Seizing back control: The ILX lol brexit is how we're all gonna die thread.

Pom - I need to look at where that is on Google maps first, it's on my brand new phone.

I am unsure how comparing the state of welfare in the UK and Romania cld be instructive wrt the UK. these comparisons are generally thrown out cheaply to stop discussion of welfare reform here

calz brought it up again this morning, so I felt the need to respond. Then comrade alphabet took it to the next level. At the risk of repeating myself, I can only agree with your second sentence.

There is a silver lining here: Romania as unsuspected paradise (I just haven't realised it yet). Thanks, all.

My word, you do seem a miserable lot
Why don't you look happy like me?
Have you backed a loser, or got indigestion
Or have you had gin for your tea?
You may have your troubles, but try to be bright
There's one consolation you've all got tonight
Things are worse in Russia. They're not much better in Prussia
The West End Theatres have gone down a lot
They seem to get wusser and wusser
Some people believe comic singing is whacked
I may get on your nerves and my voice may be cracked
But nevertheless you can't alter the fact
Things are worse in Russia

One Sunday night I went out for a drink
I met a stray dog at the Crown
He tore a lump out of my best Sunday trousers
Before I'd a chance to sit down
I found when he'd gone I'd no seat left at all
But I thought as I stood with my back to the wall
Things are worse in Russia. They're not much better in Prussia
The wife then came up and went off the deep end
To square her, of course, I'd to lush her
She cried, "I've no needle or cotton just here"
And said, "You must stop there the whole night, I fear
You'll get a bad cold, but remember, my dear
Things are worse in Russia.

My wife had a mother and she was a cat
She seemed to be fond of her too
I wasn't. I hated the sight of her dial
She ought to have been put in the zoo
Whenever I met her or knew she was near
I used to sing softly, but so she could hear
Things are worse in Russia. They're not much better in Prussia
One Saturday night she fell under a bus
And as it proceeded to crush her
The wheels went right over my ma-in-law
The wife, who was near, cried, "They've killed her, Oh lor"
I said, "What the Dickens are you crying for
Things are worse in Russia."

(no dog in this particular race, just love that song)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE

:D

Go to Ferentari and enlighten the locals about how their standard of living is no worse than that of their distant British cousins. There is still time before Britain crashes out of the EU.

Understand your point about absolute v relative poverty but it does come across dismissive of suffering here.

On the contrary, nationalist dismissal of suffering is precisely what I am responding to. For the 543573489th time, I am not underestimating Tory austerity and I am not the one who put these comparisons back on the table.

"calz brought it up again this morning, so I felt the need to respond."

You have form in doing this. Everyone knows the UK is a richer country so that it's poverty ends up as 'less'. Everyone here is aware of this, stop posting this shit like we don't know and grow out of throwing words like neo-imperialism and take your tantrum elsewhere.

Given the prevalence of anti-Romanian sentiment in the UK, I think it's fair to reply when the topic comes up.

That aside on a post isn't = anti-Romanian sentiment to me. I wasn't reading it like that.

The prevalence of food banks is genuinely distressing and in the fifth/sixth richest country in the world, the fact that people live like this is a choice made by the government.

This bears repeating, I think. The levels are really shocking when you compare them to other countries of similar wealth.

No but there is a rancid context behind it itt, which you subsequently spelled out.

xp

how dare anyone

how dare everyone

onwards to victory all

The levels are really shocking when you compare them to other countries of similar wealth.

Indeed they are. Which is why this whole argument is utterly idiotic in the first place: you can hold both this thought and refrain from arguing that poverty in the UK is on par with poverty in Romania without experiencing cognitive dissonance.

*simultaneously hold

No but there is a rancid context behind it itt, which you subsequently spelled out.

xp

― pomenitul, Tuesday, 18 June 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In your head, yeah

You can fully subscribe to this statement and be anti-austerity.

― pomenitul, Tuesday, 18 June 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No you can't. Few people in the UK experience this luxury. Many people on ilx are struggling, or if they aren't rn they are insecure about having any kind of future. Stop this. xp

An anti-imperialist pov, that's for sure.

"Things are worse in Russia. They're not much better in Prussia"

we now know that serfdom was more than slightly worse than the wilhelminist welfare state:p but it is cracking song is that!

On the contrary, nationalist dismissal of suffering is precisely what I am responding to.

This argument just feels like so much bad faith on all sides, the original calzino post was clearly moaning about people who do use Romania to minimize UK poverty and now there's all this anger at pom for supposedly doing the same when he puts a caveat in every damn post that it's not what he's doing, people are just bored I guess.

Also I think the term comrade alphabet and pom are arguing over is ethnocentrism more than imperialism but I could be wrong.

