From BBC.co.uk
Then this morning, Musk wrote a flurry of posts on X criticising the UK government, with one poll asking: “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government (yes or no)”.
The US must pass a law (heck, the repubs probably have enough states to make it an amendment) that twitter polls are definitive and binding as federal laws.
And he’s been asking KCIII to dissolve parliament yet the King can only do that (now) if the Prime Minister “advises” him to. I didn’t go to school in the UK and I’ve no idea what blood diamond tycoons tutor their kids, yet I’m not the one asking the King to do something he can’t do.
I have read the DoD has a planned outline for literally any war scenario one can think of. Plan(s) for invasion of the UK must be a thing that exists. Mind that the Republic of Ireland does have an army so you’ll have to fight them first if you want to stage a land invasion or even refuel armed bombers at Shannon. So naval blockade & siege it is.
(Okay, mostly tongue-in-cheek though I do not think Musk is doing the same with his “whom to overthrow polls”)
Can you help with a little rundown on the controversy over these “rape gangs?” Specifically, what is the charge being levied against the government/politicians by the likes of Musk and how far afield these charges are? Actually, whether these Pakistani “rape gangs” are really a thing or just a fiction would be nice too.
ChatGPT gave me a good summary from “Can you summarize events around the “grooming gangs” in the UK?” but I’m not sure if we can post such responses?
Meanwhile, my attempt at a quick summary:
UK grooming gangs
My attempt at a quick version is that in 2010, in the town of Rotherham, 5 british-pakistani men were jailed for being part of a gang that took advantage of teenage girls from poor and vulnerable backgrounds, many underage, for the purposes of sex, over decades. Investigations found that there had been many catastrophic failures in policing, where many girls had spoken to police and not been taken seriously.
Many more convictions came in the years following, and, in the town of Rotherham, the perpetrators remained mostly asian men.
The RW media jumped all over this, running stories about how “political correctness” (nowadays they would say “woke” of course) tied the hands of police. And emphasized over and over again that this was an issue amongst Pakistani men, stirring up racial hatred. And some initial investigations indeed continued to find this strong correlation, so members of the Conservative right heavily ran with this talking point.
A large-scale investigation and review of data by the Home Office was published in 2020 and it showed that nationally, the majority of perpetrators were in fact white, indeed whites were slightly over-represented. And, while there had been staggering failures by the police there was no evidence that racial sensitivity had been an element of this.
So: there’s been an inquiry, but we need another one to give the answer the RW papers want.
They’re a thing that Tommy Robinson and his ilk latched onto as a justification for their islamphobia and general racism.
There was a problem with muslim gangs in Rotherham. But there have been a lot more white gangs exploiting young girls throughout the country. Tommy ignores those and just bangs on about the ones that fit his world view.
The biggest reasons these cases weren’t investigated had little to do with fear of upsetting Muslims. It was down to a lack of resources and failing to believe what white working class girls were saying. Rape prosecutions are very low across the board. But the police didn’t want to waste time on cases where the girls looked like they were probably asking for it. (the police opinion, not mine.)
I’d add that the two people that Musk has attacked have probably done more than any other politicians to bring succesful rape convictions. Keir Starmer spent his time as DPP trying to change the culture so that victims are believed more. And Jess Philips has been a very active MP raising cases of rape and violence against women. Before becoming an MP she worked for Womens Aid, so it’s a real passion for her.
But they’ve spent their time raising the conviction rates for all rapists. Not just the brown ones that Tommy doesn’t like, therefore they are traitors in his eyes.
Yup that’s that’s definitely a likely outcome here. And would of course result in a massive payday for that slimebag Farage as primary shareholder.
Again by rights that should make the party a laughingstock with less electoral support than the monster raving loony party, but the way the world is right now (and given the frankly awful state of both labour and tories right now) I wouldn’t bet on it
Damn, this feels like something straight out of Snowcrash, might as well let corporations just buy political parties outright. I’m sure that will work out fine.
Farage set up the company and is the majority shareholder. It isn’t a publicly traded company so Farage would have to agree to sell. Musk couldn’t do a hostile takeover. It still stinks that a corporate entity can masquerade as a political party though, no doubt about that.
He’d happily see the US excluded from Five Eyes intelligence and listening stations, Faslane and sundry air bases? He’s a worse military planner than I am. What a twit.
So why doesn’t Musk set up his own party? I mean, if you’re going to buy politicians, why not just hire them right up front? I mean, there have to be a few hundred people in the UK who would be willing to run for office just for the paycheck.
I think he wants to break things; disruption is sort of his thing. He doesn’t want to compete within the existing framework of politics, he wants to break it so that something something Mars, Tunnels, Rocket, Money.
When I flew in from Ireland in 2016, I read about the buses that said stuff like £300 million a month going to the EU, as was the general message besides how immigrants had “… took our jobs!” (south park ref).
Then I read about how Farage had not only gotten himself and his family Irish passports and somehow got to the head of the queue as there were lots of applications and a big backlog for what I’ve heard referred to often as the “Golden Passport”.
(Plus I was often asked to 'splain Trump getting elected yet usually saying, “I hope he dies in jail” ended that line of query)
I don’t recall prior “richest men in the world” being such assholes. I don’t mean Trump - if he had two million he’d lose it fast and go bankrupt and he never came close to being a billionaire. JP Morgan certainly bought off enough politicians to keep his empire growing. Dunno if Howard Hughes was particularly evil. Henry Ford was clever enough to make lots of money off WWII whether or not the USA got involved.
The fictional Charles Foster Kane was not as evil as Hearst who couldn’t even threaten Hollywood enough not to release that picture. I’d be giving him ideas, yet why hasn’t Musk already made the movie of how he invented electric cars and rocket ships better than anyone else yet? He needs Leni Riefenstahl and we need another Orson Welles.
So, I’ve come up with a Brilliant Plan, I call “The Musk Lottery”.
We convince every politician in the world to just confiscate his money, and then we divvy it up into billion-dollar prize lots, and give away tickets. Most of the prizes are ear-marked for the politicians’ tickets (we need to bribe them to make this happen), but a few are saved for the masses, everyone (except Musk, of course) gets one ticket.
And then we announce that we’re going to do this with The World Richest Person every 10 years.
Watching the top 10 people trying to shed value in the last year, to avoid being #1 on December 31st will be hilarious.
Hopefully this will keep a lid on these massive hundreds-of-billions net worths, so we never have to worry about one weirdo having this much personal power ever again.