Tremors

[davidgillon]

I thought I was handling the election result, I'm used to being represented by Tories here in Kent. But then I found out that Bishop Auckland, my home town, which has been Labour since forever, went Tory, and that shook me. And then I found out that Blyth Valley, my parent's home town, that's even more Labour than Bishop, where my great uncle Tol was the Labour mayor, and where I spent every weekend until my teens, went Tory, and that, I have no words.

That isn't the sound of 'the red wall falling', it's generations of miners, including my grandfathers, spinning in their graves.

Comments

[sovay]

That isn't the sound of 'the red wall falling', it's generations of miners, including my grandfathers, spinning in their graves.

Love and strength. It's all I've got to send, but you've got it.

[davidgillon]

Thank you, and likewise.

[hamletta]

I'm just... Don't know what to say... :'(

[davidgillon]

Yeah, that!

[capri0mni]

Oh, man. I am sorry.

I'm so tired of being sad over the state of the world.

I wish I could do more.

[davidgillon]

We all do what we can. That's what counts.

[cloudsinvenice]

I'm so sorry. I expected it to be a struggle but I did not expect it to be a rout.

My constituency came painfully close to ousting a dreadful right winger who barely seems aware he's anyone's MP. God knows why anyone would want five more years of him, but apparently that's what we get.

[davidgillon]

I'd thought we might pull off a hung parliament, but not this.

On the schadenfreude side of the equation, I'm imagining the next five years for Tory MPs in places like Bishop and Blyth who now have to convince their electorate that they, and the government, really do care about places that have been starved of investment by every Tory government over the last century.

[capri0mni]

*Hugs*

[davidgillon]

Likewise

[capri0mni]

Thank you.

Meanwhile, Trump is being impeached for abusing his power and obstructing Congress. And the Majority Leader of the Senate said on national television that the Senate Republicans would help mount his defense.

Now, according to the United States Constitution, when a president is impeached, the Senate is supposed to act as the jury.

Imagine if a Mafia Boss was finally caught, and the trial was scheduled, and the foreman of the jury publicly announced that he would be helping the defense before the trial even started.

I have this dread that 2020 will be the year that the United Kingdom stops the United, and the American experiment with democracy will ultimately fail.

In the 1980s, the UK and the US mirrored each other with Thatcher and Reagan, and we're mirroring each other again with Johnson and Trump... and we're both crashing at the bottom of the slippery slope.

[davidgillon]

I wish I could disagree with any of this.

[capri0mni]

I'm trying not to end one year and start the next in a pool of 100% pessimism, but I'm only marginally successful so far.

[cesy]

Yeah.

[davidgillon]

That.

[skygiants]

Sympathy, and solidarity. :(

[davidgillon]

Thanks!

[davidgillon]

Plenty of us still willing to fight this, that's one reason to be optimistic.