The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[Chindie]

I'm sure we'll see months, and months, and months... of Tories have an Islamophobia problem soon enough.

[HanoiVillan]

Further to @Chindie's point there, We Need To Talk About Laura Kuenssberg, specifically this tweet:

This tweet fascinates me, and she still hasn't clarified it. The question is obviously 'what do you mean 'on [a] different political scale''? Does she mean that in a quantitative sense, ie. the Tories contain some Islamaphobes but nowhere near as many as anti-semites in Labour, in which case I very much want to see the sums on that. Or does she mean it in a qualitative sense, ie. Islamaphobia just isn't as important as anti-semitism, in which case that seems to me to be just obviously racist. Or does she mean what I in fact think she actually means, which is 'there's a problem of Islamaphobia in the Conservative party, but I spend much less time thinking and writing about it than I do anti-semitism and Labour because I don't know how big it is, as I haven't done any investigation and nobody in the Tory party is prepared to give me any quotes or information on it'. 

[Seat68]

Maybe she means its massively more widespread.

[HanoiVillan]

14 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

Maybe she means its massively more widespread.

. . .  then the question she needs to consider is why she hasn't spent many months covering it. 

[Seat68]

4 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

. . .  then the question she needs to consider is why she hasn't spent many months covering it. 

In all honesty, and this is my opinion and maybe not her reasons, maybe because we know the tories are snakes, they hiss, they shed skin and they slither on the ground. So when they display their snake like tendencies, well its a snake being a snake. 

Labour on the other hand are ducks, they have feathers, they go quack and they waddle. Occasionally they shit on your washing but on the whole they are harmless as ducks arent predators, they just quack a lot. That said its far more newsworthy for a duck to  turn into a snake, than a snake just being a snake.

[blandy]

14 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

This tweet fascinates me, and she still hasn't clarified it. The question is obviously 'what do you mean 'on [a] different political scale''?

Because unlike Labour, who are fractiously divided, arguing and losing MPs over anti semitism, the tories are not doing the same over islamophobia. Politically anti semitism is a major obstacle for labour ever getting elected. The same is not impacting the tories. There’s also the issue of the Tory leader not being seen as part of the cause of the problem, whereas the labour one is.

id like to think tory mps would do as some labour ones have and call it out. I’m not holding my breath. But nor am I expecting the tories to say it’s manufactured, it’s not racism, it’s all a plot by the left....

so yeah, it is on a different scale, politically, for a whole bunch of reasons.

its equally vile on a normal persons level

[Risso]

19 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Further to @Chindie's point there, We Need To Talk About Laura Kuenssberg, specifically this tweet:

This tweet fascinates me, and she still hasn't clarified it. The question is obviously 'what do you mean 'on [a] different political scale''? Does she mean that in a quantitative sense, ie. the Tories contain some Islamaphobes but nowhere near as many as anti-semites in Labour, in which case I very much want to see the sums on that. Or does she mean it in a qualitative sense, ie. Islamaphobia just isn't as important as anti-semitism, in which case that seems to me to be just obviously racist. Or does she mean what I in fact think she actually means, which is 'there's a problem of Islamaphobia in the Conservative party, but I spend much less time thinking and writing about it than I do anti-semitism and Labour because I don't know how big it is, as I haven't done any investigation and nobody in the Tory party is prepared to give me any quotes or information on it'. 

It's hard to know what Laura K means most of the time, because she's as thick as a whale omelette.  At a time when politicians from both sides are mostly all utterly inept, it's good to see the BBC following suit by appointing someone with a similar level of ability as Grayling and Corbyn etc.

[HanoiVillan]

7 hours ago, blandy said:

Because unlike Labour, who are fractiously divided, arguing and losing MPs over anti semitism, the tories are not doing the same over islamophobia. Politically anti semitism is a major obstacle for labour ever getting elected. The same is not impacting the tories.

As I said above, I think this question of internal party dynamics is indeed why it's not being covered. 

But just so we're clear, these are abysmal reasons for the BBC not to be reporting this stuff. 'News' isn't only 'news' when it's convenient for the Conservative party to talk about it, and nobody applies that standard to Labour. If the issue is that Kuenssberg is just a stenographer, writing down the opinions of powerful people, and if the challenge here is that no powerful people are giving those opinions, then they should **** well get a real journalist to actually do some investigation on the subject instead. 

Shrugging the issue off and saying 'well, the Tories just aren't divided are they' or 'well, Tories are always awful aren't they' is just allowing them to play politics on the easy setting. 

[blandy]

54 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

As I said above, I think this question of internal party dynamics is indeed why it's not being covered. 

