bojo is king, brexit is on, stuff is fvcked, tomorrow starts here -- new govt new thread new battle

xp in a very real sense, brexit britain has lost etc

In 2009 I was teaching EFL at a place in London, most of the students were on a visa where you did an English course for a month and were then given a work placement - they were from soon-to-join-the EU places like Romania and Bulgaria, and also Thailand, Colombia, Brasil. Loads of problems with this system, for example they would send actual doctors off to do picking and packing in warehouses in Cumbria, but T May cancelled the whole thing with no replacement at all, fuck her forever.

Full solidarity for the Greeks who’ve got “reclaiming the Elgin marbles” into the trade talks btw.

Would love for the Chinese to say they need reparations before signing any trade deal to compensate for the British trying to destroy their economy and society by trafficking opium in the 19th century. India making the UK grovel would be even funnier though.

as long as they make us buy their opium and cotton goods i'm cool

Loads of problems with this system, for example they would send actual doctors off to do picking and packing in warehouses in Cumbria

Interesting this as I was recently trying to research more this story from around the same time (and how it led to a trickle of kneejerk protests in the following years from Johnson, Farage and the other usual suspects about NHS staff with insufficient English

Yes, historically non-EU healthcare workers have required English tests, EU ones haven't.

fanks tracer, I appreciate the appreciation. gyac I am not qualified to dispense advice but I don't think only certain types of ppl are suited to having more control and say in what's going on in their lives. looking away is always an option, but there are different ways of getting more involved, it's not just canvassing. in part I think democratising structures is a rejection of the archetype of the activist, who is really just the shadow version of the professional politician. The Movement, as much as it exists, is towards a gradual collective increase in responsibility and sense of ownership imo.

making space for yourself (& others) in orgs, systems, and indeed, life in general, is mb the hardest thing, but ime every new sort of activity related to what I'll broadly call organising seems initially intimidating and awkward and then turns out to be.... fun? or at least invigorating. as I said I wld struggle to offer prescriptive advice beyond being flexible, attentive/ruthlessly opportunistic & sensitive to the shifting variances in personal/local/psychological circs. I am coming from a place of fairly extreme pessimist realism so disappointment and failure seem more like features than bugs, and entering into things w/ a mixture of low expectations and curiosity/openness/inexplicable enthusiasm is v useful if you can pull it off.

I wld love some union chat. there are definitely some more radical modern small unions (independent workers union - https://iwgb.org.uk/ - and united voices of the world - https://www.uvwunion.org.uk/ - have had success doing good things recently), but I've struggled w/ my complacent dinosaur union. my branch seem to actively put reps off doing too much, but even so you meet ppl and get in the loop, and the experience is good and useful if only in an 'assessing the scale of the problem' way. my rule of thumb ranking for the big general ones is: unite (at least semi-democratic) > unison (does have a leftist faction that might get in charge post-prentis) > gmb (lots of blue labour types) > usdaw (lovers of tesco management). PCS is left-wing but has apparently been absolutely smashed by tory govt, RMT, FBU, UCU all doing quite well I think.

I do enjoy labour party biz, esp during the election campaign, as well as following ongoing local issues & campaigns esp where there are consultations and forms that can be filled in and so on (on transport, homelessness, environment, planning, refugees, policing etc.). a lot of the time v few ppl express any interest so Putting Forward An Opinion is fairly significant.

is there any fairly wealthy country itw that's done a good job, or even sincerely tried to cut immigration? this is why matthew goodwin types, or indeed anyone raising the Legitimate Immigration Concerns feel like such bad faith actors - regardless of what the public think, cutting numbers doesn't seem to be on the table. across the world immigration is used as a way to expanding state & capital control, from migrant south asian construction workers in the gulf states dying in unsafe working conditions, to ethiopian domestic servants being effectively imprisoned and abused the households they work for in lebanon, to india making second-class citizens of millions of muslims by using concern about illegal immigration.

Kind of embarrassed to say it cos you put my own self-negation in perspective but I've really enjoyed your contributions on here and other political threads ogmor, you're inspiring and a model poster tbh.

^ cosign, even when we happen to disagree.

Yeah I haven’t got much to add (except we should consider a 77 thread for some of this stuff).

steady on, my only good posts are about john fahey

Incorrect, kind sir.

(was going to do an 'Ogmor Gonna Shine in My Backdoor Someday' pun but that seems... problematic)

get in the queue behind tracer

_has anyone on here read Superforecasting or wtf is was called?_

...

It but it is one of those pop-psych books that could just be a long-ish article.

Good to hear that while unemployment is at a record low, we do have 8.45 million people who are 'economically inactive' that businesses will be expected to upskill and train. I'm not sure that we'd want to risk distracting these people from their state of pure breatharian meditation - the latent psychic powers might pose some disruption to the rest of the happy workers.

"he uses german militarism as a successful example of what he was talking about at one point which made me laugh"

Manstein-splaining!

