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

ah I see

Iannucci and Brooker. I would happily take them both out NKVD style bullet through the back of the head, although my hatred of Brooker predates Corbynism.

for balance i would like to add that Mark Thomas never knowingly made anybody laugh ever

Chris Morris dismissed him as "just someone who bullies receptionists" which was probably correct!

Geoff Norcott makes being a Tory his USP, like as if he works in a field full of lefties/radicals and openly being a Tory twat makes him a real enigma.

I saw Mark Thomas a couple of years ago in Stratford. It wasn't comedy, though, it was a staged history of his attempt to start a comedy club with Palestinian refugees in Jenin. Two of them had come with him to do the show. I thought it was incredible and parts were very very funny.

Jeremy Hardy(RIP), Alexei Sayle, Josie Long.. that's probably the shortlist covered!

Mark Thomas’ bit when he was going up against the serious organised come and police act cane round on the BBC recently, and I still think it’s funny although memories of simpler times.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007760g

Not mad at anyone who doesn't find her funny

Well that's me off the hook then.

yes we are aware :)

was just about to post that redpepper piece

Rob Delaney's probably had the biggest pro-Jez uptick of any comedian I can think in the leftysphere.

yup

Mark Thomas is a thing apart.

There's a double cd of his tales wrt Palestinian refugees and all sorts, it's stunning stuff.

I've been reading quite a lot of Swift this year and it occurs to me that saying "both Corbyn and Johnson are terrible" is very much a kinda world-gone-to-hell thing that satire (at least Swift's) often does. That disgust of the state of things, perhaps? I'm still processing Swift tbh, but I think that's what all these people were aiming for.

And if you cross with FBPE and Europe being the only thing in your imagination then it's unlikely you'd be able to distinguish sides.

Also the piece is just working through grief to me, something from before the 13th December, and now I just don't care. We have lost badly. And Ianucci can do something on Cummings, not Johnson...

xp this gives them all far too much credit

More Jonathan Pie than Jonathan Swift tbh.

Pie is so brutal that you're not even sure what he's supposed to be satirising

also just because satire has come to mean light entertainment with zingers about celebrity politicians that doesn't mean that's what satire is

Oh yeah it's doing a thing that is far, far removed from the source, and it's unlikely that it wasn't that either. But it's that conservatism of the world going to the dogs position...when one option really wasn't that xps

I was reading it more in a working through my hatred mode rather than grief. I get that it's all over now in terms of parliamentary politics, it hurt like fuck in December and when that melt piece of shit won the leadership election but grief is probably too strong a word, more like hatred and anger but not grief. I quite happily spent the first 40 years of my life never registering to vote and not giving a flying fuck about Labour and can easily go back to that without slashing my wrists!

fwiw and this isn't the thread for it but who cares my reading of Swift is not that he reached a "the world has gone to hell" position, certainly not consistently. partly he was involved in politics and he had a side, church and party. partly i think you have to look at individual works as individual interventions in contemporary politics, much of which is obscure to us now.

(side note here: the Bickerstaff letters more or less invented cyberbullying and are maybe the funniest Swift stuff of all, and his target really can't be justified in terms of political importance. it's just sometimes being mean to a dick is very very funny)

mainly my reading of Book 4 of Gulliver's Travels is as a satire of misanthropy. poor empty Gulliver becomes so obsessed with the grown-ups in the room, the rational uber-centrist Houynhnhmns, that he becomes this unfeeling inhuman douchebag who bans himself from human society, not to his own credit.

A Tale of a Melt is the worst book ever!

not dissing Swift ftr, just being a random shitposter!

Thanks NV xps

comedians are essentially the morris dancers of the establishment, it probably is a bit much to expect their poltics not to suck shit. But when they are exposed as the posturing, pretentious arseholes they are (which has been one of the things twitter is good at) who err more towards being tory than even the soft left on the political spectrum, then they don't like it and go into civility mode!

