Not empty-quoting Also, in with a ground floor first page 'Hope is a Mistake' Because it is EDIT - Including the hope that I could get in a ground floor first page 'Hope is a Mistake', apparently. gently caress Erm, 2002 - our glorious reptile overlord celebrates her byootiful british golden jubilee
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 07:23 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 03:49 |
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The problem with instituting mandatory voting today is that you need someone to propose fining an enormous number of people for the first few elections, a disproportionate number of which will be vulnerable/low-income. You don't win any votes but you probably lose quite a few.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 07:53 |
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That's why offering a positive reward for voting is a better idea. If it's something like a tax rebate, it amounts to basically the same thing anyway. People end up with more money for voting than they do for not voting but it's portrayed as the government rewarding people for voting instead of punishing people for not voting.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 08:07 |
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ewe2 posted:Love the OP recap, terrific summary. If my country (Australia) wasn't already more hosed up than yours, I'd almost feel sorry for you. Can you take us through the process you blokes and sheilas had to get through to have mandatory voting? We're campaigning to have it here too.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 08:23 |
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Breath Ray posted:Can you take us through the process you blokes and sheilas had to get through to have mandatory voting? We're campaigning to have it here too. To quote the official AEC history: quote:Compulsory voting was first advocated by Alfred Deakin at the turn of the 20th century. Voting was voluntary at the first 9 federal elections. It seems the worry was that if it stayed voluntary one side might do better if they were better organised, and compulsory would even this out, not to mention some healthy state competition. It's still one of the better justifications for compulsory voting, that only the committed/extremist/well-organised political actors will always vote, whereas most uncommitted/swinging/average person would rather not bother if possible. So the short answer would seem to be organise better to the point of the other side wishing to revamp the system. Ironically our majors just tried to avoid doing this with a change to our Federal Senate voting format but the fools called a double dissolution as well that made it even easier for 3rd parties to get in so they got a Senate worse than they started with hahahaha. My only problem with this kind of "stimulus" is that if you're crap to start with, you're probably on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger curve to even recognise you're being completely caned, eg UK Labour.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 08:55 |
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Almost the olympics. How are we feelin' about that as a sporting event UKMT?
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 09:03 |
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When you get to the point at which you need either a carrot or a stick to get people voting it might be time to start considering that something in that system is basically broken and needs fixing. But forcing or bribing people to engage isn't a fix, and won't produce a satisfactory outcome. Figure out why people don't care or bother voting (hint: it's not simple laziness at root) and start there.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 09:05 |
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Sion posted:Almost the olympics. How are we feelin' about that as a sporting event UKMT?
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 09:06 |
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Oberleutnant posted:When you get to the point at which you need either a carrot or a stick to get people voting it might be time to start considering that something in that system is basically broken and needs fixing. Is it because every five years the proletariat gets to pick which section of the bourgeoisie oppresses them?
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 09:10 |
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Breath Ray posted:Can you take us through the process you blokes and sheilas had to get through to have mandatory voting? We're campaigning to have it here too. perception of modernity/scientific management of society/social good of mass mobilization/progressivism at the end of the long 19th century: quote:There is compulsory registration of births or deaths without objection, and compulsory vaccination in regard to which we only occasionally hear any protest. There is compulsory military service throughout the Commonwealth [of Australia] with very few objections; and also compulsory census and statistical returns by individuals. There is compulsory registration of persons practicising professions, or following certain businesses; and there is compulsory education in every State of the union. We have compulsory notification of infectious diseases, and we are compelled to comply with the requirements of Sewerage Boards. King O'Malley, as Minister of Home Affairs, in the Australian House of Representatives in 1911. Sawer argues further that Australian electoral officials of the age were