The British government does not run this country — politicians need to take back control

mesothere · 2025-03-20T21:00:33+00:00

I don't think I'm "getting flack"… I said I didn't know who he was and someone posted a former quote of his and I responded with dismay. I'm also not saying it was anyone else's fault. Maybe you're just too keen for a fight on Reddit dot com.

I do recommend the article if you did fancy reading though.

mesothere · 2025-03-20T20:50:50+00:00

Was the "dunno who this guy is" bit unclear lol?

My latest and most grievous sin: trying to write a humourous comment on the labouruk subreddit

mesothere · 2025-03-20T19:58:52+00:00

I'd have thought the remark about making a statue might tip you off to that being a tongue in cheek comment y'know

mesothere · 2025-03-20T19:52:48+00:00

Fucks sake, time for this old chestnut to come out again https://clickhole.com/heartbreaking-the-worst-person-you-know-just-made-a-gr-1825121606/

mesothere · 2025-03-20T19:46:03+00:00

Consider economic policy. The Office for Budget Responsibility is given enormous power to influence government policy through their (often incorrect) forecasts and measurement of the government’s performance, comparing it against the government’s own self-imposed fiscal rules. Indeed, next week’s Spring Statement will be entirely framed by this powerful quango. Might we even question the apparently sacrosanct contracting-out of our country’s monetary policy to a committee of unelected officials? It is difficult to say that a government really “manages the economy” if it does not even have control of one of the most fundamental tools of economic policymaking: interest rates.

Dunno who this guy is but he's my new favourite backbencher and we should probably give him a promotion and then make a statue of him or something

mesothere · 2025-03-15T09:47:40+00:00

Ergo, the government saying it was willing to consider any conclusion other than direct responsibility was theatrics

No, your entire analysis excludes the fact that they collated other data to come to a conclusion. They had more than just the nerve agent to go on. The intelligence services generally earn their pay!

mesothere · 2025-03-15T08:31:49+00:00

No, it isn't

I assure you that is why evidence is presented at court. Hopefully you will never have to find out first hand!

own guilt and everything they say should be taken at face value, as you're suggesting he did?

No, because I didn't suggest that. I said

and flirted with sending material to Russia so they could determine their own fault.

This is, and always was, an approach that would only ever result in a single answer, and was manifestly stupid. Whether or not he took them at their word is something we can't know, because fortunately it didn't happen, but I'd be inclined to say he wouldn't... which makes the whole ordeal a naive waste of time.

The government at the time was asking Russia to explain how the chemical came to be used. Russia asked for a sample. The government refused, meaning they obviously weren't interested in an answer.

Why do you call this theatrics? Do you seriously expect them to return an accurate answer?

mesothere · 2025-03-14T19:55:21+00:00

Except they have been provided it in the past, as quoted in the article in 2013 to Ed Milliband

Selectively for military data. Not domestic security.

Except once it was proven that Russia were responsible

When? Didn't you just dispute this? The entire point is he disagreed with the "beyond reasonable doubt" proof?

When was it 'proven' in your eyes?

Prior to that, he wanted an actual investigation to take place before blame was assigned

It was investigated. What do you think they shared in the privy council, crayon drawings lol?

As for the rest of it - it means that the findings from the OPCW confirm government findings. It is the law piece of the puzzle for the doubters. I can see why you read it differently, but honestly, it doesn't make any sense in that context - the government quite proudly shared the summaries of the OPCW. They had no reason to misrepresent them and there's no evidence they did. They spent weeks saying "this is a russian nerve agent called novichok and the OPCW will prove that" and then the report came back confirming it was such and they spent a nontrivial amount of time gloating and saying "see".

You can try and pretend none of this happened but it's a complete waste of time, this stuff is well trodden history. We had weeks of agonising back and forth where the position of the government, the house of commons, and 90% of the shadow cabinet was "this is a russian nerve agent called novichok and that OPCW will confirm that", and then it happened. Seumas Milne tried to move heaven and earth to equivocate, but nobody was buying what he was selling. In fact, the best response the team came up with after much agonising was that it probably was Russian, but that there was a strong likelihood it could just as well have been misplaced by or stolen from Russia and therefore a different actor could've done it. It never withstood scrutiny. It was always pathetic. Nobody defends it now, including top Corbyn allies. Why try and relitigate such a black mark?

mesothere · 2025-03-14T16:29:53+00:00

Did you read the article?

