quote:

1. It's not a person's fault if they are poor;
2. It's not their fault if they are disabled;
3. Neo-liberalism doesn't work;
4. The Daily Mail lies (maybe even about Pig Dave and charity);
5. Neo-liberalism has never worked;
6. The British Empire was not a force for good;
7. Neo-liberalism will never work;
8. Trans people are not "men in dresses";
9. Gendered insults are not okay;
10. If something is "so gay" it had better be something that is really happy;
11. Trains are awesome;
12. The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles;
13. Ni dieu, ni maξtre, nae hope.

R. Guyovich posted:

PISSFLAPS AND YOU

reply to pissflaps if you are capable of doing so like a normal person without whining about how much you can't stand pissflaps and his posting

if you are not capable of doing this, shut the gently caress up about pissflaps and do whatever it takes to not be bothered with him

i am going to start probing all parties in pissflaps-related derails and encourage posters itt to report those who cannot abide by this rule

Namtab posted:

PISSFLAPS AND YAOI

I'm going to seduce pissflaps

Mister Adequate posted:

Alright lads and lasses, seeing as there's a lot of questions about Are Wee Country given the DUP issue, I'm going to put together a small effortpost that can hopefully clear some things up. Bear in mind that I've not actually lived in the province for some time now, and though it's an area of interest, it's not an area I could be called a specialist. You can probably assume that anyone correcting me is more accurate than I am. Also, full disclosure, family of mine was killed in the Shankill Road Bombing of 1993, and I in principle support unification, so various biases may show. Anyway, caveats out of the way, here goes:

What is Northern Ireland?

Northern Ireland occupies six of the thirty two historical counties of Ireland in the north-east of the island, and is one of the four constituent countries that make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the other three being England, Wales, and Scotland). Whilst England has massive power due to population and hosting the actual UK Parliament, and Wales and Scotland have varying levels of devolved powers, Northern Ireland is a special case due to the legacy of the Troubles. NI is also sometimes called Ulster (Which isn't accurate to the historical Ulster and upsets some Nats as a result), or affectionately, Norn Iron, because that's how us eejits pronounce it. Norn Iron has basically no political connotations and is a pretty good informal term as a result.

What were The Troubles?

Most people will be aware that the Troubles were a period of enormous civil discord and conflict, primarily taking place in NI, lasting from the '60s to the late '90s. More specifically, it was a conflict between the 'Unionists' (So named due to their desire to remain in the United Kingdom) and the 'Nationalists' (Who support a united Ireland), with the Unionists getting under-the-table backing from UK state actors and the Nats having mostly to scrounge up support wherever they could, including weapons stolen from the Norwegian Army, AKs donated by Gaddafi, and various things bought in the US and smuggled over.

Anyway, the reasons for the conflict are vast and complicated, but at the simplest level, England embarked on an imperial project in Ireland that lasted almost a millennium, starting with the Norman invasion in the twelfth century. Over the long centuries the north of Ireland proved to be the most intractable to these foreign invaders, and as a result a huge number of settlers (mainly from Scotland) were brought into the region. So anyway Ireland wins independence, after literal centuries of revolts and rebellions, in the early years of the 20th century, but the settlements in the North had been effective enough to create a new identity of Ulster-Scots, and these people were fiercely loyal to the English throne. End result, Northern Ireland stays with the UK while the rest of Ireland goes their own way.

Unfortunately the settlement was not palatable to basically anyone, and tensions rose over the years, with Unionists terrified of an impending annexation by the Republic that would leave them all out of work at best, and Nats treated as second-class citizens, repressed by the Unionist-dominated coppers, and so on. In the late 60s this came to a head with the Battle of the Bogside, which was a fuckoff enormous riot in Derry (Or Londonderry if that's what you prefer). The Troubles were on. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) on the Nationalist side, and Ulster Defence Association (UDA), Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), and a shitload of other wee groups and splinter factions on the Unionist side.

