Scrutable

I've heard that television show is watched by a lot of the proletariat. It's on ITV.

Might make a difference.

Grumble wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 07, 2021 11:34 pm

https://twitter.com/imacelebrity/status ... 65606?s=21

I don’t normally think of Ant and Dec as satire writers

You clearly never watched SM:TV, because that was on point a lot of the time.

Lots of talking heads, stroking their beards* and pronouncing this is "another Barnard Castle".

By which presumably they mean the government will just shrug it off, nobody will resign, the poilce will do nothing and in 6 months time in some random by-election vox-pops of members of the public will reveal they still think "Good ol'Boris has dun his best ... whereas that Starmer something something something Diane Abbott".

Saying that our dreadful AG has been spotted going in to Downing Street to presumably figure the legalities of claiming in Parliament "there was no party and all rules were followed at the party that definitely never happened" when the pictures of a clearly drunken and coked-up Boris, wearing a party hat and festooned with party poppers, snogging Priti Patel in a party dress under some mistletoe, in front of a giant banner stating "Official Downing Street Christmas 2020 Party." inevitably appear.

*or even "bears" as my autocorrupt insisted I should put

headshot wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 08, 2021 9:16 am

Grumble wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 07, 2021 11:34 pm

https://twitter.com/imacelebrity/status ... 65606?s=21

I don’t normally think of Ant and Dec as satire writers

You clearly never watched SM:TV, because that was on point a lot of the time.

True. A lot of angry gammons in the Twitter thread saying Ant and Dec are getting too political though.

Someone who was there must have taken photos - and some might have published them; policemen were on duty there (as JDC noted above), caterers must have catered, waiter/esses must have waiter/essed, taxis must have been called, personal tracking devices must have been carried.
It doesn't need the genius of Ant & Dec, Dougal off the Magic Roundabout could clear this one up!

Dougal was there. He's not going to land his mate Zebedee in it. Particularly with Florence itching to deport Dougal for dubious immigration rules. They'll make Ermintrude carry the can, she's always the fall cow.

The top article on the DM website is headlined:

Government gaslights Britain: Javid CANCELS all planned interviews as police probe bombshell video showing No10 staff joking about 'illegal' Xmas party while nation was in lockdown - and UK faces prospect of new Covid restrictions in days

The current top comment is:

My mate broke down over the phone when he described watching his dad fade away through the window of a care home. It brings tears to my own eyes just recalling it now. It was around the same time these people were laughing and joking about it. They were laughing at my mate's dad Pat. They were laughing at my grieving mate Kev and his mum Kath. They were laughing at you and me when we were sticking to the rules to try to save people's lives. The whole bunch of them are truly contemptible. Right to the top

It has 4,908 up votes and 91 down votes.

Just seen Rylan Clark tweeting about PMQs

Boris Johnson apologises for Downing Street party which didn't happen

"we're sorry that the cheese wasn't wrapped in clingfilm and we paired it with red wine what were we thinking"

Video of the party emerges. Sound up.

https://twitter.com/spoofed_uk/status/1 ... 2953761793

lpm wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 08, 2021 12:36 pm

Video of the party emerges. Sound up.

https://twitter.com/spoofed_uk/status/1 ... 2953761793

Pah! Not falling for that.

tenchboy wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 08, 2021 9:46 am

Someone who was there must have taken photos - and some might have published them; policemen were on duty there (as JDC noted above), caterers must have catered, waiter/esses must have waiter/essed, taxis must have been called, personal tracking devices must have been carried.
It doesn't need the genius of Ant & Dec, Dougal off the Magic Roundabout could clear this one up!

This is the really stupid thing.

It was a Christmas party not the f.cking Manhattan Project and everybody* is wandering around with mobile recording devices, constantly documenting every minute event in their lives, from what their breakfast looks like to that time last Christmas they went to the actual No 10 to party with the actual PM and actual Cabinet Ministers, and then sticking it out there for everyone to see on every social media platform imaginable. The idea that footage wouldn't emerge was always absurd.

It is not just that Johnson is a liar, it is his lies are so banal and blatant. Yes you can say Blair was a liar or Clinton was a liar and you dig out some slippery bit of lawyerese where they told a half-truth or were evasive or carefully answered a slightly-different question or hedged their answer with half a dozen caveats or any one of the other myriad dark arts of spin; always doing just enough to skirt the borderline between truth and outright lie and keep plausible deniability. The lies themselves were usual on BIG topics; National Security, Impeachment etc. where even if you disagree you can at least appreciate they had their self-justifications in lying. I don't know if that's better or worse.

Not with Johnson, with Johnson it's footage of him saying "I'm not hiding in a fridge" while hiding a fridge**. Same with Trump, it is just the ridiculous stupidity of it all that is annoying.

**It says something about where we are at, that a time-traveller from the long ago time of mid-2019 would assume that sentence was just another one of my trademark whimsical flights of fancy rather than a near-approximation of a thing that actually happened.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 08, 2021 12:18 pm

Boris Johnson apologises for Downing Street party which didn't happen

Johnson didn't apologise for the party. He denies the party happened.

Instead, he merely apologised for the video released yesterday of Allegra Stratton laughing at everyone who stuck to the rules.

El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 08, 2021 1:21 pm

shpalman wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 08, 2021 12:18 pm

Boris Johnson apologises for Downing Street party which didn't happen

Johnson didn't apologise for the party. He denies the party happened.

Instead, he merely apologised for the video released yesterday of Allegra Stratton laughing at everyone who stuck to the rules.

