There was a local byelection in Hackney yesterday, necessary because one of the existing Labour councillors had been elected as mayor there earlier. And that election had been necessary because the existing mayor turned out to be shacking up with a convicted pedo. A bit of a mess already therefore, which makes it weirder that Hackney Labour decided to double down on the weird sex pest angle by putting forth a transphobe as candidate who compared trans women to actors doing blackface. When that surfaces, she got suspended, then unsuspended again just the day before the election. How that worked out? About as well as you could expect.
It shows once again how transphobia plays on the doorstep: badly. Ordinary voters just do not care for the sort of obsessive weirdo who likes ‘womanface’ memes. It’s the hight of Labour arrogance to think that they could stand this canidate when the Tories had as theirs a well respected ex-LibDem councillor with actual ties to the local community. And with Labour nationally also seemingly embracing transphobia, this may be a sign that the parliamentary elections next year may be a lot closer than they expect…
She also claimed that she was asked to sign off the executive summary of the inquiry into antisemitism in the Labour party, without being allowed access to the underlying evidence, because the EHRC wanted the signoff from a BAME employee. She refused to do so, describing the request as “upsetting, disrespectful and humiliating”.
Which fits to a t the way the Tories use ethnical minorities as poster children for their most cruel policies. Rishi Sunak, chosen as PM to clean up the mess that Boris Johnson and Liz Truss left behind, tightening the austerity screws again. Suella Braverman, spouting National Front rhetoric about migrants, but if criticised has the press holloring about how you dare to expect a daughter of migrants not to be racist. Sunak again, spouting transphobia in his conference speech. A predictable pattern of using the brownest faces in the party to shield far right policies from scrutiny.
That it also occurred with that EHRC report into Labour antisemitism is telling. The report itself barely found any evidence of antisemitism in the party, certainly no systemic antisemitism. Nor did it find evidence that Corbyn and his allies were antisemitic. But it was certainly publicised as vindicating the ongoing smear campaign against him and Labour. Having a BAME employee sign off on it would’ve strengthened that impression.
You’d have to be a terminal wally to fall for this shite
British lefties who say they won’t vote for Starmer: I understand where you’re coming from, I do. Just one small thing, if you could just help me with that: what the actual fuck are you talking about?
This is the childish view of politics as sport, where the only thing that matters is that the man in the boot stamping on your face wears a red rather than a blue rosette. Where all that matters is “Tories out” with no thought at all about if what replaces them is any better. Labour and Starmer have done their level best to signal that they will be continuity Tories, but they wear the right colour tie so let’s get them in power. Politics reduced to pulling the lever for the ‘correct’ party with no demands on its leadership, no accountability, just some magic faith that it will all come good once they’re in power and just ignore all the lies and broken promises.
So far, so liberal, but it’s worse. You’re being urged to vote for a party ruled by the same people that deliberately sabotaged its chances because they disliked its previous leader. You’re expected to vote for the people who called you antisemitic, traitorous scum, who sicced the press and the BBC on you for just wanting a bit more equality, a bit more justice. Even after you surrendered and you voted for Starmer as leader just to make the bullying stop, it didn’t end. Now it’s the party itself calling its own members filthy peasant oiks that better vote for it if they know what’s good for them and then bugger off.
Who would vote for that? They told you to fuck off, so if you have any dignity, do so.
The sixth film is a BBC acquisition for iPlayer. It was *never* going to be shown on telly.
The film stars Attenborough but was made for the RSPB and WWF, not the BBC.
Earlier this week The Guardian (link in linked tweet) reported that the sixth episode of David Attenborough’s new wildlife series, Wild Islands, would not be broadcast but only be available on the iPlayer, as the BBC feared a Tory backlash against it content. Because while the first five episodes showcased the natural beauty and wonders of the UK, the sixth one would focus on the environmental damage done to it and what should be done to fix it. Something the Tories, eager to let raw sewage flow into Britain’s rivers, were expected to be annoyed by. According to Jake’s Twitter thread this is wrong though. It wasn’t that the sixth episode was suddenly withdrawn because the BBC got cold feet, it was never intended to be broadcast at all! Thereby proving that The Guardian‘s story was nonsense.
Does it though?
Seems to me deciding from the start to treat this episode differently, pretending it’s not part of the series, just inspired by it, refusing to broadcast it, is actually worse. Attenborough’s wild life series have always had an environmental component to them, so why treat this one differently? Is it only fear of provoking the Tories or is it a cynical move made by the BBC leadership, now riddled with Tories themselves? it’s not just appeasement but complicity. The BBC is happy to suppress this sort of stuff because its management are Tories themselves.
This Arte documentary looks at the impact Brexit has had on cities like Grimsby and Hull, but in the process makes it very clear that Brexit was just the final nail in the coffin after decades of neglect and decay.
It’s easy to be judgmental about somebody like Darren Kenyon, the fisherman featured here. How could he have been so stupid as to believe the lies told about Brexit? How could he have voted to cut his own throat? It’s easy and tempting to do so because it absolves everybody else. Your own fault, you shouldn’t have been so stupid as to trust the Tories. You made your bed, now lie in it. But the reality is that Darren’s company was in trouble long before he voted for Brexit, one of the few fishing companies left in a town that once had thousands. Through decisions made and policies created beyond his control, Darren and thousands like him, not just fishers were left to struggle. No wonder they went for Brexit when it was explicitly sold to them as the one thing that could take away all those obstacles. Somebody like Darren, who started work at 13, not “very educational” as he puts it himself, but who managed to create a small, thriving business with his own hands yet sees it threatened by forces beyond his control, was primed to believe the promises Brexit and Boris Johnson made.
As such Darren and all the other Brexit voters like them are the least culpable for this disaster. Their fault was to trust the media and politicians who lied to them. Decades of tabloid lies about the EU and politicians blaming everything bad on it, but who steal the credit for the good it brought set the stage for the referendum. Then the media, from the BBC on down failed completely to educate and inform, at best just parroting what both sides said with few attempts to actually determine the truth. And even in those rare cases where this was attempted, it once again was reduced to “experts say X but these politicians disagree, we’ll let you figure it out”.
Worse, once Brexit was a reality and the only issue in question was how damaging it was going to be, the media and the political establishment did its upmost best to make it as damaging and hardcore as possible, while sinking any chance of an alternative. It was deemed more important to keep a mild social democrat out of Number 10 then it was to make sure the country wasn’t entirely fucked over. Time and again chances to get a soft Brexit were missed and the end result was the clown show that was the 2019 election, where Boris Johnson was shitefested over the finish line by an united press and political establishment determined to see off the threat of Corbynism. That three years later it has ended with hyperinflation, a crumbling economy and a health service on the edge of collapse is the price they would pay all over again if asked.
On the remain side there’s this annoying tendency to blame Brexit for all of the UK’s woes, but at best it’s a catalysor of already existing trends. Back in 2001 I was doing leafletting in the then elections for the Socialist Alliance in Plymouth and getting to see some of its estates was shocking. A level of poverty I’d never seen in the Netherlands. Again, reading between the lines in this documentary it’s clear that the poverty and misery in places like Grimsby and Hull aren’t recent either, but have been present for decades. This is why people voted for Brexit because it promised to change things and people were desparate enough to take that gamble. We shouldn’t blame them for it.
