The fall of the Tory party

I knew where you were coming from, I didn't take it personally, just wanted to flag it up / have my say.

also sorry for the terrible punctuation/syntax.

Kind of. Because of the whole ‘the BBC are basically Engels’ thing the audience is now supposed to be engineered to be representative of the country.

You have to say your voting intentions when you apply.

Snap. Mostly avoid politics now. Reading their papers when I visit my folks can be pretty illuminating (Telegraph and Express) and rather depressing.

Get them a Private Eye subscription

we are in the post-truth anti democratic place we are in because of iraq.

because of Iraq?

I'm not an apologist for the either of the Gulf Wars, but to me they are part of a wider and older post colonial world order.

I'd suggest there's more to why we are here than the invasion of Iraq.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/25/top-tory-mps-ask-for-10000-a-day-to-work-for-fake-korean-company

I’ve heard a couple of people who should know say we have trump because of Iraq. The thinking is that 9/11 undermined a sense of us supremacy, that afterwards the us sought out a fight with a relatively weak foreign power to reassert its dominance. It was said by the architects of the war that it would be over quickly and would be affordable. There was also a calculation made that the international community would uphold us decisiveness by essentially allowing all this to happen. None of this turned out to be true. The war dragged on and cost a fortune; in order to justify it the us had to blatantly lie to the un and the people of us and uk and faced the humiliation of being left alone especially with regard to fractured relationships with germany and france who called BS on the whole enterprise. This is not like the first iraq war at all, which the un backed. by the end of the war the us’s collective national ego was reeling. tea party nationalism, now trumpism reflects that hurt pride. What’s more in going through this totally unnecessary war and lying to its traditional allies the us has done untold damage to the moral high ground of the west and the legitimacy of international discourse. Now, i am not saying that the status quo which the us undermined with iraq represents anything especially worthy or good - you are right there is a longer history of those it represents being awful- but those few precious institutions and accords, tacit agreements about protocol and so on that created some opportunities for peace and justice were so badly damaged. It’s plays into, for example, how Obama didn’t feel like the us could do anything to prevent someone as psychotic as Asad raining death in his own people, breaking every convention under the sun; it has so much to do with the impunity with which Putin invaded Georgia. In Russia and elsewhere outside the west iraq is continuously trotted out as a reason why the us shouldn’t moralise. at home there’s a vacuum too, maga promises to ameliorate it but is obviously going to make everything worse. In short both iraq wars were bad but they occurred in diff circumstances and these meant the second was bad in ways that have more wide ranging consequences

As greedy as they are dim - did Kwarteng ask for £10k/month and then not be surprised that it was £10k/day for travelling to Korea? If so, it might explain why he struggled as Chancellor

Thank you for the detailed response; interesting points.

True that Iraq is often cited by "enemies of the west" as justification or context for other bad stuff.

It seems to me that the further breakdown of US hegemony / post WW2 world order was happening / would have happened anyway but 100% agree that Iraq accelerated and worsened the outcomes.

thanks for the thanks! I agree it’s possibly only part of the picture. Not a huge amount to do with the tories falling either

This is not great optics but none of them have actually done anything wrong (legally rather than morally) - bit of a non story really.

Isn't the theory/rule that they can't lobby on behalf of the companies while still mps. so I'm thinking what services do they actually offer for £10k A CHUFFING DAY? Other than ignoring that rule and lobbying

You're assuming they feel they need to offer some kind of value or benefit for the fee. They don't.

The MPs may not feel the need to offer anything but surely the companies want something for their 10k.

So are they breaking the law by inducing someone else to break the law by lobbying?

Interesting to see Gove taking a stand against recreational drugs.......

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65079772

^ the problem seems to be the littering more than public health risk, so perhaps we can expect crisps, fizzy drinks etc to banned too at some point.

If they put a value deposit on the cannisters the litter problem would vanish very quickly.

value deposit on the cannisters

This is an excellent idea.

sportive mamils wont like that

the english govt recently overruled scotlands attempt to introduce machines offering cash for returned plastic bottles and cans to reduce rubbish

there must be some party donor who makes a fortune from our streets being littered with rubbish

Banning gas CO2 canisters, or the crisps?

Supermarkets in Finland have machines that take in plastic/glass/cans and read the barcodes and give an amount per item depending on what it is. If it cannot determine what it is then you are credited a fixed amount. The machine then issues a voucher that can be deducted from your shopping. It is pretty slick.

It's apparently bad for micro-breweries, something about high setup costs. Do you want all your beer to be manufactured by Anheuser-Busch Inbev?

Putting a bar code on bottles would not be expensive. Sounds like the detail behind the scheme wasn’t thought out or communicated properly. If 45 counties worldwide can do it, why can’t we? Answer: We are lazy.

This is what I thought but it could be related to the can labelling. Big breweries print on the can small ones often use a label or wrap, which probably makes it more complex to recycle.

the problem seems to be the littering more than public health risk, so perhaps we can expect crisps, fizzy drinks etc to banned too at some point

It's a huge public health risk - it can literally leave you paralysed, take away your ability to walk or leave you incontinent.

https://www.insider.com/nitrous-oxide-use-laughing-gas-effects-drug-high-paralyzed-2023-1

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/aug/30/doctors-warn-of-rise-in-nerve-damage-linked-to-nitrous-oxide