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We're British, oval office isn't a gendered insult here.
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Jan 1, 2016 15:05
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Gonzo McFee posted:Happy new year. Hunt's words about replacing Council Tax showed that they are at least finally doing some self-reflection, in between shouting random insults at Jeremy Corbyn, Momentum, & new Labour members who voted for JC. Which is good. I am not on the Labour right but generally feel like Labour will be better off as a whole when the right of the party is actually self-confident enough to say something positive instead of just solely moaning that the Labour left are destroying the unity of the party by not pushing right wing policies. Renaissance Robot posted:So how about that new propaganda movie? Gerard Butler is a traitor to his country. He should be protecting Nicola Sturgeon & Angus Robertson, not the Yankee Imperialist Pigdog. (That movie looks really bad & dumb)
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Jan 1, 2016 17:00
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Seaside Loafer posted:Right, if you have time id like you to translate what the gently caress you just said there into stupid for me please. It reads like a load of bollocks with an un-necessary amount of words. Whats your point. What's been written is that apparently Jeremy Corbyn & John McDonnell are actually Blairites, but are pretending to be socialists to fool the left. No, it's not exactly coherent. It doesn't really stand up to examination as far as I can tell, they sure were playing the really long con if he's right. The idea seems to be that because he's trying moderate his message & not appear the full communism now monster in an entirely hostile press he's actually not a socialist, he's a Blairite?
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Jan 2, 2016 00:31
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Tesseraction posted:Not so much that, I feel ronya made the point pretty well, even if I don't wholly agree with it. It comes down to the fact that despite jokes from McDonnell about 'formenting the overthrow of capitalism' (while brewing a tea) and all, Corbyn and his buddies are a far cry from the full communism now theorists we claim them to be. Right but do people in UKMT actually think Jeremy Corbyn is for full communism now? I know there some slow people here but it's a joke right? Nobody expects a long-serving Labour MP to actually support the immediate overthrow on capitalism. It'd be nice but the Corbyn campaign was always just about pushing the dialogue in the country a little bit to the left, first inside the Labour Party & now in the country at large. A country with the almost complete lack of historical working class revolutionary movements is not going to be conducive to a revolutionary movement now, is it? Things aren't nearly as bad as they'd need to be for that to become a potentiality even vaguely worth considering for a second (we're talking about the level of the 1926 general strike). I think Corbyn is pushing the furthest left agenda that he can, considering the majority of his cabinet are not left wingers & the same goes for the PLP (& where the country is right now). You can't get radical change on the membership alone under the current rules. The most radical proposals have been the ones about passing more power about the direction of party back to the membership from the PLP (& leadership), where it was centralised by Kinnock & Blair. It's obviously an argument that goes back to Bernstein & the Gotha Program, revisionism or reformism, working within the confines of the capitalist state or just overthrowing it. Corbyn has never pretended to be a revolutionary, that was a slur from his critics. He's just a run of the mill democratic socialist. He's also the best hope we've got of taking the national discourse (or the Overton window if you prefer) back towards the left.
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Jan 2, 2016 01:10
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Jeza posted:You gotta play dice with Saudi, basically. Same as the myriad other powerful nations who imprison and execute their own citizens for frivolous reasons, i.e. half the world. You might well argue Saudi Arabia was taking moderating baby steps over time compared to some of those others, at least until 2015. Denouncing them publicly will do exactly nothing beyond a warm fuzzy feeling of moral superiority, and the next time some British idiot in Riyadh has a molecule of cocaine on their Nike Airs they'll just tit-for-tat chuck them in prison for a decade or cut their head off. Stop selling them bombers & other weapons? Lead an international campaign for a full arms embargo? You say "you gotta pay dice with the Saudis" but you don't say why. Yes, lots of other countries behave very badly, but Saudi Arabia is quite possibly the worst one that isn't a pariah state. See how we've treated Iran for decades? Saudis are no better, quite possibly worse.
