one out all out: a brexit from the modern world and every one of its problems please (we're all gonna die lol)

meanwhile the north magnetic pole has crossed the international date line heading for siberia and no one knows why :(

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00007-1

this probably belongs elsewhere but WHO KNOOOOOWS

Stop free movement of the magnetic polls imo

When the EU says they are refusing to negotiate its basically to say we are not going where Tory Brexiteers want us to so don't even try.

Should Labour come to power they will not have as many red lines on immigration as May so the agreement could take a different shape. Its not going to be fun at any point, but Brexit may take a different road. I don't care to refresh my understanding of this stuff pre-xmas right now.

https://www.businessinsider.com/hedge-fund-titan-crispin-odey-bets-on-pound-says-brexit-wont-happen-2019-1?r=UK&IR=T

I wouldn't put too much stock in this but it does reflect a sense of growing resignation on the Brexit side of the fence.

I've said this before but the EU won't accept a hard border in Ireland, therefore they won't accept No Deal.

Oh yeah you said that earlier this week. If that is so why hasn't May used that to get more concessions out of the EU?

what would they be?

Whatever might be more palatable so that at least more of the Tories back her.

Presumably if the EU, unable to accept no deal, tried unilaterally extending Article 50, there’d be a bit of a blow-up over sovereignty

xxp
a) a hard border in Ireland that they won't accept
b) £49b cash that we said we'd give them
c) ?????
d) €€€€€€

"meanwhile the north magnetic pole has crossed the international date line heading for siberia and no one knows why :("

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal

lol we're all gonna die

I think the q from my MP is mostly abt assessing the appetite for a people's vote, which is fairly weak on ilx at least. so far I've yet to see any path to remain that looks more likely than something like the may deal scraping through

Standing outside the pub having a cig I'm expecting to feel the globe shift under my feet

That's one way to rewrite the opening lines to "Say Hello Wave Goodbye."

:D

Oh yeah you said that earlier this week. If that is so why hasn't May used that to get more concessions out of the EU?

Cos they didn’t even think about the border and meanwhile the EU had its shit together and was acting as a united front. Once the GE happened and May needed the support of a hardline party who want a border (and like to pretend they don’t), it went from fucked to catastrophic and almost certainly still aren’t capable of making the connections or choices necessary to get something done.

Just wait til they realise we have a veto on the final trade deal!

1. Brexit doesn't happen
2. The Tories say there will be a pledge for a second ref in the next manifesto
3. Labour get in so no second ref.
4. Magnetic North shifts back.
5. ££££

6. ?????

a ukip voting distant in-law of mine has apparently announced to the family that if a second vote ever happens, she’ll “lie down in front of a tractor”

Read that as 'lie down in front of a traitor' tbh. An understandable misreading you might think.

I think she would rather be ploughed into england’s good mud than surrender to that filth

Xpost so did I, misread it I mean

Furrough fuck's sake

think we have to return to: "council funding shortages imposed by central government"

councils are given so little money their chops or ideology are not the main issue

― ogmor, Friday, 11 January 2019 11:33 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lot of posts under the bridge, but. This is undeniably real and serious problem, both for regional autonomy and local democracy, as well as further corrupting central government pork barrel politics, where you can, say, throw money at potholes, which is about as clear a case of local politics and funding as there is, in order to buy off sections of the electorate. However, I don't think there's any question that my local council, Lambeth, have handled both redevelopment of social housing and allocations of funding badly. I wonder quite a lot about this – where say very expensive investment in a business hub, which turns out to have a tiny impact, is approved, and library funding, which is tiny, is further slashed. Without knowing too much about how local government works, I would say that attracting private investment to supplement or replace local government spend entirely has probably led to a focus on a business model centred approach.

