• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Shelter in place is one thing. Shelter in pants is quite another.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if I ever tried to have some of you killed.

Naturally gregarious and alpha

It was down to kool-aid drinkers and next of kin at the trump White House

I did not have this on my fuck 2020 bingo card.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Militantly superior in their own minds…

People are complicated. Love is not.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Call the National Guard if your insurrection lasts more than four hours.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Shocking, but not surprising

Wetsuit optional.

There will be lawyers.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

I can’t take this shit today. I just can’t.

This blog will pay for itself.

Mobile Menu

  • Look Forward & Back
  • Balloon Juice 2021 Pet Calendar
  • Site Feedback
  • All 2020 Fundraising
  • I Voted!
  • Take Action: Things We Can Do
  • Team Claire, and Family
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • BJ PayPal Donations
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Nature & Respite
  • Information As Power
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • On The Road
  • Garden Chats
  • Nature & Respite
  • Look Forward & Back
You are here: Home / Archives for Foreign Affairs / Countries / United Kingdom

United Kingdom

Breaking News: Boris Johnson Has Been Moved Into Intensive Care To Treat His Covid-19 Infection

by Adam L Silverman|  April 6, 20203:30 pm| 211 Comments

This post is in: Covid-19 & National Security, COVID-19 Coronavirus, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Silverman on Security, United Kingdom

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has coronavirus, has been taken to intensive care https://t.co/hQClxR7lRt

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) April 6, 2020

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been taken into intensive care in hospital with coronavirus.

He has asked Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to deputise for him, a No 10 spokesman said.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, is a Brexit hyper-supporter who has a history of offensive comments and actions. The reason that Raab has been selected as the “designated survivor” is because there is no formal chain of succession in case of emergency established in law for the British government. Largely because successive prime ministers have been unwilling to see a formal chain of succession in case of emergency established in law.

10 Downing Street’s real lord and master has issued a statement:

Boris Johnson is being treated in intensive care. My thoughts are with his family and friends at this time. I know the brilliant NHS staff will do everything they can for him.

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) April 6, 2020

Update at 3:35 PM EST

Here’s the update from The BBC:

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been moved to intensive care in hospital after his coronavirus symptoms “worsened”, Downing Street has said.

Mr Johnson has asked Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to deputise “where necessary”, a spokesman added.

The prime minister, 55, was admitted to St Thomas’ Hospital in London with “persistent symptoms” on Sunday.

The spokesman said he was moved on the advice of his medical team and is receiving “excellent care”.

A statement read: “Since Sunday evening, the prime minister has been under the care of doctors at St Thomas’ Hospital, in London, after being admitted with persistent symptoms of coronavirus.

“Over the course of this afternoon, the condition of the prime minister has worsened and, on the advice of his medical team, he has been moved to the intensive care unit at the hospital.”

It continued: “The PM is receiving excellent care, and thanks all NHS staff for their hard work and dedication.”

Open thread!

Breaking News: Boris Johnson Has Been Moved Into Intensive Care To Treat His Covid-19 InfectionPost + Comments (211)

Late Night Open Thread: The Pleasant Feeling of Distant Superiority

by Anne Laurie|  January 14, 20201:05 am| 58 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Popular Culture, United Kingdom

I like the fact that marrying a hard working black woman gave Harry the stones to get off the dole and work.

— Blahblah, something holiday, Cipher (@snarkylicious) January 8, 2020

Entertainment value has always been part of a royal family’s utility; now that there are better ways of managing foreign policy, that’s arguably their highest utility…

After holding an emergency meeting with her grandson, Queen Elizabeth gave her blessing to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's desire to step back as senior members of the royal family and live part-time in North America https://t.co/U8ekWmwfKM pic.twitter.com/duj5CDimzW

— Reuters (@Reuters) January 14, 2020

So, it’s hard on Grandma that her youngest great-grandchild won’t be quite as accessible, going forward. On the other hand, the Designated Heir (to the designated heir, but c’mon, Charles is unlikely to ever achieve the role he’s literally waited for since his birth) has certainly shown willing, having already produced three more contestants between Harry and the throne.

Harry certainly has no reason to appease the British media; after driving his beloved (if unstable) mother to her death, the tabloids have done their best to just-ask-questions into convincing their readers that Harry isn’t even Charles’ son, and that was before he had the nerve to — shall we say — color outside the lines when it came to picking a spouse to generate another generation of public entertainment.

