Junior G-man posted:

Have we at long last reached Peak Grauniad?

Fans posted:

And then we'd have never known if the staunchly anti-nuclear, anti-war Corbyn would have or not.

Junior G-man posted:

Have we at long last reached Peak Grauniad?

Pissflaps posted:

It would have left some room for doubt.

JosephWongKS posted:

David Cameron seems to have be almost completely unscathed by all of Mandelson's Ashcroft's allegations so far, up to and including the allegations involving his carnal knowledge of a severed pig's head. How? How? Are Labour and the other opposition parties that weak, or does David Cameron / the Tories truly have that much of a stranglehold over the levers of power in the UK?

Pissflaps posted:

We're allowed to have a Prime MInister with pretty much any views on any subject, if he can command the support of his party and the voters.

Forgall posted:

Conservative voters don't care about pigfucking, and people who do care have never voted for him in the first place.

Stottie Kyek posted:

Which one of you made this?



He looks like he's on top of a Christmas tree, like a star or an angel, but even better.

Pissflaps posted:

We're allowed to have a Prime MInister with pretty much any views on any subject, if he can command the support of his party and the voters.

Junior G-man posted:

Have we at long last reached Peak Grauniad?

Guavanaut posted:

I thought Conservative voters were supposed to be the moralists who were against all these drugs and breakdown of the family and deviant sex and foreigns (except the good ones).

Private Speech posted:

Miliband said he wouldn't use them either.

Stottie Kyek posted:

Which one of you made this?



He looks like he's on top of a Christmas tree, like a star or an angel, but even better.

Times Higher Education posted:

No 10’s extremism report mirrors text of thinktank study

Sections of a Downing Street statement that accused universities of hosting hate preachers are identical to those featured in a report by a controversial thinktank, Times Higher Education has learned.

As new rules on how universities monitor events by outside speakers came into force last month, the prime minister said that institutions had a “duty to protect impressionable young minds” and to ensure that “radical views and ideas are not given the oxygen they need to flourish”.

“At least 70 events featuring hate speakers were held on campuses, according to the government’s new Extremism Analysis Unit”, the Downing Street statement added.

But four universities – Queen Mary University of London; Soas, University of London; King’s College London; and Kingston University – that were named as hosting the most events involving extremist speakers said that they were perplexed by the accusation, which Soas insisted contained “inaccuracies”.

Queen Mary’s principal, Simon Gaskell, complained that his institution had had no contact from the Extremism Analysis Unit, which seemed to have produced the figures.

THE has now learned that the source of much of the data is likely to be a recent report by Student Rights, an arm of the Henry Jackson Society.

Written by Student Rights director Rupert Sutton, the Preventing Prevent report lists the four London universities mentioned by Downing Street in its own table of the most-visited universities.

It also includes a list of former students later convicted of terrorism-related offences – of whom eight are also mentioned in the Downing Street statement using terms that are identical or almost identical to ones used in the Student Rights report.

For instance, both reports state that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab “had repeatedly contacted extremists who were under MI5 surveillance” while he was a student at University College London, before being “convicted in 2012, of attempted murder and terrorism, after trying to bomb a passenger flight to Detroit in 2009”.

An independent inquiry commissioned by UCL later found no evidence to suggest that the Nigerian student had been radicalised on campus or that he had exhibited any signs of a propensity to radicalisation.

THE has repeatedly tried to contact Downing Street to establish the source of information contained in its 17 September statement, but it has not received a response.

However, THE understands that only the figure about the 70 events came from the Extremism Analysis Unit, with the source of the remaining material remaining unclear.

The seemingly unattributed use of the Henry Jackson Society material is likely to concern many within the sector, with several students’ unions accusing the organisation of pursuing an Islamophobic agenda.

David Miller, professor of sociology at the University of Bath, who co-authored a book on the origins of the Henry Jackson Society and its funding from pro-Israel supporters, called for the government to publish the source of its data to show that they were “not of dubious provenance”.

“The Prevent duty depends on having objective information and clear evidence about how universities are responding to it – information must be transparent and unimpeachable,” Professor Miller said.

