|
goddamnedtwisto posted:https://twitter.com/Gammons4London/status/1326690221958815745 Amazing twitter handle Also according to that thread his 'doctorate' is from an unaccredited American christian diploma mill
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 16:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 15:19 |
|
|
Just read the most sycophantic Johnson love-in on Facebook. Over 4000 comments (didn't read them all) saying what a wonderful job he's doing and how he cares for us all and how wonderful he was at the cenotaph. People really believe that poo poo. The only reason I saw it is because one of my nephews posted a scathing comment on there. I did write a multi-paragraph reply myself too but deleted it unposted for the sake of my blood pressure.  where's the :vomit: icon when you need it?
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 16:46
|
|
|
what's going on with Brexit these days?
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 16:51
|
|
|
I honestly didn't realise that UKIP was still a going concern. I thought they all either went with Farage or joined the EDL and associated fash.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 16:51
|
|
|
Marmaduke! posted:I get sick of seeing people post "number go up", but... number go up? Any number! The Tory leadership is so steeped in neoliberal ideology that they'd rather begrudgingly implement half arsed indirect commercial 'stimulus' policies everyone knows are ineffective and contribute to transmission than acknowledge the glaringly obvious reality that this pandemic is a crisis point that requires strong leadership and decisive state intervention across the board. Of course this is perfectly on brand - better a thousand people needlessly choke and starve than one gets a penny they don't deserve. So talk a big game, implement a few incoherent, ineffective, and barely enforced lockdowns and economic policies, then blame the public when things blow up in your face. I don't think they're really cargo culting here because I don't think there's ever been any expectation that any of this will work to any real extent. They're grifters through and through. The appearance of governance is necessary to preserve a facade of legitimacy, no more. There's no incompetence here - they're playing an entirely different game and they're playing it very well indeed. There's a certain irony here in that the image of the benefits cheat is often used as a vilified scapegoat where according to the governing ideology such a person should be celebrated (and is in the case of SERCO and all the rest) . And the truth is that's absolutely correct. Sunak et al couldn't give a poo poo about benefits cheats and might in some respects admire them. They only become anathema when they're caught, and only then as a result of a kind of necessary fetishistic disavowal to bridge the obvious gap between governing ideology in truth and governing ideology in perception. But that's when the class antagonism really comes into play - punish the working class for doing exactly what everything around them encourages they do at every turn. I may be barking up the wrong tree here but I feel like the post-Thatcher conservative embrace of ideological neoliberalism is unprecedented in its purity, weirdly enough. It felt like a tool to beat the left, for Thatcher, but something always engaged with a healthy cynicism - she was happy, like Reagan, to mobilise state resources where it suited bourgeois class interests. This government though seems content to sacrifice its own core constituency in the name of the number, and that's where they do get weirdly cargo culty. Covid affects the poor and vulnerable more keenly, sure, but the total lack of a public health response infringes on the welfare of the elite too. While there are increasing numbers of students from non traditional backgrounds and working class backgrounds, universities are still relative centres of privilege - particularly your oxbridges and redbricks - and students have been resolutely hosed over wholesale. I cannot imagine this government managing ww2 without having panzers landing in Kent by 1942 as bojo and pals dithered over which of their completely unqualified pals to award the multi million pound aircraft manufacturing contract to, ending up with three cobbled together biplanes in a field in Cheshire. And I say this with full awareness of how poo poo the early 20th c tories also were. I just cannot picture the current party presiding over the necessary extent of state direction, let alone doing it even remotely competently. I suppose the one positive to take from this is that this is an entirely unsustainable form of governance and the current leadership lack any of the political acumen of Thatcher, making it even moreso. The issue is how painful the transition to whatever comes after will be, and what exactly does come after. We're at a crossroads, and it's both very very exciting and extremely scary. ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Nov 12, 2020 |
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 16:57
|
|
|
kustomkarkommando posted:From what I've heard in chatter the CMOs briefing was enough to spook some of the MLAs in the DUP to worry that if they just let the regulations lapse entirely they would shoulder the entrity of the blame if tighter family gathering restrictions have to be brought in over Christmas, the Dodds proposal of "everything but the devil's buttermilk" being an attempt to find a mid way point between end the lockdown now and also we can't lose more votes to alliance poles in the party. Point of correction. The Republic is in level 5 lockdown, not 4. Also at the moment the total number of new cases per day in ROI for Covid is much less than NI's new cases per day. Which has to be alarming for Northern Politicians about what will happen to their numbers if they re-open the country.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 17:06
|
|
|
