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

I'd prefer to be naive about this business of some rich tory donor putting on a captains hat and saying: arrr the sea is in my veins - but never even been in a toy dinghy tbh, and leeching gov contracts. It reminds of how NHS trusts have to pay rent for their own land to other similar parasites, it's fucking wrong, man! But I suspect in shipping it might even be the type of practice that even pre-dates thatcherism.

I mean even if it is standard practice, it is still shit and it's good that it has blown up in Grayling's annoying fucking face.

if not for the abuse of the tender process and blatant croneyism, I suppose Seaborne would be all go.

the shipping trade is where insurance (and therefore insurance fraud) was invented, it's the seed of the bad (and i guess the good) in capitalism, long before anyone else much was behaving like this (ie back into the classical mists of time)

ie the good is taking nice things back and forth across great distances, the bad was sailing yr ship full of whatever off to Port A as promised, diverting mid ocean to Port B, where you sold all the nice things and repainted and renamed the ship, then made a claim to the shipping insurers group back in Athens and said "my poor ship went down with all hands and also all the nice things", and they pay up for it all as per insurance agreement.

feel there's a trenchant metaphor for Brexit in there somewhere

schoolboy lols, The Greeks used to refer to that game as Bottomry.

The Greeks, being the strong individualists that they were, invented the insurance scam approximately 10 seconds after they invented insurance. It was perfectly normal for the boat owner to claim the boat had sunk, when in fact it was hidden in some foreign port. This was so common that standard contracts required the owners to pay the insurer twice the premium rate if the boat was concealed and subsequently discovered still floating. If you're wondering why the owners weren't jailed for fraud...that's rather difficult if there's no police force to make an arrest, nor a jail to put offenders in. If you were an insurer who'd been diddled, your only recourse was a civil court case.

highly recommended (and the entire source of my "knowledge" abt ancient greek shipping scams):
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/387/1*XUYtvWJRWdj4boSF2Nahfw.png

(full disclosure: davies takes the same line as calz on the grand old english word "bottomry" viz sniggering uncontrollably)

I'd like to think if you joined the Bottomry Investigation Squad back in the day, the job would come with a hat and a uniform. Oh I'll have to check out that book, thanx mark.

Is there a good name for March 29 yet? B-day is being used for birthday and bidet already.

transfer redline day

Aussontag.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/16FF6/production/_105589149_mos10.2.jpg

pmsl at this

HE EATS TESCO BEANS NOT HEINZ

SEE PAGES 2-895

my condolences to Chuka at this very difficult time pic.twitter.com/GiydPrpfi0

— tom (@malaiseforever) February 10, 2019

From the same edition, I think.

some comedian twat on R5 just did the whole 2ndref/politically homeless thing, followed by Tom Watson on Labour Antisemitism. Anything else happening this week?

This book is pure gold...

"Elsewhere in the book Corbyn’s first wife told how the Labour leader’s “joyless” approach to life wrecked their marriage.

Bower writes: “He would sit on the floor in his greasy, unwashed army surplus store jacket, oblivious to his wife’s irritation.

“They rarely went out together. Dinner invitations were refused. Chapman spent lonely evenings in their small flat with Mango the dog and Harold Wilson the cat as her only companions while Corbyn met political cronies.”"

"When he returned home at night, he’d happily open a can of beans, swallow them cold and declare himself satisfied."

"... he expressed a deep interest in Britain’s manhole covers, especially their dates of manufacture: ‘My mother always said there’s history in drain covers.’"

Corbyn's mum otm. Those drain covers are like the rings on trees in the rich fabric of our histor... zzzzzz

Some hilarious stuff in here. MoS always telling on themselves with the stuff they choose to highlight:

The chosen candidate was Ted Knight, a 45-year-old unmarried Trotskyite and leader of Lambeth Council – as debt-ridden and rotten as Haringey. Always dressed in a dark suit, foul-mouthed Knight addressed everyone as ‘Comrade’, always delivered with a hint of menace.

Targeting the immigrant vote, Corbyn spread the word that Labour would abolish border controls. Tories accused his canvassers of telling West Indian immigrants they’d be sent home if Labour lost.

Has no interest in culture or in reading books;

Lacks the mental agility to chair all but the most basic political meetings

McDonnell was taken aback when Corbyn announced he was standing for the Labour leadership after Ed Miliband’s 2015 defeat. ‘I thought we decided not to put up anyone from the Left,’ he said. ‘Well, we’ve decided that we need a debate,’ replied Corbyn.

