Thread 13 - TalkLair: “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.”

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous thread 12).

Looks like spring has sprung! Tulips, apple blossom and early hay fever are upon us. In the TalkLair, we remain hunkered down keeping cosy and warm, because "something something 'til May is out". The hearth is glowing, the walls covered in dubious artwork, books by non-approved authors line the shelves, rugs are down on the floors (and assorted pets curled up on them).

We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

I hate our media because he wouldn't be able to do this shit if they didn't give him so much airtime and column space. He says things that are obviously untrue and they let him away with it or put minimum work into reporting that he is a liar. He's a fucking poundshop Trump and it's a fucking disgrace.

I fear this is the year he wins a seat. I've enjoyed watching him lose in the past but Clacton is just the sort of place to elect him. He was a cunt in the European parliament and he'll be a cunt in the House of Commons. As bad as other MPs are, he is worse because he wants to cause trouble and openly admits that. It's incredibly depressing that he is now going to feature front and centre throughout the rest of this tedious general election.

Apologies for excessive swearing but this is all a very bad thing that is definitely going to make things worse for this country. I hate fear mongerers whose only pleasure in life is lying and putting people against each other. Farage is one of the worst people in this country and in an ideal world he'd live in a dingy bedsit and none of us would pay him even an iota of attention to him. The media in the US (Trump) and UK (Frogfaced vile human being) have done us so very wrong. I wish the plane crash had ended differently.

I loathe Farage and dread him actually winning a seat this time but it’s looking highly likely. We deserve better politics all round.

Word, @MouseMinge!

We are unlikely to have a general election until next year, but we have local elections (1 to 7 in order of preference) and European parliament elections (1 to 17 in order of preference) on Friday so I've belatedly got busy reading flyers and taking notes.

Not feeling great enthusiasm, but the counts are always fun and these should go on for days.

1 to 17 in order of preference is quite an ask!

@Kucinghitam One podcast scoldingly informed me that I can't even spoil my ballot because that would be very inconsiderate of me, for wasting the precious time of the counters. I should just fuck off and die if I'm not going to vote for a Righteous.

Arf at that! I've been keeping myself amused watching our constituency (the same Tory MP since its creation in 1983) on the Electoral Calculus site, which provides a % "chance of winning". We have gone from 99% Tory to 61/39 in favour of Labour. This may be partly because they've moved the boundaries, but more likely because the Labour candidate is a very well-regarded female Labour councillor.

I hope she canvasses, otherwise I shall have to hunt her down and quiz her publicly on the vexed question of "what is a woman?" If in doubt, it's another spoiled ballot as I don't particularly want Keir Starmer as PM. Life is already dreary enough.

I've been reminded that here every single paper has to be shown to the party observers before the vote is counted - I don't know does that happen there. it would be a simple way for a message to be put over on spoiled ballots.

I also remembered that a friend, who volunteered for the count once, indicated that spoiled ballots could enliven the tedium of the work.

I heard that podcast @Kucinghitam (The News Agents?) and instantly thought of you :)

The last time we voted was only about a month ago, for the county police commissioner: three candidates, Tory, Labour and Lib Dem. I just wrote "NO" in each box and added "party affiliation has no place in policing". I think Mr G just wrote "NO POLITICS IN POLICING" over the whole thing. There were only two spoiled ballots in the village (and probably fewer than 200 votes, what with it being a foregone conclusion) so I'm glad we voted and brightened up the counters' day.

Sorry you're feeling so rough, "Kuc* and I hope it doesn't last much longer. I'm dreading catching it again now, it really fucked me last time.

I hadn't seen that Farridge had been milkshaked again, but I'm not long out of bed.

We have ranked-choice voting here in Maine for local elections. I just vote in order for the candidates I might be interested in and ignore the rest. No votes is still a tactic!

I'll have a postal vote this year as we're away. I spoiled my ballot in the last general election but I didn't do it particularly professionally because I was voting in person.

This year, I can take my time…

our Labour candidate is actually something of a TERF he tells me, but I still don't trust stoma (oops, AutoCorrect), Starmer, and people like Annelise Dodds and Lisa Nandy worry me, and i am not impressed by the way they only got rid of Russell Moyle recently and didn't censure him over his appalling behaviour in the House towards Miriam Cates.

No wonder the count is slow! It's only done for spoiled or ambiguous papers here.

