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

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

good-old-pre-EU-days metaphor klaxon: a shoeshop in macchynlleth i went into as a kid with my mum still had an x-ray machine you could look into and see the bones of your feet

Clarks shoes were a surefire way of getting you beaten up at my school.

my parents seemed very keen on me getting beaten up at school tbh

y'all should've tried going to secondary school with - no lie - a briefcase. that's character building.

psyched for our post-brexit paraside where kids of all ages are free to both brush up on their literacy skills and contract bone cancer from foot x-rays at each and every branch of clarks

Yeah the art of not getting beaten up was very tricky. At my school you were just as likely to be shamed or beaten up for poverty signifiers as posh ones. For instance people with YPO coats got just as much grief as those wearing blazers.

definitely, there was a sweet spot which usually involved being as generic to the fashions of the time as possible

always worth remembering that the Greek crisis was in recent memory during the referendum - the answers on sovereignty surely somewhat refracted through the EU's cartoonish cruelty during that episode

"sovereignty" ties in with nationalism to me, big words that stir a certain kind of person who can't really convincingly explain why

I don’t feel like accepting that as a reason given that tabloids reporting that were doing so to further their own anti-EU agenda. There’s also the fact that the Irish bank bailout which meant the UK giving a loan of £7bn to guarantee bank deposits has been waved at us by every fucking racist in the country, what message they’re trying to send with this can decide for yourself. Finally, the notion that people here can clutch their pearls at the evil EU inflicting austerity when a large part of the narrative about Greece has been “lol those lazy Europeans” rather than of sympathy, well...

It’s the same as the argument that “the EU made Ireland vote twice!!!1” like I have explained to countless people irl that while there were two referendums, the second was held after the government secured concessions & assurances, and that the first was subject to a LOT of scaremongering by certain parties. The response I get is never someone acknowledging that they were wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl2oxNHV3mk

gaza slim aka vanessa bling!

Tbf I've got thoughts about how this whole thing is more than stupidity and sneering at people's shaky grasp of shaker narratives. If Blair was serious about the merits of the political class he could maybe explain how politicians have allowed this culture of the blind fighting with the blind to flourish. But he's not serious, he's a technocrat who thinks people are a mere inconvenience. Brexit is, if not inevitable, then certainly an obviously likely outcome of a rotten system in a failing state.

a large part of the narrative about Greece has been “lol those lazy Europeans”

yes but i didn't buy this narrative and neither did a fuck-ton of other people

A fuck ton of people believe a lot of things and want a lot of things. It doesn't seem to lead to positive outcomes.

Unless you voted leave and cited that a reason, we’re not talking about you.

Hahaha I work for Cl4rks and this is going to be an unmitigated disaster