11 hours ago, Remmie said:

Fair point. There are a lot of things I don't like about MK, it's just never the reasons people list to reconcile it against. I also hate it when people denigrate Liverpool. It seems to be symptomatic of a type of mentality I find infuriating; a set in our ways, stubborn and hugely averse to new ideas. 

A lad I worked with in dat der London was from MK and he used to call it the “milk and beans” so I’ve always had a soft spot for it. Prior to that I passed through MK once and thought it was bright and clean and people can commute to good jobs in London. 
 

If someone from MK came to see round where I am now they’d see shuttered shops waiting to be turned into bedsits for the DWP, illiterate gang grafitti, bookies, vape shops,  fly tipping, shite takeaways, 4 or 5 convenience stores almost facing each other, and down the road a huge 60s office block empty after they decamped to town next to a failing shopping centre the council bought for 30 odd million and is now worth half of that. 
 

I watched one of those “Britain’s worst” voyeuristic YouTube vids and they keep suggesting more of them. Luton and Plymouth both looked rough. There’s this scouse one too Billy Moore All or Nothing podcast. 
 

You’re right about the mentality thing. Narrow minded parochialism morphing into a national Thatcherite banter culture. 
 

Tories in one rule for me shocker. 
 

Behind the UK’s effort to blacklist critics

By Jem Bartholomew

Last April, Dan Kaszeta was sitting at his desk when he got an ominous email. Kaszeta is an American chemical-weapons expert who has worked for the White House and the Secret Service. Now based in London, he was scheduled to speak at the Chemical Weapons Demilitarisation Conference, run by the UK government, in May. He planned to talk about the risks posed by such weapons in Ukraine, Egypt, and North Korea.

But then he received the email, sent by one of the organizers: “Rules introduced by the Cabinet Office in 2022 specify that the social media accounts of potential speakers must be vetted,” the message read, to check if they had “ever criticized government officials or government policy.” The email went on: “It is for this reason, and not because we do not value your technical insight, that I am afraid that we have no choice and must cancel your invitation to the CWD conference.”

Kaszeta was confused. He had taken to Twitter to register his disapproval of the UK’s increasingly draconian immigration and asylum policy, but that seemed irrelevant to his work on chemical weapons. He told a friend, the British journalist Edward Lucas, that he’d been disinvited over his past tweets. Lucas was shocked. “This is bad on every level,” Lucas told him.

Worried that secretive blacklisting rules were being deployed across the British government, Kaszeta went public in May and launched a legal challenge. “I basically came around to the conclusion that the government was doing bad stuff, but they had effectively pulled the pin on a hand grenade and handed it to me,” he told me. “So I can either hold on to it, or throw it right back.”

It was a big domestic story; Kaszeta was soon on the front page of the London Times. “My mother, bless her, in Mesa, Arizona, practically fell out of her chair,” he said. His decision to challenge the murky rules would help expose a practice of snooping and blacklisting that stretched across at least fifteen state agencies. It was directed right from the top, the Cabinet Office, which is the center of power and rulemaking in the British government. The revelations from the Kaszeta affair exposed practices that were criticized as resembling “the plot of a dystopian novel.”
 

The story also revealed the administration’s hypocrisy, given that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had made attacks on cancel culture and “woke nonsense” a central part of his public message.

The blacklisting seemed to be particularly fervid in Britain’s education department. Reporting from The Observer revealed that at least nine child-development experts had been surveilled and had their invitations to speak at conferences challenged or rescinded. Carmel O’Hagan, an expert on modern languages, requested the data collected on her, and discovered that officials had compiled an Excel spreadsheet of her Twitter interactions and accused her in internal emails of having “an axe to grind.”

Kaszeta hired lawyers from the Leigh Day firm to press for a judicial review of the snooping rules. Tessa Gregory, the partner who took on the case, believed the practice was dangerous, and was certain that a judge would find a slew of legal and human rights violations in it. “This kind of vetting, where people are disinvited just because they have different political views than the executive of the day—that absolutely has to be got rid of,” Gregory told me. "It was all operating secretly, without any of us as members of the public knowing about its existence, which is why it was particularly pernicious.”

