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

it'll be the blitz again and who won the war? (actual ans here = stalin in europe, with some US help, but this is not at all how it's understood in the UK)

I know this is not an original point to make, but it does feel like to a lot of ppl of a certain age the best thing that could happen to the UK would be a catastrophe equivalent to getting bombed by nazis, which is a particularly deranged version of the boomer deference/guilt towards the Greatest Generation.

This piece is relevant on that v question:

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2019/06/today-s-75-year-olds-didn-t-fight-war-so-why-do-we-think-they-did

"actual ans here = stalin in europe, with some US help, but this is not at all how it's understood in the UK"

some of the guff I got for posting about this on the WW2 thread says it isn't just UK ppl who buy propagandist versions of history.

Meanwhile reading around what is happening to Bury FC:

Steve Dale bought Bury on 7 December 2018. 11 days later he set up two new companies, Bury Heritage & Bury Leisure & started transferring assets to them, including the club’s trophies. Some would describe this as the action of a sociopathic asset stripper #DontBuryBury pic.twitter.com/K8hAPELYGA

— PriceOfFootball (@KieranMaguire) August 29, 2019

John McDonnell, just now: “This is no longer a Government. It is now a regime.”

John McDonnell, just now: “This is no longer a Government. It is now a regime.”

get their asses

I like the Corbyn/McDonnell good cop/bad cop thing A LOT.

It's all good:

He added: “The last 24 hours have revealed the true character of Boris Johnson and, as importantly, the real nature of his politics.

“It’s exposed in Johnson a deep-seated arrogant sense of entitlement. Johnson sees himself not as a modern-day Prime Minister, whose authority rests upon the support of a Parliamentary democracy.

“Instead, his actions betray that he’s reverted to a much older Tory tradition. He’s a ruler, ruling over the ruled.

“Democratic practices like parliamentary votes have become encumbrances to the freedom of the ruler. And how dare the broadcast media seek to pose questions and ask for an interview or anything more than a short clip of him grinning.”

I know this is not an original point to make, but it does feel like to a lot of ppl of a certain age the best thing that could happen to the UK would be a catastrophe equivalent to getting bombed by nazis, which is a particularly deranged version of the boomer deference/guilt towards the Greatest Generation.

I'm not sure it's just deference. There is a deep dissatisfaction with the way society has developed that crosses a lot of national boundaries. The strongest opponents of Russian hypercapitalism have often been the pensioners turning out to vote Communist every election. One of the driving forces in Polish religious revanchism has been the elderly people who feel like the benefits of economic and cultural liberalism have passed them by.

There's a lot of awful stuff being mourned by aging Brexiters (the death penalty, corporal punishment, overwhelming whiteness, class deference, etc) but i think there's also a grain of truth in the idea that, material things aside, modern capitalism isn't really working for them either. The absolute collapse in the sense of community that has come along with mobility, atomisation, the privatisation of public space, etc, hits them as hard as anyone. Rolling back to a period when 'we had nothing but we was happy', which appears to be the default description of most of their childhoods, isn't completely bananas.

McDonnell's jarring use of language reminiscent of Joseph Cotterill's long-running thread

Looking for a Northwest Atlantic Archipelago bureau chief. Cover a wide terrain from the sweltering riverine capital to the craggy wastes of the north. Cover a once-promising democracy in decline, but also delight readers with tales of fusty traditions. https://t.co/nQIQL1puo6

— Joseph Cotterill (@jsphctrl) July 4, 2019

So they might actually pause and look at Labour's policies that aim to roll many of these things back, instead of a continuation of that atomisation you describe under Johnson.

Meanwhile this by LP is good. Not so much a coup as an abuse of power, with a reckoning on the side stating how Parliament fails all of us.

[thread] From day one, I’ve been honest about the flaws in our Parliamentary system. I have never glorified Westminster. Democracy for me has never just been about a cross in a box every 5 years. (1/5) pic.twitter.com/fzeko7M95W

— Laura Pidcock MP (@LauraPidcockMP) August 29, 2019

xp to SV

on a tiny note, one new objection i may make to the proposed "northwestern atlantic archipelago" denomination is the 100% certainty that it will be used just like "the UK" but now we'll have agreed that we're in it.

force them to say & Ireland or correct them when they don't, untill you don't need to do either anymore

i assumed he was referring to the US on account of how these islands are in the northeastern atlantic but maybe i'm missing something

xp

Absolutely! It would be a mistake to write them off as unreachable. How you actually get through to that demographic is a huge question but the idea of grass roots social engagement, community events, building bridges between young and old borough by borough, etc, etc - all stuff Corbyn and McDonnell are strongly in favour of - will be important.

no he means the UK (and he also means "northweast"): it's a parody of the absurd (poorly informed patronising etc) way that US media talks about the "third world" but transferred to e.g. in this case the UK and environs

naturally this absurd style would get the case of ireland wrong, it's bad not good

i assumed he was referring to the US on account of how these islands are in the northeastern atlantic but maybe i'm missing something

― VONC louse-wits (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 29 August 2019 11:15 (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

think ive seen NWAA (NW relative to european position) as an offering

could be mistaken

xp yes i know what its doing and i can give benefit of doubt that he may have done this on purpose but

no tbh no i dont

well i figured he just fucked up his geography and nw would work if the orientation was toward europe but you're right d it is strange how many of these reimagined terminlogies somehow entirely accidentally elide the difference between Ireland and the UK

I think part of the problem is that this demographic has been largely insulated from the effects of austerity & therefore doesn’t see or care what the fuss is about.

