Ne'er get thee stitched til Booris be ditched: UK General Election 2019

ie they do this because they need to do this. and if they need to do this, thats good

The amount of people we know that are now canvassing or involved on an equivalent level relates to this too. Not just a getting older = getting more political thing. It's how extreme things feel, how much is at stake. A Tory majority is going to feel like a declaration of war (if it doesn't feel enough like that already).

a tory majority will literally be a declaration of war tbh

This is more about destroying the trust between the BBC and the section of the public that feel most passionate about it. Job done but if Mark is right and it was always bad then maybe it isn't the loss it could be.

the sponsor a labour canvasser fb group is seriously so wholesome. the ground game this time round feels so much bigger than 2017

'getting older - getting more political'

-- may be true but is counter-intuitive in a way! It's meant to be young people who have the energy and idealism to go out and protest and change things!

a lot more offensive too - without LAB HQ having an overly defensive posture and thereby misdirecting resources

I'm impressed with, or do I mean by, Sally Rooney.

"The left will become more radical, it has done in the US and it will follow here but we dont have an equivalent alt-mediasphere that the left have there. BBC is probably at the tipping point CNN/MSNBC were idk...5 years ago?"

This doesn't scan at all. If Sanders gets the nomination it feels like any of these would turn on him. Or be doing the bare min.

They have already turned on him

The really depressing thing is that these people are going to win, even if they just squeak home, its going to validate every lie and dirty trick played throughout the campaign, and it's going to be worse next time. I genuinely don't know what needs to be done to get out of this.

I think in terms of good things, regardless of the result, is that this election has been really masks off and lots of the centre left are noticing and saying it too. People will organise against this.

they haven't won yet, and anything short of a workable majority for them is a loss

Even if they do win I can envisage the government they form being an unmitigated disaster, much much worse than the 2nd Major government and ushering in a long period of them being out in the wilderness again.

Johnson is a disaster waiting to happen, he really is unfit for the job.

I still think the seat counts just reverting back to roughly what they were after the 2017 GE is the most likely outcome. An actual majority comes with a LOT of strangeness to unpack however you stack it.

Not to mention the clowns he's surrounded himself with. Odds on on him being forced out of office by Gove or Hunt or whoever before the next GE. (xp)

Depressing: reading the comments under basically anything about the nhs today. There are bots and then there are terminal gulls with no empathy or critical thinking skills

Heartening: talking to non-online people, I went into Coral to place a bet on labour winning and the guys who worked there were like “I hope you win, boris is no good”

boris in 2024: 'this unmitigated disaster is the fault of the perfidious european union, who stymied our every attempt to strike fair trade deals with them until the no-deal deadline arrived - the piles of dead in the street, widespread cannibalism and wholesale purchase of the nhs by american pharmaceutical interests is entirely the eu's fault (also immigrants)'

*tories squeak another electoral victory, the entire landmass of the uk is claimed by the sea*

lol I will never understand betting on your own team

Be right back, going down to wins' bookies to put money on Boris not being leader of the Conservative Party in 2024.

The other thing here is that politicians have become adept at gaming the news cycle. Broadcasters could, if they had brave enough editors, refuse to allow themselves to be drawn into it. Most of us would benefit, not least the broadcasters themselves.

stick a fiver on him losing his seat on thursday for me while you're there because i hope to use the occult power of william hill to will it into existence

my v superficial impression of laura kuenssberg is that she loves being part of it all, the gossip, in thrall of the establishment

― conrad, Tuesday, December 10, 2019 11:08 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes. She's trying to be untouchable and zigzag her way to some extreme centrist position where noone can fault her (her twitter bio is a big clue: no 'journo at beeb' but nonsense about not shooting the messenger, it's so childish, yet telling). Also, she's simply a really, really bad journalist. Really bad at twitter, too. And she's nowhere near as intelligent or insightful as she thinks she is.

