The state of UK politics

[the flying pig]

You passed her your milk?

I think it was strictly speaking a water cooler that we shared. at the time I suppose she was more or less just Liz from the office, not Liz Truss™.

[Blackwhite]

I know it's hard to credit, but history shows that pretty much every PM is worse than the last.

Now come on.

That ain't true, not even close. Show your working please.
E2A if it was, we'd have by now ended up at an asymptotic nadir and oh I see.

[Devi]

I know it's hard to credit, but history shows that pretty much every PM is worse than the last.
What comes after Boris?
Truss, most likely.
Other candidates are Sunak , Lord Snooty and Patel.
Be careful wot you wish for, Comrades.

It’s not all bad Musta! After them will of course come Ed Davey.


Oh.

[Devi]

[the flying pig]

my in-laws are staying over so we did a London tourist walk earlier, standard unimaginative stuff. saw a couple of oddities along the way.

walked past downing street at one point, there were some protesters opposite, nothing too heavy.

i can't swear to this but I think there were three separate protests, each with max a dozen people: one about partygate; a generic anti lockdown/vaccine type protest; and one about refereeing standards at the African nations tournament (fair enough, that almost certainly is the Tories' fault).

I *think* when we first got there, Piers Corbyn was there for the first protest, he was with that rapper guy who he did that abysmal anti vaccine track with, but the rapper had started getting involved with the football thing, confusing.

then a large group of I *think* anti vaccine type (or maybe partygate? 'kill the bill'?) protestors came marching in from somewhere & they closed horseguards in a real rush, everyone had to bolt.

[Mustafaster]

I see the wordquacks at Tory HQ have added a new depersonalisation trope to their lexicon of passive voices and modal verbs.
Mistakes were made. Nobody made them.
Apologies to peope who may have been offended. This midget gem manages to conflate a modal with a passive. No apology for what anybody did, of course, and nobody was really offended.
Culture.
Nobody did anything wrong, it was the culture that was wrong.
Get in the fuckin sea, Orwellian cunts.

[foxmarsexpress]

I'm not someone who interferes in politics, but those who lead our country are really ... I have no words

[dirty leeds]

I see the wordquacks at Tory HQ have added a new depersonalisation trope to their lexicon of passive voices and modal verbs.
Mistakes were made. Nobody made them.
Apologies to peope who may have been offended. This midget gem manages to conflate a modal with a passive. No apology for what anybody did, of course, and nobody was really offended.
Culture.
Nobody did anything wrong, it was the culture that was wrong.
Get in the fuckin sea, Orwellian cunts.

Had this convo earlier with Mrs DL: the culture somehow grew up... nowt to do with the cunt at the top... who will blamelessly get on and fix it. Jesus.

Meanwhile, Nadine Dorries is a total fucking cunt. I don't normally wish death on people, but the world would be improved without her.

[Mustafaster]

I see the wordquacks at Tory HQ have added a new depersonalisation trope to their lexicon of passive voices and modal verbs.
Mistakes were made. Nobody made them.
Apologies to peope who may have been offended. This midget gem manages to conflate a modal with a passive. No apology for what anybody did, of course, and nobody was really offended.
Culture.
Nobody did anything wrong, it was the culture that was wrong.
Get in the fuckin sea, Orwellian cunts.

Had this convo earlier with Mrs DL: the culture somehow grew up... nowt to do with the cunt at the top... who will blamelessly get on and fix it. Jesus.

Meanwhile, Nadine Dorries is a total fucking cunt. I don't normally wish death on people, but the world would be improved without her.

They are priming Sue Gray for wot to put in her "report ".
Bet yer pension she will find that a " a culture of drinking and lack of concern for the regulations " is to blame.
12 months later she gets a dame hood or a place in the HoL.
Dorries throwing dead cats around threatening the BBC.

[Blackwhite]

Threatening? They've fired the gun.

