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

Centrism in particular seems predicated on a Whiggish idea of history that makes it (willfully imo but it doesn't matter) blind to the frailty of every step towards economic or social democracy, so blind that they apparently don't notice when governments including their own push those steps back or find new ways to negate them.

insofaras various social democratic achievements can be registered post-war, i think all of them are as much a consequence of bismarckian investment in the resilience of empire -- our soldiery must be fit and our engineers must be educated! -- than some actual big fabian push in the 20s :(

which suggests that post-war social mobility and the space to fuck abt are basically epiphenomena of the removal of empire (in the same way as london being insanely the wrong size for a small north atlantic island): health and education were part of the admin machinery, except then the machine was shaken to pieces

(more things my book is sadly and secretly about tbh)

they're never exposed to the stress and struggle of getting into any kind of employment

Just to further corroborate this (which is as otm as it gets), as part of my mercifully brief stint as a visitor to Oxford, I've met two archetypes: the unquestioningly entitled, who are legion and neurologically incapable of envisioning a less than stellar future, and the token minorities, who are so proud of flying close to the sun that they're willing to overlook the bigger picture.

mark is right, we must rebuild our glorious empire

yeah mark i agree with your take. how that relates to "what politicians think they believe" is probably an interesting line of investigation

(also i swear i will read your book eventually :D)

also pom yeah that has also been my limited experience, otm

some of these melts should read the last couple of chapters of D Edgerton's Rise and Fall of the British Nation where he goes into a strop and can't disguise his contempt for Blairism/Thatcherism. But that is presuming they are the type of people who are open minded about their own take history/political events or even willing to have them challenged.

the centrists seem to think Blairism was morally superior to Thatcherism cos of tax-credits and whatever other worthless window dressing legacy shit that has been easily stripped away by a decade of austerity which arguably would been pretty much as bad even if Cameron had lost in 2010.

it finishes with a montage of people celebrating Thatcher's death in de-industrialised northern communities while Blair is filling his boots with ill gotten money from murderous dictators.

dunty declared Dr Liam Fox "one of the adults in the room" yesterday. he is beyond a joke.

"Things have deteriorated so far that Liam Fox is now one of the adults" was the line, in fairness.

― Andrew Farrell, Monday, 24 June 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's still nonsense tho

― mark s, Monday, 24 June 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This was fantastic, well done to all involved.

arguably doing a lot of work there!

Great posts, all. I just so happened to read Sean O'Hagan's 2014 piece which brushed on the same thing (w/r/t pop stars), about the working class being pushed out of the pop and acting scene by the rich and privileged:

Pop culture has, of course, always had its share of often-credible posh performers, from the likes of Pink Floyd and Nick Drake in the late 60s to Radiohead in the 90s. But the dramatic increase suggests something has gone seriously askew. Pop music has always been a prescient form – the Beatles signalled the coming of Harold Wilson's Labour government, punk the rise of Thatcherism, and Britpop soundtracked the birth of New Labour – so it seems appropriate that the rise of posh in pop culture should chime with the ascendancy of the current Tory leadership. (David Cameron is an Old Etonian, George Osborne was educated at St Paul's. Both were members of Oxford's infamous Bullingdon Club alongside Eton-educated London mayor Boris Johnson.)

Choice quote but read the whole thing, it's good: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/jan/26/working-class-hero-posh-britain-public-school

some fun stats from polly toynbee's column in today's graun

Here’s Prof Tim Bale’s latest analysis for the BBC of the Tory membership voting on behalf of us 65 million: 70% are men, 97% white, 60% southern, 86% higher social classes, average age 57, a high proportion no longer in work. Six out of 10 want the death penalty back.

lol we're all gonna die

Staying true to democracy's Athenian roots.

I'm surprised the proportion of men is so high and the average age so (relatively) low. The only Conservative assoc meetings i've ever seen IRL have been massively dominated by women in their 70s-80s.

If only we had a progressive government with a big majority which would be able to enact legislation to make Parliament more democratically accountable/functional. Maybe if such a government had 10 years or more in power they could get round to sorting this

SV i guess the membership doesn't necessarily reflect who bothers to turn up to the meetings

That’s definitely true!

have you been a member long yourself a mhic

i was playing cricket in SV's neck of the woods on Sunday and it definitely seemed like the kind of place where the tory membership abide in packs

Haven't read it but this looks good:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jun/25/the-new-left-economics-how-a-network-of-thinkers-is-transforming-capitalism

However often McDonnell says in interviews that he wants to see a democratic economy, the adjective most frequently applied to him is still “Marxist”. “The new economic thinking is almost like a frequency that can’t be heard,” says Guinan.

