"oh you don't get me I'm the end of the union": lol brexit is how we're all gonna die

curious ilxors looking in from abroad should be careful if they do accidentally read some stuff written from outside london as they might miss insights from ppl who think "read things that are not x" means "don't read x" or even "read john harris"

You did however express the specific opinion before that London ilxors should be excluded from the uk politics thread, in jest or not, so, you know, you have form

pretending that you never had this animus and that my jokey interp was shockingly off, is however, cute

why grapple with the structural forces driving regional inequalities and their concomitant resentments when you can just pathologise everyone as they complain abt them?

there is no chance that a curious ilxor looking in from abroad wld fail to hear lots of london takes, but given that plenty of ppl in the media do not have much of an understanding of what ppl think outside the metropolis I think its worth having a broad diet and developing an awareness of geographical context as well as historical context.

guys can we get back to the important work of dunking on chinless conservatives / praying for the advent of fully automated luxury gay space communism / fantasising about cannibalism itt pls

https://i.redd.it/zbqaz7b589nz.jpg

Do you kids want to be like the real Brexit process, or do you just want to squabble and waste time?

Mr Blobby shall lead us in this brave new world.

Blobby is pretty chinless that much is true.

Also definitely laughed seeing Jeremy Hunt float extending A50 today.

xp his deranged state suggests he is not unacquainted with the pleasures of guzzling human flesh

The first thing we have to do is demonstrate that our commitment to the Belfast agreement, the Good Friday agreement, is absolute. And we will do that.

Secondly, we have to show that any solution that changes the backstop won’t lead to us trying to access the single market by the back door. And we recognise that the way that we access the single market, because we are not going to be embracing free movement, will change.

If we can overcome those two issues, which I think we can, then I think we will be able to have substantive discussions.

jeremy cunt, the very soul of optimism

why grapple with the structural forces driving regional inequalities and their concomitant resentments when you can just pathologise everyone as they complain abt them?

there is no chance that a curious ilxor looking in from abroad wld fail to hear lots of london takes, but given that plenty of ppl in the media do not have much of an understanding of what ppl think outside the metropolis I think its worth having a broad diet and developing an awareness of geographical context as well as historical context.

― ogmor, Thursday, 31 January 2019 10:46 (fourteen minutes ago)

definitely what you were doing, and not just posting vindictive, puerile snipes at Londoners to get easy + cheap points

anyway, i think we're on the same page about structural forces driving regional inequalities, so long as you don't confuse "people living in London" with the hegemonic forces ruling from London". Little tip for you to avoid pissing off ordinary working plebs in future, there.

Anyway this is more interesting than this inane beef:

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/files/2018/05/Screen-Shot-2018-05-04-at-10.12.26.png

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/files/2018/05/Screen-Shot-2018-05-04-at-10.13.28.png

If this polling data is accurate (big if) then immigration *was* cited as the single biggest factor by Leave voters, and Remain voters thought they felt the same way. BUT look at the huge margin of error in the second graph, Remain voters still overestimated the importance of immigration by ~20%.

In doing so they *massively* underestimated the importance in Leave voters' minds of the EU's role in UK lawmaking - it's a very close second in Leave voters' minds and a distant fourth in the impressions of Remain voters. But it didn't play as prominent a role in the campaign as immigration, the economy or the amount of money going to Brussels etc.

How much of that can be subsumed into generic anti-foreigner sentiment though Matt? Thinking of that racist pensioner vox pop I saw where the auld lad was ranting about “we won the war and now they’re trying to tell us what to do!»”

definitely what you were doing, and not just posting vindictive, puerile snipes at Londoners to get easy + cheap points

anyway, i think we're on the same page about structural forces driving regional inequalities, so long as you don't confuse "people living in London" with the hegemonic forces ruling from London". Little tip for you to avoid pissing off ordinary working plebs in future, there.

Well, I live in London and vindictive, puerile snipes at Londoners are fine by me, I do it myself often enough.

Out of curiosity, what kind of laws has the UK been prevented from implementing as a result of its purported vassalage to Brussels?

we can only eat ramrod-straight bananas now, and we're prevented by mincing milquetoast eu law from implementing tried-and-true british bulldog working practices like installing live power lines while waist-deep in water - that kinda stuff

won't have much inane beef readily available after march 29th :(

Also sausages made of sweepings, pig arseholes and sawdust can no longer be called sausages.

It’s 100% pure pig arsehole or nothing.

^ Cameron's legacy

We can take Leavers' concerns about lack of lawmaking independence seriously as a voting factor, but it's still essentially another lie, or series of lies, fostered by the press, as that document listing all the EU myths demonstrates. And as gyac says, its enough of a co-factor with xenophobia to be suspicious - why isn't it the type of laws that matters, not where they come from? If Westminster enacts unfair laws, why should we not equally give a shit about that?

I don't see why one type of xenophobic delusion is better than another type of xenophobic delusion.

