DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

^speaking error in heat of moment

Really though this is all disgusting pro-stratification elitist ideological BS of the most transparently shit order and the sooner Gove is testing 4 year-olds the sooner we may raise a lynch mob

'BS of the most transparently shit order' = another speaking error lol

... parse. Well, if only I'd had longer school hours, eh?

I mean presumably, keeping kids in beyond three o'clock cuts into what is conventionally family time - and this is meant to mean more time in someone's life in which they are disciplined, by school - so what, how does this fit in with not wanting a nanny state?

lol looking for consistency

But idk I guess there are people around who respond in a Pavlovian fashion to any mention of SCHOOL and DISCIPLINE and so on, and will be inclined to vote for anyone who makes the right whistle

in brief tho: Gove has one job which is to troll the fuck out of teachers, who for some reason seem to fucking love it. anything that wd require a major increase in spending is a nonstarter in real life but nobody in the game wants to admit that. and the Nanny State only applies to adults - children shd just shut the fuck up and take what's coming to them.

srsly i have teachy friends whose Facebooks are now never-ending streams of Gove articles and angry anti-Govism, he's a genuine straw man hung out by the Tories for the NUT to clown themselves on

There's a certain cunning involved in a lot of what they do, though. It seems to involve knowing just how to provoke outrage in nice people who are a little bit wooly, so that it looks as though only wooly people would oppose the proposed policy.

That announcement about school hours seems calculated to send people who were brought up by Quakers somewhere in the countryside into hot, stuttering sweats, which is of course perfect PR for soi-disant 'realistic', 'hard working' wankers.

The theatrical, Victorian cruelty of the benefit cuts likewise seems calculated to bring out a kind of sympathy that is correspondingly Victorian and melodramatic and again, your 'realists' are going to have a great time weathering that storm.

Same with the arts funding cuts.

xp but we seem to be saying similar things, NV

yeah i wasn't disagreeing, just pondering how much irl damage Gove will do in a already shitty system

plus i've been holding off on doing my own "plenty of thick bastards are products of private education" spiel

xp to self But it's all very well me calling nice people wooly. Trying to match the tory hard-headedness meanwhile gets me nowhere: people don't want to hear about how money received as benefits goes back into the economy when the benefit claimant spends it, or how it keeps local shops open. They just glaze over because, surprise surprise, tory policy has little to do with what actually works, or how things actually work

haha NV I didn't want to imply that my 'wooly' people are your teacher friends

i know teachers of the superficially wooly and non-wooly varieties. in the end i guess Gove can do this because a huge chunk of people hate teachers and another huge chunk of people hate children so

Feel there's also something to be said in this thread about Louise Mensch, Esther McVey and Katie Hopkins as an emerging 'type'. To me they all look and sound like slightly haphazard shapeshifters, whose training manual for their part in the invasion of earth has been a used copy of Nuts and a Stylist picked up off a bus seat and some crackly pirate editions of some hospital drama where the female lead is always under pressure, and has to make tough decisions.

That is, they're like an uncanny valley version of real-life self-possessed women, in the same way that Cameron is a creaky pastiche of that one line manager you had, who was firm but fair and knew what to do when things were getting difficult.

Gove's just pandering to fear among parents of the right age, he's a journalist, he knows what makes good headlines, but I doubt a lot of this stuff will see the light of day precisely because it costs money.

Obviously he has other terrible policies and talks shit virtually every time he opens his mouth but he knows what plays with the public. Schools policy is the single trickiest issue for any government I think but Gove's just resorting to populism in the hope that people will equate it with Doing Something.

I know someone who goes on holiday to the same place as the Gove family some summers, and apparently both he and his wife literally sit there reading books and drinking and totally ignoring their children (who obviously have a nanny) all day, which is worth bearing in mind next time he says something self-righteous about parenting skillz.