Nothing for Aunty to feel scared of now, you sucked on it, cupped the balls and worked the shaft diligently and they shot you anyway.

May as well start reporting honestly now, yeah?

[the flying pig]

i don't unconditionally love the BBC, never really understood how it was allowed to get so big, with so many zillion tv & radio channels & so many zigabytes of web content, and allowed to make/buy in so much stuff that the free market would quite happily provide. makes it an easy target to criticise.

of course, the principal thing that the tories really object to about the BBC's output is indeed one of the things that the free market wouldn't readily provide even if the BBC didn't - it's proper, objective, journalism that's largely untainted by the agenda pushing of murdoch and co. but the BBC's hugely bloated state has allowed non-legitimate criticism to insidiously ride on the coattails of the legitimate.

[Devi]

May as well start reporting honestly now, yeah?

Not entirely my take, but I do think there's a difference between the BBC being good, and the BBC being good at reporting the news.

The close-to-offensive guest selection in their ludicrous drive for 'balance, Laura K's blatant Tory cronyism, assorted graphic designers and their Corbyn set design and so on all make their news coverage almost entirely pointless.

But the licence fee also pays for BBC Sounds, Bitesize, Radios 1Xtra to 6, and myriad local stations that provide (if nothing else) company to the likes of my ageing mum. It'll be a disgrace if it gets binned.

[the flying pig]

May as well start reporting honestly now, yeah?

Not entirely my take, but I do think there's a difference between the BBC being good, and the BBC being good at reporting the news.

The close-to-offensive guest selection in their ludicrous drive for 'balance, Laura K's blatant Tory cronyism, assorted graphic designers and their Corbyn set design and so on all make their news coverage almost entirely pointless.

But the licence fee also pays for BBC Sounds, Bitesize, Radios 1Xtra to 6, and myriad local stations that provide (if nothing else) company to the likes of my ageing mum. It'll be a disgrace if it gets binned.

yeah, they certainly got brexit badly wrong. e.g. on question time they select the audiences to be 'representative' (so roughly in line with the leave: remain split in an area), but leading up to the referendum even for business representatives they went 50:50 leave:remain, hugely non-representative. but generally i think they do ok. laura k is obviously a tory mouthpiece in all but name but plenty of their other news or news-ish journos are the opposite.

[Blackwhite]

Accurate take I suspect

[eric olthwaite]

Saw this today, which seems to hit the mark.

The BBC have alienated a lot of people who would have fought for it, to appease those who were always going to try to destroy it.

I'd genuinely be interested to know the different ideas on 'state broadcaster' and 'impartial /wise news source' around the world. It's not something I know anything about.

Am I right in thinking the licence fee as it exists is relatively unique? In a world now dominated by subscription service, it does seem to be more and more of an indefensible anachronism.

[Blackwhite]

I mean if we're talking balance and governmental independence, having The Man From The Ministry in Room 105 as they did/do is kind of a bullet to the temple for the concept innit.

[Mustafaster]

The idea of Public Broadcasting is always a bit tricky, because it's so hard to keep any independence from the state.
The BBC do about as well as can be expected, tbh. Yes it's biased toward the Tories because it's part of the establishment and the people wot run it are politically conservative, but socially liberal.
The alternative is the media run by global capital, which is generally gonna be much further right.
The BBC is one of the UK's great achievments., imo.
Yes it's on hock to the government and we would all like to see a bit more backbone, but they are walking a very tight line with the usual subjects slavering to bring it down further.
Of all the things I missed most about leaving the UK the two I really missed werethe BBC and the cricket.
No longer, because I can stream both.
But if it disappears we will have lost something very valuable, you don't know wot you've lost 'til it's gone.

[dirty leeds]

And anything Nadine Dorries wants to do is obviously a Fucking Stupid Option. Because she's as thick as pigshit.

[eric olthwaite]

So Musta, jackos: are there state broadcasters in Spain and Sweden and if so, what form do they take and how are they funded?

[Blackwhite]