I posted that chart before. I live in a northern leave constituency and immigration DID factor less than is portrayed in media and 'EU fools straightening our bananas" DID factor way more than is portrayed in media. Anecdotally sure, but as I said before we've had decades of tabloid media pushing this stuff. The leave campaign didn't start in 2012, it started in 1986 or whatever. Effective relentless propaganda with no pushback, decades before anyone came up with a bus

Did any of it make any sense? No. It was purely symbolic, no substance to it - but Brexit is identity politics writ large, why would you look for substance?

i missed this yesterday but it's good to know the government is still coming up with crackerjack policy ideas despite the distraction of brexit

Staff at Clarks shoe shops are to be asked to engage children in conversation to improve language skills, as part of a government attempt to tackle “concerning” rates of early literacy.

Thousands of workers will receive training on children’s speech, language and communication development as part of a campaign that will also involve private companies helping fund literacy projects.

The government pointed to analysis from the National Literacy Trust suggesting 7.1 million adults in the UK have very poor literacy skills. Ministers have prioritised improving rates of early literacy and communication among disadvantaged families, which they see as being of particular concern.

As part of the scheme, WH Smith will advise parents in Swindon, which has relatively high levels of illiteracy, on how to support their children’s language development.

The government said it hoped such schemes would help parents improve their children’s skills by the time they finished reception class, at age five. Last year, the education secretary, Damian Hinds, set out an ambition to halve the proportion of five-year-olds not meeting expected standards in such skills.

The children and families minister, Nadhim Zahawi, said: “There’s no instruction manual for being a parent. For some who left school a long time ago or who have low confidence in their own abilities, it can be overwhelming to know where to start with supporting children’s learning at home before they start school – and we know that too many children are arriving at school already behind their peers.

“By working with a growing number of businesses, charities and experts, we’re making it easier for parents to kickstart this early development – helping to take forward our national mission to boost children’s early development.”

7.1m adults have literacy problems, u say? this calls for a shoe-store intervention

this gov keeps giving, my eldest about to get "voluntary" redundancy and now our Joel gets to be an English teacher on the side

weird how the story misses out exactly how much extra clarks employees will be paid for this but i'm guessing it must be a substantial bump given the importance of their new duties

And as gyac says, its enough of a co-factor with xenophobia to be suspicious - why isn't it the type of laws that matters, not where they come from? If Westminster enacts unfair laws, why should we not equally give a shit about that?

I think the stuff about 'lawmaking independence' has to be understood as part of a wider sense people have of not being in control of their own lives, that the decisions that shape their lives are made by people and institutions that are remote, unaccountable, that don't really care about you or your concerns - the people who feel like this resent Westminster as well, but the EU seems even more disconnected from them, and it's the EU they were given the chance to reject

xp if only there was a network of community-based learning and education institutions, packed with books and computers, and staffed by knowledgeable information professionals raring to help people, including children, with their language and information literacy skills.

and if only that network hadn't been severely damaged by the ongoing effects of Tory austerity

and how exactly do you expect them to turn a profit? checkmate, fantasist xp

it's true, I'm a something-for-nothing socialist, a lot like that old softie Andrew Carnegie

I suspect it can't be quite as stupid as it sounds and it might have been cherry-picked for impact but idk.

Lot of companies encourage their employees to volunteer for literacy / reading projects in schools and it wouldn't be a stretch to have literacy posters in shops, etc.

yeah it's not really outrageous, stories/schemes like this can get a positive or negative spin depending on the nature of the government and the businesses that are promoting them. cough.

how many poor kids go to Clarks ffs?

Primark and Asda maybe, but deffo not Clarks.

Tory policies that are even worse than Clarks shoes . i.e. they don't even look any good before they start falling apart after a couple of months :p

I suspect it can't be quite as stupid as it sounds

i dunno what aspect of the last few years of uk government would give you that confidence tbh but regardless i think we can all agree that the free market definitely holds the solution to illiteracy

I mean to be honest as PR moves go I will take literacy over the seemingly endless attempts to police the diet of poor children by people who have no idea what it's like to try and feed a family on that level of income.

Meanwhile Theresa May has promised there will be no erosion of the UK's food standards and regulation post-Brexit:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/31/fish-and-chip-shops-are-selling-endangered-sharks-dna-tests-prove

The leave campaign didn't start in 2012, it started in 1986 or whatever.

In early 1989, Johnson was appointed to the newspaper's Brussels bureau to report on the European Commission,[83] remaining in the post until 1994.

(well done me for looking like I'm say what I'm quoting from anvil, there)

xps, it's not my area of expertise but i think literacy generally get quite a lot of attention / investment as it's one of the few things the government has to publish statistics on, via PISA and the Key Stage assessment results. The ongoing challenge is that, however good teaching is, there's generally an expectation that parents need to help - which is tough for parents who are not, themselves, literate (or proficient in English). Having people who can point them to available resources outside of the formal school context is useful, in theory. It needs to happen alongside a bunch of other stuff but it's not an inherently terrible proposition.

it's not going to make a difference to the most needy and most likely to have literacy problems if they don't promote it in the type of shops they actually use though.

Absolutely - but i would guess it's a lot more than Clarks they're trying to get on board.

When I was a kid we could only afford to go to Clarks once. And then my brother said : shame, they (horrible brown polyvelts) look like cornish pasties.

i really loved my horrible brown polyvelts :D

:)

always been a Casual manqué