Rayvin

You don't think it qualifies as an unnecessary journey in the middle of a national lockdown? I think it rather does

Keir Starmer "supports Johnson's trip to Scotland" despite it coming just after us passing the 100,000 death threshold when it could be argued that there are other priorities beyond photo opportunities. "I'm with the prime minister on this one," he told LBC Radio. "He is the prime minister of the UK. It's important that he travels to see what is going on, on the ground."

I mean, they they think are redistributing wealth rather than me thinking it, you'd have to take that up with them I'm certain some of them will end up having made quite a lot. Not all of them, many will lose a great deal - but some of them.

Yep - but they appear to have bought into the notion that bloodying the nose of the big guy is worth the loss.

As an aside, is anyone following the Reddit driven takedown of the US financial market Incredible stuff so far. Some hedge fund shorted the stock for GameStop, which I assume is some soon to die video game retailer, and a stock trading subreddit took this as some kind of call to arms. The upshot is that huge numbers of 'average joes' have bought large quantities of the stock, thus exposing the hedge fund to, so far, $1bn of losses. It's now being covered across the MSM, Biden's office is monitoring the situation, and various stock trading apps are trying to prevent non-hedge fund buyers from investing further into Gamestop (i.e. they've made is impossible) which is pulling senior politicians into the mix. The subreddit seems to think this is 'wealth re-distribution' in action, although they are also quite exposed here if the stock doesn't hold. And I mean, eventually there'll be some massive sell off - but even so, it's causing an absolute clusterfuck on WallStreet, and for that it's worth paying a bit of attention to.

Not doubting his accomplishments - just not sure it's enough that this sort of thing is enough when it is then reversed by a decade plus of the Tories. Totally agree on the last bit on the internationalism - it's absolutely vital.

No I totally agree - he wouldn't have. Maybe first time around, not this time. Biden was the right move insofar as he was the winning move - but all I'm saying more generally is that it would be nice to have an option for something positive for society to move towards, instead of two different shades of decline - managed or full throttle.

Agreed, but Paris alone isn't going to be enough. The boring centrists as you call them are indeed stable hands, but that only appears to be good for slowing the descent, not turning it around and climbing back up. Are they the sorts of people who can take the radical action we probably do need to deal with the challenges we face? Probably not. If they're a gateway to those radical people then that's fair enough, but I'm not sure that evidence shows that they are. Hopefully Biden will be radical indeed on certain issues while being beige on others. Climate change would probably be the only one he could be, but frankly that wouldn't be a bad outcome at all.

No one is arguing that they can't. The argument is whether they're ever capable of doing enough. And if you look at our failure to tackle wealth inequality and climate change across the world in general, it does rather feel like our options for governance are for things to get bad quickly or slowly.

Yes, same - suspending arms sales to Saudi is a good move. The thing about federal prisons isn't the big move that it's being painted as but is still 'good'. Apparently it was in place before Trump though so he's really just reverting back to what already existed. Iran still looks like a problem area for some reason. Maybe that's a work in progress. Branding climate change as a threat to the US Armed Forces is a masterstroke though

Because of course it has People are hopeless.

Is "build back better" a new political buzz term or something? I thought it was a Johnson slogan representing inadequacy, but i see Biden has latched onto it too, and sports it on his Twitter account.

Do they still have their borders closed?

Is this one of those rare occasions when we want to be stuffed so that we can be rid of the manager? I expect him to squeak a 1-1 draw on the basis that it'll keep him in the job for one more painful week.

Yes, that's basically it. Nissan's "competitive advantage from brexit" is that everyone else got fucked.

Would we take Lampard here? I reckon we could do worse.

Lying by omission I guess.

Is this the one that is 8 times more resistant to vaccines? I'm struggling to keep up with the doomscrolling tbh, I've long assumed we bottomed out into a hell dimension sometime around 2016.

Let's not kid ourselves that the odd leave voter here or there lamenting the situation is representative of all of them. I'd wager that same 40% that vote Tory still fundamentally believe this is a downside free exercise in reclaiming sovereignty.

The guardian has a more detailed article on the Nissan situation. The supply chain problems are being caused by global shortages of computer chips due to problems producing them, rather than import issues. Also, Nissan are claiming that Brexit has delivered them a competitive advantage because the deal sets out that from 2027, car batteries for all EU/UK cars will need to be produced in the EU or UK. Nissan happens to have a car battery plant right next door to it that supplies it exclusively. So that's allegedly their advantage over everyone else. What I'm confused about is what difference Brexit has made to this (I assume this battery policy is actually an EU directive) unless the UK government were the ones who insisted on it.

More than anything it was the BBC who failed us. The FT isn't read by the sorts of people who needed to be persuaded and the gutter press weren't going to do us any favours. Kuensberg has a lot to answer for as the BBC's lead political editor. Along with Marr. And whoever it was at the BBC who decided to leave Johnson pretty much unchallenged despite all his bullshit. Piers bloody Morgan is doing a better job of holding the government to account for their bullshit than the BBC are for crying out loud.

IMO the media have Neville Chamberlain'd us into this with consistent appeasement of the nutjobs. It's not balance if one side is entirely making things up - it's muddying the water. What we have needed throughout was for the BBC to put journalistic integrity ahead of its own survival. That's clearly not in the BBC's interests in terms of the people who work for it, but it would have been in the country's interests. And the former explains why it didn't happen, I think. And the rest of the media just fell about it along traditional biases.

Is there any logic or benefit to us not recognising the EU ambassador? Or are we just being cunts?

I can't recall the numbers now but it's worth noting that a reasonable percentage of working class white people who voted for Trump, also voted for Obama. Clinton lost their votes. So it either has a woman problem, or it has a rage at the status quo and general shitness of life problem. I mean it has a race problem too, clearly

Biden will reverse it all before it comes in of course, but it's worth saying anyway what an unmitigated cunt that man is.