Be Excellent To Each Other

BBC: Labour pledges to renationalise most rail services within five years

Taking over the contracts as they expire is a good start, especially as the privately-held ones are now just on management contracts anyway. I get why they don't want to buy back the rolling stock initially but as the system develops I think the question of ownership of new trains would become pertinent as existing stock needs replacing.

Half-expecting the Tories to spoil this by handing over the current publicly run franchises (eg LNER) to their mates for 9 million year contracts, or Starmer to drop it next week "because it's settled and we need to make trains work".

That's a fairly positive development. Something that they can point to that's a clear differentiator and that *should* have a net benefit,

Now that Rwanda is “safe”, the government have started rounding up people to deport them instead of applying this to new arrivals. Many of these are asylum seekers who are cooperating fully with the system, are a good way through the application process and have started building a life here by going to college, volunteering and so on.

It’s deliberately being as inhumane as possible

Rwanda: Civil servants mount court challenge over new law

The union for senior civil servants is launching an unprecedented legal challenge to ministers' Rwanda plan. The FDA said it was intervening because it feared the scheme to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda could force officials to break the law.

The fiasco that keeps on giving.

And by rounding people up and putting them into detention centres before all of the legal issues are sorted, they’ll be wasting even more money.

If they just hired more staff to process claims quickly, then those with a good claim can become self sufficient and stop costing us to house them.
Those without a good claim can be deported and stop costing us to house them, and the thought of being turned round quickly will be a deterrent.

It's absolutely sickening.

I know it's a stunt designed to shore up the authoritarian xenophobic base who are going to Reform anyway, but using desperate people in such a way is just wrong.

Just voted (local and police).

The poll clerk made a great play of pretending to size up my youthful driving licence photo to my more modern, rugged handsome look.

Decided to vote for the person promising to cut crime for the police commissioner elections. Still annoyed that the Tories switched this (and mayoral) elections to first-past-the-post.

Asylum homelessness rises as refugees told to leave accommodation

So, here's the next problem. Once your asylum claim has been approved you are classed as a refugee and have 28 days to vacate your Home Office supplied accommodation and find somewhere else to live, as well as applying for benefits and/or a job.

More than 5,000 refugee households were classed as homeless between October and December 2023 in England, four times as many as in the same period in 2022.

Refugee Council chief executive Enver Solomon said asking people to find a job and housing within 28 days was "unrealistic" and "means destitution and homelessness is too often inevitable".

Calling for the "moving-on period" to be at least doubled, he added: "This dramatic rise in refugee homelessness is the tragic-yet-predictable consequence of a dysfunctional system that sets newly granted refugees up to fail."

Ha. Boris Johnson was turned away from his local polling station after forgetting to bring acceptable photo ID.

Chris Heaton-Harris, former chief whip under him, said: "As someone who knows Boris well, I can't say it completely surprises me... I do know that he then simply went home, got some ID, went back to the polling station and voted Conservative."

The cynical part of me thinks that he did it on purpose just so it guaranteed news coverage

I took it as typical of his sense of entitlement, rules being for other people.

But, the less I have to see, hear, or think about him, the better.

On reflection I think Dr. Z may be right, it's just the sort of stupid stunt he'd do. I bet his only regret is that there wasn't a zip wire outside the polling station he could have dangled from for a couple of hours.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c103ldej4qvo.amp

Haha fuck 'em.

This is one of those depressing "we should be teaching this in school not focusing on memorising the times tables" things like basic interest rate stuff, isn't it.

But no, memorise the times tables and vote for the people shouting loudest about foreigners coming over here, stealing our tax cuts.

Edit: sorry, this is one of those "bik's in a good mood again" posts.

Ooh, various news places suggesting a General Election announcement is incoming.

For July 4th, according to BBC speculation!

A little bit on the nose for us to achieve our independence from this shower of shite, but I'll take it.

Think I'll get some fizz out. Just in case.

Man, it's going to be hard to know who to vote for this time around.

Governor Marley

Another pay day for South Staffordshires finest poll clerk!

Brilliant stuff. How long have you been doing it?

I sometimes get tempted to do that but don't relish the thought of the lengthy shift.

Much as I like Peston, putting ITV on for things like this just feels wrong.

No crest on the lectern!

He's getting drenched. What a metaphor!

I've done it three times now and it's a breeze... At the last election, we had 35 people in all day. My brother is the presiding officer so I basically get paid to hang out with him all day.

So you reckon they laminated his speech for him?

He doesn't sound enthusiastic about it.

The secret of great comedy is timing.

He couldn't say, 'Labour leader.' He said, 'Lader leader.'

Practicing his yodelling. He’s taking up a new hobby now that’s he’s going to be able to free up a lot of time.

I did yodelling in my younger days.
My teacher was a

...

Little old lady

A little old lady? Who?

Trump is the biggliest presidential felon. So much winning.

Just got up and he's still a criminal. What a great feeling.

I'm not really getting much of a sense that it'll make any difference to anything save for making his supporters more fervent.

It's pretty clear that Trump's supporters aren't really supporting him but rather the idea that you can just be a total prick and get away with it.

It's all about owning the libs or whatever.

He could be a woman beating, dog torturing Lost Prophets fan and they'd still vote for him because he's a prick.

Hopefully this keeps him out of office as I really don't need a Putin supporter in the White House. I need Putin to die before my mum. She's Ukrainian and 84 years old.

I bet he gets away with just a fine. I’d love to see the smug prick get sent down though.

Don't know who to vote for?

Here's a very simplistic applet that will tell you who you agree with, by answering 10 questions.

https://earthize.org/vote/g/

Not sure how unbiased it is, as the questions seemed quite leading to me.

Hmm...

They are leading, and of course this is oversimplifying things, and I think a lot of folks are going to have to vote strategically.

For comparison to MaliA, this was mine, and I bet a lot of folks would have similar results.

I got almost identical results Mimi, and I'm concerned that I accidentally agreed with a Reform party policy

It’s not easy being green.

Conservative and Reform are basically the same thing so that makes you 100% Tory.

No surprises

That website is owned by ‘Earthize’, a climate change activist group with a social media presence.

The questions are massively weighted to favour a common sense/decency answer in favour of the Greens. They’ve chosen ten questions where a popular answer would align with Green Party values, and one of those obviously crosses with a Tory and even a Reform policy, but this is one of the least reliable questionnaire of this type that I’ve seen, partly because it has its own agenda, and partly because it’s just *too* simple.

No surprise, really. But for some of those questions there ought to be a 'Don't know' or 'It depends' option, for example 'Should migrants who come to the UK to work in public services be allowed to bring their families?' I'd say it depends on whether we're talking about immediate family members or whether extended family members should be included.

I got Green Party on there too. Which is odd as I can't imagine voting for them.

Trump's directly affecting my life in a trivial way. I'm a big UFC fan and have been watching for 14 years. Anyway, for some reason they keep inviting him to events and then they give him a proper walkout (as if he was a fighter) and then show him like 30-40 times per broadcast.

Seeing his stupid gormless face is making the events a little unwatchable for me. Especially when you get the crowd chanting 'f**k Joe Biden' in support of him. I know that cage fighting isn't going to always attract the smartest audience but it's driving me away from watching.

A group statistically more likely to have multiple brain contusions statistically more likely to support trump, you say?

That's totally made up obviously - in fact there's a little bell ringing in the distance that the guy who owns UFC is a maga type, more than anything. It might be that everyone there is annoyed as you.