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

Even without a major crisis in the UK, so many export/retail businesses have bet big on China for revenue I think a fiscal stimulus is almost inevitable.

That’s before you get to the towns that rely on foreign students to keep alive.

I thought it was supposed to be Corbynism that was going to turn this country "another Venezuela" not the bloomin' lurgy and an inert tory govt.

Of course, they now have coronavirus to use as a reason for everything that's going to go wrong until the next election - and probably beyond.

great pic, real people in local newspaper vibe

sorry but amber rudd and the (now former) president of oxford UN women standing in an empty lecture hall is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen pic.twitter.com/kbdGJOEOYQ

— rose 🦇 (@roselyddon) March 7, 2020

would not listen to that collaboration

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/04/16/08/4B34AD6800000578-5620081-image-a-1_1523863117360.jpg

strong disappointed couple not served meat pies before 9.30 am at Morrisons vibes!

remember when Jeremy Corbyn did this and we had two weeks of investigations into how there may or may not have been a seat? yeah me neither https://t.co/PybniF1mSc

— mimi🏴🚩 (@ameliamcd_) March 6, 2020

me walking past my tory neighbours when i get coronavirus pic.twitter.com/FveWUz5a5d

— ryan 🚩 (@ryxnf) March 7, 2020

strong disappointed couple not served meat pies before 9.30 am at Morrisons vibes!

I think I have that Fairport Convention album

> lol twitter word is spreading that Bercow has endorsed Bernie? Can't find a source tho

last night's Last Leg on ch4?

(ah, ok, already mentioned. didn't read gyac's post closely enough)

I don’t blame you, I instantly go blind whenever I read about the last leg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ESiJkprWAAEa8Zy?format=jpg&name=large

aka I'm a one hit wonder novelist with a toxic personality and no talent, who nobody but other racist arseholes get on with, it is so lonely here boo hoo hoo.

All of these bigots who are just so fucking unhappy despite their fame, riches, and public platforms, I can only conclude that they will continue being so as long as <group they’re bigoted against> continues to exist, and even then. Like, the fucking right won. Take your fucking prize and stop trying to strip even the tiniest remnants of dignity to the marginalised.

They are not happy with such small gains as seeing the left completely fucking annihilated for probably decades in UK parliamentary democracy, that's not enough!

xp am just wondering what took Lionel Shriver’s friend until QT to cull her.

aye, she's been bang it long before that obnoxious QT appearance.

bang at it I meant!

Its an unusual genre, and very niche as it only affects a fairly limited subset of people. I'm not totally sure if this stuff is true, but I take it at face value enough - just strange that its fodder to either write, or read about. I can see who the audience for bigotry is, but the audience for 'my bigotry cost me some friends' is surely a smaller audience and probably a little too snowflakey for any kind of wider audience.

Its probably delving too far into psychoanalyzing from afar to know why this stuff exists (maybe something to do with not feeling accepted while at University?). That explains the writer, but much less so the publisher.

The constant griping at people talking about any form of oppression or exclusion suggests a kind of envy but this all just seems a subset of a wider blue tick malaise and ennui

what's wrong with being racy?

xp
don't go too Lucian Freud there mate. We just need to build a giant trebuchet to catapult her into space!

Lionel Shriver article uses the phrase "the majority of American blacks" - would like to imagine this is just a turn of phrase gone wrong, but it isn't, is it?

Oh mate

We just need to build a giant trebuchet

I've no idea what this is. I used to carry a shank but recently I've started carrying a snake emoji due to its heightened effectiveness in suburban spaces.

I can see who the audience for bigotry is, but the audience for 'my bigotry cost me some friends' is surely a smaller audience and probably a little too snowflakey for any kind of wider audience.

I dunno, isn't one of the central beliefs amongst this audience that they are not in fact bigoted and it is unfair of the world to suggest they are? Problem might be yer average bigot isn't likely to connect their own feelings and Shriver's.

Maybe you're right but I'm guessing most of the readership aren't really losing any friends over this as they probably have a lower level of connect and engagement, where its more central to the writers persona and life

"Escape Room"?!?

https://festivalpeak.com/what-is-escape-room-and-why-is-it-one-of-my-top-genres-on-spotify-a886372f003f🕸

shit's getting weird

🖼

📹

🐦[Here’s a big thing: Rebecca Long-Bailey is to announce tonight her support for open selection.

Not even Corbyn went that far. A clear break not only with the ’continuity’ mantle, but with a pack of candidates who all (at least purportedly) are in agreement on domestic policy.
— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) January 21, 2020🕸]🐦

"I remember reading mr tubular bells saying Branson was a rat and he once punched him on the neck for getting fresh with his girlfriend."

Reminded me of this bit from wikipedia re XTC's cheaply & hurriedly made video for "Generals & Majors":

_According to Andy Partridge, Branson appeared "because he's a complete publicity hog. He decided he was gonna turn up and keep suggesting that he be in the video. That is the worst video ever made by man."_

the worst email I've ever received pic.twitter.com/Zf5hKmhHad

— jack (@jrc1921) March 8, 2020

"hi I'm that unfunny melt from TTOI who has got lost in the quagmire of shit R4 comedy ever since...

this is like something out of The Thick of It

lol i got that earlier and my out loud response to my computer screen as 'oh fuck off'.

