And a very happy “English fascists are now tearing lumps out of each other Day” to all who celebrate. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see them turn on each other, like rats in a sack.
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“Greenland again tells Trump it is not for sale”
The fact that this has to be even said in the year 2024 is madness. And we’ve got four years of this bullshit ahead. Fuck Trump and every pinhead that voted for him.
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Watching Ireland’s election coverage via the RTE Player app, only for Bertie Ahern to pop up on screen and cause me a few moments of absolute nausea slash fury.
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Awake far too early for a Sunday morning. So back in bed it is, with a coffee and my laptop, to catch up on all the election news from Ireland. Looks like it’s going to be a big steaming pile of ‘More of the Same’. 🙄
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📸 Feet up, sweatpants on, glass of beaujolais nouveau in hand. Keeping an eye on the Irish election results while catching up on last night’s “Have I got news for you”.
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☕️ Up with a coffee and reading coverage of yesterday’s Irish election.
It will be very interesting to see what kind of coalition government emerges from this virtual stalemate, and whether it has the guts/competence to make the significant changes the country needs. I’m fearful we’ll end up with another FG/FF government, reliant on a rabble of right-wing independents.
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🧐 Why am I not the least bit surprised?
Tory MP Danny Kruger investigated by standards watchdog over assisted dying funds
One of the UK’s most high-profile campaigners against assisted dying is being investigated over funding to a parliamentary group that received £55,000 from lobbyists linked to the Christian right.
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Waking up to these US election numbers is deeply, deeply depressing.
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Barely able to keep my eyes open. So it’s time for a shower and an early night. And hopefully a full night’s sleep. There’s no way I’m staying up to watch all this breathless - and pointless - US election coverage. Far too early…
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I’ve no idea why I have been wide awake since 4:30am, but no doubt it’s something to do with the Orange Clown and his fascist supports attempting to turn the US into Gilead.
Like most people I know, I just want the whole thing to be over, so we can deal with the outcome.
It has felt like the longest and nastiest campaign ever. Trump is descending into publically shitting his pants at every opportunity. Threats of violence, outright misogyny. A convicted sex offender with a track record of stupidity, support for dictators, and trashing of democratic norms. Versus an accomplished public servant.
How is this contest in any way close? It’s so, so depressing.
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🇮🇪 “Ireland’s peacekeepers in Lebanon are putting their lives on the line. I know – I was one of them”
Since 1958, Ireland has sent troops to global conflicts on almost every continent. We have had a peacekeeping battalion with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) in south Lebanon on a continuous basis since 1978. The relationship is so deep-rooted that in the Irish area of operations, close to the border with Israel, there are local Lebanese people who speak English with broad Irish accents.
Senator Tom Clonan, in The Guardian.
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👋🏼 Don’t let the door hit you on the way out…
West Ham owner says non-dom crackdown is driving wealthy from the UK:
David Sullivan, the British businessman who co-owns West Ham United football club, has cut the asking price of his London house by £10m and has blamed the promised crackdown on non-doms for rich people leaving the country. Sullivan, the chair and biggest single shareholder of the Premier League club, has reduced the price of his 21,000 sq ft town townhouse in Marylebone to £65m as he said he had to be “realistic” about market conditions.
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That's not how you shift the border
🗺️ Oh, they appear to be at it again…
The graphic appeared on a 1 minute 25 second video clip which featured Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer attending the UN General Assembly in New York last week. Under the caption “global challenges rebound on us at home”, a map of the British Isles appears with shading over England, Scotland, Wales and a large section of the northern part of Ireland. Rather than including merely the six counties of Northern Ireland, the shaded portion extends all the way to the west coast, taking in Co Donegal.
Government admits ‘error’ as Downing St graphic appears to lay claim to Co Donegal
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Oh. Maggie Smith. What an incredible talent. We were lucky to have her. RIP.
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🇮🇪 Nice to see Ireland on the Olympics medal table. An incredible bronze medal for Mona McSharry in the 100m breaststroke.
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🥇 New post: An Olympic effort
To me, it was such a refreshing change to have the ceremony away from the enclosure of a stadium. Why wouldn’t you use the beauty of Paris - one of the most stunning cities in the world - as your backdrop, when you know the world is watching?
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📺 Aaaand…. that’s enough news about elections for today. I’m out.
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🚨 Finally, they’re going to investigate the fraud committed during the pandemic.
From The Guardian:
Chancellor understood to believe £2.6bn of public money lost to fraudsters during pandemic could be recouped
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Disappointed to see no mention of “banning speakerphone in public” in this morning’s King’s Speech to parliament.
Time to start a petition, I think…
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📸 The morning after…
My Apple Watch tells me I got four hours sleep last night. And that wasn’t event a solid four hours, but split across the whole night. And it shows!
No regrets, though - I got to see history in the making. And now? More coffee…
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🗳️ A fresh start?
So my plan to stay up night to watch the election failed miserably 🤣
My last memory is of about 2am and I woke up again at 5:30am. That said, I’m waking up to some amazing news.
Not just a Labour victory - an overwhelming one - but some delicious results and the exit of some of the nastier and more feckless Tories. I also notice George Galloway and his divisive vitriol was rejected by voters.
It’s not all good news, however. Some truly dreadful people have kept their seats and Farage’s bunch of bigots have made gains. And where they weren’t actually elected, they came a very close second. How much of this was simply protest votes, rather than a systematic swing to populism - only time will tell.
I’m going to enjoy watching Labour settle into power, appoint their talent, and start to make a difference. Followed very quickly by an inevitable Tory civil war and they try to decide just how right wing they can be without actually actually wearing uniforms.
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🗳️ I’ve brought my duvet and pillows out onto the sofa so I can keep watching the election results. I’m going to attempt to power through for a couple more hours. I have drinks and snacks galore and I’m enjoying a delicious Majorcan beer to celebrate the exit poll.
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So, I’ve finished work for the week and I’m not sure what to do with myself between now and 10pm, when the exit polls are published.
Too wound up to have a nap (yes really!) and I’m all caught up on my favourite podcasts. Maybe some comics for a bit of escapism…?
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🗳️ Counting the hours
Honestly. I’m quite literally counting the hours until I can vote in the general election and then sit back and watch the results come in.
It’s been a long 14 years of chaos and mismanagement under a series of weak and ineffectual Tory governments - despite their sometimes massive Commons majorities - and in the closing days of the campaign, with their dying breath, they criticise Kier Starmer for wanting to carve out some time on Friday evenings to be with his family.
Let’s set aside Boris Johnson literally parting while we were all under lockdown. Or his defence secretary going on holiday while the evacuation of Kabul was descending into farce. Starmer is saying he wants to ensure his family don’t suffer because of his job and, where possible, he’ll have dinner with them each Friday evening.
He will be living above his office, in 10 Downing Street. So the Tory howls of “What if there’s a crisis after 6pm on a Friday?” ignore the fact that the PM is probably the best connected person in the country. Instantly contactable, always kept in the loop.
But it also points at a certain disdain for anyone not glorifying the broken long working hours culture that pervades Conservative circles. Long hours somehow equates to being a professional. Whereas working your allotted hours, working part-time, or working with flexible arrangements in plane: quelle horreur!
I’m planning to stay up overnight on Thursday night, Friday morning. I want to see the looks on their faces as they realise they’ve lost badly and to see the chief apologists for the nasty culture war lose their seats live on TV.
And yes, I’ll have the champagne on ice on the off chance Rishi Sunak loses his own seat.
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🗳️ After a quick scan of the news headlines, I can only conclude: Thursday can’t come soon enough.
We need to bin these desperate, lying, ineffectual grifters. Vote!