love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

👏 MUST 👏 PAY 👏 RENT 👏

this is because they want to make sure they're locked into rental contracts first, right? that's what matters isn't it

— 12 oxen (@HINIONGE) September 10, 2020

"a quarantined wasteland of shambling half corpses aimlessly coughing and spluttering around"

there is no "new normal" on the great spice routes of The North!

xp

"The Tories in England had long imagined that they were enthusiastic about the monarchy, the church and beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent." Karl Marx

— Irishmonk (@castlvillageman) September 9, 2020

So much awful stuff. The illiterate deleted Phillips tweet. But the Tom Watson picture tweet - really? When you thought he couldn't go any lower.

well he's more limber
now he's shed some timber

I can't wait till he live blogs on the pulping of the ill-fated diet book he brought out just as the Rona was coming to Town and panic buying and comfort eating were all the rage.

there's a great take on the Jaccob Rees Mogg lounging in parliament shot in this week's 2000AD in the steampunk mini series about mystic worlds and Parisian detectives

I was really proud to act as Strategic Comms Consultant for this report. It's a really thorough piece of work, based on 11 focus groups and two polls carried out between December 19-July 20. Read Rob's thread for the key points. I'm also going to share some thoughts of my own... https://t.co/TPzH8W4rdu

— Ellie Mae O'Hagan 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 (@MissEllieMae) September 10, 2020

O'Hagan goes into some of the findings about approval and defensiveness towards billionaires

To be fair to the cunts the universities thing is not just about rent, if students can't make it to their £9k a year universities it's one of those totemic things that show that the government just can't run a properly functioning society right now (which is true, it transparently can't).

Some of these students will have had the double whammy of disrupted university education AND messed-up A-level grades and while they've created a whole generation of people who won't vote Tory for at least another 25 years, their middle-aged parents might do and are likely to be thinking twice about it now.

That's a very good Ellie-Mae thread by the way.

rank the o'hagans

Sean at the bottom on the basis of his LRB articles alone.

critical support for this glum focus group participant: "you never see anyone down the pub with a jet ski"

fully automated luxury space communism (feat.jetskis down the pub) now

andrew is the LRB o'hagan, there are two seans (not-great writer for the obs & high llamas guy)

I like the sound of this O'Hagan

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_O%27Hagan

William O'Hagan (4 June 1944 – 15 May 2013) was a British journalist on the Daily Telegraph and a butcher, known for his virtuosity in the making of top-quality sausages. He is credited with revitalizing the British sausage industry.[1]
He was the son of Ebbo Bastard, a South African rugby union player.

ebbo bastard's wikipedia entry is a (short) wild ride

Are we not all, in a sense, the son of Ebbo Bastard?

this will make ranking the o'hagans a tougher ask

we will need to get the opinion of a professional butcher

and a bastard

London based media clans with Irish sounding surnames are usually pretty rank!

you have to make sure they don't start breeding together, that's how Brendan O'Neill happened.

Oof. EU post meeting statement on UK Internal Market Bill - remove the clauses which break international rules by the end of the month or we'll take legal action against you: https://t.co/dDLto9trAw

— Kate McCann (@KateEMcCann) September 10, 2020

Has been a while since i studied international law but i'm reasonably sure this is not how international law works:

🚨 NEW: attorney general @SuellaBraverman has set out her legal position in defence of the Internal Market Bill and the clauses which undermine the Withdrawal Agreement. pic.twitter.com/XtIZW8Cssg

— Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) September 10, 2020

Or rather, the ability of a country to pass laws domestically that break international law has no relevance to whether it's legal to do so.

^which is why it's called 'international' law.

I don't get the AG's statement, other than it attempt to say "the government isn't breaching international law, it's just saying that Parliament is able to". "I haven't robbed your house, I'm just standing in your living room holding your TV. You should trust me that I'm not going to walk out the door".

xp

In fact no, it's worse than that. "I've taken the TV out of the front door, you should trust that I'll walk back in and put it down again. Unless I don't, because there are exceptional times"

best country ever

I won't carry this telly across the border of your property to my property next door

(I may write "there is no border" on a piece of paper and use it when and if it suits me)

Attorney General @SuellaBraverman still hasn’t resigned, but she has broken her recent silence on the Internal Market Bill by publishing a statement of HM Government’s ‘legal position’ on it.

It runs to one side of A4.

And it is utterly risible.

/1 https://t.co/jx1Jy2cAIL pic.twitter.com/xJvwej8yL5

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) September 10, 2020

maybe it's ok as long as you break no more than 6 laws at one time

How restless are Tory MPs over this? Is the bill something than could feasibly be defeated in the Commons?

Surely you are looking at a defeat in the Lords

every time someone uses the word "risible" the bad guys get stronger, sorry if this offends

Which could mean it's reformation as revenge lol xp

a tory *rebellion* has begun! an amendment has been tabled and is getting some serious tory wanker signatures.

lol I'm listening to Pienaar on Times radio

real old-school GOP surprised at what they've signed up too with Trump vibes across segments of the Tories rn

STATEMENT FROM MEMBERS OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE CONCERNING THE WITHDRAWAL AGREEMENT pic.twitter.com/4z53x3ht08

— Conservative Lawyers (@SocConLaw) September 9, 2020

Have to say these names look like they just came out of a random Tory MP Name Generator.

wasn't Benet Brandreth in Game of Thrones?

He has a law firm with Bobson Dugnutt.

Excellent piece.

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/11/tories-arent-incompetent-economy-brexiter?

Calzino listens to Times Radio?

Lorinda Long.

just listened for one day for lols + because I like my tory talk-radio to dispense with any pretence of impartiality!

this is why Starmer only seems to attack them on *competence*. He doesn't have any better ideas of a national economy himself, he's just owned by different paymasters and is very quiet on austerity despite how you are supposed to take it on trust that he won't be as shitty as them cos he's the Labour brand.

If Starmer can only attack them on competence and hasn't got any better visions for the UK then that is another decade of guaranteed tory govt

"These electric shocks are killing me"

"And they're so inefficiently administered!"

I know Edgerton can be a bit annoyingly like a FBPE professor on twitter sometimes, but I respect his consistent contempt for New Labour and its dogshit legacy.

he finishes his last book with the juxtaposition of people burning Thatcher effigies whilst Blair is grifting about, adding respectability for cash pr to murderous dictators.

That's a great and accurate piece by Edgerton, you'd think the Graun would be embarrassed to publish him