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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:I'd be hard pressed to tell you who any of the shadow cabinet are right now, let alone what role they play or anything positive they've ever done. e: 1984 is the only book that political commentators have read, and they haven't even read that Guavanaut fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Jun 29, 2022 |
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Jun 29, 2022 14:28
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Tarnop posted:I assume the papers are sitting on their lockdown booze pictures of Nandy, Streeting and any other empty suit that might get pushed I feel like there are considerably more depraved stories about Streeting that the press could be sitting on. Maybe the 'burning down a pet shop' thing actually has legs beyond vague Twitter rumours?
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Jun 29, 2022 16:14
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charred crispy legs
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Jun 29, 2022 16:23
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Hi all, I've been lurking in this thread for a few months and want to learn more about leftist political theory before becoming politically active. I am currently very ignorant, having last read any political philosophy about ten years ago, so it's a fresh start for me. There is a reading list in the OP but I'm not sure where to start - can anyone recommend an introduction to socialist theory from a modern, 21st century perspective?
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Jun 29, 2022 16:34
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piano chimp posted:Hi all, I've been lurking in this thread for a few months and want to learn more about leftist political theory before becoming politically active. I am currently very ignorant, having last read any political philosophy about ten years ago, so it's a fresh start for me. I've seen Socialism by Michael Harrington and The Socialist Manifesto by Bhaskar Sunkara recommended previously in this thread. I haven't read them myself yet
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Jun 29, 2022 16:46
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nice to see he's learned his lesson, guess we can close the book on this one now https://twitter.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1542170162304106498
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Jun 29, 2022 16:47
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Prince Charles getting off the plane from Qatar holding a suspiciously lumpy bin bag
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Jun 29, 2022 16:51
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https://twitter.com/coldwarsteve/status/1542118572352327682
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Jun 29, 2022 16:55
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Tesseraction posted:Prince Charles holding a suspiciously lumpy bin bag 
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Jun 29, 2022 17:09
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Apraxin posted:nice to see he's learned his lesson, guess we can close the book on this one now God hes looking old. He'll pop his clogs with the sheer surprise when someone finds Liz's last philately...
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Jun 29, 2022 17:21
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He's getting buried with her.
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Jun 29, 2022 17:22
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Grey Hunter posted:philately... Unsure if intentional but very good either way.
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Jun 29, 2022 17:28
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My related conspiracy theory is that they're moving away from stamps and cash to lower the backlash to new face when Liz dies.
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Jun 29, 2022 17:33
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Tarnop posted:I've seen Socialism by Michael Harrington and The Socialist Manifesto by Bhaskar Sunkara recommended previously in this thread. I haven't read them myself yet I enjoyed both of them. But also, how much has changed in a decade? Tories still cunts
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Jun 29, 2022 22:05
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Does anyone know what happened to that "Demand Nothing" website that I think sprang out of these MTs a while back?
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Jun 29, 2022 22:37
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Think that was a decade ago at this point, and whoever was running it ran out of steam a year or so in. It was demandnothing.org if you want to archive.org it.
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Jun 29, 2022 23:07
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josh04 posted:Think that was a decade ago at this point, and whoever was running it ran out of steam a year or so in. It was demandnothing.org if you want to archive.org it. Great, thanks. I've not been around for a while.
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Jun 29, 2022 23:09
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BBC: Inquiry begins into Captain Tom Foundation charity. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-61986597
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Jun 30, 2022 08:07
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Wonder how much his kids made of off Robot Tom’s beautiful posthumous music.
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Jun 30, 2022 08:26
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/30/record-number-of-uk-police-forces-are-failing-and-need-intensive-help Piggery full of pigs, news at eleven. Turns out that cops even suck at being cops.
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Jun 30, 2022 09:15
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If the Met in the 70s and 80s was a success compared to the modern Met, what is it exactly that they're failing at?
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Jun 30, 2022 09:27
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I really loving hate Captain Tom. Not for the person he was, but for all he represents as a symbol of modern Britain. Mawkish sentimentality, charity doing the job of the state, profiteering vultures, thick skulled WWII nostalgia... Ugh. Just the sight of him makes me annoyed. I'm sure this is perfectly healthy.
