Westminstenders: Frozen

[RedToothBrush]

Boris Johnson was empty chaired by C4 with a block of ice.

The Conservatives went mental and have threatened to look at C4 broadcast remit.

This is illiberal and anti democratic.

Journalists are supposed to hold power to account on behalf of the public. If MPs don't turn up then they can't be held to account.

They have a duty to show. It's not good enough to avoid scrutiny because it might make you look bad. That's the whole point.

The contempt with which Johnson holds the press and public is reprehensible and you should be concerned whatever your political alligence. It allows corruption to fester without consequence.

And to then threaten C4 because they do their job in line with their responsibility as a broadcaster is alarming.

This is how authoritarian dictators work.

hate you have seemed critical on a few occasions about pp posting from abroad, asking why we do so

Hence noone had any reason to think you aren't born & bred British

That is well deserved

I’m a LD member and very active in our local party but in my super safe Tory seat will be voting Labour (postal ready to send off) as the LDs came a distant third last time. Weird to vote tactically for first time ever but just want the incumbent to either come unstuck or at least get a message that we don’t all think like sheep down here. The Labour candidate is a good local councillor and I’m happy to give her my vote this time. Can’t say I’m onboard with all the LDs’ national policies as a raging rad fem but am prioritising a protest vote locally and second referendum as a matter of immediate urgency. Women’s rights will always be under attack so the fight goes on after the current mess is sorted.

Not sure if this has been posted before, but I didn't know the Lib Dems had sold voter data to the 2016 Remain campaign. Bit squicky but it's been investigated and cleared apparently. But now there's something weird going on about their response to a journalist writing about it, including a faked letter. www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/what-are-jo-swinsons-liberal-democrats-so-desperate-to-hide/#

DUP manifesto released, totally opposes BJ's WA
He was able to dump them, when May couldn't

R. Daniel Kelemen@rdanielkelemen

Accidental but totally predictable as @m2matthijs , I, and others have been saying for a while.

Johnson picked option A, which risks UK breakup in long run.

yes prettybird you are probably right, no one cares if I am Albanian, or not. It is something that we/I have found it best not to admit to - it just seems there's so little left to say before the GE, that it's all 'fluff' really.

It's just that, for a change, the news reported on the recent Durres /Thumane earthquake with some sympathy for the Albanian people. Normally, we are reported in the news as illegal migrants or drug smugglers and people traffickers.

I just took the opportunity to bring up that isn't what most Albanian people are like. I'll now revert back to my UK-naturalized self if you prefer.

They don't know what shame means piggy so your embarrassment is really wasted. Embarrassment is for people with consciences, y'know, losers

Apt.

Why would people on here dislike Albanians?

Anyway, if you can vote in GEs, you are presumably also British.

Cross-posted.

But genuinely don't understand why you'd assume that the most pro-migration place on mumsnet would have taken a specific dislike to Albanians.

Conservative PC Gary Hynds being outed for calling a senior female barrister a "bitch" on twitter

Account now protected, presumably while an intern clears his timeline of the evidence.

Up until 2015 it had been an ultra-safe, "Monkey-in-red-rosette" Labour seat. The ousted Labour MP then led the Scottish Leave campaign (showing how much he was in tune with his constituency, which voted c70% Remain hmm) and is now telling people to vote Conservative shock (again, demonstrating how in touch he is hmm). Who was that?
pretty I don't think people on here realise how bad the Monkey-in-red-rosette" situation was here in Scotland.

Something very about a certain poster...

BCF maybe you can now understand why I asked the questions - curiosity only, only you see that as a critique.

Greykitten - Albania is not in the EU (although it has applied and really wants to be a member). I am the daughter of an Albanian who became UK-naturalized, even before the EU, so I'm British but ethnically Albanian and only vote in the UK.

Many here can choose to vote in either the country they live in or in the UK. Some can have dual-nationality, but some can't, like my Lithuanian friends.

My questions are only curiousity - like all of us here, they mean nothing.