strongly influenced by Chartist reformers in the metropole (or, to be precise, thinkers in the metropole who claimed intellectual descent from Chartism), who were much more motivated toward abolishing perceived mechanisms of corrupt practices back home (e.g., non-secret ballots and open nomination processes underscored with the threat of mob violence) by replacing them with "more meaningful" democratic mandates. That meaningfulness tacitly implies fuller mobilization of society, to the point where electoral officials took their professional mandate to include near-universal electoral participation, and indeed all conventional wisdom agreed. (there are some remarkable parallels between 20xx neoliberalism and 19xx progressivism in the sense of appeals to 'scientific', 'rational' quantification in the face of urban machinery, but I digress)
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 09:12 |
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It's good to start your Monday morning with some brain training, or even better, some mental gymnastics:
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 09:27 |
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Sion posted:Almost the olympics. How are we feelin' about that as a sporting event UKMT? Couldn't give a poo poo about it.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 09:32 |
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The idea of politics being some kind of sport that you "win" or "lose" is one of my biggest loving pet peeves. I still get wound up about political commentators on television comparing a potential electoral pact between Labour and the Lib Dems in the event of the Conservatives getting a plurality to "Chelsea and Arsenal combing their points to overtake Man Utd in the Premiership" or something along those lines and I'm pretty sure that was after the exit polls in 2010.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 09:33 |
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http://medium.com/mosquito-ridge/labour-the-way-ahead-78d49d513a9f#.iuv4j635t This Article is absolutely fantastic and a must-read for anyone interested in the future of Labour and the left in general in the UK
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 09:35 |
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ronya posted:perception of modernity/scientific management of society/social good of mass mobilization/progressivism at the end of the long 19th century: There's some nice historiography there, but I would add a couple of claims to what I started with above: 1. Australian government has always tended to be centrist and fairly authoritarian. Such "fixes" are natural to such a culture, although the rational edge added the final justification. They gave the hoi polloi the vote, not a reason to riot. 2. One of the reasons why compulsory voting works in Australia is that it removes a lot of work for the parties. It's a big country, it's hard enough to make noise in one electorate, have you seen the size of some of them? Voluntary voting gets reviewed every so often but the punchline is that means an extra cost, to get a turnout, on top of your policy platform/personality politics angles. That's expensive, and much better paid for by the taxpayer who wanted the vote in the first place, goes the thinking. quote:(there are some remarkable parallels between 20xx neoliberalism and 19xx progressivism in the sense of appeals to 'scientific', 'rational' quantification in the face of urban machinery, but I digress) One is an attempt to return to the other, in the vain hope that rationalism will fix everything. Depending on what version of rationalism makes you the most money.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 09:36 |
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Baron Corbyn posted:The idea of politics being some kind of sport that you "win" or "lose" is one of my biggest loving pet peeves. I still get wound up about political commentators on television comparing a potential electoral pact between Labour and the Lib Dems in the event of the Conservatives getting a plurality to "Chelsea and Arsenal combing their points to overtake Man Utd in the Premiership" or something along those lines and I'm pretty sure that was after the exit polls in 2010. In the case of the Ref part of it is because a lot of people who have never voted before had their choice come out on top, and part of it is because they genuinely believe they've just Churchill'd Europe (and the bastards in the UK holding us back).
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 09:39 |
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I'm okay with mandatory voting, with the provision of a "none of the above" box, where if that box "wins" all other candidates are barred from standing for x years. And slapped ceremonially with a moderately sized haddock (even new traditions require insane ritual. the british public expect it- dress someone in ermine and a wig and teach them to get a good flick on the wrist). The punishment for not voting would be vicious and cruel- random takeaway deliveries cancelled without your knowledge, car doors slammed outside your bedroom window at 3am (and if you live in some flats, I expect those window cleaning lifts and a cut-out section of an old volvo 240DL to be used to facilitate this) and some random haddock smackings. That will get tha bastards voting. HJB posted:It's good to start your Monday morning with some brain training, or even better, some mental gymnastics: Tbh, this was the *ahem* "logical" progression from "well islam isn't a race anyway".
