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Emergency vehicles blocked by Just Stop Oil protest in west London rush hour
https://news.sky.com/story/emergency-veh...r-12717957

EXCERPTS: A fire engine and ambulance were among the vehicles caught in a blockade by Just Stop Oil protesters in west London which the government has said is "unacceptable".

[...] The prime minister's official spokesman said: "These sorts of protests which disrupt people's daily lives or indeed can stop our emergency services from potentially saving lives are unacceptable. "That's why we've already toughened powers for the police, we've given them new powers to act and we are also taking further powers through the House at the moment to ensure they can go even further in preventing these individuals from disrupting people's lives."

[...] A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said: "Just Stop Oil policy, is and always has been, to let blue light emergency services through. "It was reported this morning that emergency services were blocked in Knightsbridge. In reality one of our supporters directed an ambulance away from the road block and our supporters left the road to allow the fire engine to pass.

"The public are right to be upset, frustrated, irritated and angry - their lives have been disrupted. The government can stop this today, by making a meaningful statement to end new oil and gas in the UK." (MORE - missing details)

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'Margaret Thatcher without the intelligence': Voters deliver brutal verdict on Liz Truss
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/v...16453950a4

INTRO: Voters have delivered a withering verdict on Liz Truss just a month after she became prime minister. A focus group run by pollster James Johnson showed the Tory leader faces an uphill task in convincing voters she is up to the job. The discussion, which was commissioned by Times Radio, comes after a chaotic few weeks for the government.

Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget triggered a fall in the value of the pound and increased mortgage rates as the City rejected his plans for £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts.

A rebellion by Tory MPs then forced the chancellor to abandon plans to scrap the 45p tax rate paid by the highest earners.

One woman told the focus group: “I didn’t particularly know who [Truss] was before she came into power to be honest. What she’s done so far is she’s waded in, seems unqualified for the role and has had to backtrack and I just don’t think there’s any faith in her at all.

“I’ve heard a lot of people say she’s a wannabe Margaret Thatcher without the intelligence.”

Another man said: “I just don’t think she’s up to the job.”

A female voter said: “I just don’t trust Liz Truss. You’ve not shown me anything to trust you. So far, it’s been nothing but a let down.”

Another added: “I feel she’s not ready for the role at the moment. She’s not quite there.”

But one woman, a lifelong Tory voter, said Truss had been dealt a bad hand by her predecessor, Boris Johnson, and should be given a chance... (MORE - details)

(Oct 11, 2022 04:53 PM)C C Wrote: [ -> ]'Margaret Thatcher without the intelligence': Voters deliver brutal verdict on Liz Truss

INTRO: Voters have delivered a withering verdict on Liz Truss just a month after she became prime minister. A focus group run by pollster James Johnson showed the Tory leader faces an uphill task in convincing voters she is up to the job. The discussion, which was commissioned by Times Radio, comes after a chaotic few weeks for the government.

And Liz Truss resigned today, after only 45 days as Prime Minister. That makes her the shortest lived PM in British history.

Part of the problem is how the Conservative Party chooses its leaders. The list of possibles is reduced to two, by successive votes by members of Parliament. At each vote, the lowest performing candidate is eliminated and that individual's supporters choose one of the remaining contestants. When only two are left, the choice is handed over to party members. Unlike the United States, this isn't a primary election and it doesn't mean all Conservative Party voters. Party members are people who pay a membership fee and sign up as members. Only a small fraction of Conservative Party voters are actually Conservative Party members. It's not a tremendously representative group.

So what the process succeeds in doing is ensuring that the choice of leader is restricted to the party establishment. But then regular British voters are supposed to support the result and vote for it in general elections.

Liz Truss is an Oxford product (as is BoJo, Theresa May and David Cameron before that), a member of an insider's clique where relationships fashioned at college are transferred to the ministries of Whitehall. Truss spent her earlier years as a supporter of and activist for the Liberal Democrats. Realizing that her political career would be stunted as a member of a third party no matter how much it reflected her own views, she switched her ostensible loyalty to the Conservatives.

Her predecessor BoJo ran a reasonably populist campaign, which succeeded in winning a huge Parliamentary majority that could have been a mandate for significant change. (Part of that was due to the severe deficiencies of Jeremy Corbyn, not love for BoJo.) But as soon as he was elected, BoJo revealed himself as the thoroughly "woke" instrument of the Whitehall deep state and the London bankers, seemingly more comfortable in private London social clubs than among the regular people who had elected him. (His perennially tossled hair was just an affectation.) So his popularity among the voters plummeted. His term as Prime Minister has to go down as one of the greatest wasted opportunities in British history.

For her part, Liz Truss never had to face the voters in a national general election so she never had to even go through the motions of appealing to them. And it shows.