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Jan 2, 2016 17:12
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Jeza posted:Money, oil. Saudi are a massive trade partner for the UK. They aren't some bit player. You think the UK Government will just drop literally billions of pounds worth of arms contracts with Saudi? It won't matter how many clerics get snuffed. If the UK unilaterally pulled out of selling arms to Saudi, aside from half crippling the arms industry in the UK (I'm sure this thread won't weep however), the contracts will go to the US or Russia instead. No way will the entire world, let alone the West, stop selling arms to Saudi over their national human rights abuses. It's an impossible dream. Yes, I'm quite aware that other countries will sell them weapons. Hence "lead campaign for an international arms embargo." Instead we support Saudi Arabia getting a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. Being this chummy with an appalling, theocratic, authoritarian, hellstate which does nothing to stop it's citizens which financially support groups like Daesh is a poor look. "America is doing it too" isn't a particularly compelling argument to me I'm afraid, America does lot of stupid & indefensible things, it hardly needs to be said that people in this thread feel like we maybe shouldn't just copy everything the Yanks do. Jeza posted:Besides, it isn't like UK terrorist attacks are performed by BAE-built Typhoons or whatnot. forkboy84 fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Jan 2, 2016 |
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Jan 2, 2016 17:48
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Jeza posted:I'm not saying what's right or wrong, merely pointing our what you hope for is never going to happen and the idea of leading an arms embargo which everyone agrees to on Saudi seems so distant as to be a mad pipe dream.
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Jan 2, 2016 18:14
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Plucky Brit posted:So what about the speculation that Corbyn is planning to shift Benn in a cabinet reshuffle? I still don't think it'll happen. If it does Corbyn's basically shot himself in the foot & will be out by the end of May because he'll have completely lost the PLP in a way that'll make right now seem like they wholeheartedly support him.
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Jan 3, 2016 03:03
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Fans posted:I still can't believe people think Ed lost because he was too left wing, and not because by moving to the Center no one had any clue what the gently caress he stood for. Also the time the Mail monstered his dad & Miliband show a surprising amount if spine & told them to get hosed
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Jan 3, 2016 14:36
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TinTower posted:The People are trying to excuse Simon Danczuk offering to spank a seventeen year old on the basis that she's a professional dominatrix.
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Jan 3, 2016 15:35
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TinTower posted:The whole "fifty year old sexting a teenager" thing is a major red flag. Like I said, there's plenty of actual dirt without just making poo poo up. Angepain posted:I'm glad our nations media are proudly serving the public interest by showing numerous pictures of this 17-year-old posing suggestively, thanks guys Yeah, this is always a really creepy part of any story like this, some journalist is scouring the web, social media etc for provocative looking selfies, which apparently every one has these days. They are utterly shameless about it & it seems to have crept into normal press behaviour from The Daily Mail. Away from Simon Danczuk, I thought Stewart Lee's article on the government ignoring a High Court ruling on religious education was good. But then he's always one of the few agreeable columnists on The Guardian website. forkboy84 fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Jan 3, 2016 |
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Jan 3, 2016 15:38
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Coohoolin posted:Aaaand my nan picks the least convenient time to die on us. Typical. Obviously condolences about your granny, though hearing you play the tin whistle is making me want to make possibly inappropriate jokes about your plans for the 12th July. Because the only time I've heard a tin whistle in recent years was during the Orange march that used to start outside my old flat in Kinning Park.