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Jun 30, 2022 10:15
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The Perfect Element posted:I really loving hate Captain Tom. Not for the person he was, but for all he represents as a symbol of modern Britain. Mawkish sentimentality, charity doing the job of the state, profiteering vultures, thick skulled WWII nostalgia... Ugh. Just the sight of him makes me annoyed. I'm sure this is perfectly healthy. Nah, I get it, and for the same reasons This country is infantile and will not grow out of its perpetual state of stunted adolescence until we - at the very least - rid ourselves of the monarchy (our perpetual mummys and daddys in chief) St. Captain Sir Tom is one of many, many symptoms of this
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Jun 30, 2022 10:18
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The Perfect Element posted:I really loving hate Captain Tom. Not for the person he was, but for all he represents as a symbol of modern Britain. Mawkish sentimentality, charity doing the job of the state, profiteering vultures, thick skulled WWII nostalgia... Ugh. Just the sight of him makes me annoyed. I'm sure this is perfectly healthy. Yeah this is a sign of you being a normal person. I don’t mind him, it’s the army of swivelly eyed freaks with plastered on rictus’ behind him that put me off. Glad his grifter kid is in hot water
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Jun 30, 2022 10:19
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On the other hand, old man being used for propaganda and then dying under the careless gaze of Dear Leader Boris was a pretty apt coda to his covid handling.
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Jun 30, 2022 10:23
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https://twitter.com/SholaMos1/status/1542428973845577728
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Jun 30, 2022 10:29
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I hate reading about him getting a blowie because I can just hear him wibbling his jowls and mumbling poo poo like "cracking stuff" as she works
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Jun 30, 2022 10:32
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Blowis Jobson
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Jun 30, 2022 10:33
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Boris' Johnson
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Jun 30, 2022 10:35
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The Perfect Element posted:I really loving hate Captain Tom. Not for the person he was, but for all he represents as a symbol of modern Britain. Mawkish sentimentality, charity doing the job of the state, profiteering vultures, thick skulled WWII nostalgia... Ugh. Just the sight of him makes me annoyed. I'm sure this is perfectly healthy.
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Jun 30, 2022 10:37
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bet he finishes by yelling "I'm spaffing! Spiffing!"
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Jun 30, 2022 10:37
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Say what you will about Carrie but she has earned every penny of whatever massive salary we're paying her
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Jun 30, 2022 10:42
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"Veniam, venio, veni"
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Jun 30, 2022 10:42
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The Perfect Element posted:I really loving hate Captain Tom. Not for the person he was, but for all he represents as a symbol of modern Britain. Mawkish sentimentality, charity doing the job of the state, profiteering vultures, thick skulled WWII nostalgia... Ugh. Just the sight of him makes me annoyed. I'm sure this is perfectly healthy. Not just you - I feel exactly the same (to reiterate - about "Captain Tom  The National Symbol not "Thomas Moore, the old man who did a nice thing and seems to have been ruthlessly exploited by the rest of his family for doing so").Barry Foster posted:This country is infantile and will not grow out of its perpetual state of stunted adolescence until we - at the very least - rid ourselves of the monarchy (our perpetual mummys and daddys in chief) This has been one of my big realisations and political shifts (that's 'shifts', not 'shits') over the past few years. I never put much store in abolishing the monarchy (plus the continued presence of the House of Lords, a written constitution, a proper federal union structure, moaning about the gold-leaf baroque pageantry, fussing about the architecture of Westminster or the layout of the Commons seating and all that stuff). It seems peripheral and there were plenty of examples of Euro/Scandinavian monarchies with much more progressive politics and societies than us - having 'a monarchy' clearly wasn't an obstacle, even if it's a batshit state of affairs if you think about it even the slightest bit. But that can be dealt with once we've actually sorted out all the real, material problems. But everything from the Brexit referendum onwards has convinced me that Britain will never properly progress while we're weighed down by all this anchor-and-chain that keeps us in a - to borrow your perfect phrase - perpetual state of stunted adolescence. It gaslights too many people and keeps up the charade of British exceptionalism, and turns large parts of the electorate into Manchurian Candidates where a few buzzwords about some mild social democrat not being tumescent at the sight of the Gold State Coach immediately makes them vote Conservative. Nearly all those places on the other side of the Channel with functioning societies and vaguely compassionate and egalitarian socio-economic settlements are unified by having been utterly ruined - physically, economically, culturally, nationally - by WW2 or its aftermath. It seems that it's much easier to create both the politics of social democracy and the mindset that enables it when everyone is sat starving on a pile of rubble and you can share out the proceeds of your new nation almost from scratch. I remember reading a lot about how the German and Norwegian social democratic models work and coming away very despondent because even if a magic wand could be waved to implement that system wholesale in the UK, it still wouldn't stick because our cultural attitudes just don't allow it (2020 and the behaviour of large parts of society during the pandemic crystalised that, especially). And those attitudes exist in no small part because of this image so many of us have of what Britain is, what Britain's place in the world is and what our part to play in Britain is. All the feudal and imperial hangovers have to go before that can even start to change.