Also, I know I've mentioned this before, but it's an open secret in Notting Hill that Gove & Vine 'got religion' to get their children into the best C of E primary in Kensington. To the point where Vine teaches Sunday school now, at the church in question. I look forward to the juvenile cohort of W8/W11 learning all about supply-side Jesus...

and totally ignoring their children (who obviously have a nanny) all day, which is worth bearing in mind next time he says something self-righteous about parenting skillz.

tbh this is probably best thing for the kids

Sounds like my childhood holidays - except for the nanny of course

... and the reading of books... so drinking and ignoring children basically

It would be interesting to know what percentage of parents would back longer school hours. Clearly there is a Victorian Protestant Work Ethic thing going on but where i live a lot of parents (or more accurately a lot of women) find their employment options limited by the cost of childcare and many not particularly wealthy families, often from immigrant communities, have to pay extra for after-school lessons in English, maths and science to help with homework stuff.

In theory, having properly-resourced (possibly optional) state-funded tutoring / childcare in schools might be an ok idea if it's there's money thrown at it and won't put an intolerable burden on teachers. Which is where theory unfortunately comes crashing into what would actually happen in practice.

- make lazy teachers work longer and harder
- keep kids off the street
- cut childcare time/cost for Hard Working Families

can't see how it doesn't win votes with their key audiences of middle class and middle aged cunts

http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2014/03/wendi-deng-note-tony-blair

I met TB once and can confirm he is taller than you would think and his eyes were very blue, clearly didn't pay enough attention to legs and butt though :(

funny i thought the pro-independence campaign (this is independence for scotland to which i refer) was going to lean itself heavily on the emotional appeal but now that's the essence of cameron's plea weird

Is there much else for him to lean on?

polls still say the economic argument is the real vote winner, i'd've thought the independence campaign was more vulnerable on this simply because it can't really back up any economic predictions it might make

i vote for independence

i don't get to vote but

i would vote for independence

Best thing the Tories can do is stay the fuck out of it tbh. William Hague telling us it would only cost us £200 a year each to never see him again had people reaching for their wallets and did more for the yes vote than any of Salmond's bluster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dPfskOrsWg&feature=youtu.be

funny i thought the pro-independence campaign (this is independence for scotland to which i refer) was going to lean itself heavily on the emotional appeal but now that's the essence of cameron's plea weird

The problem for the Unionists is that it's hard to compete with Salmond's fat-faced smug positivity - I mean, how can you sound positive about Britain, it's shit - all you can really do is try to put the willies up people. This is Cameron's attempt at injecting a bit of positivity - at a safe distance of 500 miles.

A senior British defence official described a year without military action as a problem. Recruiters were already struggling and the prospect of no action in 2015 would not help. "You want to join the army to do stuff," he said.

He anticipated action in the future: "I think after the election the prime minister will have the appetite to get on to the horse again, though we have to make sure it is the right horse. I would be surprised if nothing happens a year and a half or two from now."

maybe they can deal with the flood

maybe they can deal with Scotland, we'll have to watch out for border reavers, cattle raiders and sheep stealers once they're independent.

Which. Side. Do. I. Take?

*paints self blue and tears self in half*

Salmond's fat-faced smug positivity

unfortunately this is the main negative to me

maybe they can deal with the flood

killin foreigners or not interested bruv

Cameron's speech about the flood managing to imply annoyance at having to pay to fix stuff but no, no, we will do what we have to, just a bit annoyed that it's going to cost money is all

we will do what we have to, to make sure these tiresome oiks continue voting Tory

If this were all happening a year from now it'd cost them the election.

I hope 'money is no object' is brought up next time there's a problem with nhs, or schools

http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/the-benefit-sanction-debt-trap-is-this-iain-duncan-smiths-nastiest-move-so-far/

Unemployed and disabled people could find themselves owing the Government hundreds, or even thousands of pounds, if they fail to attend workfare or miss a meeting with the Jobcentre.

Details are emerging (thanks to @refuted) of a horrifying regime planned when Universal Credit is introduced which will see emergency Hardship Payments converted into repayable loans.

http://www.channel4.com/news/why-is-government-website-carrying-fake-jobs

The government's Jobmatch website is carrying bogus vacancies from nine online recruitment agencies run by a Baptist deacon in Coventry, who makes money by encouraging visitors to post their CVs.

and if you don't apply for enough non-existent jobs to help this guy makes £thousands you'll lose your benefits

Ahh yeah that fucking thing too

Universal Jobmatch is a crock of shite, reverse engineered from the software Monster use on their site and you'd think wouldn't you that a government portal should have people checking to make sure the jobs are good and legit, but no

Not to mention its habit of eating your email address and password so you have to make a new email address just to use it