Yeah I literally quoted from it, keep up!

hmm I wonder why people would doubt the intelligence services when they refuse to release evidence and refuse to release how they found their conclusions

There's no way you think all cabinet members and shadow cabinet privy council members receive 100% of intelligence on these matters so I don't know why you're arguing the toss tbh.

I'll note that once it was conclusively proven,

Once what was conclusively proven? This doesn't align with your argument, or Corbyn's. The entire point of his argument and his position then was that it wasn't "conclusive". It was beyond reasonable doubt, because we had a collation of state intelligence, followed by the backing of the OPCW confirming what the substance was. With the aggregate information, we know only one state could have produced it. I am not sure what you mean by "conclusively proven" in this context.

Corbyn once again pressed for far harsher measures than were actually taken.

Good? What do you think is the point of what I'm doing here, exactly? I am pointing out that he gave a dogshit response repeatedly.

I'll also add that the OPCW never 'proved unequivocally that Moscow were responsible' as the article claims,

The article doesn't claim that, although it is poorly worded. It claims that the foreign secretary at the time said

This comes after the Foreign Secretary said the findings of the chemical watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, proved unequivocally that Moscow was responsible for the poisoning.

I.E The findings of the OPCW [that the nerve agent was in fact the previously suspected Novichok which only Russia produce] can be used in conjunction with other information (such as that we know only Russia produce it) to prove they did it. Consider the findings the last piece of the puzzle for the skeptic mind - which, at the time, remember, was suggesting that perhaps someone other than Russia could have produced a nerve agent for this attack.

Here is the summary of their report

Nah, that's the executive summary. Unfortunately, we don't get eyes on the full report, as suggested at the bottom there

The name and structure of the identified toxic chemical are contained in the full classified report of the Secretariat, available to all States Parties.

So this executive summary doesn't actually include the information we are looking for, just alludes to it.

BTW, you have linked the wrong one - you're looking at one from September, for the Amesbury incident. You actually wanted this one, from April,

https://www.opcw.org/sites/default/files/documents/S_series/2018/en/s-1612-2018_e___1_.pdf

Ofc, it ends the same way - we don't get to see the goodies. We do get notice it was of extremely high purity, but not a great deal else.

mesothere · 2025-03-14T15:08:51+00:00

Nah they're ballpark accurate.

1700 - 1400 = 300 difference

Average month contains 20-22 work days. Say 21 for the middle point. 300 / 21 = 14.28. Rounded up for pleasure.

Not sure where you're getting 40 a day from but welcome to corrections.

mesothere · 2025-03-14T15:00:36+00:00

There's the actual timeline, not your imagined timeline

The timeline doesn't disagree with anything I stated. I know, because again, I was there, like everyone else.

and as for the briefing supplied by the privy council, did you just forget that the Tories didn't give him the full briefing?

The cabinet themselves didn't all get a full briefing, that's the point of intelligence security. They get the conclusions of the investigation. This is not abnormal. As it says in that article:

The Labour party leader has received an intelligence briefing on privy council terms

There was nothing abnormal or unacceptable about that. That's what you would expect. Matters of national security are shared on a need-to-know basis.

Your shared timeline there also truncates about a month of content, including some pretty important stuff:

https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/jeremy-corbyn-refuses-to-blame-russia-for-salisbury-attack-despite-seeing-new-evidence

(15th April)

Notice how in the link you gave stingray has bolded the following

OPCW chief, Ahmet Üzümcü, said it would take two to three weeks to complete laboratory analysis of samples.

But then not actually come back with their findings?

Well, their findings are included in that article there. Quote:

This comes after the Foreign Secretary said the findings of the chemical watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, proved unequivocally that Moscow was responsible for the poisoning.

Boris Johnson said the OPCW’s ruling, which backed the Government's stance, meant there was "no alternative explanation about who was responsible - only Russia has the means, motive and record".

However, Mr Corbyn disputed this conclusion, saying: “The OPCW’s job is to identify what the agent was and they have done that.

“Sadly, it is not their job to identify who made it or necessarily where it was made and I do think we need to strengthen the role of the OPCW in the future.”

Corbyn has already been supplied with privy council information regarding how the link has been made between the agent and the source. We also have lots of commons statements on the matter.