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Jan 3, 2016 19:50
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Noxville posted:Why Andy Burnham? He's been more-or-less going along with things, as is his wont, why would he be under threat? Exactly that. The idea is that Burnham has actually proven willing to work with Corbyn. Corbyn wants someone as Shadow Foreign & Defence Secretaries who are less committed the idea that bombing poo poo for peace works. It's one thing having a free vote, but a Foreign Secretary (sorry, writing Shadow every time is  so just imagine it's there) who doesn't agree with the leader's foreign policy seems a problem. Ditto Defence. Where as Corbyn has much smaller differences with Benn or Eagles as Home Secretary, or that's the theory.The first thought is "Corbyn must have known how they felt on these issues when he offered them those particular jobs, right?" Then I move to "sacking people for voting against the leadership on a free vote is...well, it's not actually a free vote then, is it?" Next is "I know it's only been 4 months but Burnham has looked quite good at Home, he's not come out with anything vaguely totalitarian & that seems quite long time for a Home Secretary judging by the past 20 years, Shadow or not". I still don't think getting rid of Benn is a particular smart idea, it's far too soon for such a major reshuffle. Maybe after the May election but this is just clearly punitive, which simply plays into the evil purge narrative. And of course that's a dumb narrative but there's no reason to make it easier for the press. So if a swap between Burnham & Benn is what it takes to keep things from getting massively rowdy then that's a smart measure to take. No idea what happens with Eagles though. winegums posted:That's what i was thinking. Plus it'd make sense for corbyn to keep the dud New Labour groupies in his cabinet rather than the ambitious dangerous ones. Burnham is reasonably sharp when he tires, but he's a busted flush for leader. I think there is a higher chance for Andy Burnham to be Labour leader than Hilary Benn to be honest. If he keeps his head down, continues to be have competently, when the axe does come down on Corbyn all he has to do is say a couple of words about how shocking the coup was to gain a chunk of support. Whether he'd go that way or not I dunno, but I certainly don't see Benn becoming leader without the right enacting a purge of the membership. forkboy84 fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 01:45
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I hope the Labour Party find a willing black market surgeon to remove the vocal chords of Ken Livingstone so he can no longer go on the radio or TV & say things.
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Jan 4, 2016 15:20
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TinTower posted:Except for supporting the Snooper's Charter. All that is still pretty good for Home in fairness, though that's more a reflection of how loving dreadful Home seems to be. Who was the last Home Secretary that wasn't repellent? Ken Clarke during the Major years? Or do you have to go back to Roy Jenkins? I can never tell if it attracts arseholes or if it's just the atmosphere of the department which leads people to thinking civil liberties are a extravagance at times of *insert war, threat of war, existential threat, or anything else you need here*.
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Jan 4, 2016 15:37
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Think the biggest revelation is that our Nige drives a European car. No wonder it tried to kill him.
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Jan 4, 2016 15:55
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Guavanaut posted:There are no mass manufactured British cars left though.
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Jan 4, 2016 16:43
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He could drive a Morgan or something. Or a vintage Morris Minor but those are pretty good and I don't want him associated with them.
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Angepain posted:so uh has it actually been confirmed that he's been demoted or are they just getting pre-emptively outraged over something they've just imagined happening A man from The Sun on Twitter is claiming that Benn might not be demoted at all. "Instead" Lord Falconer will go? Which seems like a non-sequiter. This is an example of the reshuffle being a shambles & not the media being idiots listening to people who don't actually have the leader's ear.
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Jan 4, 2016 17:18
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LemonDrizzle posted:it's managed to knock floods, the doctors' strike, and the train thing off the front pages, so there's that at least But instead this farce has totally overshadowed the good & important railway campaign they started this morning. And if they do punt Benn/Eagles I'm not sure Corbyn lasts much past the May elections because the PLP will take it as a sign he's not willing to work with them, fairly or not. They've no interest in giving him the benefit of the doubt when so few wanted him to get the job in the first place.
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Jan 4, 2016 21:27
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Fans posted:Wouldn't have worked. Anyone who wasn't Benn or Eagle would be up in arms with "What about me then! Does that mean it's me?" and he's either forced to do the reshuffle early due to his own leaks, which would be farcical, or refuse to answer in which case he's hanging members out to dry. Then say there are no plans for a reshuffle right now & hold it off for a couple months, at least wait until the 6 month point before reshuffling. What difference does it actually make when Shadow Cabinet positions don't enact policy? Labour are doing an incredible job at not even attempting to have a coherent media strategy. I get it. The press don't like them, don't treat them fairly. But tough poo poo. Suck it up. Not going to change so make the best of what you've got rather than wishing for a world where the press were fair & neutral. Don't give them poo poo like this on a platter. I know we like to dismiss polling because it's still very early days but that doesn't change that the polling keeps going down. This is a major concern, there should at least be a flatlining by this point. They don't know how to control a media cycle. That's a pretty big concern in this day & age.
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Jan 4, 2016 21:55
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Fans posted:Then the press speculates for a couple of months anyway all the while the Shadow Ministers he hasn't removed but wants to talk poo poo about him knowing they've only got a few months left.
