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Grape
Nov 16, 2017

Happily shilling for China!

lol the sentiments toward Irish Republic in the US go deep on both sides of the political aisle (even if a ton of people outside of New England have Ulster Scots background instead, they don't know the difference lol). Even Trump probably has some caveman like feeling of "but i like ireland, bigly cool" .

Never should have made a messy careless partition and neglected the rump North to it's internal mess. Oops there's a border problem!
Never should have allowed that famine to amass a gargantuan diaspora lol. Oops even the idiot king across the ocean probably won't have the political will to back you up against Ireland!

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Pener Kropoopkin
Jan 30, 2013

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

(and can't post for 23 days!)

American Scotts-Irish forgetting what that means and identifying as "American" is the best thing about them.

twoday
May 4, 2005



C-SPAM Times best-selling author
https://twitter.com/MrLukowski/status/1090655148580454400?s=19

Grape
Nov 16, 2017

Happily shilling for China!

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

I don't think the American MSM is even aware that Turning Point USA exists, but they immediately get featured on the BBC.

Yeah seriously what the gently caress. :psyduck:
Like I was all "now really" when people were saying most UK media was some form of Fox news, but uh ....

tarbrush posted:

What's even funnier is that the EU had been consistently engaging with the various Irish-interested American politicians for months now, again demonstrating the magical power of thinking more than a week ahead.

ahahaha really?? Even the continent has figured this poo poo out.
JESUS the Tories are incompetent.

Grape has issued a correction as of 21:58 on Feb 5, 2019

CoolCab
Apr 17, 2005

glem
man my fuckin canadian passport is expired. oh well, bring on hell.

Randler
Jan 3, 2013

ACER ET VEHEMENS BONAVIS

Fallen Hamprince posted:

just adorably stupid

It truly was the Brexit that is right for Britain.

Captain Cappy
Aug 7, 2008

Britain can burn for all I care because QI got boring and they combined 8 out of 10 cats with a weird gameshow for some reason. I'm not sure if the country produces anything else besides that.

Regarde Aduck
Oct 19, 2012

c l o u d k i t t e n
Grimey Drawer

Grape posted:

JESUS the Tories are incompetent.

They gonna make bank. Stop making excuses for them.

Captain Cappy posted:

Britain can burn for all I care because QI got boring and they combined 8 out of 10 cats with a weird gameshow for some reason. I'm not sure if the country produces anything else besides that.

Some of us live here. It provides like the floor... that the house goes on. Thank you.

Regarde Aduck has issued a correction as of 22:25 on Feb 5, 2019

Heavy_D
Feb 16, 2002

"rararararara" contains the meaning of everything, kept in simple rectangular structures

Captain Cappy posted:

Britain can burn for all I care because QI got boring and they combined 8 out of 10 cats with a weird gameshow for some reason. I'm not sure if the country produces anything else besides that.

gently caress you 8/10 countdown is far superior to the original format and its stupid title is the albatross around its neck

Randler
Jan 3, 2013

ACER ET VEHEMENS BONAVIS

Heavy_D posted:

gently caress you 8/10 countdown is far superior to the original format and its stupid title is the albatross around its neck

I'm sorry, but Countdown was originally a French television format, so we have to put down the entire cast come Brexit. C'est le loi. :colbert:

Trainee PornStar
Jul 20, 2006

I'm just an inbetweener

Captain Cappy posted:

Britain can burn for all I care because QI got boring and they combined 8 out of 10 cats with a weird gameshow for some reason. I'm not sure if the country produces anything else besides that.

If you've not seen it, check 'the fast show' out..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZyRE8DAocw

Clyde Radcliffe
Oct 19, 2014

Glenn Quebec posted:

REMOANERS continue to attempt to undermine and
Usurp our ELECTED prime minister and we will not be
Lax defending the vote which is the will of the people
Elected officials or no the people's vote will continue.

Brexit means brexit, you cannot begin to try to
Reason with the likes of Jeremy Corbyn he is very
Ill and vile man who worships Maduro and Marc
To think about supporting this man is simply
Awful and shows exceptional ignorance to the issues
Now threatening the United Kingdom and as a patriot
Never will I allow there to be another illegal vote to
Ignore British will. Honestly would you want Mays job
Absolutely not with Juncker + army of bureaucrats.