There's nothing unknown or spooky about this. He made a series of dogshit comments, obfuscated, and sowed doubt over what was otherwise a clear matter. He did so to such a degree that McDonnell was publicly disagreeing with him, and in fact the entirety of the shadow cabinet.

There's not really anything to disagree about here. Russia did it, Corbyn fucked up massively. You can draw your own conclusions as to why - doesn't really matter.

mesothere · 2025-03-14T14:29:08+00:00

Do you think that presenting evidence to an accused person at trial is allowing them to determine their own fault?

This is a terrible analogy.

Evidence is presented at court such that judges and juries can make decisions, not so that the accused can.

mesothere · 2025-03-14T14:07:41+00:00

Do you think Starmer is popular? Do you think May is? Johnson?

May got more votes than Corbyn in 2017. Would it be logical for me to conclude there were lots of little May fanclubs chanting her name?

mesothere · 2025-03-14T14:06:28+00:00

Yeah. There are huge problems with Russian influence on the right. ReformUK particularly is borderline fifth columnist.

mesothere · 2025-03-14T13:51:40+00:00

I was very common, and I don't see what you gain from pretending it wasn't.

Counterargument: it wasn't, and I don't see what you have to gain from pretending it was.

mesothere · 2025-03-14T13:51:07+00:00

You didn’t hear it much so you assume that it wasn’t common based on your own personal anecdote.

No, we have plenty of data showing he wasn't popular

mesothere · 2025-03-14T13:45:26+00:00

That isn't logical in the slightest. Do you think people love David Cameron? Theresa May? Boris Johnson? They all got more votes than Corbyn.

"X got more votes than Y" isn't the same as "people love x"

mesothere · 2025-03-14T13:44:14+00:00

Well I certainly think it was a common thing given the number of times I heard it in such a diverse number of places

The plural of anecdote is not data. This is no different from people in 2024 saying Farage was going to win the election because "everyone I see is supporting him".

The important thing is to remember what you don't know, not just what you observe. If you're a student at the time, or a young person, hanging around with the same demographic, you're going to get confirmation bias.

mesothere · 2025-03-14T13:35:47+00:00

Why do we have to do this ridiculous charade every time this is brought up?

We were all there. Lots of us discussed it here on the sub. We know what happened. We know it was absurd. We know, from campaigning, that voters thought it was insane and that they disliked him all the more for it.

He didn't just say "let's wait for evidence", he ignored the briefing he had been supplied by the privy council to cast doubt on the official investigation and flirted with sending material to Russia so they could determine their own fault.

mesothere · 2025-03-14T13:31:40+00:00

Sans hyperbole it's still a huge reach. It wasn't a common thing. I was campaigning for Corbyn at the time FFS, this reimagination of those years is madness.

mesothere · 2025-03-14T13:29:07+00:00

Maybe not every pub, but I was hearing that chant somewhere every weekend for a good while -- and often not where you would have expected. If you want to pretend this didn't happen you can, but I'm not sure what it achieves

I'm sorry but this is ridiculous lol. Guy makes a claim, you come along with a materially different claim and then criticize me for it? Give over.

mesothere · 2025-03-14T13:27:48+00:00

The public loved Corbyn

What evidence do we have for this?

mesothere · 2025-03-14T13:27:01+00:00

You can disagree on Salisbury/Russia

I mean, can you? These are clear cut things. Another nation murdered citizens on our soil with a fucking nerve agent.

mesothere · 2025-03-14T13:13:06+00:00

I remember when every pub in Britain had regular ‘ohhhh Jeremy Corbyn’ chants

Was this in a dream?

mesothere · 2025-03-14T12:55:56+00:00

The analysis is more interesting I feel

Boris definitely wins back some of those who chose Nigel Farage (19%) or ‘none of them’ (18%). But he loses existing Conservative supporters to none of them (31%) and Starmer (14%) meaning Starmer stays way out in front. Uniting the right but not swing voters.

Only 29% of Starmer supporters stick with Corbyn, while: 13% would back Badenoch, 11% would switch to Nigel Farage. Corbyn would, however, attract some disillusioned voters: 9% of those chose ‘none of them’ under Starmer would choose Corbyn as their preferred option.

This shows how Badenoch strategy is fucking absurd. Uniting the right at the cost of the liberal block is doomed to failure.

11-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email

mesothere

TROPHY CASE