This country😩Private Eye have got it right.

[ArseInTheCoOpWindow]

How many more ways to fuck up the country can this government invent?

I’m 58 and have never ever seen a government so full of lying, corrupt twats who just don’t give a shit.

And as l grew up under Thatchet l think that’s saying something! It’s like a horror show watching them.

Principles? Oh fuck right off. Yes she had the intelligence to plough money into London and her own cronies pockets and rape the North, destroy the coal, iron and shipping industries, bring cities in the North of the UK to their knees. Bring unemployment to a record high. I suppose if you lived in the south of England you could maybe look back through rose tinted glasses. I can't imagine anything being worse than her government in my lifetime

Same here, have never voted Tory & never would I only know a couple of people who voted Tory.
I often muse on how if any Labour government had behaved/said/done what this have lot have got away with, people would have been storming the House of Parliament, why are the standards expected of Labour so much higher yet we roll over day after day whilst more shite is poured over us from this venal morally corrupt load of shysters.

Loads of people support the Conservatives and many not-usually-Conservative-voters support PM Johnson. Not only that, they still believe in him.😲

I can't imagine anything being worse than her government in my lifetime

You’re looking at it.

Rude. Try reading what I wrote. You don't agree with her principles. Neither do I. My point is she had some, and clearly a lot of the UK population agreed with them, as they kept voting her in. Johnson appears completely without any guiding principles except what's best and easiest for him.

My constituency has been Tory and (Blairite) labour but now the LibDems are giving the incumbent rebel Tory MP a run for his money. I'm just after boomer, my friends are similar/boomer; hardly anyone is pro Tory or Brexit (neither are my octogenarian parents for the record) so I'm not sure bringing age groups into it helps. Although we are probably the hated remainer metropolitan liberal types.

Boomer in reality explains the birth patterns in the USA and not really the UK.

In Britain my parents, who had DB in 1949 referred to it as 'the bulge'. By the time I was born in 1951 it was tailing off. By 1955 the birth rate was quite low, but then it picked up during the early 60s.

People born in the early 1960s have quite a different outlook than we did. We were all born in a time of rationing, for a starter, but then at the same time, because of the bulge, they then started to build new primary schools. So DH (same age as DB) and DB and I all benefitted from new well equipped schools.

And my parents and DH's went on and on about the War, but by 1960 or thereabouts, they had laid it to rest.

😂😂 imagine the outcry if the current lot had to go mining or work in shipping.
😂😂
Globalization meant other countries were better skilled and more competitive in those industries.
That wasn't Thatcher's fault.

+Globalization meant other countries were better skilled and more competitive in those industries.
That wasn't Thatcher's fault*

This was indeed Thatcher’s fault. She destroyed heavy industry and wanted a service economy. I worked in clothing in the 80’s. Overseas factories were investing in technology to speed up manufacture. Britain didn’t bother. The factories overseas became more and more advanced technically, leaving Britain far behind. Britain is now too far behind to catch up.

Thatcher kicked manufacturing into touch on her reign.

This is how she decimated the north of England. By removing manufacturing.

All industry bar tertiary. Very middle class aspirational

The parties I don't find particularly objectionable tbh, they are meant to be representative of the public and of what I saw plenty of people broke the rules/ had parties during lockdown.

The corruption is unforgivable though. Michelle Mone should be stripped of her HOL seat for a start.

What we need is compulsory voting so the indifferent actually vote for the least worst option, which would surely rid of us this lot.

Living under Thatcherism sucked. But Thatcherism had direction. It was Conservatism on Red Bull and Conservatives loved it. The Conservative party is now nothing more than a vehicle for PM Johnson.

And he's riding the fuck clean out of it.😆

I worked in clothing in the 80’s. Overseas factories were investing in technology to speed up manufacture. Britain didn’t bother.

Yes, I worked in textile factories as a student in the late sixties and early seventies. I can fully confirm this - they didn't invest in new technology and only gave staff the minimum of training. Hence even then the work started to go overseas to the far east.

That wasn't Thatcher's fault

Of course it was. She waged war on the manufacturing industries, privatised everything in sight and bribed council tenants to vote for her. She destroyed the society she maintained didn’t exist.

