General Election 2024

I have to say, I am beginning to think that Sunak is actually a deep Labour agent, tasked with destroying the Conservative Party.

Does anybody remember Rishi’s little bet with piers Morgan on the Rwanda flights. Piers wants he’s money (for the British Red Cross or something like that)

Rishi is refusing to pay because they paid that one failed asylum seeker £3k to go to Rwanda.

Just more red meat for the frothers 🤣

Even if these mad bullshit schemes win every single Reform voter back to the tories (they won't) the tories still won't win. It's like they're fixated on pleasing the most rancid, reactionary Wetherspoons customer.

@mrjamesob Next up from Rishi Sunak: rationing, rickets & compulsory
rotary dial telephones in every home.

Oof national service for the yoot at 18 !

It says to me that they have totally given up on attracting any meaningful new votes and are attempting to stem the losses to Reform, to limit the damage to the party due to the scale of their defeat.

All this news is telling us is that they had a policy brainstorm and this is the absolute best idea they had. Would love to hear some of the things that they also considered but ended up rejecting as just a little too batshit.

All this news is telling us is that they had a policy brainstorm

But why are they still brainstorming ideas for an election that they knew was coming in six months? I don't care, but it just speaks volumes to their incompetence.

Even the worst project manager at work would have had the campaign 90% mapped out, ready to hit go once someone called it.

@alexwickham James Cleverly immediately rows back on the compulsory
nature of the National Service idea

No criminal sanction if people don’t want to do it, he tells Sky

Military placements get a salary

Non-military ones are unpaid — that will be hugely controversial for
some Tories

https://x.com/alexwickham/status/1794633856978751610

Facepalm.gif

Such lols.

Ha ha ha! 😬

To be honest some version of mandatory national service but in the community only and paid placements, I could see being beneficial to society. Not military or unpaid.

However, my version wouldn't get votes in the flag waving base it's designed to appease

The thought of national service to the armed forces is laughable.

Community service in society in return for free university or college education would be better

@AdamBienkov James Cleverly says that National Service will be
"compulsory" but then says there won't be any criminal sanction for
those who simply refuse.

We've got 6 fucking weeks of this.

It says to me that they have totally given up on attracting any meaningful new votes

They are polling behind the green party with under 40's, good luck attracting anyone under middle age

When they fear you more than the bogeyman you mention at PMQ's week in week out

Through the Ruislip Woods National Nature Reserve Management Advisory Group,
I've done some work with the Brunel University volunteers programme.
After some form filling, and attending (twice) the Brunel Volunteers Fayre,
(You get a stand to display what you do and make a pitch to potentially interested students),
we orgainsed three events, where students could come and help us dig offline ponds in Park Wood SSSI, to help create micro-habitats to encourage reptiles and amphibians,
and,
increase the array of Natural Flood Management installations to reduce the flood risk for the residential properties between the woods and the local river.

On Friday, I was invited to the Awards evening, where it was revealed that 908 Brunel students volunteered for over 18017 hours in this (academic) year, with the best individual figures being 551 and 430 hours.

Local MP, (Cllr Steve Tuckwell, 'Tory hero' of the anti-ULEZ Uxbridge & South Ruislip bye-election campaign last year, nowhere to be seen, although the Mayor, (Tory), of LBHillingdon was present.

Unpaid state-mandated labour? WTAF

To be honest some version of mandatory national service but in the community only and paid placements, I could see being beneficial to society.

Fuck that. 18 year olds are busy in further/higher education, or trying to start their careers.

If there’s going to be mandatory service, give it to the indolent retired who love the idea of National Service (that not one of them under 85 ever had to do) so much.

Weren't the 'quiet Bat people' a core demographic In the Thick of It?

Community service in society in return for free university or college education would be better

The idea that states should be forcing people into a specific quid pro quo is quite a draconian notion.

some version of mandatory national service but in the community only and paid placements

@jaitch, I’m sure lots of people engaging with their community would help to some degree, but mandatory? If people don’t like doing it to begin with, it’ll be seen as forced labour. It’s not as if it’ll involve anything more than litter picking for most people, and they’ll hate it.

The Tory obsession with uniforms resurfaces every now and again.
I seem to remember Gove when Education minister had a plan for Free Schools and possibly academies to resurrect the Combined Cadet Force.

National Service was discussed somehwere in the wilderness of the last 14 years.
The Army were against it. They don't have the facilities for the numbers involved,
and have enough trouble motivating people who have signed up let alone those
who would be pressganged.

Going further back, Willie Whitelaw, Home Secretary to Thatcher, had the 'short sharp shock'
for miscreants/borstal kids.
The summary was that this program produced a fitter miscreant who could more easily outrun Plod.

Frist past the post! 😹