Off Topic Politics Thread

They all have their own angles and agendas to push, and it’s rarely one that’s honest or good for society.

 

Starmer has confirmed he will resign if fined.

Ballsy move, Johnson cannot win in this situation at best he is now in political MAD.

Labour just need to ensure that if he does go they get someone in that can really hammer the nail in the coffin.

 

I’d assume if he legitimately feels he did nothing wrong then he will appeal in the first instance. We are talking about a top QC here. I struggle to believe he knowingly breached the rules. He might have done but it doesn’t seem right

What is interesting is how much the gutter press have pushed this. Is it really out of desperation to try and protect Johnson ? Or are they terrified of Starmer? The latter doesn’t seem right. But the former doesn’t make sense because “he did something similar but noway near as bad and not when it was him who set the rules and forced them on bereaved families” is just not a defence really

 

It’s distraction, pure and simple. A concerted campaign to divert attention from the utterly humiliating council election results, the imminent recession, the complete ****up in NI caused entirely by Brexshit, and a million other things.

If Starmer breached the rules, resignation is the honourable thing to do. He knows he didn’t, so he can afford to make a statement like that. As Shandy says above, it actually puts Starmer into the moral high ground.

 

They've tied themselves in knots, trying to catch Starmer out. And now he's cut the Gordian knot, and left them looking stupid.

 

Basically what was discussed in these two videos :

 

Thing is - it works. My dad is one of those who is convinced that Starmer did something wrong. And he actually get the paper which in theory means that he can read the story and realise that the headlines are misleading

It does seem like something that (as per the videos) is designed to basically trick people who just read the headlines on the newsstand rather than the whole thing. But i guess if you desperately want to believe things like:

- Labour are always worse than or at least just as bad as the tories (or hypocrites if neither)
- Johnson is lord and saviour
- what he did wasn’t that bad, etc

Then maybe you do just dispense with all critical reading skills and don’t spot that it is nonsense. Or even don’t spot that there was already an investigation and now is only another due to media pressure. And that Starmer was investigated a hell of a lot more quickly for something much more minor than the Met and Boris

 

Well said Chilcs....can't like your comment enough!

I've looked closely at the evidence and can't see how it could possibly be construed as breaking the law.

 

The first question, about the Starmer incident, should be aimed at the police.
They have, allegedly, been offered a mountain of evidence backed up by a number of witness statements that would nail Dominic Cummins for breaching Covid rules, BUT they still refuse to look at the case a second time.
Yet, “new information” that hasn’t yet been revealed (as far as I know) is enough to look at Starmer a second time.
If this eventually blows over with “nothing to see here”, then comparison should be made between the Durham police and the Met, with regards to impartiality and the top cop put under the same pressure that Cressida Dick was.
Time the police remembered that they are here to uphold the law and serve the public, and not act as a private protection force for certain MPs.
If I knew that Andy Burnham was lined up to be fast tracked to replace Starmer, I would give the police a statement myself.

 

Most of my family reads similar media and has a similar attitude, however what I would say is they are all die hard Tories and would never ever consider voting anything else in a million years, at most they won't vote if disillusioned (my Dad refused to vote for May for example). Reason I say this is I think beergate is only likely to preach to the choir, most of whom if pissed off by partygate, will still remain pissed off about partygate regardless of the outcome here.

Interestingly I did the Yougov live poll on it earlier and there were various swings around rights and wrongs and if Starmer should resign if fined (the majority said yes), however what is really notable is the final question was 'which is more serious, partygate or beergate?' at the time 0% said beergate! I think they are not convincing the people they are trying to reach that 'all politicians are the same'.

 

“Sometimes politics just blows your mind. Starmer's currently getting heat for a fine he hasn't received, over a party which didn't take place and which he did not lie about. The guy who did receive a fine, for parties which did take place, which he did ****ing lie about? Nothing.

A smear campaign started in Tory HQ, executed by the right-wing press, boosted by the broadcasters, and carried through by the police. And it doesn't make the slightest sense at all.”

 

People believe what they want to believe, mostly. And any new knowledge generally just feeds their - or rather, our - prejudices.

 

So, like, not quite mutiny, but we're getting mutiny-adjacent here.

 

The crypto market is crashing, and one of the major stablecoins (which are meant to be a medium for exchange between USD and crypto) looks like it might be about to collapse.

I really, really hope that Os didn't actually put all of his money into Bitcoin as he suggested that he would. Even though my opinion is that crypto is a series of Ponzi schemes backed by TED talks, it really sucks that a lot of people are going to lose big because they bought into the promises of web3.0.

 

Doesn’t it go through multiple “crashes”. Often a year? Which stable one might be about to crash?

 

****ed if I know but I do like a nice graph

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The Daily Mail's headline today is an attempt to make out that Starmer MUST have done something wrong, or at least more wrong than Johnson.