(drat phone posting ruined the format. I'll bold it)

:golfclap:

I appreciate the gimmick but please don't spend too long on the BBC's Have Your Say comments, for the sake of your own sanity. "Stare too long into the abyss..." and all that.

I saw May's motorcade whizz by earlier today here in Belfast and assumed she was off to Stormont, Belfast City Hall or the InvestNI building; the usual places where someone might address NI business leaders. But I just caught a bit of her speech on TV and she was addressing them in the European HQ of Allstate, America's shittiest insurance corporation.

Fallen Hamprince
Nov 12, 2016

https://twitter.com/jameserothwell/status/1092850824986927104?s=21

brexiting so hard that govt ministers literally can’t step foot in Calais

Heavy_D
Feb 16, 2002

"rararararara" contains the meaning of everything, kept in simple rectangular structures

Randler posted:

I'm sorry, but Countdown was originally a French television format, so we have to put down the entire cast come Brexit. C'est le loi. :colbert:

RIP Jimmy Carr, where will Jim Davidson turn for material now...

Lord of Pie
Mar 2, 2007


Squalid posted:

lol this is the essence of brexit.

My favorite is the guy at 0:35:

"And I fink, you know, we're an island on our own, you know, and let's face it. We once ruled the world didn't we? You know, and now we're just being part of a community. I don't agree with it at all."

Can't very well have England being part of a community now can we.

Y'all are going up in flames because that guy was buttmad about the schilling going away

Bryter
Nov 6, 2011

but since we are small we may-
uh, we may be the losers
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1092821369719533569?s=19

Ichabod Tane
Oct 30, 2005

A most notable
coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality.


https://youtu.be/_Ojd0BdtMBY?t=4

Lord of Pie posted:

Y'all are going up in flames because that guy was buttmad about the schilling going away

Nonsense. Remoaner rhetoric. Please keep up and research or Listen before speaking. When we leave the European Union to take back control of our identity the least we can do is to go back to a more pragmatic Currency System.

Ayn Randi
Mar 12, 2009


Grimey Drawer
the conversion of real prices into florins and groats will neatly conceal that bananas actually cost 10 pounds a piece now

Subjunctive
Sep 12, 2006

✨sparkle and shine✨


this is evidence-based. pediatricians in the US and Canada have been calling for the same thing

Agean90
Jun 28, 2008


wonder how long after hard brexit argentina reclaims the malvinas

Bryter
Nov 6, 2011

but since we are small we may-
uh, we may be the losers

Subjunctive posted:

this is evidence-based. pediatricians in the US and Canada have been calling for the same thing

don't care what sickos have to say here or across the pond mate

Norton the First
Dec 4, 2018

by Fluffdaddy

Captain Cappy posted:

Britain can burn for all I care because QI got boring and they combined 8 out of 10 cats with a weird gameshow for some reason. I'm not sure if the country produces anything else besides that.

Taskmaster has revitalized the "put comedians in a room together and see what happens" genre.

Fallen Hamprince
Nov 12, 2016

Bryter posted:

don't care what sickos have to say here or across the pond mate

lmao

Captain Cappy posted:

Britain can burn for all I care because QI got boring and they combined 8 out of 10 cats with a weird gameshow for some reason. I'm not sure if the country produces anything else besides that.

Truga
May 4, 2014
Lipstick Apathy

Fallen Hamprince posted:

i miss when May's slogan was "red, white and blue brexit". Good Lord that was just adorably stupid
yeah, russian flag does own

Truga
May 4, 2014
Lipstick Apathy

i'd love a class by mrs. agnes, tbf

Ramrod Hotshot
May 30, 2003

If Brexit is going to turn the UK into 1920s Germany, is there a British Hitler waiting in the wings to fash up the next election?

JFairfax
Oct 23, 2008

by FactsAreUseless

Ramrod Hotshot posted:

If Brexit is going to turn the UK into 1920s Germany, is there a British Hitler waiting in the wings to fash up the next election?