Also, I’m sure Corbyn had to be forced into standing? McDonnell wasn’t going to run again because of his health issues.

Leaving his office (decorated with a large portrait of Lenin),

Based in his office overlooking Euston station, Lansman claimed to control 90,000 supporters spread through a hundred groups across the country

Acting as part-supplicant and part-valet, Corbyn walked immediately behind, pleased to have a place as the honorary white man for the black caucus.

‘Look at Jeremy,’ said Brian Wilson, a new Scottish MP, to George Galloway, who had also been newly elected. ‘He would black up if he could.’

John Woodcock, another victim

Momentum members in local branches were empowered to remove Blairite MPs. In Hampstead, Enfield, Lewisham, Hastings, Mansfield, Stoke and Brighton, moderate Labour MPs were under siege.

2nd para is classic Dacre ... I thought he'd retired?

He immediately told friends that Parliament was ‘a waste of time’ with no relevance to his Islington constituents, especially the immigrant communities.

To meet them, he set up offices in the Red Rose Centre in Holloway where his door was always open to a tide of human misery: Cypriots, Jamaicans, Indians, Pakistanis, South Africans, South Americans, Somalis, West Saharans and Kurds all sought his help.

According to Alex Nunns’ The Candidate (which is really good), Corbyn asked, ‘what about if I run?’

Yeah I’ve read that, but this makes it sound like he insisted on running, rather than it being from a sense of duty to represent (and also no one else wanting to do it, lol)

On Milne’s advice, Corbyn chose to star at the British Kebab Awards rather than attend a major Remain rally.

Lol unite tweeted to say the Lenin portrait doesn’t exist

This party just can't get along with each other eh?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/10/tory-mp-blocked-fgm-law-christopher-chope-faces-deselection

Legitimately assumed that this was a joke people on here were doing rather than a pullquote in a national newspaper pic.twitter.com/x3CqD4CUH5

— Dan Howdon (@danielhowdon) February 10, 2019

legume-ite concerns.

He's got his finger on the pulses of the nation.

Mr Bean

Momentum members in local branches were empowered to remove Blairite MPs. In Hampstead, Enfield, Lewisham, Hastings, Mansfield, Stoke and Brighton, moderate Labour MPs were under siege.

Which moderates were under siege in Hastings and Mansfield?

tbf I assume this refers to the previous Labour candidate Sarah Owen, who was an advisor to Alan Sugar so probably unlikely to be a trot, being replaced by Nick Chowney, the Hastings council leader who is favourable towards Corbyn

Glenda Jackson was under siege?

harsh, but there had to be some punitive measures for Dan Hodges.

Why has Boris Johnson and ‘global Britain’ been given the last hour of coverage on the most significant current affairs programme in Britain at the start of a vital week? What’s going on? #r4today https://t.co/EbPXDpq3dc

— Peter Geoghegan (@PeterKGeoghegan) February 11, 2019

this and like someone pointed out - Boris (and his global britain spiel about doing away with foreign aid and putting it into military) is so fucking vile he makes a scumbag Rory Stewart look half decent.

#r4today is now having a discussion on the Anglosphere. It’s remarkable how a small, well paid right wing lobby took completely fringe ideas and used a porous media to mainstream. That’s the real story of Brexit

— Peter Geoghegan (@PeterKGeoghegan) February 11, 2019

and this

oops

Global Britain is just some pissed up old wet-brain aristo-tramp with delusions of grandeur, talking to themselves.

we're pioneers.

Lol we're all going to die. https://t.co/LahTGf8cmE

— My Actual Face (@redrichie) February 11, 2019

Unless you're an ilxor if so apologies for dragging your face here.

Bg will be getting a royalty cheque for tuppence any day now!

boris johnson is big joe joyce and brexit is his youtube channel ouvre

russia is james quinn mcdonagh

i think europe may be the extended joyce clan but it could also serve as the garda allocation for the kilbeggan area in the buildup to a fight

america is, in this metaphor, america

The staggering incompetence and venality of Australian politics is such that I have to keep coming to this thread just to remind myself that elsewhere it is, unbelievably enough, even worse.

nice to see political discourse finally reaching my level, thx redrichie

not sure what's worse re: davis' galaxy brain take on the devalution of sterling - that he knows he's spouting shit but he's doing it to try to keep dimwitted leavers on-side or that he's stupid enough to actually believe what he's saying

either way, lol we're all gonna die obv

In stopped clock is right news, Simon Jenkins is spot on on Gavin Williamson: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/11/gavin-williamson-defence-policy-uk