Faced with the possibility that Starmer is actually not guilty of anything, the Mail is now claiming that Starmer is 'Piling pressure on Police', so that if he is found guilty, the Mail was right, and if he is found innocent, it must have been because the police didn't do their job.

A brilliant example of the 'Have you stopped beating your wife?' court questioning.

 

If we think we have it bad here with our politicians my Filipino partner has spent all day watching her country elect the son of Ferdinand Marcos by an absolutely massive landslide.

For those not already aware the Marcos family hold the world record for greatest theft from a nation and ruled the Philippines through martial law in living memory.

The main opposition (the current Vice-President) was an obviously completely unelectable combination of a Human Rights Lawyer and Anti-Corruption campaigner.

Another election victory brought to you by the geniuses at Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, nice work!

 

Bitcoin is the only one that truly matters. The rest are mostly a waste of time.

The current situation is that UST (otherwise known as Terra) which is designed to be an algorithmic stablecoin is being attacked by someone with a lot of money in order to try and destroy it. UST should always remain at $1 and it dropped as low as $0.80.

Many bitcoiners were warning of this risk. Crypto is still the best performing asset of the decade even after the recent drawdowns.

 

Shandy

I have been following the election in PH too as I am in a similar situation. I am not sure how versed you are in the history of the Philppines but I have had the discussion with my friend who comes from Mindinao about this too. The whole raison d'etre for voting for "BongBong" Marcos seems absurd to westerners given the People Power revolution that previously swept aside his parents. It seems crazy that they wish to give this achievement up whilst at the same time recognising that Marcos is replacing Duterte who has his own questions to answer regarding serious human rights abuses.

I find the whole thing staggering. My friend's late brother was arrested and detained by the police on trumped up charges with the consequence that his health seriously declined. I find it staggering that, even after that experience, my friend was still very much for Duterte and has subsequently voted for MArcos and Sara Duterte as vice-president. They cannot see a link between the behaviour of their police and their government. I am aware that all her PH colleagues have voted the same way as well but I think the election of Marcos goes beyond the "fake news" Facebook campaigns which give the impression of being far more devastating than anything we have so far witnessed in the West. They seem oblivious to what they are voting for, It is very much a wake up call if you thought that the Brexit result took some explaining due to mis-information. This is on a far grander scale than anything attempted by Trump and significant enough to produce an over-wheming landslide victory. We are not talking about small margins here. I find this to be extremely alarming as the Marcos family's reputation has been remarkably salvaged.

Websites such as the BBC's and even right-wing newspapers such as the Sunday Telegraph have been extremely negative about Marcos and the hopes for the country but the majority with which Marcos has been re-elected is a salutary lesson for the West. You have alluded to Leni Abredo whose belated campaign was undermined by the fact that she was seem as very much part of the PH "establishment." Whilst I concede that she is very much in the model of liberal lawyers such as Sir Keir Starmer, there is an added problem for her insofar that PH politics has been dominated by a number of families who are very much part of the establishment over there and have been since the closing days of Spanish occupation. These "establishment" families have dominated politics there for well over a century. There is a great mistrust of these families and it does help explain the reluctance to vote for them amongt the population. In so many ways, you could imagine someone like Robredo succeeding in the UK yet they have consistently chosen unbsuitable "strong men" as leaders such as Duterte and Estrada who have proposed to solve the country's issues as opposed to the establishment figures like Acquino who is associated with corruption. Political candidates from the Left are very much a fringe / novelty act albeit I believe Communist guerillas were at one time operating in the north. The situation in Mindinao to the south is more worrying as this is the second largest island and was predominantly Muslim until re-settlement of Christians post-WW2 changed the situation - largely to the detriment of the Muslim population.

There appears to be no Socialist party in PH and the political views of people from that country I have spoken would be considered to be amongst the lunatic fringe of the Conservatives in this country. I knew little about the PH until I had read William Boyd's exceptional novel "The blue afternoon" which led me to read more on the history of the country. I think that the American involvement in the country between 1899 and 1946 did not really do much to rectify the misrule of the Spanish and instead appears to have simply passed on their bad habits to this country. The Philppines are deemed to be amongst the most stable in SE Asia yet independent journalism has been under constant threat even though a website like Rappler that is well respected and considered necessary in the West is not so well considered over there. As much as we can admire the Nobel Peace prize winner and figurehead for Rappler, Maria Ressa, a large proprtion of Filipino's actively dislike her. TV stations have been taken off the air in PH on the pretext of unpaid tax albeit this is really to silence anti-governement opinion,

I think we are used to seeing the likes of Facebook manipulate and distort political opinion aftet the electrion of Trump , Johnson and the Brexit farago yet what has happened to day is probably the most serious instance where it has generated the manifeslty "wrong" result.