Tesseraction posted:

CoolCab you said that my obvious joke screenshot was too obvious but there's a furious man in my replies trying to debunk it, including retweeting me with a correction and replying to everyone who replied to me with a screenshot of the original manifesto.

Naturally I've accused him of doctoring the screenshot to protect Dear Leader and that the Cult of Swinson is truly terrifying.

justcola posted:

I've been really optimistic about the election - plus how can I convince someone else to vote Labour if I don't think they'd win - but having a bit of a wobble today.

If the Tories get into power I don't know how I feel about another five years of this poo poo. And the knowledge that media (print and digital) dominates opinion regardless of experience or even empathy, it feels as if the chances of any future left government is slim. The effect capitalism has on the environment, or health, education means the future looks increasingly bleak within our lifetimes, let alone the next century - we can't survive capitalism.

Spangly A posted:

the tories lasted 5 years as a coalition because lib dems are phenominal bootlickers. They hosed up the brexit vote and had their last competent politician moonwalk away whistling the theme from the west wing. They lasted another 2 years on their own, then the most popular politician in UK history became completely paralyzed for another two years after another incredible self-own, all while racking up record defeats and sackings, totally held hostage by a bunch of colonialist savages. Their new PM lasted months as one of the few politicians with cross-party popularity they had left, all while the entirety of British media staged several uncoordinated multi-year propaganda campaigns, which have destroyed what remains of the public faith in media impartiality. We are witnessing, for the 2nd time in two years, a remarkably similar shift in public opinion caused by the opposition simply being allowed to speak to the wider public through a hysterically partisan media. All this while the world literally burns and anti-capitalist sentiment reaches heights not ceen in a century. We in the UK must remember that the left is lucky to have an uneasy coalition around the platonic ideal of a social democratic party and leader - we are ahead of the fash here, and we must cherish and use that. Any glorious victories by the conservative party will be like the dying of the egyptian monarchies - announced at ever shorter intervals, ever closer to capital, until suddenly; silence.

We aren't saving the planet with a socdem party. We aren't saving the planet until come to terms with what must be done to those corporations that fuel hatred with algorithms and fires with oil. What we are doing is letting people hear, in plain english, arguments that speak to their alienation and that they know to be true to them. We are listening as they speak to us about these experiences, collectively, and we are watching the billionaire-controlled media completely lose their poo poo and their credibility. We are watching empathy return to british society in relation to the poorest, and we are watching that billionaire media drop their attacks on marginilised people in favour of preposterous red-baiting.

No matter what happens capitalism is already dying, and no lapdog protest organisers can change that with their tactics of self-incrimination, no exec can change that by screaming about teenage autistic girls being a plot, no liberal or tory government can change that by fiddling with NI and tax credits. There will not be stability for these parties again, and they are tearing themselves apart as they claw at a ledge they fell from decades ago.

The world will not be a bright or happy place for some time, but you can't stop history. There will come a moment when the only choices left to us are obvious; how many people do we want to bring with us? how much blood will we accept on our hands? How long do we tolerate inaction? The truth in being a socialist is accepting that humans can be decent just as much as atrocious. We can attack those power structures that allow atrocities because we know that, in their absence, people have always cooperated and survived in extreme conditions.


We're going to win this GE, but losing didn't stop us in 2017, or 1938, or 1926. What we see today might even look horribly like feudalism, but we already killed that once, and we will kill it again. No matter what happens, we will eventually rebuild the world as a better place. This threat is uniquely catastrophic, but as far as electoral politics goes in britain today, we've overcome worse to build better. We're going to win.

Pesky Splinter posted:

https://twitter.com/tristandross/status/1197081943181086721

Lib Dem Manifesto, p67 posted:

To reform the private rental sector, we will:

• Help young people into the rental market by establishing a new Help to Rent scheme to provide government-backed tenancy deposit loans for all first-time renters under 30.
  
• Promote longer tenancies of three years or more with an inflation-linked annual rent increase built in, to give tenants security and limit rent hikes.
  
• Improve protections against rogue landlords through mandatory licensing.
  