(Oct 20, 2022 09:41 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]And Liz Truss resigned today, after only 45 days as Prime Minister. That makes her the shortest lived PM in British history.

Part of the problem is how the Conservative Party chooses its leaders. The list of possibles is reduced to two, by successive votes by members of Parliament. At each vote, the lowest performing candidate is eliminated and that individual's supporters choose one of the remaining contestants. When only two are left, the choice is handed over to party members. Unlike the United States, this isn't a primary election and it doesn't mean all Conservative Party voters. Party members are people who pay a membership fee and sign up as members. Only a small fraction of Conservative Party voters are actually Conservative Party members. It's not a tremendously representative group.

So what the process succeeds in doing is ensuring that the choice of leader is restricted to the party establishment. But then regular British voters are supposed to support the result and vote for it in general elections.

Liz Truss is an Oxford product (as is BoJo, Theresa May and David Cameron before that), a member of an insider's clique where relationships fashioned at college are transferred to the ministries of Whitehall. Truss spent her earlier years as a supporter of and activist for the Liberal Democrats. Realizing that her political career would be stunted as a member of a third party no matter how much it reflected her own views, she switched her ostensible loyalty to the Conservatives.

Her predecessor BoJo ran a reasonably populist campaign, which succeeded in winning a huge Parliamentary majority that could have been a mandate for significant change. (Part of that was due to the severe deficiencies of Jeremy Corbyn, not love for BoJo.) But as soon as he was elected, BoJo revealed himself as the thoroughly "woke" instrument of the Whitehall deep state and the London bankers, seemingly more comfortable in private London social clubs than among the regular people who had elected him. (His perennially tossled hair was just an affectation.) So his popularity among the voters plummeted. His term as Prime Minister has to go down as one of the greatest wasted opportunities in British history.

For her part, Liz Truss never had to face the voters in a national general election so she never had to even go through the motions of appealing to them. And it shows.

I'm suprised no one has mentioned "Cancel Culture" as being responsible. To be honest The traditionist form of politics needs to evolve and reform if it's to survive, otherwise it's going the way of a department stall, a historic relic on the verge of extiniction.

Call this a crazy conspiracy theorist rant if you like, but the notion US POTUS choices are a true reflection of the (media and education system indoctrinated anyway) populace as a whole, is palpable nonsense:
https://alethonews.com/2020/04/15/americ...al-system/
Not much different in most 'Western democracies', except power grabbers for obvious reasons place special emphasis on steering the US political scene.
Actual informed popular choice is pretty well limited to local council/county levels where issues like dog leash by-laws are of no consequence to tptb.

(Oct 20, 2022 09:41 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]And Liz Truss resigned today, after only 45 days as Prime Minister. That makes her the shortest lived PM in British history.

Part of the problem is how the Conservative Party chooses its leaders. The list of possibles is reduced to two, by successive votes by members of Parliament. At each vote, the lowest performing candidate is eliminated and that individual's supporters choose one of the remaining contestants. When only two are left, the choice is handed over to party members. Unlike the United States, this isn't a primary election and it doesn't mean all Conservative Party voters. Party members are people who pay a membership fee and sign up as members. Only a small fraction of Conservative Party voters are actually Conservative Party members. It's not a tremendously representative group.

So what the process succeeds in doing is ensuring that the choice of leader is restricted to the party establishment. But then regular British voters are supposed to support the result and vote for it in general elections.

Liz Truss is an Oxford product (as is BoJo, Theresa May and David Cameron before that), a member of an insider's clique where relationships fashioned at college are transferred to the ministries of Whitehall. Truss spent her earlier years as a supporter of and activist for the Liberal Democrats. Realizing that her political career would be stunted as a member of a third party no matter how much it reflected her own views, she switched her ostensible loyalty to the Conservatives.

Her predecessor BoJo ran a reasonably populist campaign, which succeeded in winning a huge Parliamentary majority that could have been a mandate for significant change. (Part of that was due to the severe deficiencies of Jeremy Corbyn, not love for BoJo.) But as soon as he was elected, BoJo revealed himself as the thoroughly "woke" instrument of the Whitehall deep state and the London bankers, seemingly more comfortable in private London social clubs than among the regular people who had elected him. (His perennially tossled hair was just an affectation.) So his popularity among the voters plummeted. His term as Prime Minister has to go down as one of the greatest wasted opportunities in British history.

For her part, Liz Truss never had to face the voters in a national general election so she never had to even go through the motions of appealing to them. And it shows.

Thanks for that summary, Yaz. I'm not usually interested enough in foreign politics to read up on it myself, and you're good at condensing it down in a fairly concise and unbiased manner.

Guess who was spotted on a British Airways flight from the Dominican Republic where he had been vacationing, back to Gatwick

Doesn't look like business class, either. (I like that, fly coach with the regular people.)