tenebrisnox
@tenebrisnox@feddit.uk
Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash… and I’m delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever!
- Baron Munchausen
- Comment on More than half of England officially in drought - Environment Agency 1 day ago:
wHaT aBoUt 1976?
- Comment on Blow to NHS as Royal Mail raises prices for bulk users by a third 3 days ago:
But just think what the UK would have been like if Thatcher and those “Winston Churchill”-sprited neo liberals hadn’t privatised everything: a perpetual cost of living crisis, low wages, high mortgages and rents, housing shortages, sky-high energy costs, hosepipe bans, sewage pumped into our rivers and seas, declining welfare services, town centres boarded up… oh… maybe not then…
- Comment on Labour overtakes Reform in voter poll for first time since March 2025 4 days ago:
Reform’s a one-man show. Without Farage it’ll revert to a tiny fringe party and all the Tories will creep back to their proper homes and be warmly embraced. The proper neo-nazis and fascists will slither back into their cells waiting for the next populist to align themselves with.
- Comment on Burnham to make some benefits conditional and ‘get serious’ about cutting welfare 4 days ago:
The devil is in the hand of the officious DWP worker who presses a button to stop genuinely ill people from receiving welfare support on the basis of “You look ok to me!” Welfare support in the UK is already among the lowest in the Western World in a country that keeps telling itself it’s the 6th richest.
- Comment on Man, 28, charged with murder of former UK MP Ann Widdecombe 1 week ago:
I’m in “pure paranoid conspiracy mode” here and wearing a tin foil hat… but there’s something of a synchronicity about Farage trying to use his personal safety as a justification for the £millions he’s been gifted. The media’s interest in that has certainly diminished since Widdecomb’s death. But, like I say, I’m in zany nut case mode and in a rational world of decent men and women stuff like this never happens.
- Comment on Man, 28, charged with murder of former UK MP Ann Widdecombe 1 week ago:
Or the British security services have finally learned from the Americans how to groom mentally ill people, give them a weapon or a bomb and point them towards someone or someplace. Oven-ready terrorist.
- Comment on Thames Water announces hosepipe ban 1 week ago:
Is it still the case that people with a swimming pool in their back garden can get a note for their GP which can be used to apply for an exemption from the ban?
- Comment on Mocking regional accents is last form of acceptable discrimination, says MP 2 weeks ago:
I was going to make a snarky comment about the MP, Ian Lavery, who said this and checked his voting record. He seems to be on the better end of the Labour Party. So wont.
- Comment on Thames Water has given a 14% pay rise to its CEO and a 26% rise to its finance director 2 weeks ago:
bUt YoU’vE gOt tO pAy FoR tOp TaLeNt, HaVeN’t YoU?
- Comment on I investigated Palantir’s foothold in the British state – and what I found should worry us all | Peter Geoghegan 2 weeks ago:
Don’t forget that it was Mandelson and his firm who lobbied government for Palantir. There is a literal coup of Western governments taking place by the Epstein class - and Palantir is one of the tools they’re using.
- Comment on I investigated Palantir’s foothold in the British state – and what I found should worry us all | Peter Geoghegan 2 weeks ago:
Maybe it’s not the party but Westminster government that’s the thing that needs real change. Even Green MPs have to swear an oath of allegiance to the Monarchy. And even Reform for all their whining about elites and The Establishment are more than willing to bend the knee.
- Comment on James Bond should stay white and male, says casting chief 2 weeks ago:
Bond wasn’t British until Connery played the role. In the novels he was English and had an incipid racist dislike of the Scots and Welsh. He was also a misogynist and a homohobe. He was also pretty much a cowardly assassin. He was supposed to look like the American songwriter Hoagy Carmichael. Initially the tv series Danger Man was going to be an Ian Fleming-weitten Bond TV series at the end of the 1950s with Patrick McGoohan as Bond until McGoohan seemed to politically object to playing the character. Bond’s characterisation has always altered. (A good book to read about all this is John Higgs’ excellent Love and Let Die.)
Today Bond has the ability to be reshaped by the current dominant culture to try and reflect how the UK sees itself. There’s no surprise that because we struggle to define what British is, defining a contemporary Bond is equally difficult. Becomes part of the culture wars.
A solution (possibly cop-out) I’d like to see is for a new Bond movie (or TV series) to be set immediately after World War Two and present him in much the way he’s depicted in the Casino Royale and Live and Let Die novels: late thirties, scar across his cheek, cruel mouth, skin grafts and all. I thought the recent Ripley adaptation was good and they way I’d like to see Bond go.
- Comment on South East Water to pay £30.5m penalty after multiple supply failures 2 weeks ago:
What happens when they simply increase bills and say “Nothing to do with fines!”? We know they are going to increase them again.
- Comment on Free school meal pupils falling further behind their peers, report warns 2 weeks ago:
Maybe read it and you’ll learn that it’s saying that the gap between disadvantaged children and their better-off peers continues to widen at a dramatic rate (unlike most other Western countries). Bearing in mind the huge cuts to early years provisions and family support services during Austerity (and continue now!) there’s no surprise it’s happening.