Tommy Robinson

Cao Ni Ma
May 25, 2010



Hopefully its more Lenin than Hitler

Lord of Pie
Mar 2, 2007


Truga posted:

i'd love a class by mrs. agnes, tbf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0muUZTKCeBg

Elephanthead
Sep 11, 2008


Toilet Rascal
This Brexit poo poo has been going on forever. Is there any date where the EU just says that's it you're out, gently caress off?

Cao Ni Ma
May 25, 2010



Elephanthead posted:

This Brexit poo poo has been going on forever. Is there any date where the EU just says that's it you're out, gently caress off?

On the 29th of march my friend

and its less the EU saying you are out and more the british saying "Pip pip cheerio" before shooting themselves in the temple

Gum
Mar 9, 2008

oho, a rapist
time to try this puppy out

JFairfax posted:

Tommy Robinson

He's more of a rohm

I would blow Dane Cook
Dec 26, 2008

hakimashou
Jul 15, 2002
Upset Trowel

Fallen Hamprince posted:

https://twitter.com/jameserothwell/status/1092850824986927104?s=21

brexiting so hard that govt ministers literally can’t step foot in Calais

It took the french a long time to expel the british from calais, they gotta flex their muscles.

Crowsbeak
Oct 9, 2012

by Azathoth
Lipstick Apathy

Raskolnikov38 posted:

seriously though any britgoons reading this should be working on establishing ratlines out of britain before no deal brexit happens

Nah, with the Royal Family possibly being evacuated we might be seeing the establishment of the Union of Britain.

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

Break the chains, Britgoons!

Bryter
Nov 6, 2011

but since we are small we may-
uh, we may be the losers

Crowsbeak posted:

Nah, with the Royal Family possibly being evacuated we might be seeing the establishment of the Union of Britain.

https://twitter.com/JayElwes/status/1092100055325118466?s=19

JFairfax
Oct 23, 2008

by FactsAreUseless
A Plague of Rats: How Years of Austerity Prompted Many Britons to Vote for Brexit

by PATRICK COCKBURN

Thanington is a deprived district on the outskirts of Canterbury which used to be called “Little Beirut” because of its high levels of crimeand violence.

Caroline Heggie, a local resident, says: “When I moved in in 1998, half the houses [in my street] were empty. Out of 40 houses, 20 were empty because of antisocial behaviour. I moved into my house which had a broken window where a crossbow bolt had been fired.”

Di Hutchinson, a teacher’s assistant who has lived in Thanington for 59 years, agrees with her, saying: “We had a terrible reputation.”

There were no facilities for communal activities and the toys for a children’s play group had to be kept in the gravediggers’ hut next to the cemetery. Anger over poor social conditions grew so intense that it provoked a riot in the late 1990s. A local social activist who objected to youths smashing bottles on the road and handed a bin bag full of broken glass to the mother of one of those responsible says he had bricks thrown at his house and firecrackers pushed through the letterbox.

Paul Todd, a former resident who works on housing and homelessness issues, says: “About 20 years ago it was regenerated when it got a large dose of money out of the European regeneration budget.” The funding was used to make extensive renovations such as putting new roofs on the council houses and renewing bathrooms and bedrooms so the homes of council tenants looked better than those privately owned. In addition, the regeneration money funded a community centre, known locally as the Resource Centre, which provides space for sports and recreation, as well as accommodation for children doing homework which they could not do at home.

Paula Spencer, who has managed the centre since it was built, adds that the EU “spent £2.5m in doing up the estate and getting rid of the rat-runs. It used to be that they would nick your video machine and disappear down an alleyway.” Crime and antisocial behaviour dropped by 50 per cent as the regeneration measures took effect. As a newly arrived council tenant, Heggie says that she had been worried by the crossbow bolt incident but “apart from one broken car window on my driveway I have had no trouble since”.

The EU intervention enabled Thanington – which I previously featured in the first instalment of this series – to lose its nickname of “Little Beirut”, but its residents complain that they have lacked public investment ever since, and that this is beginning to show. The 2,794 people who live there work mostly in low-wage jobs, often as cleaners or in supermarkets in and around Canterbury, or they are on benefits. Educational standards are low, illiteracy is high, and many single-parent families are headed by women. Nevertheless, residents and outside observers agree that Thanington retains a strong sense of communal solidarity.

