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The Tories are unlikely to be in power when the next president of the US takes office.

perhaps they see it as fuel for their misplaced victim complex, and can/will use it as culture-war fodder to rile up their voter-base?

Of course they will - but, if your modus operandi is to pick culture war fights constantly, doesn't it start to look a bit weak if you lose absolutely all of them?

The Tories are unlikely to be in power when the next president of the US takes office.

I share that hope, although I do think the Tories are also counting on the senate swinging GOP in November, hamstringing the Biden administration and allowing them to do what they want with no restraint.

if your modus operandi is to pick culture war fights constantly, doesn't it start to look a bit weak if you lose absolutely all of them?

There's no-one independent keeping score. It's just a mechanism to get Daily Mail front page headlines slagging off lefty judges, Keir Starmer, immigrants etc. Then your average red wall voter thinks "hold on, I don't like lefty judges / Keir Starmer / immigrants either..... maybe I SHOULD vote Tory"

Then your average red wall voter thinks "hold on, I don't like lefty judges / Keir Starmer / immigrants either..... maybe I SHOULD vote Tory"

And those people get what they asked for.

Well they don't... they get rising cost of living, manual job automation, and all the things that come with that.

Surely it's only a few exceptional cases that appeal?

The whole Rwanda thing is a notable change in policy and gives scope for JR.

Ironically if the HO were a bit more organised they could just reject applications and then deport people before they have a chance to appeal Jacqui Smith style. But instead they're just trying to palm off the whole job because doing the work is too hard and doesn't win you any headlines.

Any of you ladies and chaps following the twitter pile on over Gary Lineker mentioning that he was bullied for having "darkish skin"?

I'm trying to get my head around the public response to it. I've got pretty vivid memories of receiving a fair amount of racist abuse for having "darkish skin" as an english kid in the 90s. I won't repeat the kind of things that were said to me but I'm trying to understand why everybody is mocking him for somehow claiming that he's a victim of racism when that isn't what he said afaik.

In my own experience, people used racist slurs towards me despite me not being of those races. Isn't that the point he was trying to make? For me its just a reflection on how normalised and widespread some racist terms were back then.

I'm trying to get my head around the public response to it.

I haven't seen what he said in context, but I'm going to just go out on a massive limb here and say that it was:

1. Contextual, and
   
2. Part of a wider multifaceted point that you'd probably have to put more than 4sec into reading.
   
   

Assuming 1. and 2. are true, I can 100% understand the public being a bunch of basic bitches about whatever he said.

Well there's no election at the moment. They'll need some sort of conflict based policy to get behind.

They'll need some sort of conflict based policy to get behind.

The lobbyist money is on trans rights but I'm going to make a wild guess and say that its going to be the death penalty. And sure, ECHR might fit the bill too but feels a bit of an own goal tbh.

Surely it's only a few exceptional cases that appeal?

The Bill of Rights makes appeals more likely by making the UK courts give rulings that contradict the ECHR schedules, which means that if you lose in the UK you move to Strasbourg (not a huge point in doing that today) and have a very good chance of winning.

Ironically if the HO were a bit more organised they could just reject applications and then deport people before they have a chance to appeal Jacqui Smith style.

Issue there is that ~80% of applications succeed, even with this HO, so they have to refuse to consider the application in order to sate their baying pensioners.

A couple of lads in my year had slightly darker skin than the rest of us pasty Belfast kids and suffered (and that's definitely the right choice of word) the same sort of 'othering' - nicknames that we won't even type these days. Oddly for NI, we did actually have a couple of Black kids in the school, who got no racial bullying (as far as I knew, and I was relatively friendly with one of them).

In this case, I'm guessing it's today's case of online bigoted pricks jumping on a 'woke' celebrity, but I'm not on Twitter and haven't seen it.

Which means that the UK Gov are … in-breach of their international treaty obligations

You won’t be surprised to hear it, but they don’t really care. It’s been SOP to ignore laws and treaties that get in the way for at least 12 years, in fact govt employees who do are rewarded with career progress instead of punishment.

You'll probably find that a large proportion of those jumping on him for the tweet are those that called their school mate by racist names because (s)he had slightly more olive skin.

Happened to my mate at school, btw. White British parents, born in England, slightly olive skin... cue "racism" from the kids at school who were currently being dragged up.

Neanderthal little cunts.

The fun thing to remember is they will hammer a labour government for being hamstrung by Tory laws.

Don't suppose anyone knows what, if any, "technological improvements" the unions are rejecting?

Don't suppose anyone knows what, if any, "technological improvements" the unions are rejecting?

I think there's a clip of our boy Micky Lynch correcting an MP and pointing out that most of the supposed technological improvements had been implemented already. Can't find any reference to what they actually are though.

Yeah that's the thing. On the one hand you've got basic Tories with no credibility giving sound bites, and on the other you have ML dismissing the point.

What I can imagine is happening is there are a series of tech improvements the railways want, but the unions won't discuss them until a payrise is agreed to. Which is a good negotiation strategy, but I'm just curious about what the ask is.

Pantograph cameras and sensors, are a couple of things I recall from that interview. My recollection also is that ML said that the unions were responsible for their implementation.

Think it is things like closing all ticket offices and just having machines, they aren't rejecting it but saying they need a better deal for the staff who will be displaced but that gets labelled as rejecting modernisation

Edit - this covers some of the "outdated" practices
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/rmt-slammed-outdated-rail-practices/

More robots / drones walking the lines in conjunction with trains being fitted with rail cams or something.

The one I saw was line checks being done by drone - and the comment that followed was that the author of said comment was uncertain how a drone was going to check whether bolts were loose on points etc, but IDK how real that concern is.

The thing about checking things via drone is that the eyeballs watching the monitor can be in a low-wage economy elsewhere, with no pension, employment rights and so forth.

Also, if you close ticket offices and have a "push to talk to agent" system, that agent can also be in, say, Vietnam - as part of a services contract. I imagine that the RMT wants to have some guarantees that displaced ticket office staff are going to have a decent redundancy package.

I think ML did say that train based sensors and pantograph cameras are already a thing but no idea if across the whole network or not.