Darth Walrus posted:

Of course, 'you can't call the Israeli government Nazis' does run into the occasional hiccup, like the prime minister's son sharing neo-Nazi memes and writing columns for Breitbart. Also, whenever a minister is shown meeting with Yoav 'the Shadow' Eliasi.

Spangly A posted:

radmonger posted:

The essence of bigotry is saying something because you know that saying it will scare and traumatise your target, and you find their pain enjoyable.

jabby posted:

Someone in the comments said they really should ask the follow-up question to this, which is:

"What do you think the consequences of that would be?"

It'll never be asked, because it'd be utterly devastating to everybody except Corbyn.

Tesseraction posted:

Hahaha now I've got people trying to JUSTIFY squirrel genocide https://twitter.com/MrsArcanum/status/1197220904780140546

Pablo Bluth posted:

The correct way to implement species cleansing against grey squirrels is to aid the recovery of pine martens; there's evidence they predate greys at a much higher rate than reds, and allow reds to recover.

Pablo Bluth posted:

The correct way to implement species cleansing against grey squirrels is to aid the recovery of pine martens; there's evidence they predate greys at a much higher rate than reds, and allow reds to recover.

Pound_Coin posted:

Wizards for labour

https://twitter.com/johnreppion/status/1197216553009401857/

Angepain posted:

found this quoted on twitter:


wow a loan that I can use once to pay my deposit which I won't get back, this is brilliant renting is good now

OwlFancier posted:

I mean you might suggest that the israeli government are nazis because, uh, they're putting palestinians in ghettos and using ever increasing rhetoric about the need to wipe them out to make space for their ethnostate.

That's quite nazi.

Tesseraction posted:

CoolCab you said that my obvious joke screenshot was too obvious but there's a furious man in my replies trying to debunk it, including retweeting me with a correction and replying to everyone who replied to me with a screenshot of the original manifesto.

Naturally I've accused him of doctoring the screenshot to protect Dear Leader and that the Cult of Swinson is truly terrifying.

clear eyes full farts posted:

It doesn't hurt pension entitlement as long as they don't do something stupid with the lower earnings limit at the same time (there is a band where you are considered to be contributing but don't actually have to pay anything between roughly 6 and 8 k)

Spangly A posted:

Any glorious victories by the conservative party will be like the dying of the egyptian monarchies - announced at ever shorter intervals, ever closer to capital, until suddenly; silence.

Pound_Coin posted:

Wizards for labour

https://twitter.com/johnreppion/status/1197216553009401857/

The Guardian view on the Lib Dem manifesto: missing the moderate opportunity posted:

Jo Swinson’s commitment to revoke article 50 is a drastic measure that sits awkwardly with her party’s claim to the centre ground.

Britain’s electoral system is cruel to small parties. What prominence they achieve in mid-term local government ballots and byelections is lost in a general election, when cultural habit and constituency arithmetic see the traditional Labour-Conservative duopoly reassert itself in England. In a general election the identity of the next prime minister is also uppermost in voters’ minds. That person is unlikely to be Jo Swinson. The Liberal Democrat leader insists she is capable of the job and her credentials are no worse than those of any other candidate. But Ms Swinson will not command a majority in the next parliament and the public knows it.

Yet the Lib Dems’ most prominent policy – cancelling Brexit by revoking article 50 – is predicated on that outcome. Their credibility suffers as a result. The party’s manifesto, published on Wednesday, recognises that “in other circumstances” EU membership would be defended in a second referendum. How those circumstances might be engineered is not clear. Nor, in fairness, are potential deals and coalitions a matter for the manifesto, which has to presume Lib Dem government even if no one else does.

But revocation is an extreme step that sits awkwardly with the party’s reputation for moderation. This election presents a unique opportunity for the Lib Dems to occupy electoral space vacated by radical shifts to the left and right by Labour and Tories. There is a lot of room between Corbynite socialism and the Tories’ hard Brexit. To fill the vacancy, Lib Dems need to eschew unrealistic promises and speak plainly of complexity, compromise and trade-off. The implicit promise should be a leavening influence, bringing rational scepticism where others pump out ideology. The improbability of outright victory can liberate Ms Swinson to speak uncomfortable truths.

