[Tubby Isaacs]

Latest Labour Government isn't allowed to do anything story.

Royal Mint Court residents plan legal challenge if Chinese ‘mega embassy’ in London approved
Claims of ‘government interference’ in decision on plans for vast outpost near Tower of London

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... ga-embassy

The interference seems to be that the Government called in the planning decision, after Tower Hamlets rejected it. Well might some of us wonder how the Government exercises call-in powers without interference. And something from Boris Johnson (as Foreign Secretary) in 2018.

IDS is on hand for comment.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Gordon Brown urges global democracies to defy Trump with declaration of support for self-determination and rule of law

Thanks, Gordo. They just did a statement on Greenland, and how did that go with Trump?

Perhaps things can't go any worse, but I'd ask some Ukrainians about that.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I see Canada, which was put forward by the usual bores as fighting Trump unlike weaky Starmer, has agreed in principle to join the Board of Peace. I don't think that's particularly heinous, but it does rather show that we're all in the same boat. Perhaps Canada is taking one for the team on this, as part of a coordinated response?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Chinese Embassy is approved.

Watch the Tories (including Boris Johnson, I expect) make out that the situation is totally different now to when they approved it.

[Tubby Isaacs]

MI5 and GCHQ chiefs say China mega-embassy risks can’t be eliminated but mitigation is ‘proportionate’

Yeah, but what does Iain Duncan Smith think? I thought the Tories were the party of national security?

[Tubby Isaacs]

The debate on the Chinese Embassy is as good as you'd expect. (Major) Dan Jarvis is having to listen to rubbish like this from Julian Lewis.

Does the minster accept, as he should, that this is a colossal propaganda win for totalitarian communist China.
And is there any argument which was used in favour of China getting this embassy that wouldn’t have carried exactly the same weight if totalitarian imperialist Russia had wanted to buy this building?

This was the same totalitarian imperialist China for whom the Tories approved the embassy? Moving to a large embassy is now a "colossal propaganda victory", is it?

The Lib Dems also know more than GCHQ and Mi5:

Lisa Smart, the Lib Dem spokesperson, said that allowing the application to go ahead would “further amplify China’s surveillance efforts here in the UK”.

Bores on all sides are piping up about "flawed process".

[Youngian]

Think it was Duncan-Smith who is concerned the building has a basement which could be used for torturing people.
The US moved out of Grosevnor Square into a sparkly new mega embassy. Is London the new Berlin or Helsinki where rival superpowers play out their espoinage games?
I hope so, a new generation of exciting spy novels awaits.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Sounds a bit like Callan.

The Telegraph did the basement story. I got the feeling they were fishing for something to make the Tories look less hypocritical.

[Boiler]

Sounds a bit like Callan.

I must dig out my b/w DVDs of that to watch again. Seriously good telly.

[kreuzberger]

This lazy journalism about mega-ultra-spooknests is just so tedious.

A country with a 1.4b population and an economy worth US$19tn needs a lot of people to administer that complexity in major markets. Of course, some of them will be up to no good, but that is literally their job.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Hey, this chap is saying what I keep saying.

Well chaps, I'm sure Ed Davey and Zack Polanski are going to deliver everything you want.

[Youngian]

Sick of footballification and just resigned to asking "What are the trade offs?" You've told me the bad stuff about this or that policy but tell me the good points so I can weigh up the big picture.
You don't know? Maybe you should STFU until you find out.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I always mention this but the prominence of campaigners is a massive difference to old politics. The Hillsborough Law would have been a fairly simple thing to pass years ago, with a few people who distrusted the security services expressing concern.

Now the whole thing has had to be delayed because of some improbable chain of events where the Director of MI5 decides to go out on a limb for South Yorkshire Police, and (what?) claim that the 96 were part of some sort of plot to take down the government?

So because national security is a thing, a compromise has to be found. But all that happens is that they get it in the neck as useless.

Like workers rights, rental reform, recognising Palestine, abolishing the 2 child cap, the Hillsborough law will have gone from essential to not even worthy of comment once the Government does it.

[Tubby Isaacs]

For lots of campaign groups, the incentive in terms of profile and fundraising is to make out that the government are the worst people who ever lived.

Even where they are constructive, they can get pulled away from it by their grassroots. So various environmental groups who welcomed the government’s nature fund initially changed their tune when grass roots told them, they didn’t actually care about nice projects like reintroducing species or creating national forests. They wanted those houses on that barren farmland near them stopped.

So a policy that could have delivered the homes we need and improved nature became “developers paying to trash the environment”

[The Weeping Angel]

Whatever happened to that policy?

[Boiler]

Spotted on a BBC SYB today on an unexpected rise in inflation:

Screenshot 2026-01-21 at 12-29-40 UK inflation rises for first time in five months - but one-off factors blamed - BBC News.png (17.72 KiB) Viewed 95 times

Now, I don't know about anyone else here but my car insurance went down by about 20% this year? And HTF did the poster end up with a 25% CT increase? I smell bullshit*.

*even with my broken sense of smell where I can't smell scatoles any more.

[Boiler]

Apparently Hoyle has ejected a Tory (Richard Holden) from the chamber for heckling Starmer during PMQs.

'kinell. Hoyle doing his job.

Good to hear Starmer laying into Polanski as well.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Whatever happened to that policy?

Still going through, I think

[Tubby Isaacs]

Ed Milliband couldn’t speak at PMQs without a wall of noise hitting him. Mostly they got away with it. I suppose it’s like seventies football- if you all act up, it’s too many to send off.

There was though one glorious occasion when Bercow picked out Gove. Their kids went to the same school, so they often bumped into each other there. Bercow observed that Gove was a totally different character when he saw him at the school gates.

With fewer MPs, I suppose it’s easier for Hoyle to pick them out.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Good to hear the Tories living up to the serious international crisis we’re facing.

Bipartisanship is for Labour only.