And it’s not as though the young family is gonna be indigent when they ask for Canadian sanctuary:

… According to British press reports, Harry’s net worth is estimated to be around $39 million, most of it inherited from his mother, Princess Diana, and his great-grandmother, the Queen Mother. Meghan’s net worth is estimated to be around $5 million, much of it coming from her acting role on the TV series “Suits.”…

The Family has reputedly been discussing a heavy-duty revamp, where the ‘less central’ members would be weaned off the public teat. It will probably be speculated, some day, that the Harry/Meghan ‘escape’ was the semi-covert start of this laudable plan.

Corgi down, Corgi Down ! pic.twitter.com/FCg9tAK5eD

— 41 Strange (@41Strange) January 11, 2020

Late Night Open Thread: The Pleasant Feeling of Distant SuperiorityPost + Comments (58)

Late Night Open Thread: All We Have Learned…

by Anne Laurie|  December 16, 20191:19 am| 34 Comments

This post is in: 2020 Elections, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, United Kingdom, All Too Normal, Clap Louder!, Cosplay Socialists, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All

I think it’s very bad punditry to draw broad lessons for one country’s elections from another country’s elections. But if you’re going to do it, be specific. I would like Sullivan to say which parts of the Democratic coalition should be sacrificed to “anti-PC nationalism.” https://t.co/hQq5vUK1GS

— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) December 13, 2019

… is that Conservatives have a proud tradition of never learning anything new.

Combining Nationalism and Socialism….what could go wrong?

— ace-o-aces (@aceoaces) December 13, 2019

These ideas go together like a bundle of sticks.

— ? (@j_furm) December 13, 2019

I Knew Nothing Of British Politics Until This Morning But I Can Say Definitively That There Is One Clear Takeaway for the US Voter https://t.co/ycZRVLQfh7

— Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) December 13, 2019

… Some of the candidates who received votes were joke candidates, and I think that speaks volumes. Have we considered whether or not more of our candidates in America ought to be jokes? It is clear that the people are hungry for bad ideas that will solve nothing; I think we ought to consider whether worse ideas, more clearly labeled, might not be better…

Think we got that last part covered, for sure. They call themselves ‘dirtbag leftists‘ and they are at best a wen on the Democratic party they seek to parasitize.

leftists are gonna look themselves in the mirror, take a deep breath and tell themselves 'we gotta get more racist' pic.twitter.com/EHZ1zna7Io

— Social-Democratic Party of Galar (@weedlewobble) December 14, 2019

No I'm not gonna give a shit about the UK election results. Y'all long ago established the principle that any petty grievance you have with a politician justifies not supporting them in an election where their opponent is a literal fascist. Play stupid games win stupid prizes.

— Social-Democratic Party of Galar (@weedlewobble) December 12, 2019


“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” is a strong contender for motto of the year. Hopefully *this* year, and not 2020!

Late Night Open Thread: All We Have Learned…Post + Comments (34)

Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: America Is Not Britain, Fortunately

by Anne Laurie|  December 13, 20193:14 am| 38 Comments

This post is in: 2020 Elections, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, United Kingdom

democrats won big statewide victories in kentucky, louisiana and virginia like, three weeks ago https://t.co/u2vxnLTUqy

— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) December 13, 2019


We let you in, Mr. Sullivan — however profitable you might find it, badmouthing immigration is a bad look.

It’s me, the politics knower, here to tell you that the UK election predicts what will happen in 2020 and the GOP losses of the last few years were holographic simulations

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) December 13, 2019

Dems can draw lessons from Labour’s collapse. Just not the ones most people are asserting.

Main lesson is Dems need keep doing what they’re doing rather than succumb to disunity, or being ambiguous about rule of law, our place in the world, & our national values & identity

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) December 13, 2019

Yes, I do expect this result to repeat: A widely unpopular leader who drags down his party's support from levels you would expect based on fundamentals, Donald Trump, will lose to a lovable, doofy insider politician with a history of making up weird stories, Joe Biden. https://t.co/inYfM8W0YR

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) December 13, 2019

If anyone is cooking up a take on what the UK election means for us, consider the ways that the post-Blair Tories moved left. One of their manifesto planks: Neto zero carbon emissions by 2050.

