TWeaK

You’re the user, but yes Declassified UK is the one who misrepresented the whole thing. Per my edit above.

At least their post included a link to the speech, so readers could decide for themselves.

Provided an edit, wasn’t quick enough lol

In this post, a user cherrypicks parts of a speech to push a specific agenda.

Edit: The full speech: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/foreign-secretarys-remarks-at-asean-foreign-ministers-meeting-in-manila which was given to the ASEAN international forum (an international relations group for 11 Asian countries eg Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam).

The bits on Iran:

And I know in particular how much the Iran conflict is affecting ASEAN partners. You are feeling as much as anyone across the world the daily impact on your economies and the living standards of your citizens, as well indeed as the impact on seafarers from many ASEAN nations.

We too in the UK in our own way are feeling the effects of the conflict, on families and businesses in the impacts on the cost of living.

We very much welcome the MoU reached in June between the US and Iran and the US condemns in the strongest terms the unjustified attacks by Iran since then on shipping and indeed on our Gulf partners.

As a government I assure you we will work intensely with others to seek to deescalate this conflict and find a diplomatic way forward which is in all of our interests. That must include reopening the Strait of Hormuz and upholding the fundamental principle of freedom of navigation, a principle that the maritime nations around the table know better than anyone, is so important.

And the bit “on Russian aggression”, which is really about support for Ukraine:

As a government we will also continue to stand with Ukraine. In such a world, collaboration matters as they defend themselves against Russia’s unprovoked and premeditated aggression. Aggression that is not just a test of Ukrainian resilience, but of our collective resolve.

So to my original assertion, Burnham was not elected to the office of PM.

And the party didn’t even have a vote on him. He stood uncontested.

Literally the only group that had a say were the party MP’s who were responsible for nominations. However the party rules are designed to give the wider party membership a say; no opportunity for this was given. There wasn’t even a Count Binface option.

It’s permissible by the letter of the rules, but it absolutely is not what people expect to be happening with their democratic say.

Most people vote for whichever MP is in the party they want to vote for, run by the leader they want to run the country. Most people expect some stability, at least until the next opportunity to have their say.

And Labour party members are supposed to vote on the party leader, it isn’t supposed to just be a decision by MP’s. Because Burnham stood uncontested, there was no vote, and effectively the only people who got to decide were the MP’s at the nomination stage.

And Starmer had no good (publicly known) reason to leave. His controversies were never that damning, and they were contrasted with quiet competent successes.

You dismiss this as “all right and proper” according to British election rules, while ignoring that it is all dripping in slime.

That’s the farce of it all. On paper people vote for an MP, but in their minds people vote for a party, and that party is led by the PM they hope will be running the country.

Literally no one voted for Burnham to lead the party, even though party rules dictate how the party leader is democratically selected. With Labour, I understand the registered party members decide, although they may have restricted that to MP’s voting only in the wake of party members choosing Corbyn years ago.

Starmer threw in the towel, over nothing in particular, and Burnham stood uncontested. There is nothing democratic about that.

“There are no burnt houses”

*Shows picture of burnt houses*

“It’s not that bad!”

Literally take a dog for a walk up a mountain, it gets tired, “oh wait it must be someone who left a big bag of weed and my dog gobbled it up when I wasn’t looking”.

Actually wait, this article is complete bullshit.

Bluhme said Tokyo had made a full recovery after the incident during a trip to Scotland last weekend. She said vets believe she ingested cannabis left on the trail.

The vets made a guess, their best guess based on very limited information.

TIL Apparently dogs can get a severe reaction to THC from eating poop of someone who had digested cannabis.

Okay that’s a few steps beyond “discarded”.

I think the inflection point is around Bristol.

They take the piss out of you for not sounding proper, after dallywagging doun souff.

Hang on, when did we stop being able to mock gingers?!?!

You can legally discriminate against someone for being ginger, last I knew.

Investigators are considering whether leftwing, anarchist and single-issue terrorism (LASIT) played a role

It honestly feels like leftwing is just thrown in there to stop officers sniggering every time they say the acronym.

No, he absolutely still could. Whether he will be is another matter, he’s got extremely wealthy backers.

Hence why Starmer threw in the towel over nothing. The UK isn’t really run by the elected politicians, it’s run by the people who fund the party LLCs.

Better not lose then.

Lawyers for the Tates said the brothers had offered to be interviewed by Bedfordshire police in Romania and had undertaken to give up £20,000 each if they revealed the names of their accusers in the UK.

They didn’t just try to get the names, they tried to bribe the police - with relative pocket change - for the names.

How can they act when they’re on holiday?

The article spends an awful lot of time talking about the government and pretty much glosses over the media.

The government responds to public interest, if there is more public interest on a topic the government will spend more time addressing it.

Public interest is by and large driven by the media (and even when it’s not it often appears to be so).

The problem here is that the media is not covering this widely enough. This is perhaps understandable with privately owned media, who have their own vested interests, but I think the bigger question is why state-funded news organisations aren’t better at picking this up. That is a root cause and political issue.