This vox pop. This fucking vox pop. pic.twitter.com/VKcy9QBObX

— Leonardo Carella (@leonardocarella) June 18, 2019

xps only a tiny thing only struck me now, ive always kinda favoured the archipelago option til just there

we grow as people by considering at further and further removes how the world is gonna fuck up the next good thing

well i liked the way Norman Davies addressed the issue in The Isles but now you've pointed it out there is something interesting about the unconsidered effects of reframing the terminology, and some efforts and intentions are more ingenuous than others

the cotterill bit is referring to the fact that correspondents invariably have to cover & are defined by a region rather than dedicate themselves to a nation state

im happy to admit that its occurred to me incidentally to the prompt

the correct way to assign correspondents in the online age is via online spider diagrams of internet overlap

(joek needs the word online several more times)

extremely

anyway this issue over the irish question is clearly a diversion and distraction from the real business of the brexit thread

I've deleted a tweet which apparently upset a lot of people. I don't advocate hanging Boris Johnson. I think that would be a very bad idea.

— Philip Pullman (@PhilipPullman) August 29, 2019

Think of the children

not even if it's to a sour apple tree?

The man was not wrong pic.twitter.com/B452e7idTF

— Tom Hatfield (@WordMercenary) August 28, 2019

of all the turds that have recently been dropped onto my timeline, this multi-faceted beauty + sublime follow-up is my fav:

Cant believe I'm writing this as an Irish small-r republican, but seriously Tweeps, stop slagging off your monarch. She's served the UK incredibly well as a figurehead since 1953. She's 93. And she has never put a foot wrong constitutionally, including today.

*goes into hiding*

— Elinor Elliot #FBPE (@ElliotElinor) August 28, 2019

whats the follow up

She’s outed as a RDE troll

boot leather is a helluva drug

Very cheered up by the protests in Argentina.

The protesters marched to demand the implementation of a food emergency bill, an extension of the social emergency bill, and an increase in the complementary social wage, among other basic social demands. #EmergenciaAlimentariahttps://t.co/JzYEGCFy4r

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) August 29, 2019

ok im only gonna ask one more question then i give up

what is rde

Revue d'Égyptologie.

A reet diabolical eejit

Alas I meant the ultimate “how tf does she get any coverage” troll in Ireland, Ruth Dudley-Edwards.

where's the sublime outing? do our work for us fgs

I was more tickled by the "even if you MUST disrespect her maj at the very least you will of course want to protect the sacred constitution of the UK, the only thing saving us from barbarism". the v next tweet in the thread

it was v unclear stuff and not as advertised imo

xxp I had a weird ilx dream last night where I was walking with various people to a tube station for a FAP & you were the only one who wouldn’t come with, you said “I’ll make my own way”. It has haunted me all morning ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Interesting briefing with Ruth Davidson’s spokesman

- She supports Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament
- No immediate Tory leadership election, Jackson Carlaw to step in until around October
- She hasn’t decided whether or not to stay on as MSP beyond 2021

— Chris Green (@cghgreen) August 29, 2019

profiles in courage

The only future for a politician is dependant on whether votes are won. What does a fabled conversion to the EU have to do with anything?

Well, it has to do with how votes are won - the rest of the paragraph is the connective tissue there.

Though I will admit that I am partly doing something I dislike in others, which is confusing what he personally thinks with tactical Labour Policy as shaped by him. I'm not a Corbyn did Brexit truther, we lost by more than one vote so I don't give a fuck how he voted.

As noted on the other thread he's best when he's supporting something he clearly believes in, but it was never going to be an exact match.

Also, sorry about the speech-to-text, that is not I hope me posting as I normally do.

post the 2017 electio, corbyn, despite losing it, was suddenly considered a serious threat instead of a ludicrous joke

Ehh, I think he was both before that, the slider may have been moving steadily in one direction though.

My understanding is that No Deal was still no the table for May (though largely as a tool to keep ERG onside) until not long before March 29th - a briefing that it would actually break up the union caused her to come down against it.

Something which is an obsession of mine but also something that I find difficult to put into words is the changes in who gets to be fully-realised hero-of-their-own-story-this-side-of-the-grave people over the last few centuries, and the impossibility of a drafted war in the modern world - and how that would underpin an attractive image of a past (everyone imagines themselves officers, not privates).

the impossibility of a drafted war in the modern world

A local Scot suggests that apart from anything else, if the MSP do take Shetland, they'd only need one more seat to hit 50% in Holyrood.

Sorry, SNP!