― Le Bateau Ivre, Tuesday, 10 December 2019 10:12 (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Her writing style is just appallingly bad. Everything reads like a first draft. Why is every sentence a paragraph all itself? Her articles manage to be both distorting and meaningless, full of aphorisms rather than reasoning. Fundamentally yes I agree that this is down to her interest in politics as so superficially about personality and power. Her announcements and articles are gossipy, they remind me of very old-fashioned society columns and they definitely revel in the abject glamour of proximity to prominent politicians. Quite frequently her twitter feed exclaims "Hi, I was there": odd, uninformative announcements that "details are not clear yet" or even ickier the ones that are simply signal social involvement with other journalists and politicians. There was a big profile of her a few months ago in one of the big papers, the times I think. It sold its central story on her as an avowed outsider: not an Oxbridge graduate, *Scottish.* It made sense to me the source of her grasping desperation to be 'in' all the time, and revealed once again the ridiculously narrow rules that dictate membership of the ruling class. She went to the University of Edinburgh, its hardly a former polytechnic.

prfoundly cursed content

https://i.redd.it/ayructktno341.jpg

will no-one think of the rentier class???

She's another mutant expression of what has come to have been known as the Nultimate Substratum, the evil of banality made flesh

Here it is, the ultimate ILX Britisher quiz:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/10/the-guardian-election-social-media-caption-quiz

the bbc's psychotic lowest common denominator chickens are hatching

didn't local garda work for them and say that there were editorial meetings where they said they couldn't release any content if a slack-jawed bigot with legitimate concerns might object

Going full Epstein-brain but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if LK’s spell at notorious CIA recruiting ground Georgetown University might be a factor.

yeah i'm on board with that, why not

I think it's more that the objections of a slack-jawed bigot have to be ventriloquised by someone who doesn't really believe in them because otherwise it might look unbalanced.

haha that landlord pic xps

LANDLORD! CORBYN DEVESTATE HIM LIVLIEHOOD!

she loves being part of it all, the gossip, in thrall of the establishment

I interned in one of the BBC's parliamentary units about 15 years ago. From what I saw there is a politics journo 'type', usually male, who absolutely live to be inside the clique, to know more gossip than anyone else. I never came within spitting distance of it. The politicians themselves and their staff are the white heat of it, and they sun themselves in it. I'd be surprised if LK herself has any recognisable political convictions apart from this attitude, but of course the attitude itself aligns quite nicely with the sort of fealty to power and vested interests that characterises the right wing.

Here it is, the ultimate ILX Britisher quiz:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/10/the-guardian-election-social-media-caption-quiz🕸

Just had an argument with a m8 about the election. I think I’ve already had my big deep depression on this - 2016 was really hard for me, it was like the whole country voting against immigrants and the right to be a smaller, worse place*. But you look at how the media monster anyone who’s a Labour leader and you wonder how this can ever change? It’s really depressing and I’m reconciled to a Tory win and I think Brexit will destroy Boris too.

*and yes this obviously already applied to non-EU immigrants and people who aren’t white in general and I’m fully aware this is a privileged position.

Even if they do win I can envisage the government they form being an unmitigated disaster, much much worse than the 2nd Major government and ushering in a long period of them being out in the wilderness again.

― I've Got A Ron Wood Solo Album To Listen To (Tom D.), Tuesday, 10 December 2019 bookmarkflaglink

Timestamping some of these posts btw

The really stupid thing as well is I keep thinking about moving home and it always turns out to be a stupid idea and it’s shit because:

- healthcare isn’t free in Ireland
- housing would become a massive issue again
- I wouldn’t feel like I do know but my husband probably would?
- the government is hideously right wing already
- ???

Today I'm feeling cautiously upbeat. Thursday night I'm gonna go watch our Hannah play Aladdin, and then i'm either gonna hang out with friends for the results or sit at home, drinking either way, with the Disintegration Loops on.

- healthcare isn’t free in Ireland

How so? (I'm just curious, I know absolutely nothing about this.)

I also know nothing but I imagine that you have to pay for it

Yes but there's a spectrum with the US at the shameless other end.

Well, prescriptions aren’t free unless you pay over €134(?) a month for a family. It’s a big different from each one costing €9 if you pay here. And the GP costs €50-€60 a throw to visit. I was on my parents’ family plan for insurance the last time I lived there so not sure how much I’d have to pay there now.

Also it was pretty shocking to me when I went to get the pill the first time & it was free. That’s a big difference as well.

Is that the case even for lower income brackets?

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/ireland-has-third-highest-quality-of-life-in-world-says-un-report-1.4110646

Canada isn't in the top 10 therefore that list is invalid.

Cost of healthcare is partly offset by free water and free cheese iirc.

that sweet welfare Galtee