“It’s largely retained its village identity,” says Todd, whose relatives still live there and who has great affection for its people. “Everyone knows everyone else’s business.”

The only state institution to help preserve this small and vulnerable community was the EU, so it is worth asking why so many of those living in Thanington voted Leave in the 2016 referendum. At first glance, their actions, repeated in many deprived areas receiving EU funds in England and Wales, appear to be an inexplicable example of social and economic self-harm. Nevertheless, it was probably the high Leave votes in deprived white housing estates which tipped the balance towards Britain voting for Brexit. So it is important to discover why people from such places voted as they did in such overwhelming numbers. Was it a vote very much determined by opposition to immigration, or was it a more general protest by the “left-behinds” and the “left-outs”?

Most people in Thanington voted for Britain to leave the EU, and they did so because they are poor and feel neglected, according to Todd, who has known the area for 30 years. He says that there is an “assumption there that immigration has affected their prospects. I don’t think people are aware of how much Thanington did benefit from the EU. The European regeneration money certainly made a huge impact on the quality of the housing stock up there. It probably gave some of the houses another chance, otherwise they might have been knocked down. Some people want immigration cut and others think that talk of another referendum is an indicator that their concerns haven’t been taken seriously.”

Brett Bellas, a residential support worker with five children who has lived in Thanington for 10 years, agrees that people there feel neglected by everyone in authority. He points out that the full name of the district is Thanington Without [the medieval walls of Canterbury] and says that a running joke for people living there is to refer to it as “Thanington Without Prayers or Hope or Money” – a bit tongue-in-cheek, he says, but “for me it’s [about] lack of [public] investment”.

Bellas did not mention and may not have known about the EU regeneration effort which happened before he started living on the estate after years of homelessness and holding insecure jobs. In any case, the impact of that funding is running out and there are signs of growing decrepitude and insecurity.

“It’s quite a deprived area,” he says. “There’s a lot of people with drug problems and alcohol issues, and they seem to be moving families in who have already been evicted from homes because of antisocial behaviour. Everyone’s got a right to live anywhere but it doesn’t do great things for the estate.

“Over the past summer, we had a lot of guys coming down from London and selling drugs. They’d move into a house, take it over and intimidate the tenant – ‘you’re going to sell this for us’ – a lot of guys in Mercedes, real high-end saloons, who don’t fit on the estate. Then there was the shooting in the summer, which was a direct result of these guys coming down from London and that happened just around the corner from us.”

“It’s a lack of funding and a lack of police. You only ever see police when these things happen and it’s after the fact. Our kids don’t play out on the street. I know all my neighbours and I know all their kids, but it’s really difficult because there are people from off the estate come to sell their drugs that I don’t know. We had a heroin dealer set up in the house next door to us and for about six weeks, we had people knocking on our door coming to pick up their drugs up and it took 50 phone calls to the police to get them to sort it out.”

The shooting Bellas refers to took place on 19 July last year when two men in balaclavas shot and seriously wounded Danny Mobey in Thanington’s Godwin Road.

Bellas voted Leave in the referendum, denying that this had anything to do with immigration and saying that his decision was more to do with democracy and resistance to power being devolved to a centralised European government and unelected officials making decisions on his behalf. He says: “I just feel that there is something quite sinister and secret about a federal government.”

About the economic consequences of departure from the EU, he is optimistic, arguing that the Germans, French and Spanish will want to go on selling goods to Britain. He says that a lot of people he knows had voted Leave influenced by “the Brexiteers’ promise that there would be £350m extra for the NHS”. His two biggest concerns are the lack of policing and the decline of the NHS, where his wife works as a nurse, and which he fears the government wants to privatise.

Even in a place as small as Thanington, perceptions of violence vary markedly from street to street and person to person. Di Hutchinson agrees that things are getting worse: “I was ill last Christmas and I saw a drug deal going down and I was shocked because it was the first time I’d ever seen it.” Overall, however, residents and outside observers say that Thanington is no worse than other housing estates and other areas of deprivation anywhere in UK. (There are more affluent parts of the district away from the estate.)

