The fall of the Tory party

And doubtless there will be the usual right wing goons honking that the issue is that the government is too statist and if they weren’t and left it to the free market no grifting or corruption would be possible

Led by Donkeys have just posted a video where they tracked down the yacht in port in Spain and renamed it Pandemic Profiteer with huge stickers

Top work!!!

And, very much, not for the first time

Also, while I’m on my self righteous high horse (to be fair, the view is pretty good), Sunak is really shit at politics. I mean, it’s three years in, he doesn’t see the problem but witlessly honks on about “small boats” - I don’t want to be coarse but he really is a mean spirited twat (and that being generous, it is Christmas).

I appreciate that he’s PM as it’s “something that money can’t buy” (ha!) but he can’t be having fun, so brittle.

I met an estate agent once who exuded Sunak vibes - he told me that the property “benefited from single glazing” and I was, like, great, sorry, say what

Probably an apt description, but quite a few people got rich in Germany too.

Favourite example is a former Bavarian ministers daughter was just sentenced to 4 years and 5 months of prison. She didn't pay taxes on the 50 Million € she made with PPE dealings.

I went to Oxford. My mum was a teacher and my dad (who grew up in a council house) was an engineer at JCB. I was also a teacher. About the only thing I have in common with Boris or Rishi is the university I went to, and being labelled 'a posh twat','tory' or similar on account of that used to irk me. Given I've got a reasonably pronounced Stoke accent, and am moderately to the left politically, it now just makes me smile.

The country will be a better place when we stop judging people on their backgrounds - for good or ill - and reward competency and decency.

I met an estate agent once

The cunts

Full disclosure, it was by mistake

The country will be a better place when we stop judging people on their backgrounds

No it won't. It'll be a better place when we stop elitist educated people from running the country.

Educated doing some work there, technically yes but they show little prowess in actually using that education

The last leg manage to award Suella the dick of the year award, and got her to launch a small boat too.

https://youtu.be/c83kDB39plw?si=sJyzQUNM3aM0C9UU

I’ve maintained for a while, the U.K. government response to COVID was essentially the biggest heist in history

Can it match the trillion bucks Australian taxpayers will be gifting the US military-industrial complex over the coming decades under the AUKUS banner?

(Should actually be USUKA, for a couple of very obvious reasons)

Bonus kick in the teeth: this policy, begun under the most corrupt government we've had in living memory (conservative, naturally), is being continued by our nominally 'Labor' government... Because neoliberalism, aka neofuedalism, is all there is on the table.

The country will be a better place when we stop judging people on their backgrounds - for good or ill - and reward competency and decency.

Given the absolute idiocy of people, that's almost certainly too much to hope for, for a very long while. In the meantime, perhaps the ruling class can get their just desserts, approximately, via the sort of crude algorithm the general populace is far more likely to employ.

I really can't see why flipping it is so very hard, when the pressure to do so has become so great.

Can it match the trillion bucks Australian?

That’s like the price of an S-works Crux?

The country will be a better place when we stop judging people on their backgrounds

Which is exactly what you’re asking people to do with:

my dad (who grew up in a council house)…

Complicated innit. (No dig intended!).

I think the point they were making is that this is complicated. The simplistic view “attended Oxford therefore Tory bastard” does not apply here. Simply fixating on one aspect of a person fails to take in the holistic complexity of people.

Yeah but someone who went to a lesser university like Oxford would say that.

Bet he bought the council house and loves Thatcher for it tho.

An interesting and lively discussion. Perhaps we need to distil it down to a simple formula when advising Tory sympathisers -
Eton - stay the f*** away
Eton + Oxbridge stay the f*** away doubled.

I think that professor at Durham university who has issued a "debate me, coward" challenge to Amol Rajan about an Oxbridge bias on University Challenge is the thread's spirit animal this week.

Durham. Another inclusive, monastery adjacent, Russell Group university.

I say this as someone who went to University and didn't leave for about 14 years.

No, he left home at 18.

I spy @RecoveryRide and claim my £5.

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Yeah, pretty much.

I’d have no problem with an Oxford + Eton educated PM if they could actually show some ability and empathy. I’d have no problem with a PM with 2 GCSEs if they were demonstrably good at the job.

The problems come from assumptions (and in the current case, from an old boys network).

If you listen you Angela Rayner on the Rest is Politics, she’s quite eloquent on her background (and the majority of what she said was quite hard to argue with imo) but Rory Stewart also challenged her quite well on the ‘Tory scum’ comments.