Seizing back control: The ILX lol brexit is how we're all gonna die thread.

Given the prevalence of anti-Romanian sentiment in the UK, I think it's fair to reply when the topic comes up.

That aside on a post isn't = anti-Romanian sentiment to me. I wasn't reading it like that.

The prevalence of food banks is genuinely distressing and in the fifth/sixth richest country in the world, the fact that people live like this is a choice made by the government.

This bears repeating, I think. The levels are really shocking when you compare them to other countries of similar wealth.

No but there is a rancid context behind it itt, which you subsequently spelled out.

xp

how dare anyone

how dare everyone

onwards to victory all

The levels are really shocking when you compare them to other countries of similar wealth.

Indeed they are. Which is why this whole argument is utterly idiotic in the first place: you can hold both this thought and refrain from arguing that poverty in the UK is on par with poverty in Romania without experiencing cognitive dissonance.

*simultaneously hold

No but there is a rancid context behind it itt, which you subsequently spelled out.

xp

― pomenitul, Tuesday, 18 June 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In your head, yeah

You can fully subscribe to this statement and be anti-austerity.

― pomenitul, Tuesday, 18 June 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No you can't. Few people in the UK experience this luxury. Many people on ilx are struggling, or if they aren't rn they are insecure about having any kind of future. Stop this. xp

An anti-imperialist pov, that's for sure.

"Things are worse in Russia. They're not much better in Prussia"

we now know that serfdom was more than slightly worse than the wilhelminist welfare state:p but it is cracking song is that!

On the contrary, nationalist dismissal of suffering is precisely what I am responding to.

This argument just feels like so much bad faith on all sides, the original calzino post was clearly moaning about people who do use Romania to minimize UK poverty and now there's all this anger at pom for supposedly doing the same when he puts a caveat in every damn post that it's not what he's doing, people are just bored I guess.

Also I think the term comrade alphabet and pom are arguing over is ethnocentrism more than imperialism but I could be wrong.

Sorry gyac, but I'm getting a little tired of this non-debate – I'm just going to point to the post in which I spoke of navel-gazing exceptionalism upthread.

I don't know about ethnocentrism, Daniel. To some extent, yes, but there is a segment of the British population that is more accepting of Asian immigrants than Romanians because the former had a part to play in the Glorious Empire of Yore. See for instance Fig. 7 (among Leave voters):

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/

"the original calzino post was clearly moaning about people who do use Romania to minimize UK poverty"

I don't really see much of this.

Are they the same ppl who say we survived the blitz we'll survive no deal?

pom we'd have you in the irish thread fyi

Aaaargh but on another note I saw that MR Seumas Milne had liked a joke about wanking on twitter but like a complete moron I didn’t get a screenshot & now the wily old fox has unliked it!

Thanks deems, I'd love to revisit Ireland (one of my wife's aunts married a Dubliner) and get speechlessly sloshed on superlative draughts again.

I don't really see much of this.

You don't see ppl going "stop whining about poverty in the UK, it's much worse elsewhere"? Isn't that what you've been accusing pomenitul of doing itt?

pom, I didn't mean so much in terms of what groups are affected, I meant that focusing on yr country w/o wanting to acknowledge what life is like elsewhere in general seems to me more ethnocentric than imperialist. I also feel like it's a totally separate issue to actual hatred of immigrants from whatever corner they may be.

I think Pom's issue with UK austerity stems from a graph from a Unicef survey I posted on a previous thread that put the UK on the same level as Romania for childhood food scarcity in households or something like that. I can't remember but I think he had an aneurysm over it and likes to witter about it a bit since! FTR I've nothing strongly against Pom, but projecting neo-imperialist insults on someone is a bit low and pathetic in the context of responding to someone just mildly beefing about your tone towards UK poverty on a UK politics thread.

I used 'imperialist' as shorthand for 'uses its position of relative privilege to impose its vision (of poverty, in this instance) upon objectively poorer countries'. 'Nationalistic' is probably closer to what I meant to say.

Galling irony intended, of course.

Daniel - I don't see much of this out there in public discourse, no. When the UN report came out (or a Ken Loach film that portrays the harshness of welfare) I saw denial from Tories that it's as bad as portrayed.

In the past much of the talk is around deficit reduction. And much further back Osborne going "the UK could end up like Greece" but that's again linked to the deficit. All about getting your house in order.

I thought Calzino's post was referring to that previous argument with Pom. Then I saw his hissy fit over it.

Then I did an imperialism.

'Tantrum', 'aneurysm', 'hissy fit' – totally cool ways of describing foreign correctives to self-absorbed discourse. I suppose I had it coming, breaking the circlejerk and all.

Talking about people being killed by austerity in the UK, in the UK politics thread = "self-absorbed discourse".

Oh so the reference to Romania was in my head. Gotcha.

Don't think you are trying to get it. But that's ok you are good like this.

fwiw I hear plenty of "don't gripe, things are worse elsewhere", here in the UK as I did in Portugal, too. It's a timeless classic afaict, popular across cultures and eras.

xxp
I've already explained how Romania came to be mentioned in the thread and it wasn't in a manner that was being reductive about the poverty there or looking down my neo-imperialist nose at Romanians, even if you did decide to take it like that.

Austerity nearly killed my partner with MS in '17. I'm not trying to be some armchair general here, and I genuinely despair at what I see austerity has done to the local community on a daily basis. I might be a repetitive angry cunt at times, but let me tell you.. it is heartfelt!

Fair enough, calz – I genuinely empathise. My main beef is with comrade alphabet at this point (or was, because every fruitless exchange deserves to come to an end).

Lads. Sorry, had to be said.

ah look

book a rest lads

The image of Corbyn solemnly reading the James Joyce letters to his wife (NB Joyce to his wife, not Corbyn to his) floated into my head and now I can’t stop thinking about it.

Anyway, I wanted to post this, so!

Islamaphobia rots you inside https://t.co/RZIQDzNRO6

— Tom Flynn (@Flynny123) June 18, 2019

it's a pisser when you lock the wrong portrait in your study and then it's too late when you notice ppl saying "whose that gaunt ugly fucker".

apols to the dorian gray rulebook which I'm a bit sketchy on.

Chuka left #Labour promising he’d never help Corbyn & crew get the keys to No 10.

Now he’s promised he’ll be a @LibDems ‘until the day he dies’

So @ChukaUmunna - come a GE & your new LibDem leader moves to prop up a Corbyn Govt which promise will you keep? https://t.co/7IcRips7lv

— Anna Soubry MP (@Anna_Soubry) June 18, 2019

soubz just calmly posting as she normally does after that 3rd g+t has kicked in.

At least she's clear about the unifying principle that held CHUK together

I think she must be the only person who is paranoid about a LabDem coalition happening.

It's obv:

If that was to happen, Chuka would leave the LDs.

He has form and previous, right?

if it did happen there is enough love lost between him and the dangerous extremist in no 10 that he wouldn't even get a joke cabinet post, with peaked cap that says "capn dickhead" on it!

Pretty sure he wouldn’t be re-elected if he stood in Lambeth.

was reading Chuka blathering on about how many different centrist thinktanks he sits on advisory boards for like this reaffirms what a progressive person he is, without mentioning how much these fuckers pay him!

Centrist thinktank is like sitting around saying "everything's pretty much great, maybe up the racism a smidge"

“We regretfully engage in racism (but still want you to vote for us)”

twitter is now like turtles all the way down except its the aquaphibian

honestly how long does it take to count 300ish odd votes