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Jan 4, 2016 22:07
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Fans posted:That's impossible to do when he's got Shadow Ministers going behind his back to give the press quotes about how he's out of his depth and utterly clueless. He went in with a Shadow Cabinet that he felt would be conciliatory to those whose side lost in the leadership election, perhaps not realizing just how sore a bunch of losers they'd be. Right, great. Who is he replacing him with? You realise there simply aren't enough Labour left MP's to make up a cabinet? And that aside, if he tries, he'll get kicked out by the PLP. The reason you have a broad coalition of all wings isn't just to stop people from outside pissing into the tent. It's also because if you alienate a wing of the party that has most of the MPs you suddenly end up not really having a party to lead any more. The backbenchers won't vote with him on anything & his position would be untenable
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Jan 4, 2016 22:17
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Fans posted:That's bollocks. No one but a die hard "gently caress Corbyn" MP is going to pass up the opportunity to raise their profile by being a Shadow Minister. Labour has 231 MP's, he can find enough to fill a Shadow Cabinet. But you're not just looking for any old body, if you've just sacked Benn or Eagles then you're clearly wanting someone who will toe the line & not brief against the leader constantly. I'm saying finding enough of those people to fill a shadow cabinet will be quite difficult, especially as you can't just fill the Shadow Cabinet with first term MPs, & ideally it's helpful to have someone on the backbenches who supports you!
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Jan 4, 2016 22:22
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Pork Pie Hat posted:Has UKMT been outsourced to the Mail comment section? That's the usual place for seeing this kind of Arts funding moaning. I am very surprised that UKMT is outraged by what sounds like poverty tourism yes.
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Jan 5, 2016 02:52
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"Jeremy said he didn't like things I'd been writing (in defence of good colleagues & new politics)." No poo poo you total penis. Not sure what part of "new politics" you thought openly briefing in public against the party leader while in the Shadow Cabinet would lead you to keep the job. But that suggests he didn't know this would happen, of course he did. He's gone down as the "martyr" who saved the jobs of Hilary Benn, Rosie Winterton & Maria Eagles. Despite there being no actual evidence that they were ever going to be sacked. Yet that's the line everyone in the press seems to be running with. Honestly, what's even the point of parliamentary democracy if you're against the status quo?
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Jan 5, 2016 11:47
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LemonDrizzle posted:AFAIK they got to live in private sector squalor, which is a large part of what motivated the fatal shift to needs-based prioritisation. Oh well, so long as the poor continued to live in squalor, who cares who their landlord was?
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Jan 5, 2016 12:54
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LemonDrizzle posted:I didn't say that at all, but I do think that any campaign to bring back council housing on a large scale (or just to protect what council housing remains!) should be informed by an understanding of the factors that created support for the effective abolition of the old council housing system. Sorry, I wasn't very clear. I wasn't having a go at you for saying that, I was just generally agreeing & showing frustration.
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Jan 5, 2016 13:03
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Chocolate Teapot posted:The UK being a practical tax haven in parts. Eh, don't think the EU can get mad about us being a "practical" tax haven until they do poo poo about places like Luxembourg.
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Jan 5, 2016 13:15
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Prince John posted:The whole thing is bizarre though. I don't understand why it was only Eurosceptics agitating against it. It was being held up in my economics classes in school and lectures at uni as a comedy example of 'what not to do' before any of the problems became apparent. Binding your 'exchange rate revaluation' hand behind your back without meaningful fiscal transfers is just idiotic. Worth remembering that Gordon Brown is the one responsible for keeping us out of the Euro, & it wasn't because he was a Eurosceptic. So it wasn't all Eurosceptics making the case, but it was in public.
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Jan 5, 2016 14:24
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feedmegin posted:Yeah, that's why I (cautiously) liked the idea in the 90s. Blair was a big fan back then too, btw; if he'd got his way then we might be cursing him for that even more than for the Iraq thing. My teenage thoughts went no further than "it'd be nice not having to exchange currency if you go on holiday".
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Jan 5, 2016 14:54
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Spangly A posted:This is true, but has anyone actually heard anything from Hillary Benn? Livingstone was making the point earlier that he's stopped criticising Corbyn since the war vote. Haven't you heard, John Rentoul, former Blair adviser, claims Lisa Nandy turned down defence. An A-plus source that.