But just so we're clear, these are abysmal reasons for the BBC not to be reporting this stuff. 'News' isn't only 'news' when it's convenient for the Conservative party to talk about it, and nobody applies that standard to Labour. If the issue is that Kuenssberg is just a stenographer, writing down the opinions of powerful people, and if the challenge here is that no powerful people are giving those opinions, then they should **** well get a real journalist to actually do some investigation on the subject instead. 

Shrugging the issue off and saying 'well, the Tories just aren't divided are they' or 'well, Tories are always awful aren't they' is just allowing them to play politics on the easy setting. 

I think we've said on here that all parties have racist dimwits in them. Labour has a problem (pick your own assessment of the scale of it) with anti-semitism in particular. The tories with anti muslim stuff, UKIP - well...

That's not in itself major news - "society has some effwits" and some of them are in parties.

In terms of party politics, Labour is clearly split, to the extent of MPs resigning due to it and others slagging of the leader and others about it publicly and arguing publicly over how to deal with their problem (pick your own assessment of the scale of it). That's more News. It's rare and has never happened before.

The tories a few years ago were the focus of them being anti-muslim. Warsi resigned from the cabinet over it. That was newsworthy and was extensively covered in the media. The lamentable windrush and hostile immigration policy has been covered in depth - much flak sent at May and Rudd and etc.

Quite often I think the BBC gets its politics coverage askew. They give too much airtime and weight to government lines and supporters, and they have for years and years. Since Blair and Iraq. The opposition gets less of a hearing. It's compounded when the opposition leader doesn't want to talk to them as much as previous leaders.

My view is that on this narrow tweet, there's nothing awry with it. Labour's anti-semitism thing is more politically significant than the tories islamaphobia because it's led to open rows and splits in the party. I genuinely have no idea if it's worse or not than the problem the tories have.

[peterms]

This is what they do.  It's their modus operandum.

 

[snowychap]

And they've pulled the Financial Services Bill from today's business - that's business that was decided just last Thursday.

 

What an utter shambles.

[snowychap]

 

[Jon]

And yet he's still in his job.  

Edited March 4, 2019 by Jon

[snowychap]

22 minutes ago, Jon said:

And yet he's still in his job.  

He must have a basement full of kompromat.

[chrisp65]

2 hours ago, snowychap said:

He must have a basement full of kompromat.

If Chris Grayling had a basement do you seriously think he could get out of it?

He'd end up needing a crane driver to dig him a tunnel.

[PompeyVillan]

On 03/03/2019 at 08:49, blandy said:

Because unlike Labour, who are fractiously divided, arguing and losing MPs over anti semitism, the tories are not doing the same over islamophobia. Politically anti semitism is a major obstacle for labour ever getting elected. The same is not impacting the tories. There’s also the issue of the Tory leader not being seen as part of the cause of the problem, whereas the labour one is.

I'd not thought of this, good point..

[Xela]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

If Chris Grayling had a basement do you seriously think he could get out of it?

He'd end up needing a crane driver to dig him a tunnel.

The tunnel digging contract would go to a company with no previous experience of digging tunnels and that own no cranes. 

[bickster]

22 minutes ago, Xela said:

The tunnel digging contract would go to a company with no previous experience of digging tunnels and that own no cranes. 

Hi Chris, how does a crane dig a tunnel? (Is the £5 mine?)

[peterms]

1 hour ago, PompeyVillan said:

I'd not thought of this, good point..

I'd suggest the aim of the campaign is to distract and debilitate the party.  The electoral consequences are a secondary goal, in that few people will decide not to vote for them because of claims of antisemitism, but many more will not vote for them if they can be prssented as in disarray and failing to manage internal conflict.  The immediate impact is on party morale, cohesion, perceived credibility, and electoral consequences flow from that rather than primarily the presenting issue.

[bickster]

4 minutes ago, peterms said:

I'd suggest the aim of the campaign is to distract and debilitate the party.  The electoral consequences are a secondary goal, in that few people will decide not to vote for them because of claims of antisemitism, but many more will not vote for them if they can be prssented as in disarray and failing to manage internal conflict.  The immediate impact is on party morale, cohesion, perceived credibility, and electoral consequences flow from that rather than primarily the presenting issue.

Both parties are in complete disarray, no campaign required, it's there in plain sight jumping up and down wearing blue and red clown outfits, each clown is asking to be punched in the face repeatedly.

Having a conspiracy theory claiming dark forces are out to distract and debilitate either of the parties is a bit of a waste of time, they've managed it all on their own.