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

...but Evil Cretin seems to fit tbh

... do not underestimate the determination of an evil cretin, to paraphrase an evil cretin

From a Nick Cohen article a while ago:

One told me that I and other opponents of the coalition did not understand the Conservative party's leading figures. Cameron had a human face. He may be tetchy and rude in private, but if he saw that a government policy was causing avoidable harm, there was a faint chance he would change it. Iain Duncan Smith had a Christian conscience and did not like seeing suffering. He was a "decent" man, despite everything. If you showed him he was hurting people, he was hurt in turn.

But George Osborne… well, Osborne was another matter. He was like a computer program. You couldn't appeal to his better nature, or to any notion of the public good.

Iain Duncan Smith had a Christian conscience and did not like seeing suffering. He was a "decent" man, despite everything. If you showed him he was hurting people, he was hurt in turn.

I mean clearly this is bollocks right?

Suspect this means hurt as in 'bays like wounded dog when challenged on Question Time'.

Feeling the hurt

http://i3.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article2942256.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/Ian-Duncan-Smith-and-Esther-McVey-2942256.jpg

Suspect this means hurt as in 'bays like wounded dog when challenged on Question Time'.

What he does he shout and puts on a pathetic show of anger if anyone dare doubt his decency and Christian conscience

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SKCN8--wISc/T4AEwoViSRI/AAAAAAAAAZk/k5CA00HG0CM/s1600/invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-1978.jpg

so the lobbying/gagging bill has gone through minus any amendment to exempt charities from electoral law, & leaving a super vague definition of campaigning for electoral purposes

I don't understand our complicated medieval political system, but can someone please explain to me how "the vote is a tie" means we have to have it anyway?

Tied votes

If the vote is tied - which is very unusual - in the Commons the Speaker has the casting vote. The Speaker casts his vote according to what was done in similar circumstances in the past. Where possible the issue should remain open for further discussion and no final decision should be made by a casting vote.

In the Lords, the Lord Speaker does not have a casting vote. Instead, the tied vote is resolved according to established rules (called the Standing Orders).

http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/business/divisions/

http://www.election.demon.co.uk/ties.html

Thanks, Ken.

I guess it is this bit
"The final rule is that the Speaker, in any division upon a bill, should vote to leave a bill in its existing form. "

which I guess must have trumped this bit
"The Speaker should vote so as not to decide the question - in other words, to give the House the opportunity for further debate on an issue. Therefore, if there is a tie on a division such as a Second Reading vote, where failure would kill the Bill being debated, the Speaker will always vote to continue the Bill"

They're joking with this school 9-6, 45 weeks of the year stuff surely? Christ, I'd never have survived school if it was these hours. 8am-2.15pm was bad enough.

Dunno how Laurence Sterne managed with his 6 am-8 pm, seven days a week hours.

he died in his late 40s iirc

He was 54. That wasn't bad for the 18th century.

I wonder whether zero hours opt-out schooling will be an option.

anyway i don't think historical models of treating children like chattels are useful comparisons to our existing education system

Oh, the irony.

i'm aware of how bad it is now, i just thought you were saying "hey it could be worse" which, while strictly true...

I think it’s coming full circle.

it's worse in many ways, the old model tended to use brutish methods to inculcate knowledge that was considered necessary and improving for civilized adults, the new model uses technocrat methods to turn children into machine tools

i thought this new model is to turn school into baby sitters so that parents can work longer hours

sorry, that too

They're joking with this school 9-6, 45 weeks of the year stuff surely? Christ, I'd never have survived school if it was these hours. 8am-2.15pm was bad enough.

long school hours is v much an ARK schools thing - it goes along with their super rigid focus on discipline, school as controlling influence. Wouldn't be any sort of surprise if Gove wanted to take their academies as a model for all schools.

Don't understand the ARK system at all. How can "high achieving" and "non-selective" not contradict each other?

i suppose they believe that anyone can be made to be "high achieving"

That's dangerous socialist talk is that.

when oh when will the organizations that founded the Labour party stop trying to influence the Labour party?

How about when the Labour party stops standing for the interests of the working man/woman? Oh wait...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BS81PTvIYAAyS6C.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BS81ccHIgAAVmpv.jpg

the guantanamo threads all seem dead, idk where it should go

Someone explain to me what that longer school hours thing is supposed to achieve

At the moment I can only pass it in terms of 'Makes old people vote for them'/'Make people who like school vote for them'

^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