brexit negging when yr mandate is is trash: or further chronicles of a garbage-fire

Zizek did a joint Q+A with Kotkin about his Stalin biography a couple of years back. Big mistake, because Kotkin is a very interesting speaker, but Zizek shitted up almost the whole session with his incessant + ill disciplined rambling routines. I hate seeing him doing his "thing" on UK politics, it might be worth having a hard-right Tory style brexit just to deport this eejit (jokes of course).

I don't like Zizek (though I have found some value in some of his shorter pieces on political events). On the programme he came across as a buffoon, to put it politely.

But he was still something of a radically different on THIS WEEK in his wild eccentricity, endless talk and reference to being a 'philosopher'. The others treated him as a bizarre incomer.

"He's a buffoon but at least he's different" isn't selling this woeful sack of shock-to-order to me

It's why I went for court jester - he's the eccentric it's ok to like, whatever radical potential there might once have been in his politics has been totally drowned in a sea of shtick.

I am not defending him. I don't like him.

The latest YouGov poll has Labour on an 8pt lead. Nothing to celebrate yet tho, it is so disappointing that these fucks are still in government and still maintaining PIP assessments and rolling out Universal Credit. I got a lolsome leaflet about UC from my local authority advising me to have some savings to utilise while going 6-8 weeks without any income. It is rolling out here in November, so it will be a fun Crimbo! If I didn't have the kid's DLA coming in, we would deffo be having our first foodbank trip soon, so at least I can be grateful for something!

Ending up in the shit, just on that last desperate period of power exerted by a dying, nearly defeated government. It's sort of like getting shot at 10am on armistice day!

Ach that is properly shite Calzino - if you want something to celebrate imagine the fear that the 8-point lead has put in Tories Various.

thanx, AF.

Yeah, its exactly a month today since that most enjoyable election night, got to look at the positives still, if they had got that enlarged majority things would be so much bleaker. And for all of us really.

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/new-disabled-mp-accuses-government-of-eugenics/

The disabled MP, Jared O'Mara, (dude who took Clegg's seat) accuses the Tories of eugenics. I had this argument with someone (not on here) that it isn't hysterical or hyperbolic to describe what the Tories are doing to the disabled is as much the same as a policy of eugenics/a kind of "difficult decisions" polite version of the Aktion T4.

This same MP was one of the disabled ones who have been shut out of Parliament debates because of a lack of disabled seating.

He's also why the tie requirement in Parliament has been abandoned.

aye, and cue some tin-eared idiots saying Parliament's esteem has been reduced or something.

esteem reduced not for being full of careerist tabloid-pandering expenses-grubbing humanity-deprived humanity-depriving weasels but for having one or two fewer ties worn

sorry about yr situation calzino

jared o'mara is very likeable, comes across well in this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/disability-40462699/the-only-mp-who-wears-a-t-shirt-in-parliament

jesus, what next? Is Chuka going to tell us to stop being beastly to poor Nick Robinson? She ought to be apologising for ATOS rather than telling us to cut a Tory some slack. And it isn't clever equating "Corbyn extremists" with the type that murdered Cox. But at least Yvette reminds us of what a big-game hunter she is by slagging off Trump.

there's no need for beastliness in politics, it's not like it affects people's lives or anything

Much as Kussenberg's biases are transparent I do think there's a difference between pointing them out and calling her a bitch or whatever and I think Cooper could have forced the point of distinction better. Nobody ever successfully argued a moral point by calling names and denigrating the role of women in society. Nick Robinson is just as reprehensible but I bet the attacks he receives are nowhere near as personal or gendered.

apparently today's Telegraph is full of accounts of self-victimising Tories who people were beastly to during the election campaign, and who like Yvette, want a much nicer type of politics. Where people can get on with rending up the welfare state and the NHS, and folk will be much more civil to them.

i agree boxedjoy, there are plenty of misogynist gobshites of all political stripes on the internet and irl and anybody who wants to make a point using that language can gtfo. i think we've also seen politicians use the language of victimhood, as calz says, when what they really want is not to be challenged at all.

i think that's common with journalists too.

And posters

ouch

otm

as NV points out misogynists are thriving within the whole political spectrum. And Yvette has persistently tried to suggest that Corbyn is somehow responsible, and can click his fingers and go "stop internetting! my army of misogynistic anti-Semites!". But regarding the self-victimising of Tories and centrists, in recent history we have one murdered MP. And she was murdered by someone who would have agreed with May's "citizen of nowhere" rhetoric, and some of the UKIP policies she adopted. I have spent enough time reading depressing blogs about benefits cuts + sanctions induced poverty + related deaths, to see that the victims of austerity much outnumber politicians who have *suffered* recently, by multiples of hundreds of thousands at least to a dozen, or something . And as for Tories (and tbf the last Labour regime aren't blameless here either) not expecting some levels of raw anger at the coal face, after what they have unleashed onto the public in the last 7 years, is disingenuous to say the least. I noticed May isn't complaining about the abuse she suffered at the Grenfell site, at least not publicly anyway.