That is also Joe Biden's climate target.

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) December 12, 2019

The US left shared tactics with Labour/Momentum, so no spinning how bad this is for them. But the UK Tories make populist/environmental concessions that our GOP simply doesn't. Imagine if Susan Collins was the most conservative member of the GOP.

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) December 12, 2019

My takeway from #ukelection is that Dems shouldn't nominate Jeremy Corbyn

— EricaGrieder (@EricaGrieder) December 12, 2019

show full post on front page

Corbyn is a lot more like Kucinich than either of those two. https://t.co/O731wajQ2d

— The Bringer of Jollity (@davidabenner) December 12, 2019

This is colorful but wrong. Corbyn’s personal favorability was -41% (21% positive vs 61% negative). Labour’s major planks: wealth tax (+44%), nationalization (+34), & corporate reform (+33) are all very popular. Stats @YouGov https://t.co/kftltozatG

— Ken Gude (@KenGude) December 12, 2019

It was not just about Brexit. pic.twitter.com/boVWLqX2Ki

— Steven Fielding (@PolProfSteve) December 12, 2019

There is a turnip somewhere in Croydon with a message of "NHS, Remain, and Antisemitism Is Bad, Actually" that would have beaten Johnson by 30 seats. https://t.co/fdwLtXReCR

— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) December 13, 2019

For everyone who needs to read this, here you go. https://t.co/rzBm6S1v2y

— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) December 12, 2019

The most annoying thing tonight isn’t the Trump fans; most of them don’t know where Britain is. What’s annoying is all the po-faced JustTheTip Trumpers using Labour to rehearse their excuses for voting for him in 2020. https://t.co/gLNsZsTegz

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) December 13, 2019

Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: America Is Not Britain, FortunatelyPost + Comments (38)

Late Night Open Thread: When Narwhal Tusks Are Outlawed…

by Anne Laurie|  December 2, 201910:52 pm| 69 Comments

This post is in: Gun nuts, Open Threads, United Kingdom, War on Terror, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All

I’m not even mad at 2019’s screenwriters. I’m impressed. https://t.co/9v3i40rQbH

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) November 30, 2019

Bloody foreigners. Coming over here, saving lives. https://t.co/0RrjlHap6N

— Nick Harvey (@mrnickharvey) November 30, 2019

honestly this is a better argument for giving everyone narwhal tusks than it is for making it easier for the terrorist to get an ar-15 like he could in the US https://t.co/GrajCpUz23

— John Cole (@Johngcole) December 1, 2019

also, you fucking moron

— John Cole (@Johngcole) December 1, 2019

… Actually, as far as I can tell from a cursory google search, because the narwhal is a protected species, only pre-1972 narwhal tusks are legal in the U.S. (The one spontaneously repurposed in London was a pub ornament, date of its collection unspecified.) And given the legal ones are hella pricey, there’d probably be fewer stories like this…

A 65-year-old Maine man who outfitted his home with a device designed to fire a handgun at anyone opening the front door unintentionally shot and killed himself on Thanksgiving night. https://t.co/z9N1nIanKa

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) December 1, 2019


I’m not fond of unannounced drop-ins either, but jeez.

I’ll just leave this right here … pic.twitter.com/xVpIExGGVK

— Tyff ???? ???? ???? (@mojo_girl) December 1, 2019

Late Night Open Thread: When Narwhal Tusks Are Outlawed…Post + Comments (69)

Foreign Affairs Guest Post: Brexit Election News – “I DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU’RE GOING TO, BUT I WOULDN’T START FROM HERE”

by Anne Laurie|  November 6, 20199:29 pm| 99 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Guest Posts, United Kingdom

Noted English upper-class inbred Jacob Rees-Mogg blames victims of catastrophic fire for lack of common sense, failing to flee through staircases ablaze in flames and carbon monoxide. pic.twitter.com/QRCMhH2wYc

— DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) November 5, 2019

Boosted from the comments section, blog favourite Tony Jay:

And they’re off!!!

Yes, finally, about bloody time as well. As what will almost certainly be the most important national election in British History since 1979 gets underway the presumed frontrunner, a much-fancied thoroughbred with an awful lot of big money riding on his ample posterior, has already emptied his bowels straight out of the gate, slip-slid on skittering legs straight into the very first fence and now lies, twitching and whinnying, on the much befouled track as multiple sobbing Paramedi(a)cs try desperately to get him back in the race, while from the stands a grim faced Judge begins his descent, mercy-piece cocked and at the ready.