Does anyone remember if it was a chrome extension or redirect site to deny the Heil etc al revenue, and bring down the firewalls? I *was* reading a delightful salty piece by Big Nige.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 17:08
|
|
|
ThomasPaine posted:I cannot imagine this government managing ww2 without having panzers landing in Kent by 1942 as bojo and pals dithered over which of their completely unqualified pals to award the multi million pound aircraft manufacturing contract to, ending up with three cobbled together biplanes in a field in Cheshire. And I say this with full awareness of how poo poo the early 20th c tories also were. I just cannot picture the current party presiding over the necessary extent of state direction, let alone doing it even remotely competently.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 17:15
|
|
|
O fonts of all knowledge: Does anyone have a link to a handy schedule of all the information relating to the management of a leasehold block we should collect? I could draw one up myself but might miss something and it might take forever, so if there's one I could use already done it would be a great help. Before you send me to the wall, all the lessees (including me) in our block are also members of the management company which is also the freeholder. I'm now chair and director of the management company and want to ensure that we have a full schedule of all relevant information! (As an example: we need to get the electricity meters read for the common parts but no one knows who has the key to the relevant cupboard! We think it may be with someone who moved out into a care home and is selling up but no way of contacting him! - OK we could break the lock and get a new one but it's just one example.) I'm particularly concerned as the Treasurer who manages the bank account and pays all the bills is into her 80s and has breast cancer which is not getting treated properly due to covid-19 and she doesn't have the info either. Most of the people who live here are equally old and almost none of them have internet and so on.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 17:49
|
|
|
forkboy84 posted:Tim Wetherspoon donates a lot of money to the Conservative Party I was in a Wetherspoons a couple of weeks ago and saw that they're calling him 'Dishi Rishi' and it made me feel queasy.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 17:56
|
|
|
Jaeluni Asjil posted:O fonts of all knowledge: I'm sorry to be the one to point this out, but you have created such a rod for your own back here. You will become the one stop shop for every pathetic, niggling, childish problem until you wish you could shut off the air supply to each flat.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 18:11
|
|
|
So that's "carbon monoxide vents control" at number 1 on the list then.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 18:13
|
|
|
Trickjaw posted:I'm sorry to be the one to point this out, but you have created such a rod for your own back here. You will become the one stop shop for every pathetic, niggling, childish problem until you wish you could shut off the air supply to each flat. Well it was either me do it or farm it out to a managing company at great extra monthly expense! (I've done it before so I'm well aware and have stropped at a couple of people already saying I'm not here to sort out inter-flat disputes, just do stuff like get the common parts emergency lighting renewed, get someone in to clean out the gutters of the whole building etc.) OwlFancier posted:So that's "carbon monoxide vents control" at number 1 on the list then. We're all electric 
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 18:21
|
|
|
The Question IRL posted:Point of correction. The Republic is in level 5 lockdown, not 4. All the DUP is concerned with right now is the impacts on businesses. It's horrendous.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 18:24
|
|
|
ThomasPaine posted:I may be barking up the wrong tree here but I feel like the post-Thatcher conservative embrace of ideological neoliberalism is unprecedented in its purity, weirdly enough. It felt like a tool to beat the left, for Thatcher, but something always engaged with a healthy cynicism - she was happy, like Reagan, to mobilise state resources where it suited bourgeois class interests. This government though seems content to sacrifice its own core constituency in the name of the number, and that's where they do get weirdly cargo culty. Covid affects the poor and vulnerable more keenly, sure, but the total lack of a public health response infringes on the welfare of the elite too. Yeah I think you're onto something here. Seems like the Tories used to be "gently caress the poor, but if you're middle to upper class we'll make sure you're alright" and it seems there's been a bit of a switch to "We will look after our donors and our close personal friends and anybody who will directly get in on the grift with us, but everybody else can get hosed". And somehow people are still loving eating it up? Pair anything with "You're being attacked by foreigners!" and you can get people from all backgrounds to buy in, I suppose.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 18:32
|
|
|
WhatEvil posted:Yeah I think you're onto something here. Seems like the Tories used to be "gently caress the poor, but if you're middle to upper class we'll make sure you're alright" and it seems there's been a bit of a switch to "We will look after our donors and our close personal friends and anybody who will directly get in on the grift with us, but everybody else can get hosed". And somehow people are still loving eating it up? Pair anything with "You're being attacked by foreigners!" and you can get people from all backgrounds to buy in, I suppose. Nothing has changed. The Tories never cared about the middle class, they're just less subtle about it now.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 18:42
|
|
|
Ramrod Hotshot posted:what's going on with Brexit these days? But apart from that...
