PMs change and lol we're all gonna die (but brexit will never end)

Owen “29 inch dick” Smith would know all about big gains

it's interesting to see how labour have slowly tanked in brecon from it being a safe seat from the 40s to the 70s, getting around 20k votes, to narrowly losing out to the tories in 79, then gradually ebbing away to a truly terrible 1680 votes yesterday. seems indicative of when labour stopped caring about wales

Guardian article had a quote from a local who'd voted Labour until ten years ago, felt lied to by them, went Tory then felt let diwn by them over austerity, now "voting for Nigel Farage" and hoping they won't be lied to by him, because apparently that hadn't happened yet. Too many with that mentality nationwide.

blaming the voters is both always correct and always wrong

Westminster pays less attention to Wales then pretty much anywhere else in the UK afaik.

all the ppl arguing abt whether we should prioritise hs2 or manchester-leeds or whatever have clearly never enjoyed the totally unreliable diesel (!) service in wales

altho wales has been neglected by govt, the labour party and the media, we do remember them when it comes to thinking of where to dump nuclear waste

boundary changes might be responsible for some of the dribbling away too?

They don't exactly stand up for themselves, the Welsh, do they? Not anymore anyway. They almost had to impose devolution on them.

Longshanks did a proper job on them!

They have had the shit kicked out of them over the centuries.

great banter lads, it's like vintage top gear

think I've said the same upthread but wales is a good case study of the futility of devolving power without investment

not really top gear seeing as neither of us are proper English you fule!

james may went to school in newport, he's basically your celtic cousin

yeah but he's still a posh bastard!

next you'll be telling me clarkson is from 'a part of doncaster which is actually quite smart'

and it wasn't bantz. To comment that Longshanks destroyed any notions of Welsh independence to an extreme he couldn't manage to achieve in Scotland, would be true.

your Top Gear comment is pure projection on your part.

I'd similarly say Cromwell did a job on my ancestors, and it wouldn't be meant as Top Gear bantz, because i'm not an English nationalist.

I enjoy thinking in terms of the long durée as much as the next ilxor but while it's true that in the context of the military campaigns of the C14th wales fared especially poorly, I don't think this or the notions of national character that ppl might want to base on it, are considerations that make for a productive assessment of the modern political situation in wales

lol whatever you total dick!

Lads can we all just calm down and go back to English-bashing as we normally do?

Just trying to knock some sense into the Welsh + bantz.

I'd rather be accused of being a murderous paedo than of engaging in Clarksonisms or being a Top Gear fan.

you know us proper english can't help ourselves, it's in our blood

yes I know "proper English" is a problematic term, I meant to put quotes on it - it seems like a term Clarkson would. OK?

tfw the monster raving loony party's brexit policy is better than the government's

UKIP were beaten by the Monster Raving Loony Party in the Brecon By-Election. This is the Monster Raving Loony Party’s Brexit policy. pic.twitter.com/q3v3t9teSK

— ellis (@e_c_k_97) August 2, 2019

xp yes, none of this is serious, just wish some of the chat abt wales was more so

nobody is preventing that from happening tbf.

It is serious to some extent, I think there's a severe inferiority complex in Wales similar to what used to prevail in Scotland.

i can remember poster ogmor once complaining about how people try and dismiss the influence of events from hundreds of years ago have on our current political make-up, when the most of the wealth in england is in the hands of people with names derived from the conquesting Normans.

Birkenhead Social Justice Party ✊

Nice "major announcement" there Frank, you self-important prick.

I think any inferiority complex is a symptom of underlying poverty and the wealth, power and proximity of england, none of which is going to change or explain the changes which have happened, or neglect from the rest of the uk.

All nationalism is a double sided coin of x-riority complex do at me

llads

lol & xp otm

to snuggle back into the more cosy territory of our lazily-assumed consensus that austerity is bad, here's a piece arguing that austerity not brexit was when the political order went to shit https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/economics-and-finance/the-shredding-of-political-convention-started-with-austerity-not-brexit

Difficult to see what the Tories are currently doing that is insufficiently Brexity for Brexit Party voters though.

In all seriousness, didn't leave on Mar 29th, haven't left yet.

In less seriousness, happy to set up a referendum committee on the readmittance of Calzino.

Kudos deems

ffffs

Not trying to feed a beef, but the bus I'm on has just passed a Street namef after Clarkson's great grandad who was a major glass player in the area and no doubt a first class arsehole as well.

The proportion of Tory voters who switched to the Brexit Party looks very small in comparison to the proportion who just stayed at home. Turnout was down about 10k, the Tory vote down by 8k. Loathe as I am to admit it, yr man being done for fraud probably played a part.

it’s spelled bœuf
xp

That is quite surprising considering it was basically petty fraud on a technicality - not that I'd complain.

Perhaps because it was such low level petty corruption that his rep as proper tory was done for.

> Clarkson's great grandad

he's related to the Kilner jar people iirc from Who Do You Think You Are?

Yep. Every time one of my kilner jars of soup cracks when I'm removing from the fridge I take a second to metaphorically spit on his memory!

The Tories refusing to reselect him after being done for fraud probably didn't help. I don't really think it matters what kind of fraud - anything that reminds people of the expenses scandal will do.

Frank Field is standing as an independent af the next election. This should be fun.

field's majority at the last election was 25,514 fwiw