Financial aid from the EU and other advantages stemming from membership had little effect on poor Leave voters in 2016. Either the EU’s achievements were under-publicised, or – and this is probably the crucial factor – whatever the EU did was not enough to counterbalance a pervasive sense among millions of voters that their lives are getting more pressured and insecure. This was as true in east Kent as it was in Cornwall, an example of ingratitude for EU largesse often cited. That county has a population of 530,000 and received €654m (£574m) from the EU between 2007 and 2013. It was due to receive another €600m before 2020, yet 54.5 per cent voted Leave.

Fear of immigration was probably the most important factor in the way people voted, but so too was the privatisation and outsourcing of utitlities and services, job insecurity, decline in real wages, high rents, deindustrialisation and a lack of cheap transport. The EU and its supporters can justly complain that Brussels is being unfairly scapegoated for failings that it has nothing to do with, and which should be blamed rather on globalisation, privatisation and the austerity policies pursued by Conservative governments.

Yet, even if the EU is not responsible, this does not mean that the deep discontent revealed by the referendum result is not real. Simply put, Brexit is a symptom as well as a cause of the crisis which has enveloped Britain and envenomed its politics. The ill-considered Remain slogan of 2016 – “Better Together” – was never going to resonate with those whose standard of living had stagnated or deteriorated over the past decade despite Britain being in the EU.

Thanington is a useful microcosm showing why so many all over Britain feel they are on the receiving end of multiple pressures. In many respects, Thanington is a community that feels under siege. Just to its south, a large new housing development is under construction. Spencer – described by one former resident as being “if not the heart beat [of Thanington], the one who brings heartbeats together” – says that this is worrying news for the community. She says that the two new communities with respectively 750 and 450 private houses being built means that “all the traffic going there will have to pass through the estate, which will cause resentment”. There will be little parking and children will no longer be able to play games in the street.

Transport is already scarce: according to Spencer, it takes two bus trips to get to the nearest doctor, while there is only one bus every two hours in the evening. A planned new exit from the A2, which is being contested by local residents, will make Thanington even more isolated from the rest of Canterbury than it is at present. And as houses become more expensive and cost far more than the present population on their low-paying jobs can afford, the traditional community will break up as parents find that their children have to move off the estate if they want find anywhere cheap enough to live.

Even more seriously, the insecure low-paid work done by many in Thanington does not provide enough to pay rent and food. The result is reliance on food banks and free school meals. Caroline Heggie says that people are becoming more and more indebted “because now you’ve got companies giving out credit cards to people with low credit ratings”.

A telling sign of the growing deprivation in Thanington – and the sort of event which may explain why people there failed to endorse the status quo in 2016 – is a recent plague of rats.

“People came to me and said that there were rats in their kitchens, rats in their children’s bedrooms, running over kids’ feet, and under bathrooms so there was raw sewage seeping everywhere,” says Spencer. The origin of the rat infestation is unclear: it may be that rats were disturbed by the new housing construction in nearby fields, or that the council no longer deals with rubbish that has been left to pile up. Cuts in public services of all kinds have hit Thanington hard, and services dropped include pest control.

A rat catcher charges £60, which tenants must now pay themselves though there may be 10 or 12 rats to be disposed of, necessitating more than one visit. Heggie says: “You used to have council ‘rat people’, but because of austerity, you don’t have them anymore.”

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/05/a-plague-of-rats-how-years-of-austerity-prompted-many-britons-to-vote-for-brexit/

Kassad
Nov 12, 2005

It's about time.

Fallen Hamprince posted:

https://twitter.com/jameserothwell/status/1092850824986927104?s=21

brexiting so hard that govt ministers literally can’t step foot in Calais

Fitting for a Brexiteer to lose freedom of movement ahead of March 29.

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hakimashou
Jul 15, 2002
Upset Trowel
Are the brexit voters the plague of rats in that story?

I've always called the 'alt-right' and all the internet meme right wing trash people and the racist moron trump people and the reddit "incels" 'rat people,' here in the states.

hakimashou has issued a correction as of 07:56 on Feb 6, 2019

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