dare even float that one.

Up until 88/89, Thatcher’s ‘populism’ had been a byproduct of deeply held beliefs and circumstance. Up until then she was a woman of principle – principles which condemned millions to poverty. But she wasn’t doing it just to make it through the next 24 hour news cycle like the vacuous fraud that is Boris Johnson.

Just sent this to my brown-nosing little shit of a MP. I doubt it will do any good, but I’ll feel a bit less angry for a few hours.

Dear Mr Argar,

I am writing to you as one of your constituents to ask that you withdraw your support for the Prime Minister and call for his resignation.

I do not intend to make this a long email as I know the opinions of your constituents only concern you insofar as they affect your position, status and earnings. I can only hope that you receive enough of these letters and e-mails that you are forced to take notice. As it is, I suspect you will have already told one of your lackeys to delete any emails expressing these sentiments. I am probably typing to your email recycling bin.

It is obvious that Boris Johnson cannot be an effective Prime Minister given his corrosive effect on law and order. It is as simple as that. No amount of smokescreens around war in Ukraine (France and Hungary have both been running presidential elections at this time) or cost of living crisis (caused in no small part by the supply chain disruption arising from Brexit) can diminish that salient fact.

I note that you graduated in Modern History from Oriel College Oxford. I would ask you to consider what side of history you are on by supporting a corrupt and now criminal Prime Minister. I imagine you do not really care, though.

Obviously not really usable as a template, but I tried to get something ‘personalised’ in.

Nothing will change unless enough of the UK electorate grow up and develop a sense of society and a realistic view of where the UK sits in the world order.

Unfortunately the likes of Johnson can just decry anyone who advances this reality as unpatriotic / doing Britain down / a gloomster (whatever the **** that means) and get away with it.

A country’s government should be a mirror that the electorate hold up and are happy with what they see. If they are happy with this lot staring back at them, we might as well give up and go back to an absolute monarchy.

Still no word from sunak. Could he really be considering bringing the temple down on their heads?

Not
In
A
Million
Years

They’ve realised how low a bar they have to hurdle with the UK electorate. They know Johnson is a reflection of a large enough segment of the ‘us’ that his presence guarantees electoral success.

The Tories have been proven right, twice, in their contempt for ‘us’.

You don’t ditch a winning formula, even if it is utterly incomprehensible to anyone with more than three brain cells.

🤷‍♂️

They are the people who should be hanging their heads in shame tonight.

Shame is for hand-wringing liberal pinkos who want to take us back into the EU.

Boorish stupidity is much more British.

I am beginning to view Johnson (are arguably the tories party) very much the way I view Trump – less the problem themselves and more of the litmus test of a societal problem.

100%.

The problem is not him, but the people who vote for these shits. The problem are the arseholes or the pig shit thick knobbers we share the nation with who put them into power.

Careful with talk like that. They’re just misunderstood.

😂😂😂

Fabricant has held Lichfield since 1997.

It is a relatively prosperous constituency with 94.6% of its population identifying as white British against 84.8% nationally. It voted 59% leave and has had a total **** of an MP for 25 years.

I reckon he knows his audience pretty well.

In my fevered imagination I’d love to see Starmer convene a hasty party political broadcast where he says:

“To those Tory voters out there who are professing their indignation at Johnson’s lockdown pissups I ask you one question. Are you going to make that indignation known by not voting Tory ever again? If the answer is ‘no’, then shut the **** up about it and go away. If the answer is ‘yes’ I say welcome to the real world”.

Won’t happen, of course. He’d be better off having a skin-full and nutting a student with the UK electorate as it is.

Now would be a good time for Sunak to resign.

Yeah, but he won’t.

They all know how many dullards out there will vote for them if they appear in front of enough union jacks and talk tough about dinghies in the Channel for a couple of weeks beforehand.

Mine’s David Warburton, so I’m not sure I’ll be bothering.

Edward Argar here. He’s such a greasy pole climbing oleaginous shit that he’ll do anything to stay in favour with whoever is in charge at that particular moment.

I’m still going to email him, though, if only to make me feel a small amount better.

In unrelated news, I have a new colleague at work.

And plans to submit a request for a new outdoor communal space at work – like a patio, for example?

The Tories already stuck two fingers up to mid-low level NHS staff by saying “we got a few pensioners to clap for you pointlessly, so you can forget about a decent pay rise”.

The levels of NHS staff who bore the brunt of Covid in 2020 don’t tend to vote Tory anyway. Most Tory voters would happily stick the boot into these staff now they feel like they don’t need them as much.

Appear tearfully in May 2020 on social media saying you’re at your wits end and can’t even get milk on your way home from working in a covid-riddled hospital = love and hearts and tear emojis all round from people feeling vulnerable.

Ask for a decent pay rise nowadays in light of the stresses of the last two years = denounced as an ungrateful commie by those same people now they’re happily vaccinated and feeling bulletproof.

Brexit Britain innit.

The people I know who voted Tory in 2019 absolutely stuck to the rules. They moaned about it (didn’t we all) but they stuck to them.

Well Johnson’s a goner then. I presume they’ll all be voting for someone other than the Tories to express their anger?

Fiver says Johnson is still Tory leader at the next GE and they piss it again.

Micky Fab

He reminds me a lot of Joe Pesci playing David Ferrie in ‘JFK’.

Only more ridiculous.

Face it folks. The kind of person who votes for a party led by Boris Johnson was probably also having their own lockdown pissups due to their own sense of entitlement and disregard for others – just so long as I get what I want, me, me, me, I, I, I.

So he’ll probably draw the obvious conclusion that there are enough selfish oafs like him to keep him in the job.

Political calculations are very easy these days for the likes of Johnson.

^^^^

Pretty much everyone who uses FB Marketplace. I thought FleaBay was bad enough but FB Marketplace really is a dickhead magnet.

I reckon only about 1 in 10 people on FBM turn up on time, in a suitable vehicle, pay the agreed price and then **** off like you’re supposed to. The other nine show up late, don’t show up at all, bring a 2-seater to collect ladders etc or try to ‘negotiate’ the price at the end.

On one occasion I have actually been forced to say “the price you have agreed to is £50, if you don’t want to pay £50, give me the stuff back and **** off, take it or leave it”. I was then accused of being rude despite the fact that I had already made the same point about eight times in more diplomatic ways.

^^^^^

I believe this is the gold standard for dealing with such situations….

giant wellies too
they’re huge

Most clowns prefer the ‘massive shoe’ look.

Ha ha. In that second photo Truss looks like she’s just about to be pounced on by the guys from the secure unit she managed to slip away from*.

*Obviously slipping away from a real secure unit would be beyond a dunderhead like Liz, but luckily this one’s been contracted out to G4S. Even Liz can outwit a school leaver who’s too busy perfecting the perfect bubblegum bubble and texting her mates whilst she’s supposed to be keeping an eye out, but earning minimum wage for doing so.

😄

People who go squealing to the STW mods when a debate isn’t going their way.