I just vote in order for the candidates I might be interested in and ignore the rest

Known in Norther Ireland as 'vote til you boke'. Start at 1, and keep numbering until you reach the candidate who makes you sick.

I'm loving 'Vote til you boke'.

This is the problem, PoppySeed. Even if your local Labour candidate seems OK, you're still putting your trust in Starmer and Dodds and co if you decide to vote Labour. It's a complexity I don't have with my candidate, though! 😄

I love “vote till you boke” (though I may be the only person in Portland Maine that knows what boke means

OOh, have just discovered this that I composed last night but never hit the post button on

Our count is slow, but on the other hand the tallies are extremely accurate for at least the first two in any constituency (our constituencies are multi-seater, between three and five, and the larger ones are great for getting slightly eccentric locally-focussed people elected). I wonder whether making it a thing that everyone could write one personal message on a blank bit of the ballot paper, all to be scanned and made digitally available after the election be a way to encourage more people to turn out and vote. Or would it be too like xtwitter and no novelty at all?

Hope everyone slept well and that the poorly are feeling better than yesterday.

Last night DH started watching the Starmer v Sunak debate with DDs, messaged me to say it was rubbish, "They're just constantly talking over each other!" After 15 minutes they switched it off and went to bed*.

I skimmed through the MN thread about the debate and my overall impression was exactly what DH said, with the main take-home being that everybody on that thread was either a party shill or so immersed in their own tribal bias that they're like fish who can't see water.

It's so fucking tedious - not just that particular thread, but any thread on politics on any platform, any TV discussion, any news article, any bloody podcast. Everyone is so damn proud of being tribal and narrow-minded and of actively baiting/sneering/pious-frauding the other side. Looking back, I'd say that the rot first became obvious around 2016, although the mycelium under the surface would have been spreading for a long time.

I'm so done with it. I think I'm going to obey the News Agents and just not bother to vote.

*I'm trying to isolate in the spare bedroom, not working terribly well because the 3 human residents keep trying to come in with various excuses. DH makes a big show of pulling up his shirt collar over his nose, like he isn't a fucking biologist who understands how viruses work 🤦🏻‍♀️Yesterday was a day of terrible sinus congestion, resulting headache, rivers of snot. This morning I have reached the racking coughs stage.

Oh dear Kuc, I wish you better.

We watched about 10 seconds of the 'debate', before confirming it would be scoring cheap points; not debating at all.

They don't do politicians in general any favours by descending to that level.

I made it to the first advert break, in the hope things might improve as they settled down. It didn't. The 45 second rule wasn't helpful - with that time limit they can't really do anything but pre-prepared soundbites. And they both appear to have been replaced by slightly unconvincing androids.

I didn't bother with the point-scoring contest, which I dare say they both lost. I wish that people would stop banging on about Sunak's wealth (which must be very nice for him, but prompts no envy in me and is irrelevant) and that Starmer would get his adenoids sorted out so that I could stop putting my fingers in my ears every time he speaks.

I didn't watch it either, and like Kuc, scanned the thread (very busy!). Increasingly I hate the whole charade: not just the televised debates, but all the daft "Here's Rishi in a factory, pretending to look interested" and "Here's Keir on a building site in a hard hat" (they love hard hats! 😃). It's schoolboy stuff, gaslighting the public.

May your rivers of snot abate soon, Kuc. I would say, though, that some issues are just tribal. Gender not least, surely? You're either for it, or against it. Not that that helps in trying to find a vote in this election.

I didn't watch it either, and like Kuc, scanned the thread (very busy!). Increasingly I hate the whole charade: not just the televised debates, but all the daft "Here's Rishi in a factory, pretending to look interested" and "Here's Keir on a building site in a hard hat" (they love hard hats! 😃). It's schoolboy stuff, gaslighting the public.

May your rivers of snot abate soon, Kuc. I would say, though, that some issues are just tribal. Gender not least, surely? You're either for it, or against it. Not that that helps in trying to find a vote in this election.

That post took ages to land! the whirligig thing was going orund and round for ages, never normally does that on MN. But now I see why: it was twins! 😁

all the daft "Here's Rishi in a factory, pretending to look interested" and "Here's Keir on a building site in a hard hat" (they love hard hats!

Hard hats and a high vis vest seems to have become synonymous with 'ordinary working person'. Which is, of course, nonsense. If they must do photo ops, I'd much rather see them doing policy analysis - but crunching numbers and seeking legal opinions doesn't come with a dressing up outfit.