Basically we all spend the next thirty years bombing and shooting and baseball batting the shite out of each other, and Northern Ireland became a pretty brutal place, where police stations were armored like you'd expect to see in Iraq in 2006, violence was everyday, and Belfast at least had to be physically divided by huge-rear end walls euphemistically called Peace Lines because otherwise we all went into Permanent Riot Mode and it's like 28 Days Later up in.

So what ended this mess?

An extremely long and grueling political process, the Peace Process, whose cornerstone is commonly called the Good Friday Agreement. It is widely acknowledged to be a messy and imperfect situation, but it did well enough to put the worst of The Troubles in the past, and the few remaining diehards on both sides were mostly left out in the cold. In part this was because the peace process involved basically every group of relevance in the matter, which meant sitting down across the table from known terrorist leaders. Concessions of various sorts were made, one of the most contentious of which was prisoner releases of convicted terrorists and so on; not something many bereaved families want to see, but if it stops more families ending up in the same situation, it's something I'm personally able to live with.

As I say though, it was a good enough agreement to end the great majority of serious violence, despite ongoing issues with things like marches and so on. The thing is that one of the core, central, most indispensable parts of the agreement is the dissolution of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which brings us up to the current mess. There are many other ways in which the EU is an important guarantor of peace, but that is by far the main one. Almost everyone ended up in agreement on it, with referendums in both the North and Republic strongly in support of the agreement, and only one major political player opposed - the Democratic Unionist Party.

Wait, what about Sinn Fein? They don't take their seats, but could they, to change the maths?

Okay, Sinn Fein are/were the political wing of Irish Nationalism and were very strongly linked to the IRA, which is one of the main reasons aforesaid compromises were both hard to get and essential. They remain committed to a United Ireland, and they stand for UK General Elections in the North (They're also active in the Republic as a more 'normal' political party but that's not directly germane). They reliably get a handful of seats in Norn Iron, but due to history and objectives, they do not take the seats they win in the British Parliament. To do so would give legitimacy to British rule over Northern Ireland.

The Commons has 650 representatives, meaning on paper a party needs to win 326 seats in order to have a majority, and thereby have an uncomplicated mandate that only has to worry about their own party's MPs. Because SF doesn't take their seats, this number is reduced, usually to 323. This time around SF actually won seven seats, meaning that magic number for this Parliament is 322. As the Tories have 318, they need to find four seats from elsewhere to have the majority needed for getting things done. Everyone else is either too ideologically opposed to the Tories (e.g. the SNP) or has been badly burned by coalitions before (Liberal Democrats), which means the only game in town appears to be the DUP. In this instance, as the DUP have ten seats, a Tory-DUP coalition or alliance or whatever tots up to 328, which is a very narrow majority but enough.

However, there was last night a possible situation where the Tories and DUP would add up to about 323 seats, which would mean, should Sinn Fein actually take their seats, that this coalition would lose its majority. As SF loving detest the Tories with every fibre of their beings it is understandable that people could ask "Hang on... what if...?" but it was never really on the cards. Sinn Fein's party constitution explicitly forbids taking Westminster seats, and our dead, gay forum's general consensus is that whilst there may be some theoretical circumstance where they'd take their seats, we are talking about some kind of insane situation where they are needed in order to stop an existential threat. That all said, being able to kill a Tory-DUP coalition has to be the most tempting look at Westminster Sinn Fein's had in a long long time.

Alright, they're not taking their seats - So what about the DUP?

The Democratic Unionist Party, or DUP, are unique in UK politics in that they are an evangelical force that has considerable power at least in Norn Iron. They're anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage, and have at least some people high in the party who deny climate change and are Young Earth Creationists. They were founded by the inimical Reverend Ian Paisley, who was, uh, firm in his stances on remaining part of the UK among other things. Now, normally this lot aren't doing anything on the UK stage as a whole, being more concerned with vetoing gay marriage or expansion of abortion rights in Norn Iron. Yesterday's election shattered that however; today the DUP are the only thing propping up Theresa May's government, giving them massive influence and power.