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 19:01
|
|
|
Successful ruling classes create buffers between themselves and their enemies, usually either through patronage, paternalism or nationalism depending on the threat. Neoliberalism only really permits patronage which is why it's all incestuous court politics and stenography between their politicians and the media and open corruption between the politicians and their friends and business partners - that's how they hold the reins of power.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 19:02
|
|
|
Jaeluni Asjil posted:O fonts of all knowledge: Lol I can't help in any way but, without wanting to appear condescending or whatever, I'm glad you are a poster here. It's a bit different you know?
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 19:03
|
|
|
I feel like I mention it every so often but there’s a good to decent chance that Brexit effectively cripples all transport in one of the largest urban areas in the country. And this is known about but nothing has been done to mitigate it, bar building a car park for twenty trailers next to a ferry port.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 19:11
|
|
|
Gyro Zeppeli posted:Nothing has changed. The Tories never cared about the middle class, they're just less subtle about it now. Oh I don't think they ever actually *cared* about the middle class, but they used to make concessions to them. Now they're just openly pissing them off.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 19:16
|
|
|
Tory voters these days have been conditioned to the religion of Hard Choices, they'll look at all the people dying & think how brave & strong our gov't are for letting so many people die, because there's no way you'd make a choice that hard if it wasn't much better in the long run. Because of the economy, you see. The harder the choice, the better the outcome. When the economy gets worse regardless, it's because we didn't kill enough people. & don't look at all those other countries that didn't let people die & their economies are better than ours, those people are foreign, I didn't see it so it doesn't count
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 19:18
|
|
|
Gyro Zeppeli posted:Nothing has changed. The Tories never cared about the middle class, they're just less subtle about it now. They all died out sometime around when Labour became the main opposition to Conservatives and the worst part of the Liberals merged with the worst part of the Tories to make the FYGM party.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 19:23
|
|
|
goddamnedtwisto posted:https://twitter.com/Gammons4London/status/1326690221958815745 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5WouIzjgqo
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 19:43
|
|
|
What the loving gently caress is this new level of bullshit? https://twitter.com/malihaeza/status/1326947520979857416?s=19
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 19:49
|
|
|
ThomasPaine posted:The Tory leadership is so steeped in neoliberal ideology that they'd rather begrudgingly implement half arsed indirect commercial 'stimulus' policies everyone knows are ineffective and contribute to transmission than acknowledge the glaringly obvious reality that this pandemic is a crisis point that requires strong leadership and decisive state intervention across the board. Of course this is perfectly on brand - better a thousand people needlessly choke and starve than one gets a penny they don't deserve. So talk a big game, implement a few incoherent, ineffective, and barely enforced lockdowns and economic policies, then blame the public when things blow up in your face. I think its the sort of progression you get in an organisation (particuarly one as hierarchical and packed full of a mix of dimwits and sociopaths like the Conservative Party) from the people who adopt an idea (the Thatcherites and neoliberalism), those that come afterwards who didn't do the thinking but agree with the ideas - often to a much greater extent than the first wave (Major and the 1990s-2000s Tories): See for instance the privatisation of the railways; the Thatcher governments may have hated BR and thought in an ideological/intellectual sense that railways, like almost everything else, should be private enterprises, but they were also astute enough to realise that there was no way of actually privatising them as they already existed without creating a hellishly complicated and