Yeah, that's the thing... the non-apology. I don't think that'll cut it.

Stratton is surely toast.
Still, she can always go back to BBC news to be totally impartial about how wonderful the PM is.

tom p wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 08, 2021 1:47 pm

Stratton is surely toast.
Still, she can always go back to BBC news to be totally impartial about how wonderful the PM is.

Don't forget telling mothers who receive housing benefit that they shouldn't be living in their own house if their parents have any spare rooms.

tom p wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 08, 2021 1:47 pm

Stratton is surely toast.
Still, she can always go back to BBC news to be totally impartial about how wonderful the PM is.

Yup, resignation statement just been published.

That all went well, then.

Stratton apologises for joking about the party which didn't happen as people died alone and will no longer be doing whatever it was she's been doing.

live blog

Priti Patel, the home secretary, Damian Hinds, the security minister, and Matthew Rycroft, the permanent secretary, were among those attending a Home Office media reception yesterday. People who there have now been advised to take a PCR test, because one of the guests has tested postive on a lateral flow test.

Hahahaha f.ck 'em all.

El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 08, 2021 1:21 pm

Johnson didn't apologise for the party. He denies the party happened.

Instead, he merely apologised for the video released yesterday of Allegra Stratton laughing at everyone who stuck to the rules.

He has said only that he has been informed that it didn't happen. So it is not him denying it, but someone undisclosed that is denying it to him, and he is passing on that denial. That leaves open the possibility that the informant is mistaken, and might also have to resign when they are found to be mistaken.

And that denial by the informant is not a denial that numerous people were together in the room at the stated time. Rather it is a denial that it amounted to a party, or was in contravention of rules.

In other words, the actual denial is very much the kind of denial that Allegra Stratton turned into a joke. If there had been no implication of laughing at normal people who have to obey the rules, I could see her being made to resign just for that. But it seems to me possible that the idea of us and them was far from her mind at the time she made the joke, in front of various colleagues and journalists, at a practice for a public briefing session. In the context of that, and the people she said it in front of, I would say she it is possible she was taking the mick out of precisely the kind of cover-up excuse that this government uses, and has now used. And she is so badly upset precisely because she only later sees how badly it is taken when widely published, when she had intended it as a joke on the government. Plainly this is just my hypothesis.

IvanV wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 08, 2021 6:08 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 08, 2021 1:21 pm

Johnson didn't apologise for the party. He denies the party happened.

Instead, he merely apologised for the video released yesterday of Allegra Stratton laughing at everyone who stuck to the rules.

He has said only that he has been informed that it didn't happen. So it is not him denying it, but someone undisclosed that is denying it to him, and he is passing on that denial. That leaves open the possibility that the informant is mistaken, and might also have to resign when they are found to be mistaken.

And that denial by the informant is not a denial that numerous people were together in the room at the stated time. Rather it is a denial that it amounted to a party, or was in contravention of rules.

In other words, the actual denial is very much the kind of denial that Allegra Stratton turned into a joke. If there had been no implication of laughing at normal people who have to obey the rules, I could see her being made to resign just for that. But it seems to me possible that the idea of us and them was far from her mind at the time she made the joke, in front of various colleagues and journalists, at a practice for a public briefing session. In the context of that, and the people she said it in front of, I would say she it is possible she was taking the mick out of precisely the kind of cover-up excuse that this government uses, and has now used. And she is so badly upset precisely because she only later sees how badly it is taken when widely published, when she had intended it as a joke on the government. Plainly this is just my hypothesis.

A chief spin doctor being caught on camera joking about her dishonest bosses & having to cover up for them would surely be a resigning matter too

El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 08, 2021 2:01 pm

tom p wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 08, 2021 1:47 pm

Stratton is surely toast.
Still, she can always go back to BBC news to be totally impartial about how wonderful the PM is.

Don't forget telling mothers who receive housing benefit that they shouldn't be living in their own house if their parents have any spare rooms.

that's just incentivising them to get off their lazy arses and get to work, the plebby scum

tom p wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 08, 2021 6:52 pm

A chief spin doctor being caught on camera joking about her dishonest bosses & having to cover up for them would surely be a resigning matter too

That's reason that I thought she had resigned, when I first heard the video and the resignation. Then I listened to the Media Programme on Radio 4 while I prepared a dish for dinner.

Last christmas, my wife's dad was in the final stages of a relapse of his colon cancer. It had metastasised throughout his body and he was going to die, painfully and slowly over the course of the next couple of months or so. That prognosis came to pass and he died in February. We didn’t come back to the UK to visit him because we were following the COVID rules & my wife didn’t get to say goodbye to her dad, nor did my daughters get to say goodbye to their grandad.

My mum had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s around the start of last year. Last Christmas would have been about my last chance to speak to her, and not the half-dead husk she is now, who only occasionally flickers with the dimmest smidgeon of recognition. She couldn’t really cope with the telephone or skype back then, even with people helping, but she could manage small face-to-face chats. But I didn’t go home and talk to her, because I was obeying the rules. When I finally got to see her, she had no speech, and clawed at my watch and wedding ring like some character out of a bad play. She briefly recognised me (I hope, but I may be deluding myself) and as I sat there with her she patted me on the head. That’s it, though, that’s my interaction with my mum. I gave up the chance to say goodbye because I was sticking to the rules. Again, my daughters didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to a grandmother who could understand them and respond.

And these c.nts. These utter, f.cking, shameless, hateful c.nts, were getting pissed (almost certainly on free booze provided by the public) and plotting their vicious schemes and lies.
I can’t say how much hatred and contempt I have for them.