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

Great work from the ONS:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/24/almost-all-international-students-leave-uk-after-finishing-studies

Estimate that 'up to 100,00' foreign students overstay their visas each year.

Put out a statement that the 100k figure is 'experimental'.

Actually check and find that it might be a couple of thousand and they're not even necessarily staying illegally.

As a chaser, miscalculate the tuition fees they're paying by about £2.1bn.

And as if 100K was a problematic figure in the first place.

The bigger problem is that racists will just point to this as 'see how easily the stats are wrong - that's how we reckon there are way more migrants than what they say there is'.

laura pidcock 4 pm

https://i.redd.it/1dajcx7k4khz.jpg

Ms Pidcock, who is a vocal supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, said: "My very very initial reflections are that there are two basic types of Tory. You’ve got the ones – like Boris Johnson – who are so blinded by their own privilege and have never experienced hardship, that they genuinely seem unable to see what it’s like in our communities.

"If they see someone in tears from the sheer weight of everything that’s being piled on top of them their reaction is, ‘oh you’re being very dramatic’.

"The other type is completely ideologically driven. They seem genuinely to believe capitalism is the best way to improve society and it blinds them to the evidence under their nose.

"Whatever type they are, I have absolutely no intention of being friends with any of them."

She said this is because she considers them "the enemy".

Ms Pidcock explained: "The idea that they’re not the enemy is simply delusional when you see the effect they have on people".

Heh yeah I followed her on Twitter as soon as I saw that :D

Fucking August...

Pidcock only echoing what Dennis Skinner has said numerous times to zero fuss.

crucial difference for telegraph readers, tho, is dennis skinner's soundbites being delivered by *gasp* a young woman

real monocle-into-the-cormflakes material for the bufton-tufton set

Labour needs more Laura Pidcocks and less centrist cocks

wikipedia facts abt tufton victor hamilton beamish, baron chelwood (for tufton bufton is he):

"He avoided being captured at the fall of Singapore by taking to a rowing boat with seven other men. The men rowed to Sumatra but upon reaching their destination they found that it too had fallen to the Japanese…"

"He was strongly opposed to the Soviet Union's domination of Eastern Europe to which he addressed himself in his 1950 book Must Night Fall? In 1970, he published a book, Half Marx, warning against the rise of the extreme left in the Labour Party. His other noted publication was a book on the Battle of Lewes (1264) between King Henry III and Simon de Montfort, but he is most noted for his interest in nature conservancy"

His daughter is a ScotLab MSP, obviously

This "both sides" bollocks annoys me no end:

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2017/08/did-mainstream-media-smear-jeremy-corbyn-over-traingate

On the one hand yes Traingate turns out to be bollocks but on the other did u no that one of the directors of the company that revealed the new footage is actually the guy filming the original footage?

i mean so what?

Here is your centrist gran telling you to grow-up: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/24/denouncing-tories-laura-pidcock-mp-westminster

btw, has anyone written any counter to this?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/24/brexit-eec-britain-efta

Apparently brexit might turn out ok if we look to efta?

xp wasn't expecting the shout out to Militant's Dave Nellist in that article

Pidcock should look at the record of the 1980s Militant MP Dave Nellist, who was a master of procedure, and sometimes very funny, as well as often angry

a former Militant member once told me that their MPs were specifically forbidden from drinking in the House of Commons bars, lest they become overly chummy with the class enemy

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2017/aug/26/labour-calls-for-lengthy-transitional-period-post-brexit

this sounds good, hope it doesn't fall apart within a couple of hours like previous Labour announcements of a new brexit position

having read on a bit further, this bit doesn't sound so good:

Permanent long-term membership would only be considered if a Labour government could by then have persuaded the rest of the EU to agree to a special deal on immigration and changes to freedom of movement rules.

In this new BBC series, a team of intrepid detectives hunts down fictitious foreign students overstaying their visas pic.twitter.com/GqFbSsiijz

— Alexandre Afonso (@alexandreafonso) August 25, 2017

more like insipid defectives, innit?

o shit the tories have memes now, game over for the left

Welcome to Activate UK. #activateuk #meme #retweet #rt pic.twitter.com/PEqbyjjA4Q

— Activate UK (@Activate_uk_net) August 28, 2017

strong, relevant first effort there

what could possibly go wrong

Activate is an independent national grassroots campaign organisation that seeks to actively engage young people in the right of centre politics, make a case for what conservatism can offer and provide a platform to enable their voices to be heard.

We are committed to modern, open and member-driven politics in the Conservative Party, working to get Conservatives elected and ensuring that a Conservative government is in power.

We intend to reclaim the voice of young people in politics, bringing together individuals and groups in our education system, workplaces and communities. We will campaign and organise to ensure that issues that are important to them are heard, discussed and addressed.

Star Wars bores probably already Tories tbf

down with the kids

Dying at this tweet from the guy who runs it... pic.twitter.com/Gh5kALku6Z

— S★mmy✌️ (@samstyles147) August 29, 2017

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39399000/jpg/_39399648_tory_boy203.jpg

there's loads of kids already engaged in right of centre politics, they're called public schoolboys

#meme #retweet #fellowkids

srsly straining my brain to think of any current Tory ideas with undeniable appeal to The Youth

Pension triple-lock shurely

some of the oh so hilarious Activate pisstake memes doing the rounds make me feel like voting Tory, well maybe not, but stop doing this kind of thing please! Unless it is actually funny.

the dreary steeples that are nixing brexit:
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-parishes-of-fermanagh-and-tyrone-are-unravelling-brexit-1.3201011

"The Border problem can be dealt with only if the UK stays in the customs union and, preferably, also the single market. The announcement on Sunday by the British Labour Party that it now supports doing this, at least for four years but perhaps for good, is thus of great moment for Ireland."

this thread (read down the bottom) doesn't make his takes on politics any more useful but it does somewhat unstitch the "all jolyons must have lived posh untroubled lives" argt*

David Benedictus is my biological father, and did go to Eton. There’s no mystery about this: it’s in his Who’s Who entry. /1 pic.twitter.com/8W1woSHFn0

— Jo Maugham QC (@JolyonMaugham) August 28, 2017

•which has always been a bit basic imo (disclaimer: windmill man is still a chump)

I can't be bothered linking the Indie piece cos it has Frank Field in the url for starters! But TLDR version: FOI requests have revealed the DWP has pissed away over £40m on futile legal battles to prevent disabled people getting ESA payments, and the cost may be even much higher. ATOS + CAPITA have received £578m for "assessing" people for PIP since it launched. Shorter version: There is also a magic money tree when it comes to killing disableds, it seems.

was there a point where the Great British Public lost any shred of empathy for disabled people? I don't remember this base level of resentment and awfulness towards disabled people being on benefits when I was growing up with a wheelchair-bound dad, and that was Thatcher's Britain - is it just the army of cunty twitter Tories and Mail commenters emboldening the policies?

lol

Michel Barnier is acting like a smackhead begging for his next hit of our money. Time for this depraved addict to go cold turkey! pic.twitter.com/wSv7T5AWZL

— LEAVE.EU 🇬🇧 (@LeaveEUOfficial) August 29, 2017

xp
I often read comments like: there were too many people taking the piss, something had to be done .. etc. Like as if benefits fraud is the root of all society's ills and as if killing the disabled is a bit harsh, but acceptable collateral damage to sort out these malingerers etc..

I sometimes have conversations with people where I argue that a huge national benefits system is bound to be vulnerable to a small degree of fiddling at the margins, but it's better that everybody in need is properly looked after and a few people cheat rather than nobody cheats but sometimes those in need lose out.

And people look at you for a minute while their mouth does the goldfish thing and you can see their brain going "NO, BUT SCROUNGERS, KILL THE SCROUNGERS" and then you feel a bit sad inside

I've never gaf about benefits fraud, and sometimes in between company liquidations and layoffs - have quite happily committed it myself. At least people committing BF are putting it back into the economy, unlike those slippery tax avoiding fuckers, funnelling all their wedge into dodgy off-shore holding companies. Like our current Home Secretary for starters.

yeah i totally agree, that's just my attempt at being reasonable

i might start caring about the vanishingly-small amount of benefits fraud committed in this country once the corporations and the rich start paying their fair share of tax, but not a second before then

calzino otm in other words

100 % otm.

kezia dugherowngrave morelike

Probably bollocks but good if true:

A senior Scottish Labour source tells me Kezia Dugdale was "hounded out by JC's mob".

— Jamie Ross (@JamieRoss7) August 29, 2017

i want a mob too

jc's mob otm

i think the chances that she was "hounded out by JC's mob" are slim, but are of course going to predominate as the press is enjoying pushing the narrative that corbynite labour is a stalinist (or trotskyist) cabal.

here is what kezia herself said in her resignation letter (think this is abridged maybe? but makes clear there's no finger-pointing going to be going on from her) https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/08/kezia-dugdale-why-i-have-quit-as-leader-of-the-scottish-labour-party/

where they go from here is a bit of a puzzler. corbyn has done scottish labour a big favour with the election manifesto: while more conservative and unionist older labour voters seemed to have swung to the tories in scotland, young snp voters swung to labour. this is something that can be potentially be built on in the future. on the other hand this young cohort of former snp voters - or at least yes voters in 2014 - are potentially going to be put off in the long-term with corbyn's complete ignorance of scottish politics (his gaffe at the weekend that apparently showed he doesn't know that scotland has a separate legal system) and his disinterest in further powers for scotland/enthusiasm for the continuance of unitary government in britain. any leader who just parrots the corbyn line on these matters will look like the scotlandshire branch leader. anyone who, like dugdale, floats federalism, or even potentially someone who allows for less discipline around the constitutional question will be undermined by the uk leadership and will look weak

id imagine if the corbynites are really in ascendance in scottish labour it will probably be neil findlay who will be the new leader. union backed, sed-described socialist, anti-trident, pro-corbyn.

problem is he seems a bit of a dafty. but scottish labour is hardly an embarrassment of riches

kez says she's left the scottish labour party in much better condition than she found it in: "it's on its uppers," she said.