“HJS is not an academic body, but a campaigning thinktank with a neoconservative...agenda, so the notion that it could set the agenda on extremism is staggering,” he added.

In response, Mr Sutton said that Spinwatch, with whom Professor Miller published his book, had itself received funding from controversial sources such as the Cordoba Foundation, which has been labelled the “political front for the Muslim Brotherhood” by David Cameron.

“Spinwatch is funded by the very extremists Prevent seeks to challenge. So it is no surprise to us to see it working to undermine Prevent, as well as labelling those organisations actively working to challenge extremism with scurrilous accusations of Islamophobia to distract from its own insidious agenda,” he said.

Barry Foster posted:

Turns out he is indeed on top of a christmas tree, and you can buy him here

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/250000101/jeremy-corbyn-alternative-xmas-tree

Barry Foster posted:

Turns out he is indeed on top of a christmas tree, and you can buy him here

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/250000101/jeremy-corbyn-alternative-xmas-tree

Guavanaut posted:

£30.00 plus shipping from Brighton.

Why am I not surprised.

Cerebral Bore posted:

If it included "and it's all Corbyn's fault" it would be, but as of now it falls short tantalizingly close to the apex.

It would have left about as much doubt as the possibility that Corbyn was lying when he said he'd never push the button does right now.

Lord of the Llamas posted:

How many hours do we think it takes to hand make one of those? Any knitting experts here?

Lord of the Llamas posted:

How many hours do we think it takes to hand make one of those? Any knitting experts here?

Guavanaut posted:

I wasn't complaining about the price so much as thinking 'Brighton. Of course. Where else would hand knitted Corbyn tree toppers come from.'

Pissflaps posted:

....keep going.


edit: does anybody have a source for this btw? I don't remember him saying it and apparently neither does Google.

Lord of the Llamas posted:

Lord of the Llamas posted:

Lord of the Llamas posted:

In other news Simon Jenkins has some good news; there is no housing crisis! The poors just need to hurry up and socially cleanse themselves.

quote:

Even the poorest newcomers seem to find somewhere (usually private) to rent.

Private Speech posted:

I thought you liked Ed? Anyway the point is that Corbyn was just repeating his "I wouldn't press the button" which came up in the pre-election debates. To be fair the question was more specific and he faffed a bit about it, but in the end it amounted to the same thing.

link

Private Speech posted:

I thought you liked Ed? Anyway the point is that Corbyn was just repeating his "I wouldn't press the button" which came up in the pre-election debates. To be fair the question was more specific and he faffed a bit about it, but in the end it amounted to the same thing.

link

XMNN posted:

That question is absolutely ridiculous.

Pissflaps posted:

This is nothing like what Corbyn said.

baka kaba posted:

Not if they're talking about Trident and someone starts going 'b-b-but terrorists!' Then it's a pretty good followup question

Guavanaut posted:

He's right, you know.

Overminty posted:

I've seen it argued that it could be a PR stunt. Not that it affects your point.

Lord of the Llamas posted:

Guavanaut posted:

Looks like you're right. I thought it was a bit low.

Have a mattress and a microwave for 780 a month instead.
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-53770109.html

(I'm not being 100% fair. You get a toilet too. And a chandelier!)

Junior G-man posted:

That article is just so catastrophically bad.

XMNN posted:

Why would you use nuclear weapons on a non-nuclear pseudo-state at any point ever? It's a ludicrous proposition.

I still don't think it makes any difference whether a lifelong anti-nuclear campaigner and pacifist explicitly confirms that he wouldn't launch a retaliatory nuclear strike or not. It's not enough of a cast-iron guarantee that it would induce the Reds to initiate a first strike even in a world where the Americans don't have thousands of warheads aimed at them and he wasn't going to use the threat of nuclear bombings as a bargaining chip anyway. It's a non-development.

Guavanaut posted:

e: 3 - The rule of emperor Augustus is renewed for a ten-year period. One of the better emperors by all accounts, as at least he didn't gently caress a pig.