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 09:40 |
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So, Owen Smith held a rally in Liverpool on Saturday. It was..not well attended. He also turned up for the Pride festival, for five seconds, just long enough to get his picture taken before being hurried off by his minders. Meanwhile, at Corbs rally in Hull: TIBFJC? Spuckuk fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Aug 1, 2016 |
# ? Aug 1, 2016 09:48 |
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ewe2 posted:There's some nice historiography there, but I would add a couple of claims to what I started with above: Australian nationbuilding doesn't seem especially centrist or authoritarian as nationbuilding projects historically go, by the by. (Australian lay historical narratives tend to be especially exceptionalist and parochial in a way that exceeds even American narratives, so I feel obliged to point this out). I'm not sure about #2. Winning office does not entail gaining the most voters but getting more voters than the other parties; low turnouts are generally good for incumbents. If this the main salient point, parties would hasten to abolish compulsory voting, and they would be in power to do so.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 09:54 |
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Spuckuk posted:So, Owen Smith held a rally in Liverpool on Saturday. It was..not well attended. WhiskeyWhiskers posted:Just continuing the mandatory voting chat from last thread, it's great, but you'd never get anyone in power to agree to a 'none of the above' option. You just need to make people aware that it's showing up to a polling booth and getting their name ticked off that's compulsory. If they want to draw a vulva or cock on their ballot paper and hand that in as an informal vote that's their democratic right. I'm sure Oberleutnant or someone else will point out that having a populace with a Kafkaesque deference to government form-filling exercises is the overall root cause problem there, and it is. That probably needs fixing too.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 09:58 |
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The Saurus posted:http://medium.com/mosquito-ridge/labour-the-way-ahead-78d49d513a9f#.iuv4j635t quote:nobody close to power in Britain actually proposes to break with the economic model of the past 30 years except Corbyn and his shadow chancellor McDonnell. someone should let John "IRON DISCIPLINE" McDonnell know! but actually, wait... quote:In turn this creates an opportunity for Labour to put itself — as the Libdems never have and never will — at the head of a progressive movement. EEA, eh. This is what radical change in an economic system looks like, comrades.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:02 |
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Guavanaut posted:August, the last month of Summer Back by appointment next July Wow, very thorough OP. Loved the bit about the pumpkin. But given the number of posters here with forms of depression as well as people sticking their heads round the door and saying 'this is why I don't read this thread any more' maybe we could include some good news stories in the OP too, just to get us off on the right foot each month. One to add to the OP would be the government initiative on plastic bags.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:06 |
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ronya posted:someone should let John "IRON DISCIPLINE" McDonnell know! Yeah that bit totally lost me. I can understand the leftwing Remain argument but a leftwing Rejoin? That's madness.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:08 |
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ronya posted:Reading Owen Jone's latest with amusement. This is a really good article, and deserves to be more visible here since it covers a lot of the ground that this thread (regularly) goes over.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:10 |
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Guavanaut posted:You'd think there's be a bigger turnout for someone who likes writing pieces in the Sun daring to set foot in Liverpool. To be fair, I walked past it by accident without realising it was supposed to be a 'thing'.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:13 |
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namesake posted:Yeah that bit totally lost me. I can understand the leftwing Remain argument but a leftwing Rejoin? That's madness. I think the idea is to scupper leaving rather than rejoining. It's clear that the three brexiteers will make a complete mess of this thing and public opinion will swing back to remaining sufficiently to quietly drop the whole idea.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:13 |
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I keep reading Guardian comment and it's crazy how right wing they are, especially when it came to Muslims. And I took a look at a Daily Mail comment section... and the most upvoted comments were basically the reverse of what you'd expect
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:20 |
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Lord of the Llamas posted:I think the idea is to scupper leaving rather than rejoining. It's clear that the three brexiteers will make a complete mess of this thing and public opinion will swing back to remaining sufficiently to quietly drop the whole idea. Or vote in UKIP/Farage's newest venture to do it properly.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:21 |
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I'm probably not putting my case in the best way; I see Australian authoritarianism as a continuum from colonial days; just because it might be a good idea doesn't mean it wasn't intended in a prescriptive fashion. If you can grab a copy of Keith Dunstan's Knockers, it's a tongue-in-cheek overview of the 'us and them' narrative that certainly fits your exceptionalist bill, no argument there.ronya posted:Australian nationbuilding doesn't seem especially centrist or authoritarian as nationbuilding projects historically go, by the by. quote:I'm not sure about #2. Winning office does not entail gaining the most voters but getting more voters than the other parties; low turnouts are generally good for incumbents. If this the main salient point, parties would hasten to abolish compulsory voting, and they would be in power to do so. It's a cost-balancing exercise. Early 20th century politics involved actually going around the place and speaking to actual people which may or may not then be reported in newspapers for people who could read and afford them. If one side is better at reaching voters or more better suited to get turnout perhaps for example, because they're chasing the urban vote rather than the country vote, then this is a serious disadvantage to those in thinly-spread non-urban electorates. Note that the Bruce-Page government was expressly avoiding that this conclusion be drawn, hence the private members bill. You may still think, well why does that matter, whoever controls the cities will be incumbent, but it bloody well mattered to people who owned large parts of non-urban Australia. If you read the full AEC link, you can see that the suggestion of moving back to voluntary voting is quite recent, suggesting to me that the parties think that modern communications have removed this imbalance but as you can see the opposing argument is that the results from the last four elections would have been the same. It's not an issue the parties are willing to broach with the public until they're certain of an advantage, which is also telling, because then the taxpayer has a right to ask why the majors currently spend their money until the last possible week of Federal elections when they "launch" their campaigns. Certainly not after the two-month campaign we just endured for little result.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:22 |