Is that a metaphor or an analogy? Why don’t I understand things? I blame someone.

If you’ve been listening to British Media outlets cover the topic of UK politics at any point over the last millennium (has it only been two years? Really? Is that all?) you’d almost certainly have come away with the distinct impression that this Election was very much a dead rubber. Labour were totes doomed, the Liberal Democrats were on the surge and, though the SNP were due to wipe out all the other parties in Scotland with their message of “Drank mah pish, y’anglash cants”, the only thing standing between the Tory Party of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and an absolute majority in Parliament was the foreign-backed influence project known colloquially as ‘The Brexit Party’ and its intermittently confrontational national Gauleiter, Nigel Farage. This narrative wasn’t just set in stone, it was perma-frozen there by an unchallenged certainty that “Boris”, as his journalistic fans insist on calling him, was simply far too witty and nimble and beloved by the Average Voter for his impression of a jolly decent cove just trying hard to do the absolute best he could on behalf of Queen and Country for anyone on the Opposition benches to lay a glove on him. He’d have this all wrapped up in a matter of days and the only question was how big his win would be.

It would be an understatement of pron-cocktacular proportions to say that this narrative has proven to be, ahem, somewhat flawed.

Where do we even start with the meth-brained way the Tories have gone about the relatively well-defined business of getting themselves elected by actual living voters rather than the access-journalists they used to go to school with?

Let’s begin with Jacob Rees-Mogg, the huffily anachronistic Tory spokesman for the Department of Why Good Blood Will Out, Sirrah!, who took time away from lurking noncorporeally in the blighted ether twixt Dream and Nightmare to go on the radio and pronounce in clipped tones of flat finality that the many of the 72 poor, foreign-born peasants who burnt to death in the Grenfell Fire Tragedy back in 2017 had only themselves to blame for lacking the simple common-sense to ignore the Fire Brigade’s clear instructions to remain in their homes and instead move downstairs, perhaps to the shelter of the family crypt, or possibly the main wine-cellar, where they could have at least enjoyed a nice glass or two of Merlot while awaiting rescue. It didn’t take long for the stench of Rees-Mogg’s comments to breed pushback from the lower classes, and soon he was forced to release a statement in which he clarified that he was, of course, terribly sorry to have been unclear in his original wording and had in fact meant to say entirely the opposite of whatever it was the peons had taken offense to.

Ever the good little Conservative the BBC’s Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg was quick to praise Moggy for the speed of his apology after his ‘gaffe’. I’m sure you meant well, you bargain-basement Halbermann, but I’m afraid you didn’t help. ‘Gaffe’? People asked. What ‘gaffe’? Sneering at dead people for not having the intelligence to ignore mere functionaries isn’t a gaffe, it’s what you do when you’re a Tory scumbag trying to redirect blame away from the private contractor who broke the law to clad the building in cut-price flammable material and the local Tory council who studiously ignored all of the warnings and complaints from the tenants because they didn’t have any financial incentive to give a shit what the serfs were jibber-jabbering about.

Obviously, the next step was to bring in a professional crisis-manager, someone with the nous and the guile to pluck Rees-Mogg from the jaws of peril and fob-off the angry common folk until the Media had got bored and moved on. Obviously, yes, but that bit of common-sense didn’t occur to the mavens down at Conservative Central, because instead they wheeled out oyster-mouthed Brextremist wind-instrument and all-round blistering fuckwit Andrew Bridgen, a sad-trombone sound effect of a man who knows he was lucky to feature in the first series of the inexplicably popular reality-show ‘Britain Does Brexit’ and is so desperate to eke out his 15-minutes of fame that he’ll appear on late-night Japanese TV with a live squid hanging out of his rectum if that’s what it takes to stay ‘relevant’. His argument was that, while Rees-Mogg’s comments were “uncharacteristically clumsy”, his good friend was so “intelligent and compassionate” that what he’d clearly meant to say was that he would simply have given the residents better advice than those know nothing “experts” with their “plans” and “regulations”. Trust a Brextremist to advocate blind obedience to the ill-informed, that’s more or less their native credo. Sorry, Andrew, you’re never going to get that invite to Moggy’s country estate. You’re neither wealthy nor well-born enough, and under that cheap cologne you smell like a prole.