I thought it was supposed to be Corbynism that was going to turn this country "another Venezuela" not the bloomin' lurgy and an inert tory govt.

― calzino, Saturday, 7 March 2020 13:29 bookmarkflaglink

read this post while I was reading Clifford Geertz's excellent Local Knowledge where he describes his time in Java, in a way that, while clearly not the same as the circumstances we find ourselves in now, also seem applicable:

... health was poor, prices were rising, and life was altogether far from promising, a kind of agitated stagnancy in which, as I once put it, thinking of the curious mixture of borrowed fragments of modernity and exhausted relics of tradition that characterised the place, the future seemed about as remote as the past.

my bolding there, to highlight the bit i found striking. applying it to the UK, it made me feel the UK is now very short on progressive politics - global, educational, civic thinking for the future –, and very long on regressive politics, so that yes, the future seems about as remote as the past. more generally it made me wonder who the "unacknowledged legislators" will be as well. i feel there's a lot of good writing around at the moment in the UK for instance (just flicking through the doestoevsky wannabe stuff in a bookshop the other day confirmed this, even though it isn't all 'good' by any means. In short I feel we've got some good cultural legislators out there, but our politics is powerfully regressive and determined crudely to undermine any progressiveness through their tiresome and embarrassing culture wars.

"the future seems about as remote as the past"

lots of terrible people in politics misuse "progressive" about policies that are dishonest managed decline "skills wallets" that are just full of mothballs and coffin dust. This might seem like simple stuff, but just anyone having a plan including a managed future seems misrepresented as "radical" these days, it's sickening stuff.

sorry if this post completely dissolves and doesn't make any fucking sense, but it did make perfect sense when I typed it!

makes sense to me. i didn’t do a lot of hard work in my post there, but your point about the government being “inert”, but with the constant forth of brexit and culture wars at the same round, struck me when i read it in the context of that “kind of agitated stagnancy” line.

and yes progressive as building structures to enable the future and the people who will be living it rather than going into a screeching reverse back up the drive to Downton Abbey, while doling our tech solutions to further enable the gig economy.

FTSE now at 3.5 year low, below 6000 points. Money pouring into govt bonds. Yield on two year govt British bonds now negative. Govt can effectively borrow for free.

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) March 9, 2020

Is this the magic money tree come to life?

so this is apparently "seismic". I don't have a private pension or a mortgage or savings so stuff like this never quite feels seismic to me, but it seems like shit is getting real!

xp i was going to say "at least they can't blame corbyn for this" but apparently now it's going to actually work out well for the tories, if nobody else, fuck this.

It's a half-decent krach all across the board, don't know if I'd call it seismic (yet). Don't underestimate the influence of KSA's tinkering with oil production either.

xp is it? I don’t see this playing out well for them

Alex Salmond has been charged with 10 counts of sexual assault, two of indecent assault, one of assault with attempted rape, and one of attempted rape, but here’s a Scottish journalist likening that to “touching a woman’s arm.” pic.twitter.com/w09Ejz6MK3

— thot catalog (@see_em_play_) March 9, 2020

The Alex Salmond apologists are grim as fuck.

The Tory line for a decade now has been that it's fundamentally irresponsible for a government to increase borrowing during an economic crisis. The current lot have already proclaimed an end to austerity so should be able to borrow with impunity and they're shame-faced enough to row back on any previous commitments in any case.

The argument that UK pensioners benefit heavily from government borrowing was never actually made but it's true, for as long as lots of people want to buy gilts the government has to run a deficit.

The ongoing crisis is not going to benefit them but if things sour badly it won't be because they're short of access to funds.

it seems like at least a free hit for them, and more likely presents the opportunity for all sorts of unseemly shenanigans if they were a government run by lunatic ideologues which fortunately isn't the case

Is this prick an appalling concern troll in a landscape already past capacity with them? Seems so!

Phillips has been a vocal opponent of moves to extend a definition of Islamophobia drawn up by an all-party parliamentary group, as now used by Labour among others. Muslims were a multiracial group “united by a faith and a belief” and could not thus be treated as a race, he told Today.

Phillips, who chaired the EHRC when it launched in 2006, was among 24 public figures who last year wrote to the Guardian declaring their refusal to vote for the Labour party because of its association with antisemitism.

It'll be interesting to see who comes out to defend a Daily Mail columnist who once proudly boasted of having been crowned 'Islamophobe of the year'.

Sonia Sodha, who has been persistently on the right-wing of all the Labour party discussions, has pointed out how awful he is.

i'm sure Trev has fully thought thru any parallels between Islam and Judaism when drawing up his ideas on who can experience bigotry

I’m sure we can expect the former member for Dudley North soon, unless he’s preoccupied with other matters.

Maybe he's spent the last few months reflecting on how the people of Dudley weren't right behind him on everything after all ha ha ha