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Spuckuk posted:To be fair, I walked past it by accident without realising it was supposed to be a 'thing'. I was thinking to myself most of those people in the photo looked like they were taking an afternoon walk and were curious as to what the dishevelled middle-aged dowdy man was ranting about in front of 12 people.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:26 |
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Niric posted:This is a really good article, and deserves to be more visible here since it covers a lot of the ground that this thread (regularly) goes over. quote:I think the idea is to scupper leaving rather than rejoining. It's clear that the three brexiteers will make a complete mess of this thing and public opinion will swing back to remaining sufficiently to quietly drop the whole idea.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:27 |
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This bit, by the way, is not theory but empirical claims:quote:A new strategy must be based on the realisation that Labour’s heartland is now in the big cities, among the salariat and among the globally oriented, educated part of the workforce. It's certainly very interesting, as claims about demography go. Roughly speaking you can summarize it as: Labour should assume it it has the urban ABC1s in a bag, should write off the commuter belts as lost, and fight hard for the C2DEs (that it already has, without forming a Government). This is of course exactly the opposite of the conventional wisdom, which is holds that the battle is with the marginals in the commuter belts. I'm not sure how seriously the author himself even takes the argument. This is warmed-over Blairism: quote:To the beleaguered working class of the small towns it can only be: massive economic stimulus. Labour’s message has to be: we will flood your community with resources, jobs, training opportunities, transport links, nursery places and better schools. And even before we get into power we will bring decision-making power to your doorstep by putting you, the local electorate, in charge of the priorities we fight for. (note the careful avoidance of any mention where the resources will come from - i.e., PFIs. This evasion is quite noticeable if you recall Blair's speeches from 1996ish) And this is confabulation designed to appeal to marginals: quote:The issues that are important across both groups are of course: equal rights, the defence of free healthcare, extended state provision of both childcare and elderly care — and a dramatic reduction of university fees. (who have disproportionately more aspirational child-rearing and are disproportionately more likely to go to university) It reads like, as Owen Jones says, running center whilst pretending to be running left.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:27 |
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Kurtofan posted:I keep reading Guardian comment and it's crazy how right wing they are, especially when it came to Muslims. The Graun used to be relatively decent but the moderators seemed to have decided JE SUIS CHARLIE and therefore any racist poo poo is acceptable as long as it doesn't call for immediate murder.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:27 |
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namesake posted:Yeah that bit totally lost me. I can understand the leftwing Remain argument but a leftwing Rejoin? That's madness. That's not what he's saying though, he's arguing for a soft brexit as opposed to a hard one.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:30 |
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Sion posted:Almost the olympics. How are we feelin' about that as a sporting event UKMT? Truculent as usual. Much like inner city housing projects, it's poo poo because governments spend too much money on it up front and then largely abandon it once it's done. I'd probably object less if improved public sporting facilities and a 10-20 year plan to get regular people interested in sports was the main goal, and the summer of competitions was more or less a glorified housewarming to celebrate the opening. Baron Corbyn posted:The idea of politics being some kind of sport that you "win" or "lose" is one of my biggest loving pet peeves. If politics was a sport it would be Upper Class Twit of the Year.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:32 |
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Tesseraction posted:The Graun used to be relatively decent but the moderators seemed to have decided JE SUIS CHARLIE and therefore any racist poo poo is acceptable as long as it doesn't call for immediate murder. The Charlie Hebdo thing really did seem to break the brains of a lot of educated self-described progressives. I don't know if it was because it gave them an opportunity to express the racism that they'd been suppressing all those years or what, but way more than 9/11 or 7/7 it exposed a really loving nasty side of them.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:36 |
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Sion posted:Almost the olympics. How are we feelin' about that as a sporting event UKMT? I imagine like last time around people in general will be concerned about the screwing over of vulnerable people and a general attitude of making great sacrifices so that the IOC higher ups can get pampered as they put on a nice sport show, up until the moment the games starts in which people realise that sport is entertaining and everyone will forget about it until next time round. e: that's the Great British Public in general rather than this thread btw, I know nothing can break our cynicism Also I just learned the word "truculent" so nobody can say this thread isn't educational
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:36 |
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New word of the day, that. One of those five bob an hour words innit.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:37 |
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Renaissance Robot posted:Truculent as usual. Much like inner city housing projects, it's poo poo because governments spend too much money on it up front and then largely abandon it once it's done. The regen of Stratford has been pretty good although I accept that the Olympic park was in London. I'll be tuning in for the 100m final but as it's all on at 2am BST I will prob just catch highlights before work.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:43 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 03:49 |
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Sion posted:Almost the olympics. How are we feelin' about that as a sporting event UKMT? its going to be a massive train wreck that makes the sochi olympics look competent
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 10:45 |