This means 'innovative hubs' can attract money (cos business and private investment *loves* 'tech' and shiny new things). Libraries have no business model. As people often say, they're now the one place you can go and no one's trying to sell you anything. There's no product lifecycle, there's no continuous improvement. It's a very low, static investment that brings about a greater good to the public realm. They also incidentally suffer from obsession with 'continuous tech improvement' through the belief that they can be made autonomous hubs and that the internet has replaced all books anyway.

And as an aside these new ideas can really be a magnet for stupidity – never very far from my mind is that some fucker in Lambeth council said 'I know let's combine gyms with libraries and call them 'Brain Gyms'. Because of *course* sweaty exercise and a little repose in the warm with some books and newspapers and internet access go together. Facile moron.

It's just a way of saying that the private investment model, forced by government cuts, but also very much woven into Lambeth 'Blue Labour' thinking, where gentrification is about increasing the median value of the area and generating a return on investment that way, has resulted in a business model culture at the heart of how decisions get made, with a wider penumbra of the sort of superstitions and cultism around technical solutions and the digital economy that currently obsesses business. Business models are useful and necessary ways to analyse your investment, but they don't or shouldn't apply in the same way in the public realm.

Anyway, that's just a theory - any evidence for or against very welcome.

remember the election of 77 etc

indeed, thanks for the reminder. fuckin brain gyms tho.

I find it hard to believe that grotesques like Claire Kober really think that they are just pragmatists who are doing their best for the people they represent - because it's going to happen anyway and you need some no-nonsense realpolitik solutions even if it destroys communities, you just need to look at true value in these projected figures here - can't make an omelette etc. I just think they are amoral, corrupt scum of the earth. Anyway great post Fizzles, sorry I've only got *that* to add!

I'm all for local democracy but my opinion of local councillors is somewhat tarnished by growing up in Paisley (your town may vary... but I doubt it).

one of my local councillors turned up on my estate last year and made the mistake of asking me if I had any problems. At the time I was going through a really rough patch and was giving him the lowdown on my annus horribilis and for a little theatrical touch he did this wiping a non-existent tear away feint. Lol I thought he was taking the piss out of me at first but no, this was part of his caring councillor stchik. Tbf while I was talking to him one of female colleagues removed a dead rat from the ginnel which was probably more of a community service than what this corrupt fucker had done in years.

I'm all for local democracy but my opinion of local councillors is somewhat tarnished by growing up in Paisley (your town may vary... but I doubt it).

Standing outside the pub having a cig I'm expecting to feel the globe shift under my feet
― Berks & Cow (Noodle Vague), Friday, 11 January 2019 17:00 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's one way to rewrite the opening lines to "Say Hello Wave Goodbye."
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 11 January 2019 17:40 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And now I'm all alone
In Brexit land
My only home

OK so lots of points to address here:

- No think Claire Kober is a dyed-in-the-wool Blairite and that informed her policy more than local government cuts did. Lammy was critical of this stuff before Aditya Chakrabortty made it a major media issue and he also realised the contribution that acute housing problems made to the 2011 riots. I'm not claiming him to be the Messiah but there are significant differences in position. Tottenham remains relatively ungentrified compared to most of inner London, although that is changing.

- One major difference between the New Labour years and the Cameron government, other than a 40% cut in local government funding, is around the use of business rates. Pre-2010, local authority business rates used to be all sucked up by central government and then redistributed nationally, so money would shift from rich councils to poorer ones. NuLab was pro-gentrification but some of this money enabled councils in less affluent areas to offset some of the harsher effects, to some extent. Gentrification is really about displacement rather than cafes opening up, after all.

- Since 2013 or thereabouts, councils have been able to keep 50% of all business rates they collect. So while their hands are tied on raising council tax for all sorts of reasons (system is a mess basically), business rates become pretty much the only lever they have. This is a massive incentive for poorer councils to gentrify and get richer, and the way you do that is attracting business investment and leads to some of the facile nonsense in Fizzles' post. For a lot of councils, having a few big dilapidated housing estates glowering over there is a barrier to that, especially when you can be filling that land with housing for wealthy City types and in the process creating a nice safe environment for young creatives. The attitude basically seems to be that inner London is for cool affluent (mostly) white people now and everyone else can fuck off somewhere else.