Observing them getting owned on twitter is much more fun than their comedy imo

Most of them are very shallow wells, xyzzzz. I think you are overestimating how much thought goes into their flimsy shtick.

a good example was that numpt dunking on Corbyn on HIGNFY and then sort of revealing his own conservative paternalistic politics in the diss.

In the UK i get the feeling with some comedians that there’s a sense-memory of alt-comedy and 80s punk sensibilities that has mistaken their critiques of capitalism, say, or of parliamentary politics, or of “conventional wisdom”, for a blunt rejection of the very idea of organised political programmes of any sort. less “pox on both your houses” and more “pox on the idea of houses in the first place” which both gives them the warm fuzzy feeling of being more radical than anyone else and a very handy excuse for doing fuck all.

a sense-memory is a good description because it is like a kind of imitative/preformative part of their shtick that wouldn't stand up to much scrutiny, because it is completely faked and not in the slightest a heartfelt thing.

performative

well apart from the out and out quiet tory comedians like Spiderman's nauseating dad!

Anyone else feel like today's "close pubs in order to open schools" statement from Graham Medley was a deliberate hand grenade lobbed in to annoy the government? There's a real shit or get off the pot vibe to it.

he's right though. The pubs being open is not only going to became a major transmission vector, it also reduces any authority the government have in bringing in local lockdowns. Because why should people accept any restrictions when people are getting pissed and not practising social distancing, just walk past any pub tonight and bear witness to everything just as it was pre-Rona.

you can't seriously prohibit people from visiting other houses and expect them to follow the advice when people from multiple households are getting shitfaced together, it doesn't make any sense and often people will respond to such a contradiction by just saying fuck your rules.

I think he's right as well and that's why it's such a smart intervention - basically saying you can have pubs or schools but not both right now is going to at least provoke a debate and focus a few minds.

I went into two pubs a couple of days ago and they were totally empty inside with booking only spaces in the beer gardens, which seemed safe enough but that's clearly not sustainable past September and obviously not being observed everywhere. Pubs are just more dangerous than anywhere else for all the obvious reasons.

Tbh I only had a pint and the socially distanced pub felt so unconvivial that it's cans in the park from now on.

cans in the park rules!

Don't like parks and don't like drinking from cans :(

Have to say though everything we know about this govt suggests they are absolutely going to try and have their disease ridden cake and eat it.

future epidemiologists will refer to their response as The English Muddle of Death, well see also Brazil and USA tbf.

how to get the worst of both worlds during a pandemic, the highest death-rate and the most acutely damaged economy with the most prolonged recession and then get brexit done!

What the fuck is this? What is he even on about? https://t.co/qVKF4eX0fH

— Sinan Kose (@TheSinanKose) August 1, 2020

good job he isn't remotely left-wing or he'd be toast already

@Keir_Starmer @lisanandy @UKLabour @CST_UK @LabourAgainstAS
Veiled antisemitism on show here. Considering the follow up tweet. Swift action is required, please pic.twitter.com/izm1r1JzKw

— Den Of Scholes😷 (@den_jw) August 1, 2020

That’s right, just post through it

My attempt at irony talking about thirty pieces of silver has been misrepresented by some comments & I am deleting it! Serves me right for rereading the entire bible in the lockdown!

— Barry Sheerman MP (@BarrySheerman) August 1, 2020

What is going on.

wow, mask off pic.twitter.com/aeTWelWAfj

— gart/barfield (@wurrance) August 1, 2020

Lads stop posting obviously fake tweets - the account has the same name as the Jo Swinson squirrel story

Calz, c/d?

@politicaltrims Best haircuts in Yorkshire XTG in Byram Arcade in Huddersfield!

— Barry Sheerman MP (@BarrySheerman) August 1, 2020

Think the "everything's gone to hell!" model is just the middle aged version of the "everyone's stupid except me!" model, which is something we were discouraged from doing when we had to do a short film for uni in my class. I think both are pretty much timeless, alas.

Xp
I got barred from all byram arcade hairdressers for the double offence of being a mirror breaking balding ugly bastard! But taking in mind the sky high rents businesses pay in the byram they probably saved me a pretty penny or two.