inefficient system which would actually end up costing the government more than the nationalised network ever did. The Major government was packed with Thatcher cultists and neolibs who either just knew that it would be better if the railways were privately owned because Free Market or saw the scope for funelling £millions into the pockets of banks and bus companies that they had shares in. Now we're at the stage where the Conservative Party (and neoliberalism in general) hasn't had any intellectual rigour or challenge applied to it so it's just three generations of people cargo-culting ideas born in the aftermath of the 70s Energy Crisis. Borrovan posted:Tory voters these days have been conditioned to the religion of Hard Choices, they'll look at all the people dying & think how brave & strong our gov't are for letting so many people die, because there's no way you'd make a choice that hard if it wasn't much better in the long run. Because of the economy, you see. The harder the choice, the better the outcome. This reminds me of something I read about how in the 1970s the Royal Navy decided that the central tenet of its training for new officers would be 'moral courage' - the ability to adhere to certain values and take the right course of action even if doing so was very difficult or even potentially deadly. What this led to after a few cohorts of newly-minted officers had entered the service was a leadership which, having been taught from Day 1 that the sign of a good leader was to display moral courage, kept taking the difficult, unpleasant or awkward course (mostly unpleasant an awkward for those they commanded, but in some cases promising young officers would make career-endingly tough decisions just to prove how morally couragous they were!) even when less arduous and painful alternatives would acheive the same - or even a better - result. So the RN dialled that back a bit and began teaching its future leaders that while leadership may require tough choices that doesn't meant that you always have to take the toughest option.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 19:51
|
|
|
That mindset may explain the recent spate of light naval patrol craft deciding to body check tankers and cruise liners and getting cut in half in the process.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 19:54
|
|
|
Wait the navy was teaching elan vital in the 70s? lol
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 19:56
|
|
|
Sorry for the random USpol question, but it's fun to compare our terrible system with their terrible system... I saw a tweet which I think said that Bernie and Warren shouldn't be in the new cabinet because "their" governor is Republican. So you give up being a senator to join the cabinet (makes sense), but then the governor chooses a new senator? Or did I completely misunderstand that?
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 19:59
|
|
|
I assume they would have to have a new senatorial election (because senators serve six year terms and they elect a third of them every 2 years) but if their governors are republican perhaps they are saying they shouldn't risk an election until they have to because they might end up with more republican senators?
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 20:01
|
|
|
kustomkarkommando posted:As a border dweller lifting our restrictions before Ireland leaves level 4 is real loving stupid, especially considering the chat down south is that it's gonna be level 3 all December with pubs closed so we're gonna be swamped with people looking for a pint  Kung Flu only affects the taigs, why should we suffer, open 'er upHalf of Cork is in the Crown Bar, Armagh looks like New Vegas  We made an errorTotal Meatlove posted:I feel like I mention it every so often but there’s a good to decent chance that Brexit effectively cripples all Can you elaborate?
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 20:11
|
|
|
Bobstar posted:Sorry for the random USpol question, but it's fun to compare our terrible system with their terrible system... it depends on the state. some places would have a special election for the senate seat which might remain vacant until then, some would have the governor appoint a person to fill out the rest of the term, some are a mix of the two (like the governor appoints someone until the next election in two years).
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 20:22
|
|
|
Red Oktober posted:Jacob Rees-Boggs? Jacob Pees-Boggs, cmon man!