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Jun 30, 2022 10:47
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We did almost make a big start on that in the 40s-70s until a bunch of people shat their pants and shaved their heads (maybe not in that order) over the thought that a Black man might exist, then the country voted for an ideology that ripped all the copper out of the walls just to make sure that none of Them could get their hands on it, which ended up subsumed in the enduring national mythology of The Bins. The turn back towards monarchy, insularity, tradition (or alleged tradition) etc. seems more like it's part of that, a combination of not having anything else to believe in, feeling you're not getting what you deserve, and thinking that it's Those Bastards getting it all rather than the gold coach lady or the big hat institutions.
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Jun 30, 2022 11:01
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I think Novara Media got it right on Monday when Ash was saying that part of this is because Brenda was canny about the rise of media and how she interacted with it so she's been able to portray herself as this benign/benevolent figure who keeps a steady hand on the declining empire and keeps herself out of controversy. This is something the rest of her family has abjectly not managed, whether it's Andrew gallivanting with a notorious nonce or the crown prince apparently living out cartoon villain fantasies of walking around with burlap sacks with a giant € on them. The monarchy is in a high point and frankly I'm not sure this endless honeymoon can continue once Brenda croaks and Mr Black Spider Memos takes the ceremonial toilet.
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Jun 30, 2022 11:06
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Guavanaut posted:We did almost make a big start on that in the 40s-70s until a bunch of people shat their pants and shaved their heads (maybe not in that order) over the thought that a Black man might exist, then the country voted for an ideology that ripped all the copper out of the walls just to make sure that none of Them could get their hands on it, which ended up subsumed in the enduring national mythology of The Bins. All true, but the gold coach lady and the big hats provide a tempting nexus for people to form this alternative identity around and feeds that idea that everything was great in the past and would be again if we could just get back to Those Days and the values they represent - it must be true because we still have a powerful lady with a diamond-encrusted sash and a gold coach...Ooo look, a vic of Spitfires!!! The fact that the institutions that were around when the UK was an imperial superpower are still there seems to act like a mirage for people to project reactionary solutions to current problems, rather than progressive ones. Your point about this all being people looking for something to identify with, believe in and to have some sort of cultural king-post when everything else that could provide that has been ripped out by neoliberalism is exactly right. That's why I used to not particularly care about the monarchy - it wasn't the root of the problem, and we managed the Attlee and Wilson governments (gently caress it, even the Macmillan ministry was more left-wing than anything that's happened over the past 12 years) and that was when we not only had a monarchy but a much more hide-bound and conservative society. But I increasingly get the impression that the modern British state is a gordian knot of modern capitalism and age-old imperial institutional leftovers and imagery...and it's the latter that seems to be the looser end that seems more worth picking at. Of course - to complete my gordian knot analogy - if I think about this too much for too long I turn into a 'draw your sword and cut the knot in two/tear down both the state and capitalism and bring out the guillotines' sort. Which, as someone who's generally cautious and timid and likes to try and fix and improve things rather than make radical changes, I'm not quite ready to come to terms with yet (partly because, I'm happy to admit, I've absorbed a fair amount of those Great British Institutions & Traditions particles).
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Jun 30, 2022 11:19
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I'm very interested to see what happens when the queen goes. You've got the double whammy of most people not remembering a time when she wasn't queen, but also decades of the next guy hanging around being a human* in plain sight. They should have just kept him charging in a crate. I don't think it'll automatically make people go "right, time for a republic", but it won't be exactly the same. I agree with the people above too. You can't fix everything just by abolishing the monarchy/lords/really stupid pageantry and demolishing the HoP to be replaced with a modern hemicycle with enough seats for everyone... but I'm not sure how anything can get fixed without doing that.
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Jun 30, 2022 11:22
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Bobstar posted:I'm very interested to see what happens when the queen goes. You've got the double whammy of most people not remembering a time when she wasn't queen, but also decades of the next guy hanging around being a human* in plain sight. They should have just kept him charging in a crate. Changing the curriculum so that history isn't taught as 1066 and british exceptionalism in the early 20th c. would probably help quite a bit. Shame it'll never happen.
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Jun 30, 2022 11:27
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Good news all, queen's getting a pay rise. https://twitter.com/theipaper/status/1542407310613553154?t=6zHbogBY0Wu2Ek5BJ8WErw
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Jun 30, 2022 11:33
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