BF2S Forums Where are all the whiny peaceful "Enlightened" European now?

Larssen wrote:

Boris is a bit of an enigma to me. When he's speaking I get the impression that he's obviously not an idiot. Yet he simultaneously manages to be a fucking idiot anyway. Yet he kind of still isn't. One of the weirdest leaders in recent history if you ask me.

As an aside I was just watching some stuff about chequers because I got lost in the internet somewhere and that must be one of the ugliest leadership retreats Ive ever seen.

Probably not actually stupid but lazy and feckless and a nasty self-serving piece of shit.

His current wife comes from a long line of leg-spreading strumpets apparently, I haven't bothered to actually do any research though.

Reading about johnson's personal life is a rollercoaster lmao. how many children does this guy have? No wonder he complains about his salary and expenses sometimes, he must be up to his neck in alimony payments. He also has a child that's barely a few years younger than his now wife.

The parties revelations do seem to be a bit of a storm for him but I'm actually willing to wager he's just going to sit it out, considering his character. No way he's going to let go of his post before the end of his term, he'll have to be forced out by a cabinet mutiny. The voter might not even punish him for it either.

Last edited by Larssen (2022-01-15 05:05:23)

the voters almost certainly will. he has reneged on a lot of promises made during the harrumphing 'just get the deal done' brexit era.

the conservatives already lost one of their ancestral seats in the border shires which had been firmly blue for over two centuries, following a (yet another) cronyism/corruption scandal in which the local MP had to fall. very unusual for such safe blue seats to fall in that way.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-s … e-59693102

two of the upcoming byelections this spring are in very volatile inner-city london areas. london is one of the most politically active areas, tbh, and seats do regularly change hands. boris himself has had a few close runs during his tenure as the mayor of london, for instance, which would have been a major embarrasment (he shouldn't really have been occupying two positions at once but err, that's a long story).

it's conceivable that the conservatives will be punished in the byelections. whether it will create enough of a commotion within the closed parlours of the party itself, i.e. trigger the no-confidence process through the 1922 committee, is anyone's guess. formally about 50 or so MPs from within his own party have to write letters of no confidence. 30 have done so so far, which leaves about 20 or so more (can't recall the exact figures).

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-15 05:25:21)

everyone knew johnson was bad. even conservatives knew full well what they were taking on. he was the populist prancing pony; the good tv-ratings-man; our trump. what's more salient and relevant in the analysis is what combination of dark arts were used to hoodwink the population like this. the major right-wing tabloids, social media feeds, misinformation campaigns, cambridge analytica ... this stuff shades into 'the russians and the trump campaign' territory really fast.

and yet. it's all there, fairly out in the open. and useful idiots like you have been cracking nuts and throwing shells into the ring the whole time, delighting in the fact that 'the people' are 'taking back control' and that britain is lurching towards xenophobic, empire-deluded populism.

yes, brexit was all europe's fault.

hahaha

so: how have the tory party reacted to the massive fall-out from BoJo 'big dog' party mania?

here's the evident playbook from today's press briefings and parliamentary shenigans:

• news was 'leaked'/announced last night that they're (finally) going to defund the BBC. one of the most aggressive 'culture war' aims of the conservative right for years. the license fee will be phased out over the next few years and the BBC will have to privatise itself, inevitably changing massively in the process. more importantly, the tory party know that two things play on the national consciousness: the NHS and the BBC. make a huge shake-up announcement about the BBC and you will surely turn the media into meltdown mode over the 'BBC story' for days. aka 'change the narrative'.
• boris continues to hide. he is 'self-isolating' due to 'close contact' with an anonymous 'family member' who has supposedly tested positive. mind you, he has not exercised this sort of caution before, being rather gung ho, in fact, walking around hospitals without a mask on. there is nothing in the current UK regulations or laws that advises people to self-isolate based on a supposed contact. so boris is deciding to be a selfless saint, how very convenient ...
• priti patel, the home secretary, is today in parliament announcing plans to deploy the military/navy to the british channel, to intercept migrant boats. this bullshit again. because the UK is, of course, under imminent threat of 'invasion' from refugees attempting to cross the channel in the coldest, windiest, most impassable months of the year. this isn't so much 'change the narrative' as dogwhistle to the boorish.