- This is all fuelled by the fact that most London councils are so solidly red that there is more chance of an extraterrestrial invasion than there is of Labour being voted out. That leads to complacency, stupidity, bullying, taking their residents for granted and probably some mild corruption as well. That is changing to an extent, hence the mock horror from the Evening Standard et al at 'moderates' being replaced by scary Momentum thugs. But it leads directly to the sort of mess you get in Lambeth and Haringey, both of which have been among the worst London councils for as long as I can remember. And changing the precise flavour of red doesn't necessarily help either.

that’s brilliant, Matt, thank you.

can i just say you guys are the best

Fizzles your contribs to this and the jl/christie thread are making this grey hungover day a lot more bearable

Neil Warnock says to hell not only with the EU but “the rest of the world” as well. Fresh thinking from the Cardiff manager: WTO minus minus. pic.twitter.com/YS4wDTL9Ki

— Paul Hayward (@_PaulHayward) January 12, 2019

lol, Neil's plan for a UK autarky is even more extreme disaster cappy than Mogg's.

Is he still playing a former Hearts full back as a centre forward in the 'best league in the world'?

I mean the second tier is his natural level so what else do you expect from him?

xp
that lunk looks a proper clone of a late 70's early 80's era Big Sam, I swear he must be one of his.

I'd be interested to hear why you don't rate Edmund Crispin, Fizzles, I really enjoyed the few Gervase (not Gideon!) Fen books I have read, though Fen himself is something of a "Wimsey as Oxford Don" cipher.

ugh rong thred sorry!

whiney as oxford don is a concept

new crime and detection series. when whiney arrives in oxford, he starts to shake things up - criminals, police, academics and porters are about to find their world turned upside down.

Wth hilarious consequences. tune in etc...

Just a pity Idris Elba is so closely associated with Luther.

hiyooo

So I hope everyone is clear on Labour policy after Marr then.

thought he performed better than usual on marr this time round - AM usually riles him up and he gets a bit near-shouty/impatient with him

big week coming up

and I wasn’t trying to say lol lammy u centrist melt upthread - there’s very little to disagree with in what he’s saying. and people like him need to continue to rail on this issue. but I feel like reversing the referendum is not a 3 year project (I know he has been consistently vocal) but a 30 year project.

in the dominic cummings speech posted upthread he talks about how he was reluctant to take on the lead in the leave campaign because he thought britons had probably gained a better understanding of the EU and what it does in the 15 years since he led “no to the euro”. what he found from talking to people was that they were actually in the round no clearer - this is for many reasons including the constant slow drip drip of anti EU press commentary and that the EU and european identity had never really become hegemonic in the UK (probably for many of the reasons in gyac’s thread posted above re: empire etc)

Nothing short of declaring for a referendum right this second is going to satisfy Labourish FBPEs, who have no appetite for reading the fucking conference flowchart or, Heaven forfend, waiting until after the vote on Tuesday. Basic. Fucking. Bitches.

The Corbyn ‘lemme finish!’ sounds like a dad with three boys, and gives me the LOLs.

Arghhh! Jeremy Corbyn just said on #Marr that the European Court of Human Rights is "in part an EU institution". It isn't! It's a totally separate institution, arising from a separate treaty which well pre-dates the EU and would remain in place whatever version of Brexit pic.twitter.com/uPy5JTodPr

— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) January 13, 2019

? so? I get how there’s maybe an argument which says politicians conflate the EU and ECHR so that the negativity to the former pollutes the latter. corbyn clearly not doing that and simply misspoke, if anything.

the important part of that phase of the interview was where he spoke about how labour would have a foreign policy grounded in and guided by people’s universal human rights

oh and where he spoke about continuing to recognise the jurisdiction of the ECHR