hellothere
@hellothere@sh.itjust.works
Reddit refugee
- Comment on Why there’s no legal “too hot to work” temperature in the UK 1 day ago:
Ikr, it’s like -22 at McMurdo station, people complaining about the weather are dumb bitches.
- Comment on Luxury watches, iPads and a Jaguar: what Peter Murrell bought with embezzled funds 6 days ago:
Amazes me that his wife supposedly had no idea this was going on.
- Comment on UK records hottest day of year as forecasters warn of more extreme heat 1 week ago:
Warmer, yes, but not over 30, especially in May.
- Comment on Starmer bans Labour councillors from doing deals with Polanski’s Green Party 1 week ago:
Cards on the table, I’m a labour member who voted for Corbyn as leader twice and then Starmer in 2020.
Solely attributed, no. A factor, sure.
But the fact of the matter is that the left are playing on a rigged pitch. It isn’t fair, it isn’t balanced, the media are hypocrites and will invent controvosies out of thin air. Plus our electoral system is fundamentally broken.
A perfect example is that Boris Johnson was known the ride a bicycle as Mayor of London. Nothing was made of it. When Corbyn became labour leader, suddenly he had a MAOIST BICYCLE.
So while Corbyn’s labour did get more votes cast in 2017 and 2019 than Starmer’s labour did in 2024, it was too concentrated in cities. More people also turned out to vote against him because he was easier to characture as a 1970s throwback.
Again, none of this is fair, or right. But it is the state of play, and you have to be able to overcome it. We rarely manage it, which is why the Tories have been in charge for over 2/3rds of the last 100 years.
As always, simple answers to complex questions are lies.
- Comment on Starmer bans Labour councillors from doing deals with Polanski’s Green Party 1 week ago:
Literally since day 1.
This has always been the tension between the wider labour movement - which by definition must always be advocating for more than is currently acceptable - and the party, which must present itself as a balance.
- Comment on Starmer bans Labour councillors from doing deals with Polanski’s Green Party 1 week ago:
Corbyn failed twice, he was not the guy.
- Comment on The Met and Britain’s imperial double standard 1 week ago:
No u!
- Comment on The Met and Britain’s imperial double standard 1 week ago:
Yeah, that’s not how anything works.
The Met are unbelievably useless and corrupt, that’s completely true, but investigation of potential war crimes is the job of the CTP. For once the met not getting involved is a good thing because they can’t fuck it up.
This level of journalism from Morning Star is no surprise, but I expscted more from Webb.
- Comment on The Met and Britain’s imperial double standard 1 week ago:
That could well be because this is the responsibility of CTP, and not the Met.
- Comment on This is bigger than Starmer vs. Streeting vs. Burnham 2 weeks ago:
Fucking media psychodrama. Utterly pointless waste of time.
- Comment on Keir Starmer sets out changes to education, health and courts in king’s speech 2 weeks ago:
The full media briefing document has released earlier
…gov.uk/…/The_King_s_Speech_2026_-_background_bri…
My thoughts as follows:
- the steel nationalisation bill could be interesting - the public interest test doesn’t seem to be limited to just steel, could be a good mechanism to forcibly nationalising water companies in the future (which can’t come soon enough)
- it astounds me that bringing back legal aid close to what it was before the ConDem coalition gutted it is going to cost less than 200m in todays money. Fuck Osborne.
- the energy section directly calling out how literally half of all recessions the UK has faced since 1970 have been caused by oil price shocks is great, I love Milibae so much.
- while there is no mention of it here, i really hope the votes at 16 bill ends up including PR for English council and Westminster elections. Labour cannot let Reform take advantage of the FPTP spoiler effect at the next GE.
- I really really hate the immigration and asylum changes, I expect these to be softened through backbench pressure
Overall, on the surface this is still all very incremental. Now, that could well be because this would have been finalised weeks ago, and wording agreed with Brian for his little speech. Or, it could well be because that’s all we’re gonna get regardless of what Starmer says to keep his job.
I really hope it’s the former.
While the last session did have a variety of gaffs, mistakes, and certified fuck ups, a lot of very good shit did also get done. It’s taken 800 years to remove the aristocracy from our parliament. Workers rights have been significantly improved. As have renters. Pretty much everything Miliband has done. We are getting closer to the EU and are no longer questioning whether essential allies are friend or foe. The two child limit has been removed.
