Into another mirror-world morning

Miscellaneous Blather
#101

There is an equally enraging coda to this in When The Dust Settles, a truly excellent memoir by a disaster recovery expert. After 13 chapters of hard-won experience of how to treat disaster victims and their families with compassion and humanity, the chapter on the Grenfell response is an appalling contrast. Neglect, defensiveness and wilful ignorance were the main characteristics. No one knows if the official death toll is correct, because no-one in authority apparently cares enough to find out, but it is almost certainly too low.

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In any decent country, this disaster would result in court appearances and jail time.

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#102

Who would have believed that a family of complete fucking grifters would take advantage of their father’s recent hip operation and intentionally soak millions of pounds from a charity set up in his name via a trust also set up in his name, from which he would see none of the proceeds, but would instead be rewarded with a holiday, upon which he contracted the novel coronavirus and tragically died.
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#103

UK gov just seeing some 35 resignations, including 17 ministers and 5 cabinet ministers.

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#104

Truly entertaining day in politics on Completely Normal Island. I had the Guardian live blog open in a window and that kept the Schadenfreude levels satisfyingly high all day.

Edit: not just me then

#105

Resigned as head of the Tory party, but not as Prime Minister.

Right.

#106

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#107

awm
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#108

When I was doing an evening language course in the UK, we had a state-mandated PREVENT session, which the teacher was palpably embarrassed about. We did it in German so it was educational … I guess … but I and an aging hippie took issue with basically every element of it. Good thing we had a tolerant instructor, otherwise he’d have been quite justified in reporting us for being dicks. Anyway, it was the kind of superficial flag-shagging bollocks you’d expect from the current government. And the current opposition, to be fair. God the country is so screwed. (THOUGHTCRIME DETECTED RUNNING DOWN THE UK CITIZEN REPORT FOR REEDUCATION*
*a Serco service ).

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#109

I have had a couple of Prevent training courses thanks to government jobs, and them listing, er, anti-fracking protesters alongside Islamic extremists, because they could do a bombing if they wanted, made me mentally bin the whole thing. No mention of neo-Nazis, which are far and away the most violent group in the UK. Up there with the “IS THERE SOMETHING SUSPICIOUS IN YOUR NEIGHBOUR’S BINS? REPORT THEM!” posters.

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#110

One of those things that, if you said it aloud to your friends, would make them think you were insane.
#111
#112

Is this really a thing? Like, you put people in hotels, and pay their bills, whilst the peasants freeze in their homes?

Is this a brexit thing?

#113

No, it’s a the UK Home Office is Malign and Incompetent thing. It’s just it happens to coincide with the government utterly fucking up looking after the rest of the country.

Contrast with Germany where the government is giving vast amounts of help with bills and taxing the shit out of the energy companies‘ profits to pay for it, something the miserable fuckers in charge of the UK have explicitly ruled out.

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#114

We haven’t graduated to putting them in concentration camps, yet. And the hotels (when they even use hotels and not old armed forces accommodation) are shitholes, with a family to each room. The government refuses to build or maintain facilites, so uses hotels instead, because it’s more expensive but the money at least goes directly to their friends.

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#115

With the added refinement that the process is none of speedy, efficient or humane, and asylum seekers are not permitted to work, so the policy creates a large pool of people who need support without giving them the opportunity to support themselves, and then makes that support as grudging as possible.

It’s making me incredibly angry that the Kindertransport is being held up as some kind of proof that the UK is inherently beneficent and welcoming. Nope, the children came alone because Britain wouldn’t accept their parents. You know, Jewish people fleeing the Nazis. Nothing has really changed.

#116

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Amazing this can happen in “racist” Britain, and can’t wait to see China follow suit…. Oh wait

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#117

Not exactly hard to do tokenism, and some of the Tory party’s biggest racists (Badenoch, Patel, Braverman) are not white.

#118

Priti Patel is the MP for my hometown, where the colour of your skin doesn’t matter nearly as much as the hate in your heart

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#119

UK news in one picture:

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#120

the left

That group of hardcore communists known as the capitalist market traders of the world.

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