Moving on, there’s the matter of the Intelligence Report on Russian Interference in British Politics, including but not confined to the 2016 Election, which should have been released weeks ago but is now being kept on the down low until after the 2019 Election. Everyone involved in its creation and clearance has affirmed that it’s gone through all of the necessary stages of expert classification and is ready to be released to Parliament and the public in time to be useful, what with a General Election only weeks away. So, what’s the problem? Johnson, of course. He won’t release it. Various BS reasons have been advanced, none of them lasting very long under the intense heat of very mild questioning, and it’s coming down to the simplest of Occam’s Razors: it’s not being released because Johnson and his advisors (mainly long-term Russophile Dominic Cummings) are petrified of what’s in it.

show full post on front page

What might that be? Could be anything. Clear evidence of Russian funding for the Leave campaign? Proof of Russian bot-armies helping Leave spread their message? Confirmation of Russian infiltration of the Tory Party? Possibly even actual names named of who the Russians have under their control? Conceivably all of the above with Russo-American in place of just Russian? For all we know the Secret Services could have mapped out the entire influence, manipulation and bribery network that made ALL of 2016’s major failures of democracy happen and handed them to Number 10 wrapped in a big, red bow, but we just don’t know, because Downing Street is deliberately concealing it from us. It’s not hard to see a wide range of reasons Johnson would want to keep the Report bottled up until after the Election, but it is hard to see why an independent Media dedicated to keeping the British Public informed about the major news stories of the day wouldn’t be making a MUCH bigger deal about his deeply-suspicious order to supress it. If only we had one. For example, the BBC didn’t even have the story on their website until very late in the evening after the story broke, and you’d struggle to find it there even now. Needless to say, I can’t imagine that happening if a hypothetical Labour Administration were supressing an Intelligence Report about pressing national security threats. They’d be on it like a drake on a passing lady duck and wouldn’t cover a single other story until it all came out. Still, the topic isn’t going away and every day Johnson sits on it is another day he can get violently buffeted by accusations of complicity with Putin’s aims for the UK. Serves him right.

What’s next? The Advertising Standards Agency has forced the Government to pull its latest tranche of expensive advertisements about the much hated ‘Universal Credit’ system (Welfare or Social Security, I think you guys call it) for being chockablock full of misleading inaccuracies (i.e. blatant lies). That’s a good few hundred thousand pounds of public money spaffed into the void trying to defend yet another Tory project that has as its main purpose inflicting cruelty and misery on millions of defenseless people. Not a good look just weeks before an Election where Labour are making their determination to scrap Universal Credit a centerpiece of their campaign.

It’s been revealed that the figures bandied about by the Government for affordable houses constructed since they won election promising to build 200,000 of them might have been a little bit inflated. Rather than the 200,000 expected, the real figure is a lot more like, uh, just let me check my notes here, ah, more like…. zero. That’s right. Zero. Nada. The big Duck Egg. More millions wasted on incompetence and graft, and what do we the public get out of it? A whole lot of land with absolutely shit-all on it in the midst of a massive affordable housing crisis. Wow, talk about a vote winner, eh guys? They’ll be popping the corks all night at Conservative Central over this one, won’t they? What’s that? Those pops aren’t corks? Then what….? Oh, well, yeah, they obviously knew the price of failure when they took the job on.

Let’s see. In the debate over Johnson’s Withdrawal Bill his Government made a clear promise to MPs of all parties that of course Parliament would have a vote on extending the transition period between agreeing to leave the EU and actually leaving past the December 2020 cut-off should any hypothetical Johnson Government fail to agree a Free Trade Agreement with the EU in that time. This was the infamous No Deal time-bomb identified as the real reason the Brextremists who’d scuppered May’s Withdrawal Bill three times voted for Johnson’s very similar one. If they just held their nose and waited a year, they could force a No Deal Brexit by voting against signing off on whatever rushed and unbalanced FTA the UK and EU managed to cobble together in such a short period of time. The promise to MPs that they could prevent a No Deal by voting to extend the transition period to cover however long it took to get an FTA agreed and signed won a lot of votes over to Johnson’s Withdrawal Bill, but now they’ve bluntly announced that MPs won’t get any such thing, making it crystal clear that Flobalob wants the threat of No Deal back on the table to wave at the next Parliament’s MPs should they reject the terms of any FTA he negotiates. This has not gone down well at all, and leaves Johnson wide open to accusations that he’s just a lying sack of shit who will say whatever he has to in order to get the person he’s talking to to drop their knickers, which has the added benefit of being oh so true.