The parties. Meh. It’s small fry for a man WHO WAS FOUND GUILTY OF ILLEGALLY POROGING PARLIAMENT

If he can walk away from that, he’s made of bloody Teflon! How can people just …. Let that go?!

There must be some pithy saying about anyone who thinks they might not need an ethics advisor is most sorely in need of one, but I’m too tired to think of it.

I wonder what it will take to get rid of him? He’s clearly going to amble along running the place in his own best interest until he goes too far. Suggestions of what will be too far, anyone?

Agree with everything you have said OP.
Add in another covid wave arriving that the government are going to do precisely nothing about.
I feel really despairing about the state of the country. What sort of a mess are things going to be in by the time we get to have an election? Another two years of this? Eurgh.

We can't get rid of him. Nor can the Conservative party. Everyone is stuck with him.

We're all on the BOJO train now.😱🤡😱

I hold no candle whatsoever for Thatcher. I'd be perfectly happy to dance on her grave.

The trouble is that, if I had to choose between her and Johnson as PM, I'd choose Thatcher every time. So I guess when Johnson snuffs it we'll all be doing a whole lot worse on his grave than just dancing.

". It’s small fry for a man WHO WAS FOUND GUILTY OF ILLEGALLY POROGING PARLIAMENT"

Yes but do people really know what proroguing Parliament is? Even at the time? And people have short memories. But lockdown? And parties had by those who put the lockdown in place. Hmm plenty of people didn't break the rules - not like that!

"Add in another covid wave arriving that the government are going to do precisely nothing about."

Yep. Where is Evusheld? Who here knows what Evusheld is? It was approved in this country on March 17th this year. Made by British firm AstraZeneca. It's a special vaccine suitable for the 500,000 immunosuppressed who had no or a poor response to covid that gives you antibodies and works ✔️ Plenty of other countries have been giving it out. But not here. Barely a mention. Boris Johnson wants to have you think he's sorted covid with the vaccine rollout he takes credit for. And his big fat raspberry to Europe for doing it so quickly. But people still vulnerable to death by covid? Fuck em! Doesn't fit with his lying liars narrative.

Oh god, he just wants to pretend Covid is over. That’s classic Tory isn’t it, claims to be the party of business but in fact is the party of business owners. ‘Business as usual’.

By which I mean failed government privatization of public assets like utilities and rail, zero investment in workforce- (charging for university education and putting the barest minimum into training and apprenticeship while not requiring businesses to train their own people,), back to presenteeist culture in offices even where WFH is possible, in order to get workers spending on transport travel fares and exorbitant car fuel again, in order to prop up the huge city centre office rents that their mates make money from.. list goes on and on.).

I don’t think Johnson has got any concept of policies around business, being a journalist, but he really likes to be liked and is very easily lobbied.

It’s very scary how vulnerable that makes us with him at the helm at a time of huge challenges for the economy on so many fronts- brexit, global forces on materials and fuel, covid, Russia waging war on Ukraine, and the rapidly closing window to prevent the very worst of global climate change economic chaos.

We literally don’t have time for his nonsense. Adults are required stat. I’d vote for a MN emergency coalition government at this point given how fucked things are, just to get some non-partisan action on the economy and environment going now, to shore us up a bit better for the future.

I didn’t mean to write ‘MN’ government, but I think autocorrect is sometimes cleverer than it lets on

I’d definitely vote for that!

...and to all the people saying we have to keep Boris because there's no-one suitable to replace him:

1. that's a damning indictment of the entire Conservative Party
2. it's the inevitable outcome of him surrounding himself with "Yes, Boris" types rather than competent politicians
3. there's bound to be a high quality candidate somewhere on the backbenches, who needs enough support to be able to do a Macron and come from nowhere to sweep to victory
4. isn't a lack of suitable successor something Boris has planned so that he gets to remain in power as long as possible?

To those saying we should leave him be, because he's doing his best, I say his best isn't good enough, the country deserves better.

To those saying the other lot would be worse, well I don't have a lot of time for the other lot either but seriously, how could it be worse? I guess we could have put boots on the ground in Ukraine but surely this latest Labour leadership has learned from what Blair did in the Middle East, and wouldn't storm in?

Who here knows what Evusheld is?

i have never heard of it. I assume that Johnson doesn't want to know because other countries got in first, so there is no political capital in it for him.