I won’t pretend its everything I wanted, it barely scratches the surface, but its a fuck load more than I got in the preceeding 14 years, and that is worth something.
- Comment on The media smear campaign against Zack Polanski is working wonders 3 weeks ago:
Exactly as we saw with Corbyn.
Yes, the media is biased and serving the interests of their owners.
As a political group we bang on and on about material conditions, but we sure do love to pretend that we’re operating on a fair and level playing field, and then feign surprise and outrage.
Is it fair that anyone to the left of Ghenis Khan is pilloried? No, of course it isn’t. But it frustrates me beyond belief is that we refuse to learn that lesson.
We need to get past this idea that any individual is bigger than the movement. Like Corbyn before him, Polanski is both being unfairly targeted, and also giving easy hits by having said demonstrably dumb and/or false stuff.
Remember, this is the same media who crucified Ed Miliband, the atheist son of Jewish parents, over looking weird in a single photo while eating a bacon sandwich. And the same media who were beside themselves at Starmer (foolishly) accepting clothes and glasses, and yet are very quiet about Farage’s £5m bung.
The deck is stacked against us. We have to stop pretending it isn’t, and a big part of that is ruthlessly binning prominent people who make dumb mistakes. That’s sure as fuck unreasonable and unfair, but the alternative is continuing to damage progress.
- Comment on Zack Polanski’s Greens block anti-Zionist motion at conference 1 month ago:
Good.
By all means pass resolutions on Bibi committing war crimes and that he and his cronies should be tried in the Hague. Denounce in the strongest terms the murder of innocents.
But any third country - and especially the UK - advocating for any singular state not achieved through a peaceful democratic mandate is an utterly batshit position for any party to take.
Peace can only come from when Israeli and Palestinian people see through the poison being fed to them, and unite against their ‘leaders’.
- Comment on 2 months ago:
Wtf, I guess I hate the gays now?
- Comment on Council removes almost 1,000 flags from Derby streets 4 months ago:
You’re getting into silly reductionism now.
To an extent, but, it’s only silly because of where you draw the line compared to where someone else might.
Going back to the ref results, the borders in general had some of the highest No votes. Border psychology is a fascinating thing, and what you usually see in countries with adversarial relationships is an increasing level of self-identification and expressed difference, rather than less. People in Hawick not wanting to lynch every bastard from Otterburn is - internationally speaking - a rarity.
I guess my point overall is that Westminster absolutely need reform, FPTP needs to be fucked off, as do the Lords, and we need to move to a much more federalist system with substantial devolution. A Union of Equals would also mean that English regions get the same levels of devolution, and if we did that on population there would be 10 of those, plus Wales and NI.
But I think we also need to seriously pay attention to the lessons we’ve learnt from Brexit. Barriers to trade are a fucking nightmare. As are trade negotiations. The majority of Scotland’s total trade is to rUK, much like how the UK’s trade was to EU. In a dynamic where you’re the smaller market exporting to a larger market, you’re in a weaker negotiating position. Political, maybe spiteful, reasons give the other block reasons to drag their feet. Disentangling laws over 50 years take forever, 400 even more so.
I sincerely don’t believe that independence meaningfully improves Scotland’s position or abilities in the world. Let’s assume an independent Scotland is allowed to immediately rejoin the EU, by pretty much any measure it would be in the middle of the pack, around the same position as Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, that sorta thing.
Have a look at EU policy, what is decided, even with a more (but still pretty bad) proportional system, where money is spent, who has the most influence, etc, and I don’t see how that would be a meaningful improvement.
But that’s just where I draw my particular line - give me a federal UK within a federal EU, and I’d be content.
- Comment on Council removes almost 1,000 flags from Derby streets 4 months ago:
Christ alive.
I completely agree my home town is fucked, it’s part of the reason I left. My point re Barnett is that Holyrood gets additional money from Westminster for all the cash it spaffs in London, while the bit a few miles south of the border I now live in doesn’t and has all the same problems.
I’m a massive supporter of devolution and local decision making, and a lot more powers - especially tax raising - do need to be devolved.
Yes a lot has changed since 2014, but where you are drawing the lines on the map to decide whether something is ours or theirs is something to consider.
It’s clear that you think an independent Scotland would benefit from oil wealth - I’d agree, if for no other reason than I can’t see Holyrood selling off the drilling rights to their executive mates in BP and Shell - but if the central belt votes for independence, and everywhere else doesn’t, but due to population distribution the overall vote is Yes…well, then what?