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Jan 5, 2016 16:18
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Spangly A posted:"It's bad timing of Jeremy Corbyn for the openly tory media to decide to collaborate to create a shitshow out of literally nothing right when the tories are doing things that people who read newspapers might dislike" It's not just the Tory press. The Mirror, New Statesman, obviously The Guardian, they have all been at it at least as much a the Tory press. loving miserable. But I suppose the idea is that this drivel has been ongoing for over a week now. Corbyn should have nipped it in the bud & said there were no plans for a reshuffle. Could the press have spun that into something? Maybe, aye. But it can't be any worse than this clusterfuck.
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Jan 5, 2016 17:26
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Looks like the livebloggers might be kept busy today, the Shadow Rail Minister has handed in his resignation.
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Jan 6, 2016 11:26
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Tesseraction posted:Resignation letter blames Corbyn's alignment with Stop the War Coalition and agrees with previously mentioned Cameron-fellatio. Laura Kuenssberg says three more potential resignations to follow. Unless that's combined with a mass resignation from the Labour Party by "Corbynistas" & finding a new party for everyone to be involved with, seems like that's pretty much kill off the left in this country. Which you could argue died at the end of the 70s quite fairly, but I sort of always liked to believe we could have a renaissance at some point in my life of some sort of egalitarian policies.
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Jan 6, 2016 11:45
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serious gaylord posted:This post doesn't make any sense. The two that were sacked yesterday rebelled against him personally, Benn didn't rebel, as you've just said, it was a free vote. So he is removing people from his cabinet for doing what he's done throughout his career, which is disagree with the leader. If you can't agree to collective responsibility then you shouldn't accept an offer to join the Shadow Cabinet. Jeremy Corbyn was never in the Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet so his rebelling against the party line under Blair & Brown is hardly relevant.
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Jan 6, 2016 12:12
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serious gaylord posted:I think if you make a song and dance about wanting open and honest debate in your cabinet to then turn around and sack people like Pat Mcfadden for having the wrong opinions is a bit much. Pish. "Open & honest debate" has consequences. If you take an open debate & use it to longingly dream of the days when John Reid was stamping on civil liberties, fine. You have nostalgia from when Labour was in government. But I think you've mistaken "open & honest" debate for a free reign to slate the leader, which it was never meant to be. It always sounded more to me like wanting to move away from the presidential style of Blair & move back to a proper cabinet, where policy was actually discussed & the leader actually listened to his cabinet colleagues. On this day in 1946 the first ever general election was held in Vietnam. No idea who got what percentage of the vote because the distribution of seats had been awarded beforehand. The Vietnam Worker's Party were awarded 182 of 302 seats in total. The French obviously opposed the election. forkboy84 fucked around with this message at 12:35 on Jan 6, 2016 |
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Jan 6, 2016 12:23
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Pissflaps posted:It's going to be hard for anyone to reverse the damage done by the Corbyn exercise in time for 2020. It's damage limitation at this point. You are Peter Mandelson & I claim my £5.
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Jan 6, 2016 12:36
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So that's 3 gone. Can't remember, did Laura Kuenssberg say 3 in total or three to follow Reynolds?
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Jan 6, 2016 13:51
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serious gaylord posted:People are just attributing the leaks to those two. Its almost certainly not (just) them considering they've continued since they've been sacked. Wait, what leaks have happened in the past 12-18 hours? Have just not been paying attention? I suppose I was a sleep for a good chunk of that time. Is it just me or does the whole Trident thing seem like a re-enactment of the post Thatcher Tory party over Europe? The membership broadly support a position that's unpopular with the wider public, the MPs are fairly split, the main question is "how long can it last for?" At least Trident renewal will have to either happen or not happen fairly soon, though it does keep getting put back.
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Jan 6, 2016 13:57
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Gonzo McFee posted:Honestly don't know why I expected any better from Labour. You'd be better off hoping RISE in the central belt aren't as hopeless as they are in the Highlands. Short of that, there's always the Greens. Honestly, as a Scottish person who is also a socialist the SNP are pretty far down the list of inspiring political parties. Doubly so when Fergus Ewing is your MSP.
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Jan 6, 2016 14:08
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