Next, the Secretary of State for Wales, one Alun Cairns, has been forced to resign from his post after an e-mail emerged proving that he’d been (prepare to be shocked) lying his stumpy little arse off when he denied knowing anything about a former aide (who he had later backed to become a member of the Welsh Assembly) deliberately sabotaging a rape trial in order to get a friend of his off. The thing is, Johnson didn’t sack him, and he’s not stopping him standing as a candidate in the election. On the contrary, he thanked him for his service and is apparently looking forward to welcoming him back when he’s spent enough time in ‘exile’. It’s a really, really bad look and gets worse when (as has been pointed out by Labour) neither Cairns nor his boss seem to have given a moment’s thought for the actual real-life victim in all this at any point during the proceedings. Coming very soon after another Tory candidate in South Wales was outed for having used social media to tell everyone the people featured on Godawful poverty-pron reality TV show ‘Benefits Street’ should be “put down”, this isn’t doing anything good for the Tory campaign to pinch lots of Leave voting seats across South and Central Wales.

And then there’s Flobalob himself, who just can’t seem to get through a single sentence without segueing off into a fat old lie or three. That’s been the key to his success for all these years, but things are a tiny bit different when electoral ‘purdah’ rules are in effect, because the national media have to at least look like they’re being unbiased now that everyone is starting to tune in. In other words, there’s immediate fact-checking going on and (important) the fact-checking is being reported on in real time.

So when he claims that Parliament blocked his Withdrawal Deal from passing, it’s immediately pointed out that, no, Parliament started passing his Withdrawal Deal but rejected his attempt to restrict the whole process of passage to three days, at which point he pulled the Deal and demanded an Election, you fucking liar.

When he claims that electing Labour would mean two Referendums next year and no Brexit, its immediately pointed out that Labour promise one Referendum (on Brexit) and have actually ruled out giving the SNP another Independence Referendum early in their first term, you fucking liar.

When he claims that the Tories are building 40 brand new hospitals, it’s immediately pointed out that the Government has announced six hospital upgrades, with dozens of others being promised some funds to plan these upgrades themselves, you fucking liar.

I could go on, because this shit incenses me and there’s just so much of it happening in such a short period of time, but you get the point. This is supposed to be an Election Johnson and his cronies have wanted and planned for, yeah? So why is this bed piled so high with shit you could throw a sheet over it and provide low-cost skiing opportunities for daredevil midgets? Why can’t the Tories stop stepping on each other’s dicks like they’re trying to skip across Todger River? Could it possibly be that, despite the hype, they’re actually not that good at this unless they get to define the terms and cheat the system in every situation? This is supposed to be Day One of the Greatest Arsekicking Ever Delivered To The British Left and, I’m sorry, but I’m really decidedly unimpressed by the quality of the beating I’m receiving. If I was paying for this, I’d want my money back. Hell, Johnson and Co are paying for this, but they’re using public money to do it, so I feel doubly aggrieved.

Maybe we are going to come out of this with a Government that isn’t actively trying to run some sort of enormous con to immiserate the country in order to enrich their business sponsors. That would be just great, thanks. So if the Tories want to continue being garbage at the job they’ve given themselves, that would be great too, because it looks like Labour are really up for this and chewing up that poll disadvantage even faster than they did in 2017.

Fingers crossed. What’s happening over there? I hear you had some elections that went well?

Foreign Affairs Guest Post: Brexit Election News – “I DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU’RE GOING TO, BUT I WOULDN’T START FROM HERE”Post + Comments (99)

Panopticon Creep: UK Edition

by Major Major Major Major|  September 10, 20193:45 pm| 94 Comments

This post is in: Privacy, Science & Technology, Tech News and Issues, United Kingdom

Once upon a time, London was the world’s most-surveilled city. This position has since been usurped by Chongqing, a city in the Sichuan province which boasts one hundred sixty-eight cameras per one thousand people. Perhaps upset over the loss of their title, Boris Johnson has decided it’s high time that the UK began compiling records of its citizens’ web traffic.

tl;dr: Here’s an executive summary based on my reading of the linked article.