Initially, the case seemed to be progressing well; Kaszeta got an official apology in July. But before a judge could scrutinize the lawfulness of the secret file-keeping and blacklisting, the government ordered the policy withdrawn. Without an active policy to challenge, the judicial review was dead. The Cabinet Office did not reply to a request for comment from CJR. In November, a spokesman for the office told The Observer: “The government is committed to protecting free speech. We are reviewing the guidance and have temporarily withdrawn it to prevent any misinterpretation of the rules

6 hours ago, Anubis said:

 

At what point do we rage? At what point do we say enough is enough and trash Parliament? 

They know things will get a bit tasty soon hence the new draconian anti strike, anti protest and harsh surveillance laws. 
 

22 minutes ago, Fowlers God said:

Do we?

It’s a bit mad but the Brazilians were/are linked to the Universal church which in turn has been part of the Bolsonaro right. Fabinho’s missus deffo was putting stuff up in support of him, don’t know about the players. 

2 minutes ago, Creator Supreme said:

Amazing people, but how sick that they are needed at all, and that it's getting worse.

Yeah the social and health cost of people living increasingly chaotic and precarious lives is a ticking time bomb. 

Another piece in The Guardian, this time a bit closer to home.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/27/i-dont-want-anyone-to-feel-the-despair-i-felt-the-woman-feeding-liverpool-from-an-ice-cream-van

Of course there’s the bit in The Wire when Bubs is with the journo at a church run food kitchen and the journo asks if all of the people there are homeless and Bubs replies they’re mostly working poor. That would’ve been 2006/7 maybe? And now look at us. And they want to make it even harder. 
 

Mic Wright is an excellent read and neatly critiques the British media.

Here, it’s more on the owner of GB News’ online activities and the reaction to the News Agents’ report ahead of his potential purchase of the Torygraph and Spectator. 
 

https://open.substack.com/pub/brokenbottleboy/p/the-paul-marshall-plan?r=7i95q&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

25 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

Not really a surprise,is it?

Unfortunately not mate. No sign of any change in approach either. 

Exclusive:

Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal…..

https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/dwp-disability-benefits-claimants-fail-whistleblowers/

2 minutes ago, Strontium said:

 

Suddi Raval who was one half of Together used to post on the old UK-Dance mailing list. The first thing I remember about him is that he was also a veggie. The second is that he used to complain about autocorrect changing his name to Suede Ravioli. Nice fella.

Ha ha that’s quality. I’ll look them up now. 

1 minute ago, manwiththestick said:

Great track that. There's a video on YouTube taken from a club around the time it came out and it looks absolutely brilliant when the beats kick in with the crowd going mad and the strobes etc.

 

Not a phone in sight.

I’ll have a look for that mate nice one. 
 

Well worth a watch on iPlayer about China’s state surveillance. 
 

Very long read article contrasting and comparing the West and China’s authoritarianism. 

https://open.substack.com/pub/theupheaval/p/the-china-convergence?r=7i95q&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

3 hours ago, Creator Supreme said:

And who the fuck is that inbred cunt?

Thatcher’s last private secretary and dark money ultra right grifter who loves the UK so much he lives in D.C. 

3 minutes ago, Shitty Arse said:

What a fucking tune. 

“More powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

30 years old Essential Mix from Dave Clarke, available on BBC Sounds. 
 

1 minute ago, Arniepie said:

hasnt there been a 40% cut?

Many councils’ adult and childrens services are in special measures and unfit for purposes. Some

of that is down to cost cutting . Obviously it hit harder in poorer places which was the purpose of austerity. 

13 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

This isn't what I was hoping the future would look like.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/26/concern-as-more-councils-in-england-and-wales-plan-to-turn-off-street-lights

Hopefully some Friends of <insert neighbourhood> Street Lighting Facebook groups start up to run what was a statutory service for the benefit of all. The Big Society in action. Hook up the Peleton to power it then post to Insta #community 

Hello Reds, what a win that was!