And he's gone.

Not before time. £100k p.a. for 5 years that he shouldn't have received. I'm sure he'll be ok.

Good. Has that Labour one that got convicted of harassment quit yet?

She's a nasty piece of work, no way she is going to quit (imo).

But I think if her appeal isn't successful there will be a recall vote, right?

From the BBC report:

The sentence means Webbe will face a recall petition, which could trigger a by-election if at least 10% of her constituents support it.

However...

Analysis

By Tim Parker, BBC Radio Leicester political reporter

Mr Goldspring knows only too well what his decision today means for the Leicester East constituency.

It sets in train the possibility of a by-election, but it's a slow train with an uncertain timetable that might never reach the destination some are hoping for.

If Claudia Webbe fails to overturn her sentence, she faces a recall petition - where her constituents will be asked if they want to replace her.

But with the backlog of cases in courts at the moment, that appeal is likely to take several weeks.

If a recall petition is triggered, that must last six weeks. Factor in the time taken to organise that too - and the potential impact of the holiday period - and it makes a by-election date even more difficult to predict.

There were 78,433 people able to vote in Leicester East in 2019 - 10% of them need to feel strongly enough to sign a recall petition, for a by-election to be triggered.

Tories 36%, Labour 35%

If people want the source etc.

Also, just because I saw a lot of people angry about fireworks and pets etc. last night, thought this result from the same poll was interesting:

Once getting Brexit Done is removed as an excuse all actions play book for this government, its support will crater.

Johnson will walk before he's pushed.

He'll earn more through various Micky Mouse "consultancies" and journalism than he does as PM, and that's probably all he and his awful wife care about.

As opposed to all us altruistic souls who got into poker simply to make the world a better place

The ultimate in false equivalences.

The job of a poker player is to win money; the job of a politician is to govern well. That includes not supporting corruption.

It won't.

Now that "brexit is done", you have a population basing their voting choices on things like "sticking it to the wokesters" and "****ing cancel culture", happy as they are to be bent over backwards so long as they can blame an out group. Record tax increases, the mean EU honouring oven ready deals, supply shortages, worker shortages, corruption on a ridiculous scale... all of these things are just hand waved away by an increasingly hard right wing. Anything to justify their vote for this government I guess. They won't admit they were wrong. Ever. The mess can be easily filed under someone else's fault. They've even taken to blaming Labour, for not providing a strong enough opposition. I think the only hope for the UK is that these people get dso beaten down by the government they voted in that they don't even bother going to the polls next time.

That would be an improvement but it doesn't really solve the problem unfortunately. A lot of those people used to vote Labour before they became radicalised by the tabloid war on the EU.

Don't get me wrong, I still think the UK is ****ed. You just have to look at this thread to see that a portion of the electorate care more about sticking it to transgenders than they do about improving the country. This is the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Imagine caring more about that than you do about economic ruin.

Ha ha, this is perfect.

https://twitter.com/mrjamesob/status...37445501677576

That really isn't close to what has happened here.

lol

I think I've said this before, but I find it really difficult to be part of the left when such a large contingent believe that taking a contrary political position is becoming "radicalised." It's not just jalfrezi, it's become pretty standard Twitter discourse. I fully believe in the ideals/political philosophy/policy, but god damn, we just have the worst people.

Yeah i've probably misinterpreted some comments about not being able to voice opinions about gender issues in the staff room at school or whatever it was. I do have a friend who admits to basing his voting decisions on sticking it to "wokesters", which is where i'm really coming from. He listens to talk radio all day whilst driving around for his job and thinks julia hartley brewer is great. :|

Radicalised is probably too strong, but you just have to look at the headlines still running in the daily express et al to realise that there is still a concerted effort to paint the EU as the enemy.

I think this is quite a problematic way to think about the effect that the media has on its audience. It assumes a passive audience of simpletons that can be easily manipulated by press narratives and lies. I certainly don't deny that the press has such narratives and is prone to lying, but I would push back on the idea that an audience can be so easily manipulated.

Instead, it's better to think of audiences as active participants in this process (who are probably more savvy than we give them credit for) who are making a deliberate choice to consume this type of media because it fulfills whatever gratifications they have.

So I guess what I'm saying is, if the Brexit voters are radicalised (which I don't agree with), rather than assuming it was the media that "did it do them", think of it as a two-way interaction in which they were active participants.

I think you have more faith in the general public than I do.

Was the UK leaving the EU even a part of public discourse before the in-fighting tories foisted a referendum on us? I'm old enough to remember the 2014 Scottish independence vote when the No camp(who I voted with) sold us on the fact that we would retain EU membership by staying. Suddenly a few years later those same people were actively campaigning for us to leave. I genuinely believe they were manipulated. You just have to look at the language they use. It mirrors the RW gutter press so closely.

yes but we have to recognise that it's the same mistake where we see the noisy extremes on the left as the norm rather than the fringe. The vast majority on the left aren't like that anymore than the vast majority on the right are radicalised. The big danger is more polarisation/divisveness where we become more and more like the usa. The attitude to vax show we are far from th USA yet although we already have far too much polarisation.

A big part of the problem is where the noisy group on the left refuse to recognise the legitamacy of the other side. Brexit being an obvious example where I get grief for recognising it is legitimate to have wanted to leave the EU. Somehow that gets seen as making me less pro-EU when in fact it makes me more pro-EU as I see both sides as legitmated and was still totally committed to remain because I so wanted to be part of the EU. It is so toxic to any sort of debate and democracy when too many involved think the other side being wrong or bad in some way rather than having a political diasgreement.

The problem of social media in amplfying the problem is becoming well understood. Humans do get attracted to content that makes them angry and it's being actively pushed to them.

Calling 'radicalised' on people you don't agree with you politically is really childish.

Biggest problem in political discourse at the moment is its black and white nature, and this is an obvious attempt to demonise everyone who doesn't agree with you. No shades of grey whatsoever.

Wiser heads do try and understand all angles, and look where there are points of common agreement, and also by understanding the disagreement can better present their arguments and temper them for the intended audience.

It's just the good old 'you're bigoted and stupid' approach that some people can't let go of, and the only tempering is changing such accusations to variants of the same. Such as calling an entire demographic who acted democratically and lawfully 'radicalised'.