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

aditya’s the fuckin best

does everyone at the guardian work from home or does he have to like share an open plan office with simon jenkins?

I feel there are worse people to sit with at the Guardian. Don’t think I could breathe the same air as Hadley Freeman or Marina Hyde.

jenkins is 76 so i doubt he comes by the office every day

also he used to be married to gayle hunnicutt :0

This isn’t as upsetting as finding out we inexplicably have a book of his in the house

hmmm

columnists come in like once a month to check their mail i thought

@suzy ;)

fuck baroness hyde

like a lot of young posh ppl people back in the Blair era, was quite happy to attack Labour right from the left, but finally horrified at the prospect of a centre-left Labour ever getting into government. typical fucking landed gentry trash.

I like ilxor UK politics threads as a place to park information about news, to have a discussion that’s unlikely to be interrupted by cranks of the Chris Williamson ilk, derailed or derided by Centrist ‘90s Music Press Guys (and where we can complain about them), or people with other flavours of Corbyn Derangement Syndrome.

This is a rare corner of the interwebs where people are mostly intelligent and accommodating of others. It’s also a good spot to commiserate with others touched by austerity/Tory cruelty and having an outlet to clown
on the latest Jess Phillips/Stephen Kinnock/Change UK bullshit also a bonus.

The word ‘mostly’ was chosen for a reason!

The honourable member for nominative determinism strikes again:

This guy James Cleverly is a dishonest and a Liar of a person. He is not to be trusted. He hit my car on M11 while speeding and using his phone. At the scene he admitted it was his fault. He damaged my new car. When i contacted him he said he is not accepting liability.Shame on u pic.twitter.com/R2dOcFRh6H

— Asim (@Asim08535742) August 20, 2019

lmao get his ass asim

Johnson's proposed solution to the backstop issue is apparently for...Ireland to stop following EU rules and start following the UK's - while still remaining in the Common Market.

I feel like there may be some holes here.

Well now

Westminster voting intention:

CON: 42% (+17)
LAB: 28% (-6)
LDEM: 15% (-)
BREX: 5% (-5)
GRN: 3% (-)
TIG/CHUK: 1% (-)
UKIP: 0% (-4)

via @KantarTNS, 15 - 19 Aug
Chgs. w/ 13 May

— Britain Elects (@britainelects) August 21, 2019

Grim.

I am not clicking on Rafael Behr's piece and I hardly read the cunt, but I hate the headline in its tired reference to wars fought over 100 years ago and how 'calamity' is inevitable.

xxp
they are not recognised by the British Polling Council and way out with that group of pollsters for what that is worth, which might be fuck all!

fwiw the current aggregated poll of polls has the tories on a 5 pt lead.

fwiw

Firstly, Kantar don't include the Brexit party in their main prompt (nor the Green party) - people have to click through to a second screen to see them. That presumably depresses Brexit party support

— Anthony Wells (@anthonyjwells) August 21, 2019

This is the same as YouGov found when we looked at the same issue (though we deal with it differently) https://t.co/5x1hvVG69E

— Anthony Wells (@anthonyjwells) August 21, 2019

Without that change, Kantar would have been showing Con 40%, Lab 32%.

— Anthony Wells (@anthonyjwells) August 21, 2019

whoops. first tweet in that last post should have been

Secondly (and more interestingly), Kantar have changed their past vote weights to account for false recall. They have found that people who voted Labour in 2017 are less likely to now report voting Labour, so have adjusted their targets to account for this.

— Anthony Wells (@anthonyjwells) August 21, 2019

never rated the lads down at kantar media

oops just noticed they are a BPC recognised pollster as well.

kantar tns sounds like a Welsh football club.

the real conspicuous bit of dodgy polling from the Kantar one is that they have Tig/ChUK on 1% tbh

Johnson's proposed solution to the backstop issue is apparently for...Ireland to stop following EU rules and start following the UK's - while still remaining in the Common Market.

I feel like there may be some holes here.

― ShariVari, Wednesday, 21 August 2019 09:31 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

it succeeds on one overarching point- "it will be the irish choosing to make this hard on themselves"

What's behind the HS2 review announcement? Farage want's it scrapped so I feel it must probably be good, otoh it's a fuck of a lot of money to spend to get to Crewe a bit quicker, otoh I was looking forward to Curzon Station rising from the dead, otoh what about all the trees they're cutting down (have already cut down, I believe in some cases...)?