I know almost nothing about Albania except roughly the geographical location and suspect most British people have similarly low levels of knowledge about the country. Then again like you @HateIsNotGood I naturalized as an adult and there may be cultural memes of which I'm simply not aware.

I'm heartened by the recent polls, but still expecting a Tory government. I wonder if the MRP stuff has any local factors added in, I'd be interested in eg the use of text mining local and national media weighted by local circulation for party/candidate associations with positive or negative words, plus candidate related scandals or divisive local issues like in @bellinisurge 's constituency. Probably the latter is too expensive, but the text mining might not be, there was some nice work shown recently on the national media bias between party references. I'm thinking about Liverpool and the Sun after Hillsborough, how the city seemed to be buffered from certain positions by boycotting the paper.

I know Albania isn't in the EU , though you are of course an EU citizen.

Hate correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you a Leaver? So how do you feel about the fact that your country of birth wants to join the EU?

FWIW all I know is that Albania is still recovering from a hideous and lengthy dictatorship under Enver Hoxha - and that process is going to take time.

SaintEyning i think people preparing to vote tactically are heroic.

Not convinced of two tier health care systems (yes, most OECD countries have some form of them). Don't really see it as a case of middle class paying because they can/should. Rather, that under two tiered systems it ends up that higher socioeconomic folks get to pay for better care whilst lower socio economic folks get the less experienced, less skilled. Two tier systems tend to cream off the better doctors.

Plus, more systems, more bureacracy. I'm from Canada originally and in my province they introduced fee's but ended up rescinding them when the provincial gov't realised it cost more to administer the system than the money coming in. NZ model not necessarily best in class and has its issues too... "A growing gap between high and low income earners means that more people feel they can’t afford medical and dental care."

theconversation.com/new-zealands-health-service-performs-well-but-inequities-remain-high-82648

"Normally, we are reported in the news as illegal migrants or drug smugglers and people traffickers"

That is disgraceful and racist of the media
and regular posters here have frequently condemned racism against East Europeans, posting that they are a positive asset to the UK

.... except maybe for a few Tory / Brexiter ploppers, who claim EE citizens are reducing wages, increasing rents, clogging up GPs, schools etc and that Brexit will solve that

Thanks MShip - most posters here assume I'm White British because I voted Leave and frequent the Brexit Arms. Whoever I'm talking to, whether IRL or online, the last thing I do is admit I'm Albanian.

At least, if Brexit starts (we all realize it's not getting Done straightaway), Albania maybe can get a Deal with the UK, without waiting several years for the EU to accept us in.

We're one of the poorest countries in Europe and really shouldn't be.

Derxa - it was/is Tom Harris. He made a very bizarre election video in 2015 which demonstrated he'd essentially given up https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/westminster-2015/uk-election-candidate-posts-video-of-dog-being-dragged-across-carpet-1.2199462?mode=ampp*

I'm not going to engage any further with the Albanian/British visitor. He/she seems to be determined to see his/her nationality as some sort of issue, in the basis of zero evidence on these threads . So the best response is no further response. 🎶🎵

As I say to my close friends - the mafia and earthquakes don't stop people going to Italy, so why don't they go to Albania too.

Because until recently, the country was closed to us, and politically less accessible than countries such as Poland or the Baltic states.

*Fedup21
*
Ditto. I will be voting not-Conservative- for the party that is most likely to unseat the incumbent Tory MP.

Out of curiosity, were you born in Britain, @HateIsNotGood ? I want to ask because I'm never sure what to put for ethnicity on diversity forms, for myself or my kids. DH and I are white, Canadian, with a mixed European background like most Canadians (half each German and Dutch in my case as my parents emigrated as children post WWII, more mixed in DH's). But we're both British citizens now, do I put white British, or white other? And our kids were born in the UK, are they white British? I put white other, and say "European" in the box, but it feels wrong, especially for the kids, as we are all British citizens. It doesn't help that I work in genomics, so I'm well aware that we definity aren't genetically British, and the diversity forms are a crude way of getting at those groupings. I find it so confusing, what do you put?