Both the unions in my workplace (PCS and Prospect) are hopeless when it comes to traditional Union stuff like better pay and conditions, they are good at making a lot of noise and bluster and caving in at the earliest opportunity tbf. However PCS are apparently good at supporting staff members with complaints and grievances - or, to be more accurate, they have one or two people who are good at it, I'm not sure I'd give the union itself much credit. As far as I can tell the only area where the unions are allowed, or prepared, to flex their muscles is internal recruitment. Here they have insisted, in the pursuit of complete objectivity, that the employer is not allowed to take into account an employee's work record, attendance record etc, but must base the entire process on the interview. The fact that you are an absolutely useless cunt, who can't do their job, wanders in late every morning, is on the sick for half the year cannot be used against you in the recruitment process - because that would be unfair on useless cunts.

hoo boy, some quality "should black musicians be allowed to suggest that racism exists?" debate on the Beeb tonite

PCS is full to the brim with trots

The three things that should be taken as given itt:

- Brexit is bad
- we’re all gonna die
- Blobby

The three things that should be taken as given for the subjects of this thread:

- fishhook is real
- all commentators are bad
- it doesn’t suit anyone in the British media to give a shit about anti-black racism unless they’re riling up the gammons for a bit of racebaiting

is there any fairly wealthy country itw that's done a good job, or even sincerely tried to cut immigration? this is why matthew goodwin types, or indeed anyone raising the Legitimate Immigration Concerns feel like such bad faith actors - regardless of what the public think, cutting numbers doesn't seem to be on the table.

Cuts in volume tend to be precipitated by economic problems - Australia cut skilled migration following the 2008 financial crisis and has increased it as the economy has grown again. But yes, the objective is very rarely to manage numbers downwards, it’s to control the type of migration. Ideally, the theory goes, you could turn immigration on and off like a tap, and filter for the exact profile of migrants you want to ‘recruit’. May is a real outlier in that she was motivated to cut for the sake of cutting, irrespective of the economic impact, and had to repeatedly be pulled back by more ‘pro-business’ colleagues.

The U.K. is massively hamstrung by not producing anywhere near enough people who can work a computer to keep a tech / services economy afloat or enough people in the caring professions (or willing to stay in them) to support an aging and sickly population. I guess theoretically both of those things could change with domestic investment but it doesn’t look like anyone is particularly interested in doing that.

Was listening to a deputy manager of a care home on the radio earlier saying she doesn't qualify for the minimum "living wage" because she is under 25.

https://i.postimg.cc/bww4cPG1/0-F887-CA2-DCBF-461-B-8-F09-7627394-DA77-E.jpg

lol this was delivered to us...and I didn’t get one

There’s a CONGRATULATIONS YOU WON pop up attached to that, argh

It’s this (this was not my opinion btw, I just found it cringe)

This messaging from Starmer... could be a fascist slogan? pic.twitter.com/Pjs5LtAgOz

— Socialist Dad (@shirleymush) February 19, 2020

more Alan Partridge than Goebbels

unity ? yeah right.. keep telling yourself that dickhead!

Omg

More than unimpressed by this literature from the Keir campaign today. Pointless policies, vacuous statements, and an unnecessary addition to my recycling. Finally am I really supposed to put this poster in my window?! pic.twitter.com/ppjI3coqN1

— Simon Darvill (@simondarvill) February 19, 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H5esfSC4F4

*This* is integrity!

The word pledge belongs in the Elizabethan age tbh.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERKTGlxXsAAW7Ll?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

!!!

he's just missing some raybans

I know this is far from the most important thing here but in some industries - eg the care industry - Patel's announcement today seems to be putting a heavy burden of training on businesses and other organisations that would otherwise be able to import skilled labour. And there's no guarantee the individuals concerned will stick the jobs out in any case.

How long before they start forcibly moving unemployed people around the country to meet skills shortages? It's the logical extension of what they're talking about here.

Wait you got one too?!

no it's the same one you posted.

If Patel thinks carers are "economically inactive" citizens wait till how much bigger the social care bill gets without them. She's fucking vile poison.

didn't the 2015 Corbyn election leaflet have a similar (slightly less cringey) slogan on the envelope? "warning: contains a new kind of politics" or something?

"Wait you got one too?!"

just received my integrity package in the morning post and got an email from Allin-Khan, this shit is getting live!

ah yes, immigrants - they do our shitty menial jobs, therefore we must tolerate them #votelibdem

So Priti, @patel4witham
Who’ll fill the coronation chicken sandwiches?
Who’ll dig cauliflowers out of freezing muddy Cornish fields?
Who’ll wash the hospital bedpans?
Who’ll clean our offices at night?
Who’ll feed, bathe and care for our most vulnerable?
Asking for a friend...

— Caroline Voaden 🔶 (@CarolineVoaden) February 19, 2020

that tweet is NAGL but she got monstered by Julia Hartley-Brewer so now I don't know what to think

culture wars eh?

xxp who will cleanse the piss from our diamonds?

talking of the diamonds of piss I was reminded of their forgotten leader the other day when some senile old cunt in the Lords was making a modest proposal regarding the grey squirrel question!

For the record, this kind of talk is extremely common among Eastern European immigrants.

Which talk, Pom?

Lazy Brit talk?

The idea that EE workers are “cheap” labour and therefore seen as lesser?

That without low-wage labourers from foreign shitholes (as per Donnie Trump), Britain will fall apart.