The Politics Thread

Let me get this straight: de Pfeffel was wearing an earpiece at PMQs today...yet he still couldn't muster a better response than "Stop picking on meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"?

 

But the clever thing is you know who is pulling the strings but can't see them

 

Was he though - has it been established/confirmed?

 

The official line from Downing Street is that his ear always looks like that

Errm...does it?

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Trump lying again. During the D.C. protests,Trump went into the White House bunker for safety. He says he went to inspect it!!!!!?
I wonder if Boris has a nice safe bunker below number 10?....or he could hide in the Parliament cellars. I hear they sometimes store gunpowder there!

 

There's reportedly a whole network of tunnels and bunkers beneath Whitehall

The obvious one is the Cabinet War Rooms, since that's a tourist attraction (although that is a small part of a much larger facility) and the former Down Street tube station as that too was used as a bunker, but there's also what is known as Q-Whitehall that spreads from Trafalgar Square to the Treasury to the National Archives

 

Astonishing

 

Rees-Mogg's grand plan of dragging MPs into Parliament to vote is looking really clever now that Alok Sharma's tested positive for Covid, doesn't it?

 

Has he though? Haven't seen confirmation. Even if free, doesn't change how stupid it is. Imagine an MP dies after contracting it.

 

He's currently self-isolating as he waits for the test results - although Brandon Lewis trying to claim it was hayfever isn't going to age well

On the subject of things not aging well, this aged badly in a matter of hours...

 

Never had a fever from hayfever (despite the name), even though I get it bad some years.

 

Looks like Emily Maitlis is daring the BBC to bench her again

 

With the background that General Mattis, one of the most respected military men in the US, has basically called Trump a Nazi.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52915816

Trump's response was to just lie a lot, of course. Standard.

 

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reminded the entire armed forces that they serve the Constitution, not the bloke in the White House

Looking forward to the newly recommissioned USS New Jersey sailing down to Mar A Lago...

 

The script says that the Republicans are the pro-military party with military-like leaders (unlike the Democrats). Or so they would have you believe.

And yet when given the opportunity to behave like real leaders they do quite the opposite. Trump skulks off to the basement instead of facing the crowd directly which would probably have made no difference to them but would have done a lot for his credibility. Mind you of course he managed to avoid service in Vietnam as well because of bone spurs in his foot (which apparently have now healed - except bone spurs don't heal apparently). In addition to that he has been notably disrespectful (that's putting it mildly) to some prominent veterans (Sen John McCain, ex defence sec Jim Mattis, Sen Conor Lamb to name but a few). Of course another "great Republican leader" was Bush Jr who also notably managed to avoid service in Vietnam. During the "war on terror" (a stupid thing to call it IMHO), he was touted as a great leader. Yet this great leader firstly couldn't cope with the news of the second plane impact and just carried on for seven minutes in front of the school group he was with, and then disappeared for eight hours, we find out later flying around in Air Force One instead of fronting up. These are not actions of a leader, they are the actions of someone who can't cope with what has happened. Later there was a bullshit excuse of there being a confirmed threat against the President, but we now know that the security services were a long way from knowing what was happening that day. Also although I don't know of Bush being directly disrespectful to veterans, the campaign waged by his advisers against Sen Kerry, the "swift boat campaign" was one of the most disgraceful episodes of US political history in my opinion. Here the so-called party of the military sought to undermine a decorated veteran in favour of a candidate who avoided service.

 

Meanwhile,Comrade Putin remains quiet. He's probably sitting watching American telly laughing his bloody head off at the Trump antics,as he downs his daily vodka.

 

He's actually off whacking some idiots, as they supposedly didn't mention a massive oil spill:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52915807

 

On the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, let's look back at what Trump said about it in 1990:
“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it.”
“Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength."
"Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world.”