One example of welcome candour is the Lib Dem pledge, carried over from the 2017 manifesto, to finance the NHS with a one penny income tax rise. All parties are in a bidding war to fund public services and national infrastructure. The arguments over deficits that dominated politics for a decade have made way for a new post-austerity consensus, with even the Conservatives promising looser purse strings. Much of this fiscal bounty will be achieved by higher borrowing (regardless of who is in power) but a serious recalibration of what the state provides also requires tax rises. There might be loopholes to close and fat cats to squeeze, but the reality of a broader, more sustainable tax base is that many ordinary middle-income voters will also be expected to contribute. Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson pretend otherwise. To the Lib Dems’ credit, they do not.

Most of the manifesto is sensible and unremarkable, covering terrain familiar to those who pay regular attention to Lib Dems. The party is in favour of well-resourced public transport, a greener economy, civil rights and – their niche speciality – wide-ranging constitutional reform, including proportional representation and enfranchising 16-year-olds. The case for structural reform is bolstered by the spectacle of Brexit ripping up informal conventions of British democracy in recent months, but there are always more urgent matters demanding limited public attention in a general election campaign.

Under such constraints it is easy to see how the Lib Dems came to think their Brexit annulment policy was clever. It declares a simple position and speaks directly to millions who think leaving the EU is a terrible idea – a position many had hoped, in vain, to hear from Labour. But even within that hard core of remainers, many are queasy about flatly dismissing the 2016 referendum result. There are excellent reasons to oppose Brexit, but the means by which it is done matter. The sensibilities of leave voters should not be dismissed out of hand, least of all by a party that names itself after the principles of liberalism and democracy. Ms Swinson is right to be defending Britain’s membership of the EU. But her task in the coming weeks is to do it in a way that is realistically aligned with public awareness of the available outcomes in this election.

Pesky Splinter posted:

Even the loving Guardian are lukewarm on the libdems - still fawning, obviously, but lukewarm:

Jose posted:

rarity you probably don't want to hear this/you already have an electric toothbrush so it doesn't matter but my gum was giving me grief around my wisdom teeth all weekend/week so i bought an electric toothbrush once my UC came in and after a single brush with it the pain has almost instantly gone. The smaller heads and motion of it make it far easier to clean that far back into your mouth

Rarity posted:

I saw the dentist yesterday and it turns out that due to an impacted wisdom tooth one of my teeth now has a big hole in it that's decaying away which needs removing and the dental hospital won't be able to see me for four months. I'll probably get one at some point though!

forkboy84 posted:

lol at that subhead, LIB DEMS ARE NOT MODERATE ENOUGH. What a worthless newspaper.

Braggart posted:

The Right want to deport everyone who isn't a ruddy-faced gammon, while the Left want to deport no one. We should compromise by deporting anyone browner than say, a paper bag.

Miftan posted:

Also some of my family's last names have a Stein in them which we always pronounce as Sht-eye-n EXCEPT the UK branch that pronounced it St-eye-n, if anybody wants this to be more complicated and inane.

forkboy84 posted:

Better idea: Deport everyone who was born here. Put me on a one-way plane to Irkutsk.

https://twitter.com/RabbiZvi/status/1197076375389310982?s=20

forkboy84 posted:

I hear the Islington North candidate said shtein instead of stein.

quote:

The future of our country is in our hands ... so if you want to stop Boris Johnson and stop Brexit then vote Liberal Democrat. If you want a £50bn bonus to improve your life, vote Liberal Democrat ... If you want to work with our friends to tackle the climate crisis, vote Liberal Democrat. If you want to build a brighter future, vote Liberal Democrat.

forkboy84 posted:

Better idea: Deport everyone who was born here. Put me on a one-way plane to Irkutsk.

https://twitter.com/RabbiZvi/status/1197076375389310982?s=20

forkboy84 posted:

Better idea: Deport everyone who was born here. Put me on a one-way plane to Irkutsk.