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 20:23
|
|
|
Bobstar posted:Sorry for the random USpol question, but it's fun to compare our terrible system with their terrible system... I think it depends on the state and depends how long they have left in their term. Looks like in Vermont and Massachusetts, the special election to replace them would have to be within a certain amount of time (6 months in Vermont) and the governor can appoint a temporary senator in the meantime. So the governor would obviously hold the election at the last possible minute and install a republican in the meantime.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 20:25
|
|
|
Nutapii posted:
Portsmouth and Southampton form one continuous urban area with minor satellite towns between them, that covers a population of about 1m people. The motorway (M27) is currently being upgraded to become a smart motorway along its length, but is nominally 3 lanes. It joins the M3 to London at the Southampton end, and the A3 to London at the Portsmouth end. Portsmouth is mainly situated on Portsea Island, and there are three road bridges that lead onto it. Southampton is on the mainland proper. Both have commercial ports, Portsmouth also has the main naval port for the UK. Southampton is the 2nd or 3rd biggest commercially and Portsmouths is smaller. The risks are that; quote:Traffic disruption arising from delays at the Port of Portsmouth and extending along the strategic road network Any delays at Portsmouth in terms of freight traffic will inevitably kill the throughput on one of the bridges, increasing congestion on the other two. Portsea island has a population of 200k, who would be reliant on three lanes on and off it. The main accident and emergency for Portsmouth is off the island on the mainland. It will be a shitshow.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 20:45
|
|
|
 (not a photoshop afaik)
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 20:55
|
|
|
Women are routinely exhorted to self-check their 'girls' to identify breast cancer early on. Well, men, check your 'boys'. A family friend aged just 40 has just been diagnosed with testicular cancer so don't delay, check your nuts today. https://baggytrousersuk.org/check-your-nuts/
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 21:15
|
|
|
WhatEvil posted:Yeah I think you're onto something here. Seems like the Tories used to be "gently caress the poor, but if you're middle to upper class we'll make sure you're alright" and it seems there's been a bit of a switch to "We will look after our donors and our close personal friends and anybody who will directly get in on the grift with us, but everybody else can get hosed". And somehow people are still loving eating it up? Pair anything with "You're being attacked by foreigners!" and you can get people from all backgrounds to buy in, I suppose. 100 years ago the Tories were still close enough to the nobility that they had a sense of noblesse oblige, and some of the more progressive ones would even take a view that a rising tide lifts all boats. Apart from that you're basically correct.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 22:38
|
|
|
loving hell the chocolate/chili fudge is a menace
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 22:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 15:19 |
|
|
ThomasPaine posted:The Tory leadership is so steeped in neoliberal ideology that they'd rather begrudgingly implement half arsed indirect commercial 'stimulus' policies everyone knows are ineffective and contribute to transmission than acknowledge the glaringly obvious reality that this pandemic is a crisis point that requires strong leadership and decisive state intervention across the board. Of course this is perfectly on brand - better a thousand people needlessly choke and starve than one gets a penny they don't deserve. So talk a big game, implement a few incoherent, ineffective, and barely enforced lockdowns and economic policies, then blame the public when things blow up in your face. the Tories as the 'natural party of government' has two relatively recently headwinds that the party did not face until very recently: - internal party selections aggravating internal party dysfunction (partially to keep up with New Labour, partially to empower a sense of disconnection with the party amongst its natural Middle England base - in that regard, the populist turn of the party is arguably working as intended) - Labour successfully annexing the educated, employed class to an astonishing degree completely unprecedented in pre-1997 Britain This arguably goes some way to explaining its unresponsiveness to media chatter (or conversely its inability to make its "internal view" felt - but otherwise the policy outlooks themselves are... not actually very novel? This is not Thatcher and Howe in 1981 waving the ideological banner of monetarism at the open protest of establishment opinion*. The signature political mishap of Cameron - the use of referenda to ratify an elite consensus - was in vogue all over the world and it wasn't even his first swing at the apple. Or of May - the dementia tax and the bedroom tax were both latent planks bubbling in that think-tank consensus way and little work was done to test its reception, exactly because wonks did not think it was all that fatal. Shelter England spent many years calling for a tax on spare rooms to promote rightsizing. Johnson is pulling leafs out of pre-existing books, too, rather than bringing purified ideology to the table. But the party is unable to keep establishment wisdom in sync. It is no longer looped into all the halls of opinion, not as it used to be... for covid-19 one can consider it in international perspective - there are several countries where public health authorities have engaged in a quiet revolution to entrench the counterintuitive view that the winter influenza outbreaks are going to kill a massive wave of people every now and then, it's essentially unstoppable, and policy should reorient to be palliative rather than overreacting in a phenomenally costly way. The model pandemic is influenza, not the far more damaging covid-19 Conversely there are several countries where the model pandemic is SARS or MERS, both of which are even more horrifyingly deadly than covid-19, and these countries have not blinked at measures that Europe would not countenance - building-to-building lockdowns and mass surveillance * Johnson's admin does have its own ideological project - Brexit - albeit its utter absence amongst elite institutions means that it continually struggles to articulate what it actually wants and what it'll do to get there.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 22:48
|
|
