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

line for labour this morning is surely he’s already broken the law once we can’t trust him to not do so again in pursuit of no deal

sick corbyn burn on pm " everyone knows boris likes to wave his arms around and shout ludicrous things.."

the media seriously have brexit derangement syndrome

“most people care most about brexit”

uhhhhh do they?

regular discussion of the Spiked/Living Marxism crew can be found on this entertaining thread British Right-Wing Pundits🕸

LOL @ Farage, Claire Fox, Richard Tice (and Big Bren) flailing about, having to defend Boris while simultaneously criticizing the decision to prorogue and the ruling against proroguing.

Meanwhile, Bojo must've said 'I'll have what he's having' when around Trump yesterday. What is this nonsense?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/25/pink-eyed-terminators-and-limbless-chickens-boris-johnsons-un-speech-in-quotes

“most people care most about brexit”

uhhhhh do they?

not according to the today show

Corbyn give a decent interview on Today, casually batting off a few sixes on private schools and big pharma.

yep, solid, convincing, it's almost as if the poll ratings/bad leader thing is because of issues other than his presentation

The poll ratings/bad leader thing is because of issues other than his presentation

Kicking back on this a bit, his presentation is part of it for people who vote based on psychology rather than issues, and those people exist. Its more that I think we over-emphasize leader ratings in general, I don't think they're particularly useful as they only really measure people who vote based on this.

But in 2019 why anyone is giving any poll any serious credence is beyond me, regardless of what it says

Have you not been to ilm 2019 recently :p

Meanwhile, Bojo must've said 'I'll have what he's having' when around Trump yesterday. What is this nonsense?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/25/pink-eyed-terminators-and-limbless-chickens-boris-johnsons-un-speech-in-quotes🕸

this is genuinely deranged, what the fuck boris

The more I see stuff like this, the more I think it isn't deranged at all. I'll find out what my RW cousin thinks but I suspect its something along the lines of "yes some of the individual sentences may seem silly but I think we all know the general gist of what he's saying, there's no need to be so literal"

Theres some truth to this if you think in a more abstract, existential or poetic sense. The way we "know" what Trump is saying, even when the words on the page make no sense. Its not dog whistle as such, though thats an example of it

Yes, I think that’s right.

Ultimately it’s a lot of rhetorical flourish to say ‘technology, huh? Could be good, could be bad’.

Anvil, do you mean it's 'strategy' of some kind to talk like this? I just thought it out of character, even for Bojo. SV otm on what he means to say, but it's reads as pretty outrageous prose to me.

Not to play devil's advocate for this buffoon, but wasn't he, well, deliberately buffooning? I think he fancies himself a stand-up comedian.

He’s Not Like Other Politicians

Really feel for the translators having to translate that gibberish. ‘Did he really say “your fridge will beep for more cheese.”’?

anvil spot on imo. those hyper-literal word for word transcriptions of what trump says don’t - and i can’t believe i’m saying this - do him justice.

that’s not to say that he doesn’t come out with genuine word salad - cognitive and verbal - sometimes, but most of the time he does *communicate*.

'Not like other politicians' is definitely a thing.

Anvil, do you mean it's 'strategy' of some kind to talk like this? I just thought it out of character, even for Bojo. SV otm on what he means to say, but it's reads as pretty outrageous prose to me.

― Le Bateau Ivre,

I think strategy is maybe too strong a word - but isn't the persona one of someone that talks in big ideas and lets other people fill in the details? And isn't the criticism that he doesn't really do tangibles

People don't hear what anyone actually says, they hear how its said and substitute in their own content, which is why delivery matters. And almost all politicians are poor at this. Bernie gets flack sometimes for saying the same thing all the time. Thats good, it means the content has connected

Translating Trump is reportedly a nightmare in Japan, as translators are afraid of seeming incompetent.

Johnson likes to say sentences 'with striking imagery' and vocab (olden days words, vivid adjectives) to compensate for the behavioural idiocy. Kinda like if Trump if he'd read a book.

just the one, mind

actually i'm sure boris has read lots of books, he's just failed to understand them

Incidentally, wasn't Prometheus chained to a crag in the Caucasus rather than in the underworld (Tartarus)?