Is that self determination?
Or is the same madness we saw with brexit, of majority rule forcing everyone else to follow them?
- Comment on Council removes almost 1,000 flags from Derby streets 4 months ago:
Am not a yank.
For my sins I live a bit south of the border, and Aberdeen before that.
Thanks for proving the emotive part of my point though.
- Comment on Council removes almost 1,000 flags from Derby streets 4 months ago:
Scots Independence is a nationalistic endevour, it’s pushed on an us and them basis with the usual strength and weakness contradictions and ahistorical myth making.
Westminster is fucked, absolutely, and the current system does not work for anyone outside of south east England and London. But imagining that a unified Scotland even existed pre-1603 is something my Isles ancestors would dispute rather strongly, especially if insisted on by lowlanders.
We should be proud of our history, there is nothing wrong with that, but pretending that there is any genuine factual case based in history, economics, political structure, or anything other than emotion, is foolish.
- Comment on Council removes almost 1,000 flags from Derby streets 4 months ago:
Nationalism is still nationalism.
- Comment on Three prisoners charged with murder of child killer Kyle Bevan 6 months ago:
I agree the bloke is awful, and his actions reprehensible.
But you do get how you’ve, literally, had to dehumanise him to justify your view, yeah?
- Comment on Head of UK’s largest union says she doesn’t know if Starmer will remain Labour leader 6 months ago:
Look, I’m not happy with what Starmer and Co have done so far in aggregate, but the PLP would be signing it’s own death warrant if they engaged in the type or psychodrama which the Tories did over the last 5 years.
A good amount of MPs already know they will likely lose their seats in 2029, but trying to accelerate that is not in their interest.
- Comment on Man sent to France under ‘one in, one out’ scheme returns to UK on small boat 7 months ago:
King. Shit.
- Comment on Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards 8 months ago:
I completely agree with not wanting the UK to be China.
But I do see these as separate things - the same issues you describe could be done with driving licences, if someone was mad enough to try.
- Comment on Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards 8 months ago:
I honestly don’t get the resistance to a standard ID card.
We already have passports, driving licences, and national insurance as work arounds to prove identity, so in and of itself I don’t get why a proper one is a problem.
I’ve literally had to carry a driving licence for over two decades just to get a beer.
- Comment on Elon Musk tells Tommy Robinson protest ‘violence is coming’ in call for change in UK government 8 months ago:
Clear cut incitement of violence, time to ban his companies outright.
- Comment on Investigation reveals Starmer's general secretary's marriage to Israeli arms lobbyist 8 months ago:
I wonder if the canary realise that they are making the same argument here as was made to not give women the vote. Namely, that a married couple will have the same views.
Granted, I do struggle to see how anyone could be married to a lobbist - let alone for arms - but association is not proof of a view.
Is there a risk? Sure, and it needs to be recorded as a potential conflict of interests and managed correctly - and, again, given all the other dumb shit that has happened this week I am sceptical that that has happened - but the assertion being made here is not a good look, at best, and arguably misogynistic at worst.
- Comment on Assisted dying bill is a ‘licence to kill’, Theresa May says 8 months ago:
So, she’s in favour?
- Comment on Left unable even to get into deputy leader contest proves Labour is dead 8 months ago:
There are many, many, things you can criticise Labour under Starmer for, but “neo-Tatcherite” is laughable and about the level of political insight as I’d expect from the canary.
Last I checked Maggie didn’t nationalise rail companies, or increase workers rights, or a mass house building programme, or make targeted invest in the north, or have an industrial policy, or put billions in to renewable. In fact, come to think of it, she did the exact opposite of every one of these things.
Am I happy with Labour right now? No. But not everything short of fully seizing the means of production is Thatcherite, and to pretend it is gives the dead bitch far too much credit.
- Comment on British soldiers still paying for sex in Kenya despite ban 9 months ago:
If I was a smart man I’d be able to construct a discharge joke, but I’m finding it rather hard.
- Comment on Half-a-million members sign up to new left-wing party founded in Britain 9 months ago:
Please re-read my comments, you’ll see what I’ve written is not what you’re claiming it is.
I’m always happy to talk about routes of how we get to a better place, but if you’re just wanting to argue then I’ll pass.