nasty, nasty bunch of chancers. imagine trying to regain political capital out of a migrant/refugee crisis, and deploying the military, furthermore, in order to 'distract' from the fact you were having wine parties all summer. totally normal island.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-17 08:07:36)

the BBC is mostly bias towards the left, actually. the right really doth protest too much. especially in politics. the long-reigning bbc political correspondent, one of the most impactful and influential positions in the british media, the erstwhile laura kuenssberg, has long been in the pocket of boris+cummings+gove et al. she's very 'insider' to their circle. the idea she is somehow ever critical of government or disseminating 'left' critiques is hilarious.

the BBC has an official organisational credo of 'impartiality', which in recent years has badly been letting down reasonable discussion. for instance, on issues like climate change, if they have a climatologist or scientist expert on to speak for 5 minutes, then they'll tend to give 5 minutes over to some corporate shill or outright climate denier, too, all as part of the cult of 'fairness'. the idea that journalists should hold power to account or speak on behalf of the truth or 'facts' has become badly distorted by this pussyfooting around being seen as 'partial' on any issue. this always works in favour of the right-wing, and has historically been so in many societies where the media start to fear censure or defunding from the powers-that-be.

i mean to say, the BBC is mostly biased against the Left.

the BBC and media were roundly critical about corbyn and the grassroots momentum project built up by labour in the last 10 years.

the BBC continually gives seat-space and representation to far-right blowhards on its political pundit shows (e.g. question time, which is where the national debate takes place as far as television programming is concerned).

the BBC is largely responsible for making nigel farage a serious player in UK politics. the media couldn't look away from the nigel farage spectacle, which started as a wry joke for them (like trump) but quickly became a golem of their own making. nigel farage and his offspring have had 10x the representation, airtime, and opportunity to blow their hot air to the tv-watching public than ANY 'left-wing' cause. every single political show on the BBC now, whether in the name of that shibboleth 'impartiality' or just because the controversy makes for 'good ratings', will star at least one predictably 'outspoken' figure from the far-right who comes on to rant and accuse the politicians, media, and entire 'westminster bubble' of being 'enemies of the people'. it's an exercise in liberal self-flaggellation amongst the media elite. a left-wing organ? don't make me laugh.

in fact, you could probably say that the BBC is responsible for nurturing boris johnson as a public figure. they kept booking him on their comedy panel shows and weekly entertainment spots because he was an 'entertaining' fellow. boris johnson spent 10 years acting the lovable buffoon on british panel shows and comedies, hiding and deflecting his gross ambition and honing his schtick. it was entirely the 'elite london media bubble' producers who kept ringing his number and putting him on the telly, turning him from a disgraced ex-journalist who was blacklisted from the profession (for lying and fabricating sources) into a sort of rehabilitated 'lovable rogue' character.

it's a right-wing obsession to declare that the 'mainstream media' are all corrupt, bias, elite, metropolitan snobs, etc, etc. it's a populist ruse. the idea that the BBC has been a 'ministry of information' for left-wing propaganda is absolutely farcical.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-17 08:48:39)

These same people are probably the sort that call CNN the "communist news network" for fucks sake. I've yet to meet someone of that ilk who can properly identify a truly left-leaning news source.

the conservatives have been making noise about scrapping the BBC for years. it's one of their perennial bugbears.

recently they announced they were jettisoning channel 4, which had a partially funded model afaik, and worked as an 'alternative' voice to the BBC aimed at non-mainstream audiences/the youth demographic/etc. channel 4 is now an independent private entity.

stories about this abound. what's notable this time is that they're now pushing it through because their leadership is in the biggest crisis yet.

e.g. https://deadline.com/2020/02/petition-s … 202861288/
“Save Our BBC” Petition Gets 100,000 Signatures After Government Sources Threaten To “Whack” Broadcaster
february 2020. that petition got its requested number within 24 hours.

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/save-our-bbc-1
this is a recent one since the 'leaked' news. 340,000+ signatures in 24 hours.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-17 09:25:27)

the savile affair is a blot on the organisation's history (though i dare say a much bigger blot on the NHS, which seems to have emerged without a scrape in public opinion, seeing as they opened the wards and entire hospital wings to him for years and years).

but i don't see how defunding the BBC and replacing it with an even more opaque, even less accountable private broadcaster is going to remedy such things in future ...?

yesterday rishi sunak wrote off £4.3 billion in covid debts associated with suspected fraud.

that’s £1 billion+ more than the annual bbc license fee.

this is also a (billionaire) MP who voted twice against giving money for schoolchildren/school meals during the pandemic.

could you imagine what the ring-wing press would make out of a story involving £4.3 billion in welfare fraud/benefit cheating?