Multiple xps - SV’s mother is a Tory but I’m not excusing any of the rest of his behaviour

I read in the CH comments (ofcccc) that Tory women members were valuable because they would turn up and do the organisational (ie women’s) things associations need to run successfully, and that there were proportionately fewer since membership declines. How far this goes beyond some old fella pissing and moaning about having to licj the envelopes himself now, I have no idea, but there were definitely other commenters who’d noticed fewer women about too.

big hitter vs mcshitter pic.twitter.com/pgIodRkQIO

— joe (@cillanoir) June 25, 2019

yes the old tory institutions ran on scary rural tory ladies but the supply has been dwindling for many years (their granddaughters are now all pop stars)

her father, Sir Charles William Somerset Marling, the 5th Marling Baronet, ran a recording studio, introduced her to folk music and shaped her musical taste, an experience that Marling later described as, "a bit of a blessing and a bit of a curse. ...

it can be a curse having everything handed to you in some senses ... but extremely low sympathy rating for that curse!

tear her for her bad verses

I refuse to listen her after Marcello dismissed her as a "tory twat"!

but hypocritically I listen to many fascists from history still .. but I'm probably probably bad.

at typing for a start!

but my hatred for tories was so glowing white at the time she emerged .. I refuse to listen to her.

boy's clubs, you simply love to see them!

Asked by one member what he would do with the NHS, Johnson told the crowd it was a “crowning glory” of the UK but was “not getting the kind of support and indeed the kind of changes and management that it needs”, suggesting he as prime minister would aim to undertake an overhaul of the health service.
Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate - sent direct to you
Read more

He said Simon Stevens, the NHS chief executive, had once helped him get elected president of the Oxford Union as a student, and together they would “sort things out”.

In remarks that may alarm those opposed to another reorganisation of the NHS, Johnson said: “It needs more money but where you are absolutely right is that it needs reform.”

woke matt* welcome to the #resistance

pic.twitter.com/fVN99w2nM3

— Matt Cartoons (@MattCartoonist) June 25, 2019

*(every-face-a-willy matt is already in the #resistance)

where you are absolutely right is that it needs reform

People seem to be absolutely blind to the fact that every huge organization that employs tens of thousands of people, but most particularly those huge organizations which purely deliver services, will be riddled with human inefficiencies and wasted effort. It is inescapable.

When those organizations are for-profit, the fact they generate big profits absolves them of criticism. They create jobs! They make money for everyone involved! How can you hate that? But when those organizations are funded from tax revenue every mistake and inefficiency is viewed with horror, even if the service is delivered more efficiently and cheaply than if it were delivered by a private corporation.

In the future feel free to refer to this as Aimless' Law.

boris dngaf about ‘reform’, he wants to privatise

i get the sense he absolutely dngaf about anything really, other than power and being liked in the moment.

he simply doesn’t care what happens to the NHS and says the easiest words at any given time in front of any given audience.

Also public service creates better jobs (by median not mean) than private!

If inefficiency is "you got this medicine two days later and you died", then it's obviously bad, but if it's "we could get an overstressed graduate to do both these jobs at once", I'm happy to wave the flag of inefficiency.

You damn betcha he wants to privatize NHS. Hand it over to the job creators who will bring efficiency to the organization! Mainly by cutting salaries and withholding services, so as to divert more funds to pay shareholders and the executive officers.

This is exctremely late pls forgive but I’m dying @ Hedges & White interacting:

In the past week I have never been more ashamed to be a journalist. We are so much better than this.

It's the general public we should be attacking, not each other. https://t.co/xmAvpa1yFQ

— Simon Hedges (@Orwell_Fan) June 23, 2019

Sorry, but that’s a bit deep for me

— MichaelWhite (@michaelwhite) June 23, 2019

lmao

lol, that was a good one!

Hope they sue the Mail

am told that the neighbours who reported the Symonds-Johnson row to the police have since moved out of their flat - and are seeking security advice - after a series of grim threats

— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) June 26, 2019

Meanwhile

Ed Davey rules out letting Jeremy Corbyn become PM to force another referendum.

“I don’t want to see Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister under any circumstances”

— Nick Eardley (@nickeardleybbc) June 26, 2019

there was a stat floating about on twitter that Davey & Swinson have voted along with the Tory whips more times than Gove and Hunt

'if the country must be destroyed, let it be us what does it'

More fuel to my "libs will have done no deal" story, love to see it

the "nicer" tory arseholes are certainly letting a few ropy youGov polls go to their heads a bit, and it's long been established some of these wags do like to use their polls to tell a story or two. Libdems are trailing the main parties by 8-10 pts with other pollsters. And let's not forget the art of polling is often basically talking to sample sizes of 1200-1600 people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

love to see them annihilated again. I'm getting sick of seeing all this lol Cable Surge stuff, fucking loathsome bunch of politicians and voters.

Swinson is a horror, poor auld Cherlie must be birlin' in his grave, ayyyyyyyyye.

I hope the poor old lad has got a bottle in there for when he's finished birlin'! I wasn't always a fan tbh but fucking hell, compared to the smug, evil, tory-wanker LibDem players of the last decade, he was someone with principles at least.

https://britainelects.com/polling/westminster/

this tracking poll shows that YouGov are the outliers in telling their story about the LibDem surge. One of their co-founders is slippery Tory mp who is a renowned regular bullshit merchant on QT.

it's always quite heartwarming to see chUK often polling at 0%.

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/884/521/353.gif