  • Currently, the various parts of the government collect analytics on how people use their websites.
  • BoJo would like to combine all of this data, creating profiles of how each individual uses the whole government’s online offerings.
  • This is to be done ASAP and in secret. The rationale for this is mumble mumble Brexit.
  • This data will be “anonymized”, which is not particularly meaningful at this level of specificity. While an analyst armed with this database would not be able to find a person’s usage by searching for their name, the same analyst could easily derive a person’s name from their usage.

Drilling into some detail now:

Boris Johnson has secretly ordered the Cabinet Office to turn the government’s public internet service into a platform for “targeted and personalised information” to be gathered in the run-up to Brexit, BuzzFeed News has learned.

In a move that has alarmed Whitehall officials, the prime minister has instructed departments to share data they collect about usage of the GOV.UK portal so that it can feed into preparations for leaving the European Union at the end of next month.

show full post on front page

[…] At present, usage of GOV.UK is tracked by individual departments, not collected centrally. According to the documents seen by BuzzFeed News, the Cabinet Office’s digital unit, the government digital service (GDS), will add an additional layer of tracking that “will enable GDS to have data for the entire journey of a user as they land on GOV.UK from a Google advert or an email link, read content on GOV.UK, click on a link taking them from GOV.UK to a service and then onwards through the service journey to completion”.

In the personal minute, Johnson told members of the XO committee that GDS had been asked to turn the GOV.UK portal into a “platform to allow targeted and personalised information to be gathered, analysed and fed back actively to support key decision making” in the run-up to Brexit.

This is exactly what Facebook, Google, et al. tell us about the value of targeted advertising; oh how we’ll appreciate their knowing everywhere we go and every website we look at. Just think of all the highly personalized ads we can experience! But the UK government is not, of course, a corporation. We’ve seen what the Cambridge Analyticas of the world can do with access to fairly basic demographic information. Imagine what could be done with the sort of information the government is likely to have–especially a government that’s already up to their eyeballs in collusion with, er, Cambridge Analytica.

No bother, though; I’m sure this has nothing to do with the election BoJo hopes to hold in the near future.


Full disclosure: I have worked in advertising technology on and off for several years, and currently hold a position at a data-management platform in the industry.

Panopticon Creep: UK EditionPost + Comments (94)

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Do Something!

Call Your Senators & Representatives
Directory of US Senators
Directory of US Representatives

Vaccine Venting Here!
I Got the Shot!  (Month 2)
I Got the Shot!

 

🎈Ways to Support Our Site

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal
Shop Amazon via this link to support Balloon Juice ⬇  

Recent Comments

  • WaterGirl on Breaking: Senate Majority Leader Schumer Has Advanced Merrick Garland’s Nomination To a Final Vote (Mar 6, 2021 @ 6:46pm)
  • Annie on Breaking: Senate Majority Leader Schumer Has Advanced Merrick Garland’s Nomination To a Final Vote (Mar 6, 2021 @ 6:45pm)
  • Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes on Breaking: Senate Majority Leader Schumer Has Advanced Merrick Garland’s Nomination To a Final Vote (Mar 6, 2021 @ 6:43pm)
  • Geminid on Breaking: Senate Majority Leader Schumer Has Advanced Merrick Garland’s Nomination To a Final Vote (Mar 6, 2021 @ 6:42pm)
  • 🐾BillinGlendaleCA on Breaking: Senate Majority Leader Schumer Has Advanced Merrick Garland’s Nomination To a Final Vote (Mar 6, 2021 @ 6:42pm)

Team Claire, and Family

Claire Updates
Claire is Home!

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year

Featuring

John Cole
Silverman on Security
COVID-19 Coronavirus
Medium Cool with BGinCHI
Furry Friends

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Submit Photos to On the Road
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Meetups: Proof of Life
2021 Pets of Balloon Juice Calendar

Culture: Books, Film, TV, Music, Games, Podcasts

Noir: Favorites in Film, Books, TV
Book Recommendations & Indy Recs
Mystery Recommendations
Netflix Favorites
Amazon Prime Favorites
Netflix Suggestions in July
Longmire & Netflix Suggestions

Twitter

John Cole’s Twitter

[custom-twitter-feeds]

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2021 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc