it'll be Rory won't it?
― thomasintrouble, Friday, 24 May 2019 14:33 (four years ago) link
too fey and asexual for nasty party imo.
― calzino, Friday, 24 May 2019 14:34 (four years ago) link
the logical conclusion of that post could mean I'm sexually attracted to Boris and Theresa. Just checking if my local vets practice castrates humans as well.
― calzino, Friday, 24 May 2019 14:45 (four years ago) link
the internet's thriving nullo community has come great diy advice if the vet is reluctant
― michael keaton IS jim thirlwell IN ‘foetaljuice’ (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 24 May 2019 14:47 (four years ago) link
Went for Penny Morduant - little to no public profile (and if you want to do evil and fool ppl that you aren't quite that this is important), and a Brexiteer. Kate Maltby said that (unlike Leadsom) she isn't socially conservative. Lol and all but if she can get to a Cameron-type likeability across then I can see it happening.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 24 May 2019 16:19 (four years ago) link
negatives: name is a jk rowling villain
― imago, Friday, 24 May 2019 16:21 (four years ago) link
Negatives only to libs, the con faithful are all 1000 years old and wouldn't know wtf that is
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 24 May 2019 16:26 (four years ago) link
xxp I think not socially conservative is a little bit of a stretch because that certainly doesn’t apply to her stance on the military or historical war crimes
― gyac, Friday, 24 May 2019 16:30 (four years ago) link
Yeah totally, what Kate must mean is will be sympathetic on women's issues or some such guff.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 24 May 2019 16:34 (four years ago) link
cometh the hour cometh the man, michael gove
― findom haddie (jim in vancouver), Friday, 24 May 2019 16:45 (four years ago) link
Voted Gove cos he’s clearly done the legwork to make fellow MPs forget what a snake he was, he’s headbanger enough for ERG & the membership and has a lot of press sympathy. Plus the MPs can block Boris but they can’t block everyone and Gove seems as likely to get to the final two this time as anyone. Plus let’s face it, the banter heuristic demands it.
― gyac, Friday, 24 May 2019 16:47 (four years ago) link
Too weird looking to be PM, sorry not sorry.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 24 May 2019 16:48 (four years ago) link
This is also SV’s logic but it doesn’t apply outside a GE scenario (and applies to Stewart at least as much?)
― gyac, Friday, 24 May 2019 16:49 (four years ago) link
Applies to 95 percent of UK prime ministers tbh
― specific goats my way (Noodle Vague), Friday, 24 May 2019 16:51 (four years ago) link
And also Gove is what the Tory party (but afaict no other part of the country) considers to be warm and intellectual and personable, so...
― gyac, Friday, 24 May 2019 16:54 (four years ago) link
― Uptown VONC (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, 24 May 2019 16:56 (four years ago) link
last time they basically chose Dolores Umbridge, so
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 24 May 2019 16:58 (four years ago) link
Write-in vote for Coldplay's In-a-Gadda-da-Vida album
― specific goats my way (Noodle Vague), Friday, 24 May 2019 16:58 (four years ago) link
weird looking UK PM's from the old era don't count, these days Anthony Eden would get arrested walking too slowly past a school. Back then he was a certified sex symbol - proof: he had a hat named after him!
― calzino, Friday, 24 May 2019 17:03 (four years ago) link
Hitler had a moustache named after him tbf
― specific goats my way (Noodle Vague), Friday, 24 May 2019 17:04 (four years ago) link
if you asked for a Hitler on Savile Row they wouldn't pass you a moustache tho!
― calzino, Friday, 24 May 2019 17:06 (four years ago) link
Hold on, Boris isn't popular enough with the (non-Tory) general public but Michael Gove is??!?!? This is Boris all the way unless there's a concerted effort by the parliamentary party to stop him, in which case it's Raab. Hunt insufficiently Brexity.
― Ned Caligari (Tom D.), Friday, 24 May 2019 17:11 (four years ago) link
the general public just need the same XXX strength beer goggles sarah Vine wears.
― calzino, Friday, 24 May 2019 17:13 (four years ago) link
Feel like the canniest candidates might just turn up on Love Island this summer
― specific goats my way (Noodle Vague), Friday, 24 May 2019 17:13 (four years ago) link
I’m talking about this specific election which is confined to Tory MPs and members. Gove would get turned over in a GE.
― gyac, Friday, 24 May 2019 17:13 (four years ago) link
(xxp) Sarah Vine, there's another drawback. I'm wondering if Boris might even decide to sit this one out when he realizes the enormity of the shitshow that's developing.
― Ned Caligari (Tom D.), Friday, 24 May 2019 17:15 (four years ago) link
This is the thing - he'll have to do work, which is beneath him
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 24 May 2019 17:17 (four years ago) link
Sarah Vine would be piiiiiiiiiiisssed offffffff if she had to give up her column, for which she is paid silly but not quite Boris Johnson at the Telegraph money. Come to think of it, Boris Johnson must be skint from divorce lawyers etc....
― suzy, Friday, 24 May 2019 17:18 (four years ago) link
Oh yeah he won't be able to keep it in whenever he meets a hot head of state either.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 24 May 2019 17:20 (four years ago) link
Boris wins the vote.
He calls a GE as soon as the reins are in his hand, convinced of his own popularity.
He loses.
― Mark G, Friday, 24 May 2019 23:16 (four years ago) link
...to such an alarming degree he's forced into forming a coalition government with Labour.
― Zeuhl Idol (Matt #2), Saturday, 25 May 2019 01:00 (four years ago) link
What, those Marxists?!
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 25 May 2019 07:05 (four years ago) link
Matt Hancock, who is apparently the Health Secretary, has thrown his hat into the ring.
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Saturday, 25 May 2019 08:15 (four years ago) link
his perpetual beaming grin countenance will make him a hit with Cliff Richard fans.
― calzino, Saturday, 25 May 2019 08:20 (four years ago) link
Sad state of affairs when that insignificant little squirt thinks he can be come Prime Minister.
― Ned Caligari (Tom D.), Saturday, 25 May 2019 08:37 (four years ago) link
what's lower than 'the dregs'? May has long since passed the barrel scraping stage of Conservative talent.
― calzino, Saturday, 25 May 2019 08:50 (four years ago) link
I fear not!
― Ned Caligari (Tom D.), Saturday, 25 May 2019 08:51 (four years ago) link
Boris wins, don't think he'll call a GE though (also got to factor
Wouldn't be surprised to see a post-victory pivot of some sort though, maybe second referendum
― anvil, Saturday, 25 May 2019 08:54 (four years ago) link
xxp Mark Francois
― gyac, Saturday, 25 May 2019 08:58 (four years ago) link
Dancing on May's grave on Newsnight last night. Oddly enough it would've been an antidote to the 'she's human after all' dreck if it wasn't coming from such a disgusting place
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 25 May 2019 09:04 (four years ago) link
I saw Owen Jones’s clip of him saying why May deserved no sympathy was doing numbers on US twitter last night, which was nice.
― gyac, Saturday, 25 May 2019 09:17 (four years ago) link
Banter heuristic: Johnson or perhaps Rees-Mogg sneaks onto the final membership ballot (with inevitable victory to come) by a margin of one or two votes, thanks to the three CUK defectors
― Bash Street Kids: Endgame (Bananaman Begins), Saturday, 25 May 2019 09:20 (four years ago) link
I've worked out what Matt Hancock reminds me of - a vicar in an 80s sitcom whose daughter has brought a punk boyfriend to dinner.
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Saturday, 25 May 2019 09:42 (four years ago) link
Bananaman's prediction would be hilarious if it wasn't so terrifyingly likely to happen.
― Matt DC, Saturday, 25 May 2019 09:52 (four years ago) link
rory stewart has the only endorsement that matters
Thank you https://t.co/UaiseKqnWQ— Rory Stewart (@RoryStewartUK) May 25, 2019
― ||||||||, Saturday, 25 May 2019 09:53 (four years ago) link
lol
― shhh / let peaceful like things (wins), Saturday, 25 May 2019 09:57 (four years ago) link
― shhh / let peaceful like things (wins), Saturday, 25 May 2019 09:59 (four years ago) link
Exceptionally good!Cackling at the Hedges endorsement, that’s incredible.
― gyac, Saturday, 25 May 2019 10:01 (four years ago) link
God knows there’s enough of the other shite about. It’s bad enough the pious finger-wagging when these fucks die and you decline to pretend they were good people, we certainly don’t have to take it for a fucking career change
― shhh / let peaceful like things (wins), Saturday, 25 May 2019 10:05 (four years ago) link
I also enjoyed Nicholas Winton’s daughter coming out to slap down May (figuratively) and Lord Dubs too.
― gyac, Saturday, 25 May 2019 10:09 (four years ago) link
I was in Paris waiting in the queue for the Eurostar and there was an American family in front of me, and one of the Eurostar employees asked them which train they had tickets for (in order to make sure they were in the right queue) and they couldn't understand him at first and had to ask him to repeat, and once they did understand, and after he had started moving away, they smirked to each other and began mimicking the guy's accent and rolling their eyes, all very much "can you believe how bad this guy's English is" and I'm just boiling inside. DO YOU REALISE YOU'RE IN PARIS RIGHT NOW MOTHERFUCKERS? HOW'S YOUR FRENCH???
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, 5 July 2019 15:55 (four years ago) link
which is quite amusing since I sound North American af.
― gyac, Friday, 5 July 2019 16:08 (four years ago) link
lol the NA accent can be quite scathing when it needs to be, although I concede that its Canadian variant further dulls the edge.
― pomenitul, Friday, 5 July 2019 16:11 (four years ago) link
Yeah but you don’t have the scathing rolled R though, francophone version is no substitute.
― gyac, Friday, 5 July 2019 16:14 (four years ago) link
I speak English with a standard Canadian anglophone accent and Romanian with a standard Romanian accent but I can't, for the life of me, even when I'm sloshed, combine the two. I can do an English accent in French and a French accent in English but I am utterly unable to sound Romanian in any language other than Romanian. The beauty of ILX, however, is that you can still choose to hear that arch-scathing Eastern European accent in your head – I'm all for it.
― pomenitul, Friday, 5 July 2019 16:20 (four years ago) link
Anyway, sorry for hijacking this thread again, I just wanted to say: fuck off, Boris.
To make matters worse, his French is semi-decent for an occasional speaker. He's not fluent by any stretch of the imagination and he makes some amusing mistakes, but he seemingly understands the value of speaking more than one language:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEGtpSvGXEA
― pomenitul, Friday, 5 July 2019 16:38 (four years ago) link
Boris’s French is better than Gove’s (https://youtu.be/PlUJ-36-4ho) but worse than Cunt’s. Can’t find a good video of this but there’s about fifty videos of Hunt speaking Japanese, wtf.
― gyac, Friday, 5 July 2019 16:53 (four years ago) link
Also this video of TM speaking French is awfulhttps://youtu.be/0dbvZJqgp0A like even the Queen made more of an effort speaking Irish
― gyac, Friday, 5 July 2019 16:59 (four years ago) link
Bercow makes me angrier than Gove in that clip.
― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 7 July 2019 10:54 (four years ago) link
Bercow is always like this but he and Gove hate each other & genuinely cant think of a situation where I’d side with Gove.
― gyac, Sunday, 7 July 2019 11:07 (four years ago) link
Yeah, it's just the "well we're all just mates having a laugh here" vibe of it. Endemic to parliament I know.
― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 7 July 2019 11:16 (four years ago) link
Jesus fuck have we really got another two weeks of this?
― Matt DC, Sunday, 7 July 2019 11:34 (four years ago) link
I don't think Johnson's French is very good in that youtube given that he spent some of his childhood and several years of his adult life in Brussels. It's just the bare minimum enabling you to get by, ie typical Boris
― Zelda Zonk, Sunday, 7 July 2019 11:46 (four years ago) link
Again wondering out loud if any of BJ’s Eton fees were paid as part of an expat employee package that went with Daddy’s EC job, because wouldn’t that be *delicious*?
― suzy, Sunday, 7 July 2019 11:50 (four years ago) link
but Johnson is more immune to shame than most Tories, even. i think he'd be comfortable benefiting from something he intends to deny to other people.
― Polly Toynbee OK (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 7 July 2019 12:06 (four years ago) link
I don't think Johnson's French is very good in that youtube given that he spent some of his childhood and several years of his adult life in Brussels.
Tbf it's a lot easier to live in Brussels (a bilingual, even trilingual city) with a bare-bones grasp of French than it is in Paris. By the same token, there are born and bred anglophone Montrealers whose French is poorer than Boris's, alas.
― pomenitul, Sunday, 7 July 2019 12:13 (four years ago) link
Regardless, I’d love to see him answer a question about it on telly. The waffling would befit Belgium.
― suzy, Sunday, 7 July 2019 12:20 (four years ago) link
― pomenitul, Sunday, 7 July 2019 12:20 (four years ago) link
xpost you're no doubt right about Brussels although all the British people I know there speak French a damn sight better than Johnson!
― Zelda Zonk, Sunday, 7 July 2019 12:27 (four years ago) link
Will never forget taking a train from Brussels to Brugge and at a certain point they just abruptly stopped doing announcements on the train in French.
― gyac, Sunday, 7 July 2019 12:29 (four years ago) link
there are born and bred anglophone Montrealers whose French is poorer than Boris's
A random example of this: Steven Pinker, who spent the first 20+ years of his life in Montreal, gave a conference at the École normale supérieure in Paris and wasn't even arsed to take QUESTIONS in French. The amount of anglophones who don't bother learning foreign languages even in contexts where you'd expect it is absurdly high, and it's not even entirely their fault. This is simply how linguae francae work: language is power, etc.
― pomenitul, Sunday, 7 July 2019 12:30 (four years ago) link
all the British people I know there speak French a damn sight better than Johnson
I assume they want to be there, though, whereas Brussels appears to have been Johnson's In Bruges.
― pomenitul, Sunday, 7 July 2019 12:31 (four years ago) link
tbf pinker is a massive twat in other areas of his life also
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 12:34 (four years ago) link
Will never forget taking a train from Brussels to Brugge and at a certain point they just abruptly stopped doing announcements on the train in French
yeah when we were in Bruges the other week I had to explain to my son why his attempts at French weren't necessarily appreciated
― Polly Toynbee OK (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 7 July 2019 12:41 (four years ago) link
Can't argue with that.
― pomenitul, Sunday, 7 July 2019 12:42 (four years ago) link
Mind you the francophone bruxellois don't bother to learn Flemish, although they're literally surrounded by Flanders
― Zelda Zonk, Sunday, 7 July 2019 12:53 (four years ago) link
Yeah, there's a clear hierarchy. Regional languages in France have also been systematically quashed. My wife's grandfather, who was German-Alsatian, decided not to teach his children either German or Alsatian after WW2, although he himself continued speaking them as needed (in Strasbourg).
― pomenitul, Sunday, 7 July 2019 13:01 (four years ago) link
my father, a South American immigrant to the USA, didn’t teach us Spanish because he thought it would slow our assimilation. We learned it anyway. I don’t know anything about pinker (some popular scientist? not gonna bother) but people at the ENS pride themselves on doing everything public in English. Of course internal ENS power (all ENS people *really* care about) is carried out in French. Pinker just showed himself uninterested in that, which is fine, for the locals as well.
― L'assie (Euler), Sunday, 7 July 2019 14:13 (four years ago) link
Most francophones wouldn't go out of their way to give a talk in English at the ENS for the sake of showboating. And no bilingual Montrealer would ever consider such a thing, in such a context. I'm not taking issue with the ENS's openness to English here, I'm just saying that given the environment in which Pinker grew up, it's fair to expect some amount of linguistic sensitivity. Same goes for Naomi Klein, who comes from a similar background, and whose politics are far removed from Pinker's.
― pomenitul, Sunday, 7 July 2019 14:35 (four years ago) link
No, I meant he probably asked what language to speak and was told English (maybe with relief). Unless the entire audience is francophone an academic talk in Paris will be given in English. At least that is the norm ime
― L'assie (Euler), Sunday, 7 July 2019 15:20 (four years ago) link
he probably asked what language to speak
What I'm saying is this certainly didn't happen.
― pomenitul, Sunday, 7 July 2019 15:28 (four years ago) link
It’s probably the least of his problems today...
but what about Steven Pinker pic.twitter.com/YNwqNZ0SRM— Matt Hammington (@MattHammington) July 7, 2019
― gyac, Sunday, 7 July 2019 15:56 (four years ago) link