UK General Election 8th June: Shake it all about?

[Junkenstein]

"Terrorist" bomb blast suspected in Manchester, as a chunk of papers carry corbyn /ira taglines. You could get suspicious here, but it's likely another government fuck up, assuming Isis or related.

Not ruling out gas explosion yet either, because a lot of the infrastructure is old and fucked. There's also been a few big-ish demo jobs around the area which adds to the possibility.

Either way, not what you need in the middle of an election. May needs to pull the crazy racist "send em all back anywhere" shtick to try and pander what's left of the brexit vote. Not helped when a lot of these are pensioners who you've just shat on. Or to be fair, have no solid idea of how you'll be shitting, in what kind of quantities and from what heights.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Apparently there was just a terrorist attack in England. What convenient timing, just in time for the election. This stinks of a false-flag operation (or maybe not stinks of but at this point it's definitely a possibility).

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm starting to wonder if the Tories aren't purposefully trying to throw the election at this point. 

Step 1: introduce terrible social care policy that will negatively affect your key voters
Step 2: Declare that there is "no going back" on policy
Step 3: Go back on policy.
Step 4: Achieve all of this within 4 days, including a weekend.

I mean, it's either that or its gross incompetence, and either seems likely at this point.  Throw the election, let Labour (fail to) deal with Brexit, blame Labour for a thousand years for not getting a miracle deal like Theresa May would have (try to avoid laughing).

I've considered, the same thing, along the lines xaz reasoned. The only simple alternative I can see is sheer arrogance which is possible. If the Tories win with this kind of no effort and constant fuckups it'll be taken as a mandate to do whatever they please.

This is looking paralyzingly familiar.

[Cain]

Looks like I went to sleep just before this terrorist attack happened.

Give me half an hour to have a coffee and hit up my usual suspects

[Cain]

No claims as of yet...Islamic State supporters are trolling on the usual channels, of course, but IS supporters are going to do that.

[Vanadium Gryllz]

So apparently May took a bit of a beating on the Andrew Marr show. I didn't watch it but maybe i'll try and catch up this evening.

News of course overshadowed by the bombing. I wonder if that's gonna give a boost to the Tories. Not exactly coming off as strong or stable right now.

[Faust]

That is the most worrying thing, the grandstanding boring old "Hard line against terrorism" that is now obligatory to trot out, is time consuming, it takes effort. I'm more scared of the outcome of a chaotic negotiation process, then in any terror attack.

[Cain]

Indeed.

ISIS have claimed the attack...but their account is at odds with what the police have said.  It is possible that the police held back infomation, to allow them to sort real claims from the cranks.  And ISIS usually don't claim attacks without some evidence...

[Junkenstein]

Terror alert status now upgraded to super serial. Bomb appears to be "highly sophisticated" which probably means they got the gear from homebase instead of b&q.

ETA- military deployed to "key sites". Not seen anywhere particular disclosed but that would be an interesting list. Bet I can name at least 5 places, including 2 nuclear sites and 1 oil and gas site where there won't be any or any extra.

Which raises potentially very interesting questions when you talk about the financial aspect of any of these attacks.  Take insurance for instance. How much do you think you need to raise the premiums on somewhere before it makes more commercial sense to shut the place? A little bird told me that the hike to air products in the aftermath of France would have made it "economically unviable" to keep open, if it wasn't already shutting, and they've got a pretty decent safety record. Now look at a shitshow that's had an issue or two and you could easily be talking about a substantial facility or two being on very shaky ground. I would imagine this easily applies to the US and the rest of Europe and similar. The potential for one corporation to force another out of a country with proxy terror wars is probably closer than we'd like to think, assuming it's not already happening. I think it's definitely worth looking at very closely the next time it occurs in a corporate location.


Cain, help me out here, is there a reason beyond the spectacle side of things that make using nail bomb type shit preferable to other methods? I'm thinking you can mix up some nasty gases etc. From what you can get in practically any supermarket yet this doesn't seem to be a thing, thankfully.

On a slightly different note, anyone bothered with the marr interview yet? Worth watching?

[Cain]

Reliability.  Nails go everywhere - everyone gets hurt.  Gases disperse in open areas, where there are likely to be most targets.  Even in enclosed areas, they don't do very well (sarin attacks in Tokyo should have killed hundreds, not six people).  Technical expertise is above and beyond that for normal bomb-making, requires more exotic components likely to be on watch lists, and may be harder to hide on a person as well.  Cost factors in too, nails are cheap.  Don't even actually need nails, just a bunch of scrap metal stripped apart to ensure sharp edges will work fine.

Also, most terrorists are not very imaginative.  When they are...that's when you get Ramzi Yousef, or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

[Cain]

Of course, it's worth noting that under May, 17,000 police officers have left the service, at least some of that due to budget cuts and the general Tory attitude towards the police.

We've seen this before, with the Environment Agency, "let's use the Army to plug the gap in vital services we've underfunded".  The Army itself is underfunded, btw, but since they have to follow legal orders...

Anyway, all I'm saying is that we wouldn't need to call in the Army, at a time when we're debating going back into Afghanistan in force, if we didn't cut police budgets.

[Vanadium Gryllz]

It seems like the Tories have been cutting everything that they possibly can which begs the question... where is the money going?

And if there simply is no money how are the other parties' more optimistic manifestos going to be funded?

edit: In trying to find my own answer to the above questions I have started (trying) to read the party manifestos.   

[Cain]

Allegedly it's going to pay off the national debt.

I'll let you look up those actual figures for a laugh.  What it's really going into is tax cuts.

Edit: the Labout and (IIRC) Lib Dem manifestos are both fully costed.

[Vanadium Gryllz]

Yeah the current plan doesn't really seem to be achieving it's stated aim.

[LMNO]

Glad (?) to see the US and UK aren't that different.