Thread 38 Starmer: Tax your Hamster

[DuncinToffee]

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https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5440759-thread-37-starmer-pinko-commie-slimeball?page=1

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I agree.

I think most people would have been better than Johnson. For Johnson it became his “Churchill moment” but rather than doing what was right he did what he thought would make him popular. He wasn’t even on before when stood with medical advisors at the lectern and they may as well have been delivering their hit in Manderin because Johnson just brushed over it anyway.

There are people saying that Theresa May would have followed the same scientific advice as Johnson. I think it was all too apparent at the time that Johnson was bored by it, didn't understand it and made no effort to. Virtually any senior Conservative figure in my lifetime would have been less frivolous, irresponsible and damaging than he was.

Yet the Johnson apologists are still evident on those threads.

Yes. Pull the other one. Not that it will matter to the Farage and Reform groupies.

They had hardly scream two tier justice though. I wonder if Farage still admires Putin?

I’d like to know what scientific advice Johnson was following that everyone else would have followed.

He had no idea what was going on and didn’t even appear to try and listen to his medical advisors doing the same PSA’s he was.

I agree that I think almost anyone else would have been better and at first I was supportive of him and generous about the fact it was unprecedented.

Very similar to my experience. Just a weird internal focus on breathing. I lay on the sofa for 3 or 4 days, thanking my earlier self who had done some batch cooking in case I caught it. Stand up, put microwave on, sit down til it pings, eat as much of it as you can manage.
I caught mine at my stint at school for vulnerable pupils. I’m a senior teacher but t( vast majority were, of course, infants and juniors. Distancing wasn’t happening. I agree the whole thing was bad for children/young people but it’s hard to see how it could have been managed without losing a lot of teachers to covid/long covid. An earlier harder lock down might have kept it short and prevented the need for more though.

I remember talking to a resident in a nursing home about the election for Conservative leadership and was arguing that Hunt was better than Johnson, especially if something catastrophic like a pandemic happened! (I didn't really think a pandemic would happen). He was a member and insisted that Boris was the only man for the job. This was July 2019. I often think of him because he was a pleasant old chap.

Thanks for the thread DuncinToffee!

Please provide refuge, I don't know why I bother posting on any other threads anymore, this is the only thread where toxicity and sheer shitgibbonry are not posted on every other post!

Even if Theresa May had followed the same scientific advice no way would she have presided over the bollocks that went on in No.10 or not held cobra meetings I also doubt she would have sanctioned the fecking billions that was spaffed by Johnson & his cronies.

The problem with following scientific advice is that it needs a culture of ... well following scientific advice. Which isn't really the UKs strong suit.

So we were starting with our legs tied anyway. Add to that the clearly partisan and rigged advice and you pretty much ensured that enough people had enough reason to go "chinny reck-on" and that was that.

As a significant Churchill fan the comparison between him and Johnson is completely odious. Churchill and Johnson were both journalists with great skill with words. There the comparison ends.

Churchill is a man who was a near perfect war leader. A man who could compromise, build agreements with other politicians not on the same side, lead a unity government and face down some of the more Conservative and regressive elements of his class to permit the country to survive. He is a visionary man in that sense. He gets on a plane in the middle of a war in horrendous times to chum up to Stalin and drink vodka. Anything to preserve the country. He sets in train a number of eccentric projects to save Britain and spends his time in every diplomatic effort to get the country money when its starving for funds and arms, he persuaded the US to support us, he gets De Gaulle to London, he lives under the Cabinet Office in an underground bunker that is cold and filthy, and finally gets rid of men like Halifax who would have negotiated with Hitler and let Europe be razed by the Nazis.

Johnson is a lazy arse. He wrote his own history because no one else would bother.

There is no denying Johnson was nothing like Churchill.

The comparison isn’t that he was like him - but Johnson believed he was and wanted to be as popular and produce a good response like him.

However - like you say - he just doesn’t have those qualities to practice what he preaches he could and would!

I didn't catch COVID until 2022. By which time it was a very different animal, I wasn't very ill at all.

DD1 hasn't had it at all.

Boris is very much like Churchill in that he is permanently broke. In fact that is pretty much all they have in common, if you strip adjectives out of the comparison.

Somehow I can't see Boris riding into a war zone and then escaping on foot.

Had my shingles vaccine today and it hurt! Oof. Feeling better now. To my knowledge, I haven't had Covid.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/nov/20/moj-to-remove-right-to-trial-by-jury-for-thousands-of-cases-in-controversial-overhaul

Me neither! I remain amazed as someone working with primary age children including in ‘bubbles’ that popped repeatedly, that I escaped it until Sept 2022. It was utterly shit, but I didn’t think I would die, unlike so many people when it first started in force in the UK.
I did refuse to accompany a coach load of children on a trip that first summer, however. And lo and behold, every single adult on that coach caught it. 🙄. I had the luxury of making that choice but so many workers in so many environments didn’t.

This is interesting because it really doesn’t need to happen and is only happening between criminal justice is so badly underfunded. Either way offending has always had this choice of forum, but underfunding it has gamed it favour of delay and fading will by witnesses.

Juries are a lot more liberal than judges. It will probably mean convictions go up. It means the CPS will be able to push more cases forwards

He is a man who rushes to the front of a crowd and affects to lead it. Contemptible man

Once you remove juries, you are half way to tyranny.

A juror can say "no fucking way am I convicting".
A magistrate will just go "Dats de law" and that will be that.

It's juries acquitting people despite "the facts" that keeps laws on the right side of just.

I’m a bit on the fence about this one - having done jury service has completely dented my confidence in the ability of 12 random people to come to the right conclusion! Stupidity, ignorance and racism present in both juries I was a part of. (Obviously not from me )

They were a feature in Northern Ireland. Diplock courts.

Levenson’s proposal has been kicking around for 30 years. If the criminal justice system had proper funding this would not have been looked at again.

It will mean repeat offenders can no longer rely on their records being hidden and the CPS standard for bringing cases will be lowered in effect.

Jury trial is expensive. Liberal provisions cost. Nobody wants to pay for juries. It’s a willed tyranny

We’re not prepared to invest in the justice system in the way it requires. There are no simple fixes otherwise the Tories would have done something. More courts (and courts open), court staff, barristers, better tech etc.
This is what we get when we can’t/wont invest.

Which is why I’m still fucking furious about the bloody great hole in our economy brought about through Brexit and the absolute wasters that sold it to voters.

This with bells on
plus all the over under investment to numerous to bloody list, utterly shameful if they’d have told the ERG nutters to fuck off & didn’t put party before country just maybe the country wouldn’t have suffered so much.