Sorry gyac, but I'm getting a little tired of this non-debate – I'm just going to point to the post in which I spoke of navel-gazing exceptionalism upthread.

I don't know about ethnocentrism, Daniel. To some extent, yes, but there is a segment of the British population that is more accepting of Asian immigrants than Romanians because the former had a part to play in the Glorious Empire of Yore. See for instance Fig. 7 (among Leave voters):

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/

"the original calzino post was clearly moaning about people who do use Romania to minimize UK poverty"

I don't really see much of this.

Are they the same ppl who say we survived the blitz we'll survive no deal?

pom we'd have you in the irish thread fyi

Aaaargh but on another note I saw that MR Seumas Milne had liked a joke about wanking on twitter but like a complete moron I didn’t get a screenshot & now the wily old fox has unliked it!

Thanks deems, I'd love to revisit Ireland (one of my wife's aunts married a Dubliner) and get speechlessly sloshed on superlative draughts again.

I don't really see much of this.

You don't see ppl going "stop whining about poverty in the UK, it's much worse elsewhere"? Isn't that what you've been accusing pomenitul of doing itt?

pom, I didn't mean so much in terms of what groups are affected, I meant that focusing on yr country w/o wanting to acknowledge what life is like elsewhere in general seems to me more ethnocentric than imperialist. I also feel like it's a totally separate issue to actual hatred of immigrants from whatever corner they may be.

I think Pom's issue with UK austerity stems from a graph from a Unicef survey I posted on a previous thread that put the UK on the same level as Romania for childhood food scarcity in households or something like that. I can't remember but I think he had an aneurysm over it and likes to witter about it a bit since! FTR I've nothing strongly against Pom, but projecting neo-imperialist insults on someone is a bit low and pathetic in the context of responding to someone just mildly beefing about your tone towards UK poverty on a UK politics thread.

I used 'imperialist' as shorthand for 'uses its position of relative privilege to impose its vision (of poverty, in this instance) upon objectively poorer countries'. 'Nationalistic' is probably closer to what I meant to say.

Galling irony intended, of course.

Daniel - I don't see much of this out there in public discourse, no. When the UN report came out (or a Ken Loach film that portrays the harshness of welfare) I saw denial from Tories that it's as bad as portrayed.

In the past much of the talk is around deficit reduction. And much further back Osborne going "the UK could end up like Greece" but that's again linked to the deficit. All about getting your house in order.

I thought Calzino's post was referring to that previous argument with Pom. Then I saw his hissy fit over it.

Then I did an imperialism.

'Tantrum', 'aneurysm', 'hissy fit' – totally cool ways of describing foreign correctives to self-absorbed discourse. I suppose I had it coming, breaking the circlejerk and all.

Talking about people being killed by austerity in the UK, in the UK politics thread = "self-absorbed discourse".

Oh so the reference to Romania was in my head. Gotcha.

Don't think you are trying to get it. But that's ok you are good like this.

fwiw I hear plenty of "don't gripe, things are worse elsewhere", here in the UK as I did in Portugal, too. It's a timeless classic afaict, popular across cultures and eras.

xxp
I've already explained how Romania came to be mentioned in the thread and it wasn't in a manner that was being reductive about the poverty there or looking down my neo-imperialist nose at Romanians, even if you did decide to take it like that.

Austerity nearly killed my partner with MS in '17. I'm not trying to be some armchair general here, and I genuinely despair at what I see austerity has done to the local community on a daily basis. I might be a repetitive angry cunt at times, but let me tell you.. it is heartfelt!

Fair enough, calz – I genuinely empathise. My main beef is with comrade alphabet at this point (or was, because every fruitless exchange deserves to come to an end).

Lads. Sorry, had to be said.

ah look

book a rest lads

The image of Corbyn solemnly reading the James Joyce letters to his wife (NB Joyce to his wife, not Corbyn to his) floated into my head and now I can’t stop thinking about it.

Anyway, I wanted to post this, so!

Islamaphobia rots you inside https://t.co/RZIQDzNRO6

— Tom Flynn (@Flynny123) June 18, 2019

it's a pisser when you lock the wrong portrait in your study and then it's too late when you notice ppl saying "whose that gaunt ugly fucker".

apols to the dorian gray rulebook which I'm a bit sketchy on.

Chuka left #Labour promising he’d never help Corbyn & crew get the keys to No 10.

Now he’s promised he’ll be a @LibDems ‘until the day he dies’

So @ChukaUmunna - come a GE & your new LibDem leader moves to prop up a Corbyn Govt which promise will you keep? https://t.co/7IcRips7lv

— Anna Soubry MP (@Anna_Soubry) June 18, 2019

soubz just calmly posting as she normally does after that 3rd g+t has kicked in.