The Off Topic Topic

[Barrister]

About what I expected.

[Josquius]

I like this new series.

[The Larch]

Trite hackneyed plot-twist 1 - Renzi was a baddie all along

As if he ever was a goodie.  I mean,  he entered national politics by couping and deposing another member of his own party as prime minister.

This may just be the Anglo-Saxon media but he definitely had an arc as modernising, reformist candidate taking on the party bosses (like Blair or Macron) only to turn out to be less impressive and ultimately a villain (like Blair or Macron ) and now he just feels like a chaos agent.

Oh yes, don't get me wrong, he had massive clout when he became PM and was definitely seen as a "get things done" kind of politician. Then during his tenure as PM he alienated basically every single ally and colleague, and ended up leaving the PD and setting up his own, marginal party (blackjack and hookers are assumed) in which his is the only voice that matters. He's all ambition, zero pragmatism, which is rare amongst Italian politicians.

[Malthus]

Government crisis in Italy. Old habits never die.

I always think Italian politics is like a big prestige TV series - I have zero doubt that it's really interesting and that I'd really enjoy it, I just don't have the time to properly catch up on the previous 48 series. But I still enjoy it when I watch the odd episode.

Ooh!  Do Canadian politics next!

A well-reviewed young adult show. It might be actually compelling, but I don't bother checking it out 

Anyone dare to do American politics? 

[Eddie Teach]

Pragmatism is a useful tool for realizing ambition.

[Barrister]

Government crisis in Italy. Old habits never die.

I always think Italian politics is like a big prestige TV series - I have zero doubt that it's really interesting and that I'd really enjoy it, I just don't have the time to properly catch up on the previous 48 series. But I still enjoy it when I watch the odd episode.

Ooh!  Do Canadian politics next!

A well-reviewed young adult show. It might be actually compelling, but I don't bother checking it out 

Anyone dare to do American politics? 

Oh come on - that's the hyper-violent prestige cable series that even if you don't watch you can't help but hear about every last plot twist.  It's the Game of Thrones of world politics.

[Tonitrus]

I was thinking something like Fear Factor or I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

Or maybe Tiger King.

[Sheilbh]

Anyone dare to do American politics? 

I'd go with celed's predictable procedural description but they've got trapped into a cycle of always escalating cliffhangers.

[Admiral Yi]

Maury Povitch

[Sheilbh]

Or maybe Tiger King.

America:

[Sheilbh]

I am following the influencer v British public fight on covid very closely

Basically loads of influencers travelled to Dubai for "essential business purposes" and are now being dragged by all their followers for not taking covid seriously/breaking the rules etc. To justify their decisions the influencers are now posting random images of unspecified graphs with "#work" (which is something I've definitely done in the office).

Edit: An article on it:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jan/14/covid-uk-influencers-scramble-to-justify-exotic-getaways

Also noteworthy - British tourists (including a lot of influencers) driving a new spike of cases in the UAE

[Josquius]

I'm becoming worried rich British arse holes may have lasting implications for Brits abroad.
Well. Over and beyond brexit of course which is already pretty mega.
Brits in Switzerland have caused chaos; first the Verbier flight, now the Lauberhorn race cancelled due to one.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55645396

[Sheilbh]

Government crisis in Italy. Old habits never die.

Something must be in the water - Dutch government on verge of collapse too (I wonder how much is just that covid paused actual politics in lots of countries and now the politicians are bored and bring it back). This is, at least, more explicable than Renzi:

Dutch government faces collapse over child benefits scandal
Coalition at risk amid fallout from tax authorities wrongly 'hunting down' thousands of families
Jon Henley Europe correspondent
@jonhenley
Thu 14 Jan 2021 11.29 GMT

The Dutch government will decide on Friday whether to step down over an escalating scandal in which tax officials wrongly accused thousands of parents of fraud, plunging many families into debt by ordering them to repay childcare allowances.

The opposition Labour party leader, Lodewijk Asscher, who was social affairs minister in the previous government, resigned over the affair on Thursday, denying he knew the tax authority was "wrongly hunting down thousands of families" but conceding a failing system had "made the government an enemy of its people".

The prime minister, Mark Rutte, has said he opposes dissolving the current coalition, arguing the Netherlands needs stability amid the coronavirus pandemic, but has not ruled it out. The cabinet will review its position at a regular meeting on Friday.

The four ruling parties in Rutte's coalition are deeply divided in their response to a damning report on the scandal but are thought to prefer ending their alliance rather than risk losing a no-confidence vote next Tuesday, after a planned parliamentary debate on the report.

The MPs' report, titled Unprecedented Injustice, was published last month after an inquiry into the childcare benefits scandal that included public questioning of officials up to and including Rutte.

It established that "fundamental principles of the rule of law were violated" by the Dutch tax authority, with fraud investigations into families triggered by "something as simple as an administrative error, without any malicious intent".

The investigating committee chairman, Chris van Dam, called the system "a mass process in which there was no room for nuance", with some 20,000 working families pursued for fraud before the courts, ordered to repay child support benefits and denied the right to appeal over several years from 2012.

Some were pushed close to bankruptcy or forced to move house by unjust claims for tens of thousands of euros when the alleged fraud amounted to an incorrectly filled-out form or a missing signatures. Several couples separated under the strain.

Government ministers, MPs, civil servants and court judges all bore their share of responsibility, the report concluded, recommending that "everyone in the apparatus of state should ask how such a thing can be prevented from happening again".

The government has apologised for the tax office's methods and in March last year set aside more than €500m (£450m) in compensation, about €30,000 for each family.

The tax authority has also admitted that 11,000 dual-nationality families were singled out for special scrutiny. But prosecutors have declined to open an investigation into discrimination, saying they had found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

"Responsibility for culpable acts attributable to the state must be sought in the political domain and not in criminal law," public prosecutors said last week.

Twenty of the families involved this week took legal action against ministers from three of the parties in Rutte's current coalition for their role in the scandal, alleging criminal negligence through a failure of good governance, discrimination and violating children's rights.

The health minister, Tamara van Ark, finance minister, Wopke Hoekstra, economic affairs minister, Eric Wiebes, former tax minister Menno Snel – as well as Asscher – are all named in the case documents, filed with Dutch supreme court.

The fate of the government hangs mostly in the hands of Rutte's coalition partners, with at least one leader – Sigrid Kaag of the social-liberal D66 party – saying this week that political consequences from the parliamentary report were inevitable.

If it does collapse, the government would stay on in a caretaker capacity until a new coalition was formed, with general elections due in March and Rutte and his centre-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy performing strongly in polls.

[Sheilbh]

England - still struggling with snow
https://twitter.com/P_Andy_Lucas/status/1349688962579914753?s=20

Also I love the Yorkshire commentary

[Maladict]

Something must be in the water - Dutch government on verge of collapse too (I wonder how much is just that covid paused actual politics in lots of countries and now the politicians are bored and bring it back). This is, at least, more explicable than Renzi:

Dutch government faces collapse over child benefits scandal

Yeah, not Covid-related at all. And probably too serious to play the "we're in a crisis situation" card. This scandal has been brewing for a long time.

We were due elections in March anyway, although the question remains if a demissionary cabinet has enough powers to deal with Covid.