- Comment on James Bond should stay white and male, says casting chief 2 weeks ago:
I’m hoping Daniel Craig returns as a cyborg rebuilt from the nanonots in his body. The first scene should be him as a skeleton sailing a speedboat out of the nuclear explosion at the end of the last movie, with the nanobots rebuilding his muscles and flesh drinking a martini. After that the producers can just borrow the idea of the Bloodshot comic character. They could throw in the ability of the nanobots to alter his appearance so multiple actors can play the role in the same movie. Then have flying sharks with golden teeth, a plot by a polar bear with a Russian oligarch’s brain to turn the world into a bee hive and clones of Bonds dead loves brought back to life for him to fight and have sex with (at the same time!) - with the twist that they have radioactive genitals. Amazon, if you’re reading this, I’m available for scriptwriting hire.
- Comment on South East Water to pay £30.5m penalty after multiple supply failures 2 weeks ago:
Brilliant! Now they’re going to have to put up my bill again to pay for this. The shareholders won’t have their profits impacted by rulings like this.
- Comment on Gary Stevenson: 'Tax wealth or we'll return to the feudal age' 3 weeks ago:
Let them live in their floating city states or in their underground bunkers like erzatz Bond villains. Let’s see how much wealth they create there.
- Comment on Gary Stevenson: 'Tax wealth or we'll return to the feudal age' 3 weeks ago:
I’d love to know that, too. Would definitely like to have some books recommended by reputable historians who say feudalism never existed.
- Comment on More than 300,000 pupils estimated absent after England World Cup win 3 weeks ago:
Schools are going nuts at the moment about attendance due to central govt targets. Look at the craziness with schools shutting at 1pm during the heatwave so they could claim attendance figures - while sending children to walk home at the hottest part of the day.
- Comment on More than 300,000 pupils estimated absent after England World Cup win 3 weeks ago:
Who decides what “quality time” is, though? Seems unfair if watching a football match is ok but a child taking a day off to do something equally valid with their family (a different sporting event in which they the child was participating) gets penalised. (This does happen.)
It would be fairer to give all children something like a handful of days they may use (pehaps 5 a year?) they can use for family-related, sporting, cultural and religious activities. Events like the World Cup can be flagged up in advance and parents and their children can choose whether or not to use their allocation.
- Comment on ‘I felt my spine and body split’: the woman who was hit by a child on a Lime bike – and denied compensation 3 weeks ago:
I’m going to sound like an old person but: What was a 10 year old doing on their own in central London (let alone how did a 10 year old manage to steal an ebike)?
- Comment on Teachers in England get two-year 6.6% pay rise but schools to foot part of bill 3 weeks ago:
I’ve known decent teachers (and really effective classroom teachers) utterly corrupted by becoming senior managers and the stink of money and authority. They turn into the people they despised when they started their careers.
- Comment on Teachers in England get two-year 6.6% pay rise but schools to foot part of bill 3 weeks ago:
One of our local MATs has a CEO on £400k plus £60k pension contribution per year. AND a personal car and chauffeur to drive him from school to school. Apparently, it’s like royalty arriving when he turns up to do a tour and shout at people.
- Comment on Teachers in England get two-year 6.6% pay rise but schools to foot part of bill 3 weeks ago:
It’s effectively a pay cut. Schools are already making staff redundant to manage budgets. It means that teachers have to fill the gaps, teach bigger classes, make do with less resources and so on. Working more for an in line with inflation pay rise.
A local primary school near us has made two-thirds of its teaching assistants resundant and two full-time classroom teachers. The remaining staff have been rallied and told to “pull together” and “plug the gaps”. For the children, of course.
- Comment on Police criticise decision to let pubs stay open until 5am for England match 4 weeks ago:
And potentially dangerous if England lose and men who’ve drunk all day have no one else other than each other and early morning commuters to punch.
- Comment on Bob Vylan to sue BBC for defamation over Glastonbury coverage 4 weeks ago:
I’m still trying to comprehend how genuine white-supremicist anti-semite neo-nazis can support Isreal and froth at the mouth in outrage about attacks on Jewish people. The world has not only turned upside down but inside out as well.
- Comment on UK state threats bill could pull British journalists into terror prosecutions, experts say 4 weeks ago:
It also includes journalists.
- Comment on Keir Starmer says some road and energy projects will be scrapped to pay for £15bn defence plan 4 weeks ago:
It’s for defensing the homes and assets of the rich. Lord Fitzwankle of ChorleyFlockbum is terrified that the Chinese have designs on his Olympic-sized swimming pool next to the maze in his estate’s grounds. Of course, Lord Fitzwankle wants his security paid for out of general taxation by cutting spending on state education, NHS and welfare.
- Comment on Keir Starmer says some road and energy projects will be scrapped to pay for £15bn defence plan 4 weeks ago:
Some would call thousands of foreign troops stationed in a country an occupying force.
- Comment on Keir Starmer says some road and energy projects will be scrapped to pay for £15bn defence plan 4 weeks ago:
UK is already the sixth biggest spender on defence without this latest “upgrade”. Where is all the money going if - supposedly - we don’t have a large standing army, much of the hardware doesn’t work and it takes weeks for a military vessel to set sail? Lots of this is propaganda, of course. Maybe not upgrading all the nukes at a cost of £63 billion might shift some of the money? Maybe asking WHO is being defended would be a good starting point? (And it aint the ordinary UK citizen.)