The bigger picture in this case is surely the revolving door of BBC into the Con Party, notwithstanding the 'liberal BBC' idea. This ought to seem quite outrageous, yet as with most of what the Con Party does it is not even scrutinized.

Maybe the politicians making capital out of defending journos could try to address these real issues rather than carrying on the trash talk.

Was a lazy opportune catchall sing tbh xps

https://www.economist.com/news/britain/21724827-labours-leader-will-badly-disappoint-his-young-supporters-jeremy-corbyn-and-bourgeois-dream

DING DING DING.

JOHN LANCHESTER’S novel, “Capital”, provides a vivid portrait of life in a street in south London in the run up to the 2008 financial crisis. The residents watch with delight as the value of their houses rises ever upwards (“Having a house in Pepys Road was like being in a casino in which you were guaranteed to be a winner”). But there is trouble in paradise. The residents start receiving mysterious messages through their letterboxes proclaiming: “We want what you have”. Soon the messages are accompanied by videos and the tone becomes more threatening.

Mr Lanchester’s novel helps to solve the biggest puzzle in British politics: why the vast majority of young people voted for a 68-year-old who has spent his life flirting with organisations such as Sinn Fein and Hamas and backing hard-left causes like the public ownership of the means of production.

Far from being a repudiation of Tony Blair’s policies, Corbynism represents the completion of the takeover of Labour by middle-class people who put their own interests (such as free university education) above those of the working class. But Mr Gray’s strictures miss an important point: most young Corbynistas are not so much settled members of the middle class as frustrated would-be members. Ben Judah, a millennial-generation journalist and author of “This is London”, points out that members of his generation are angry that they have done everything they were told, from studying hard at school to going to university to trying to get a respectable job, but are still holding on by their fingertips.

middle-class people who put their own interests (such as free university education) above those of the working class.

fuck off

Desperation setting in with these clowns, tbh.

The most intelligent explanation has been provided by John Gray in the New Statesman.

this john gray article was literally the worst thing I've read in the past 6 months

I can't remember the Labour manifesto stating the costing for abolishing tuition fees was going to be from lowering the national minimum wage and raising taxes for low earners. Lol! and the Economist's tone is that the working classes aren't also a "self-interest" group in wanting access to higher education, oh no they don't need that!

calling for cheap houses and free cradle to grave education, how bougie

labour's success will depend on the extent to which it can embed its agenda as the new common_sense, which in turn will depend on the extent to which it can crush the neoliberal stockholm syndrome which leads ppl to internalise 'better things aren't possible'

Mr Corbyn continues to mesmerise his young supporters with offers of free tuition and well paid jobs.... And the political class as a whole ignores the deeper causes of Britain’s stagnation, from stalled productivity to a failure to produce high-growth companies.

🤔

the idea that capital explains anything is preposterous. tho it makes sense to see it here - an overlap between the london literary world nepotism that made a car crash like that book possible and this sort of op-ed finger wagging at voters is perfect.

I don't know what the author's problem is with, surely Corbyn should be welcomed for carrying on the grand tradition of British politics, that of middle-class people putting their own interests above those of the working class?

the only person I've ever heard say a thing positive about john lanchester's capital is an avowed labour centrist

Lol! If you don't want self-interest middle class politicians ... erm vote LibDem!

I can see how you'd be attracted to Capital if you were literally incapable of seeing people as anything other than vague archetypes.

I noticed this delicious headline in the Telegraph during the week...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/05/tories-biggest-problem-no-one-remembers-winter-discontent-anymore/

They are floundering this lot. Let's enjoy it while it lasts.

If only voters could keep something that happened 40 years ago, before millions of them were born, in the front of their minds, at all times.

Lmao that would be the winter of discontent caused by low paid workers' frustration boiling over at years of public sector pay freezes?

All I can remember about the WoD was the novelty of candle-light during the national grid shutdowns. The Thatcher years, oh they were really fucking great times though!

We're there national grid shutdowns? Sure you're not thimaking of miners strikes a few years before? Seem to have fused together in a lot of pepoles recollections. But maybe there were power cuts, it's not like I can remember, had no object permanence at the time

hmm. you have me doubting my own memories now, but no, there was definitely a period were we having a few brownouts a week. But these events might have been localised rather than the whole National Grid!

there were definitely blackouts earlier in the 70s, iirc during the winter of discontent we stayed warm and illuminated by setting fire to the corpses piling up in the street

brownouts prob the wrong word, sustained power outages - I should have said.

Lol!