Thread by @doctorow

UK PM Boris Johnson has built a career out of running across rivers on the backs of alligators, always moving fast enough that he escapes their jaws. His career is a long string of outrageous scandals: lying, fraud, infidelity, abuse, all escaped with impunity. 1/

If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wal… 2/

Like any self-respecting posh sociopath, Boris knows how to fail up. But eventually, even the nimblest of gator-racers loses a step and finds a set of jaws clamped around his leg. 3/

Boris is embroiled in a scandal - he ordered a national lockdown that meant that no one in the land, not even the Queen, was allowed to socialize, even as he presided over more than a dozen parties in his official residence. 4/

In the grand scheme of awful Boris crimes, this barely rates, but it has managed to rile both the UK columnist class and the Tory base, thanks in no small part to Boris's own rivals in the Conservative party, who sense an opportunity to depose him and move into the PM's flat. 5/

In a desperate bid to save his political life, Boris has deployed #OperationRedMeat, a series of stupid, unworkable and performatively cruel measures to distract from his scandal. 6/

Operation Red Meat's policies include defunding the BBC, ending all covid restrictions, campaigning against cryptography, using the military to block small migrant boats and other clickbait/culture war bullshit.

independent.co.uk/news/uk/boris-… 7/

Many of Operation Red Meat's bad ideas are re-runs - policies that have already been floated and defeated, policies that would be a catastrophe if they were ever realized. 8/

That doesn't mean they won't be realized, though: Boris's support for Brexit was pure, insincere opportunism, but he still backed it. 9/

Here's another moldy-oldie that Boris has dusted off for his distraction campaign: a plan to compile a database of the pornography preferences of every person in the UK, cross-referenced to that person's finances.

bbc.com/news/technolog… 10/

Of course, that's not how the Tories are selling it. They're calling it an "age-verification system" for online pornography. But to make this "age-verification" work, you will have to provide a credit-card or passport to the site, or a third party. 11/

These sites will make all kinds of claims about how they will protect your privacy. These claims are bullshit. They will deliberately or inadvertently keep all that stuff on file, and then they will leak it or get hacked. 12/

If the NSA and MI5 can't prevent leaks, neither can Pornhub.

And when they do, they will expose the porn-viewing habits of every Briton, along with their financial details. It's a kompromat bonanza.

This idiotic plan has been repeatedly defeated in the UK. 13/

I don't actually think the people advocating for it want it to pass - they just want the distraction. But remember, that was also the basis for the establishment support for Brexit - and then the UK got Brexit. The fact that this isn't serious doesn't mean it won't happen. 14/

Image:
Cryteria (modified)
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9…

CC BY 3.0:
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.… 15/