Shoring up Tory seats in the chilterns.

I think the economic benefits of fast as fuck trains will be minimal, but at least you'll be able to fly past all these barren dead places with murderous hordes of barbarians hunting for human flesh.

I think for lots of Tories it’s a byword for government infrastructure spending?

It's spending that spoils their view

Btw this is everything:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/aug/21/eu-to-blame-football-new-handball-rule-ian-holloway

The benefit is not necessarily in the speed but in the capacity, the north south rail lines are pretty much full. Once your building a new line you might as well build a fast one even though the the distances to Manchester and Birmingham aren’t far enough to get more than marginal benefit out of high speed.

The problem the Tories have is that it runs through their heartland and offer no benefit to the people living there.

Holloway sucks even more shit than Warnock and Souness combined, there won't be a big enough pit for all the enemies of the people from the football world.

This unstable combination of whingeing victimhood twinned with pompous self-regard

The short version of that is that Ireland won't be quite as fucked by No Deal as the UK thinks it will be.

you need g-search the title of the FT piece to read it - they are usually link-walled.

I know, but I don't get the sense that for anybody here this place accounts for the majority of discussion they have about this

*Raises hand*

I mean, I have wider sources of information for sure, but I don't engage in those places because generally people are saying the same things that I feel but put better (see: this sentence).

If I engage (read: squabble) more here it's because the idea that those that are pro-EU are implacably opposed to the "social ideal that puts the welfare of most people ahead of the wealth hoarding ability of a tiny elite of the super-rich" is just completely alien to anything I experience elsewhere.

having an outlet to clown on the latest Jess Phillips/Stephen Kinnock/Change UK bullshit also a bonus.

This should be on the NHS.

In 1953, when Winston Churchill was prime minister for the last time, 91 per cent of Irish exports went to the UK. Today, that figure is 11 per cent and falling. Far from being the poor, dependent outpost relying on British largesse — as depicted by Brexiters — the Republic of Ireland is an outward-looking, dynamic, trading entrepot. Today, Irish firms in the UK employ more people than UK firms in Ireland.

suck it you deluded fucks!

Look along with a moratorium on MLC “writing” can we please please agree to stop writing about people itt as somehow opposed to the EU when they merely have views on how shit the Remain campaign is, how the EU is bad for letting refugees drown en masse, and how EU post-crash austerity was damaging to loads of EU citizens? Thanks.

It's not the place that accounts for the majority of my discussion, but it's the majority of my discussion with people I (somewhat) agree with.

Btw this was a good piece on HS2: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hs2-logistics-financial-benefit-controversy-a8937936.html

If I engage (read: squabble) more here it's because the idea that those that are pro-EU are implacably opposed to the "social ideal that puts the welfare of most people ahead of the wealth hoarding ability of a tiny elite of the super-rich" is just completely alien to anything I experience elsewhere.

Hear, hear. Not to mention the notion that Brussels is hegemonic enough to have a forcefully effective bearing on the neo-fascist and/or aggressively neo-liberal policies pursued by certain member states is… oddly optimistic? Germany is not Italy is not Hungary is not Spain is not Ireland is not…

Btw, this place does account for 99% of my exchanges about British politics. I haven't been in the UK for very long and am not close enough to the rare acquaintances I've made irl to shoot the shit on a regular basis.

Gyac OTM, it's amazing how people seem still to be of that opinion despite the fact that these threads have had both 'Brexit' and 'we're all gonna die' in the title for like a year.

Ah now come on, there's definitely a caricature of the pro-EU, FBPE, EU-flag facepaint thrown around here a lot. Which apart from the politics projected on to them, doesn't seem to ever reflect the chance that they are non-UK Europeans trapped in this hellscape.

you see it all the time in the media too where people (remainders) who think we should probably respect the result of referenda are caricatured as brexiteers or “pro” brexit

remainers*

in other news I have just heard “if there’s an NDB, it will all be ireland’s fault” in the wild

The short version of that is that Ireland won't be quite as fucked by No Deal as the UK thinks it will be.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 21 August 2019 12:20 (forty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i mean over here anyone i see drumming for panic for anything except the border/GFA i start looking for their angle (y2k style)

we'll be fine