Johnson likes to say sentences 'with striking imagery' and vocab (olden days words, vivid adjectives) to compensate for the behavioural idiocy. Kinda like if Trump if he'd read a book.

― nashwan, Wednesday, 25 September 2019 08:41 (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

:/

Back when Occupy was a thing I remember our classicist mayor BJ failing Ancient Greek Stuff 101 when he didn’t accept that ‘agora’ was a marketplace of ideas and not just goods.

his awful shtick is strictly for people who find Richard Curtis joints so hilarious, most of the struggling proletariat from the shitholes think he's a horrible posho twat and a crashing bore short of a good fucking shoeing. Hence his well documented difficulties campaigning in northern marginals recently.

When Prometheus brought fire to mankind. In a tube of fennel, as you may remember,

Is there a name for this rhetorical device? It's kinda passive aggressively (?) reminding us that he's more intelligent than we are (?) - i.e. of course most of us don't remember, as didn't learn about Greek mythology at school.

The Oxbridge aside iirc.

that’s not to say that he doesn’t come out with genuine word salad - cognitive and verbal - sometimes, but most of the time he does *communicate*.

― Fizzles,

Trump is a highly effective communicator. A lot of the stuff he is picked up over is irrelevant (shades of that "your going to the camps" tweet). Then some walking sheet of paper comes on and you can't remember a single word they said because the communicated nothing.

Trump also knows how to read a room. Pretending he doesnt have these skills is the dumb thing

Classical Greek is his primary area of academic expertise, so it's a very specialised and easily seen-through play if so xxp

telegraph was an amusing read this morning columnist after columnist lined up to say that 'the people' won't stand for this etc etc always a balm to dip into its pages after a time away just when i'm starting to get annoyed at remain media almost handwaving away the result of the referendum and get reminded that in telegraph land they genuinely seem to think leave won with 80% of the vote.

isn't there some Aesop fable about a showboating bore who get's beaten to death with a lump hammer?

telegraph land they genuinely seem to think leave won with 80% of the vote.

― oscar bravo,

Leave won with 80% of the Telegraph vote

When he did the speech about painting buses as a hobby everyone thought it was deranged but it turned out to work to deflect search engines from his awful Boris buses and by extension other mayoral disasters so maybe there’s something similar happening here.

xps to self
I was thinking of The Fox and the Stork(er)!

he's a human chaff grenade

A people's vote you say? I thought you were for revoke? This is very confusing. Someone explain to me in three words. https://t.co/B8JtMBH1al

— Sinan Kose (@TheSinanKose) September 24, 2019

Trump is literally being impeached over a phone call he failed to explain away, so I'd say we should probably hold off the 'effective communicator' judgments just a little bit. There is a reason most politicians sound like a piece of paper.

Yeah all this stuff is entirely about firing up the right-wing/Brexit ultra/gammon vote, in his mind it doesn't matter how it looks to anyone else.

Unfortunately for him it does matter because you can't win an election with those voters alone, and it's impossible for any PM to actually do their job when they're pissing off virtually everyone they need to deal with.

nothing confusing at all about the LibDems "cancel a 50/nah people's vote instead/maybe government of national unity?/just anything but corbyn's evil labour because ppl with cystic fibrosis shouldn't have access to affordable medicine" stance

Just before the madness we're all stoked for:

Meeting of Labour Against the Witch-hunt with Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone and Chris Williamson is packed pic.twitter.com/4UwC8c5BGV

— Rachel Wearmouth (@REWearmouth) September 24, 2019

pom correct abt the caucasus and bojo is wrong abt tartarus -- tho having said if i recall my robert graves greek myths correctly,
(a) very often the myths had variant or overlapping versions*
(b) several mythological spaces were located more geographically than madey-uppily in some of the versions

*e.g. the wikipedia entry on tartarus mentions a giant called tityos whose liver was eaten by vultures (for attempted rape, at hera's behest, of zeus squeeze leto, mother of apollo and artemis) -- i doubt BJ is misremembering this, but i think he is mentally misfiling filing prometheus alongside e.g. sisyphus and tantalus

that's his main shtick and he can't even get it right, that's what too much stella artemis does to you kids.

and as we all know, prometheus should be filed alongside your alien quadrilogy blu-ray box set

in the bin