Now, the modern Conservative party has made attempts to be more socially progressive, and indeed they were the party who got gay marriage legislation through the Commons and legalized it in the UK minus Northern Ireland, and they more-or-less consider that stuff to be secondary at best, and a series of lost battles at worst. The DUP probably won't be demanding an abortion ban or anything, but they also can't be counted on to support anything progressive that comes up, because it's going to make Jimmy on the Newtownards Road extremely upset come next election time. Still, these are more-or-less negotiable or avoidable, and you'd be likely able to count on other parties supporting things like that regardless. The real problem is in Brexit.

Wait, Brexit? How does that effect Northern Ireland?

Remember when I said the Good Friday Agreement relied on an open border? Yeah, that's the problem. Regressive as they are in many ways, the DUP are smart enough to know that the border with the Republic is essential. Since the end of the Troubles, NI has seen a lot of new growth and development (place looks nothing like it did when I was wee), and the current economy is hugely reliant on being able to trade over the border with zero paperwork, fees, or anything else. You just hop in your truck in Newry, drive down to Drogheda, and start unloading.

So Brexit is going to put that to bed, because it will create a border between the United Kingdom and the European Union, a land border in the case of the island of Ireland. Absolutely everyone in Norn Iron is bricking it as a result because they know just how catastrophic this will be for the economy, and the DUP wants the softest Brexit they can get as a result. Whatever the border looks like, it needs to be as open to movement and trade as it is today, and every addition to that starts putting people out of work and closing businesses.

Unfortunately for prospects of their coalition, the Tories have taken very much the opposite tack; a Full English Brexit, a Red White and Blue Brexit, a Hard Brexit, "No deal is better than a bad deal", and so on. Characterize it as you please, the end result is the same, the Tories don't give a flying gently caress about NI or the consequences of Brexit, and have traded on promises of sticking it to the EU and being willing to crash out of the negotiations if they can't get the deal they want. Unfortunately, contrary to what they claim, the EU does not need us more than we need them, and given how done Brussels is with our stupid bullshit, they're not going to be very open to us pissing around.

Everything else can be negotiated or just put on the back burner until the next parliament, but because Article 50 has been triggered, and the negotiations are scheduled to start in a mere ten days, Brexit cannot. It is coming down the tracks with absolute inexorability, and no matter what is done, SOMEONE is going to be angry enough to pull their support out of Parliament and scuttle the whole thing. May wasn't actually wrong that going in with like a 50+ seat majority would strengthen her hand, but it was actually about domestic strength more than with the EU negotiators. Now, if she pursues the hard Brexit her party wants, the DUP will tell her to get out tae gently caress. If she pursues one soft enough to satisfy them, her own MPs will tell her to get out tae gently caress. And the thing is that this does not change if she goes. Sometimes you can shore things up with a change of leadership, but whatever poor sod is in charge, with the Commons distributed as it is, faces exactly the same situation and exactly the same problems.

Further Constitutional Complications

In order to secure peace in Norn Iron, the London government had to basically step back from any sort of party political involvement in the Province. The UK at large was supposed to act as a guarantor and mediator, with the authority to bring everyone together and have them sit down and find agreements, but largely staying hands-off otherwise. To explicitly favor one political party or enter into agreement with them is deeply and fundamentally problematic in this regard. This may be why there's no announcement of a formal coalition, to maintain plausible deniability over this matter, but the problem was never going to be in the official name of the thing.

As the North is currently mired in an existing political crisis anyway, with the devolved government in Stormont unable to agree on an Executive and therefore not currently actually sitting, far past the deadline for forming a government, so it's hard to imagine any of this coming at a worse time. That deadline was extended due to the General Election but things are only more complicated right now.

So... Brexit bad?

Brexit bad enough that, if handled badly, we could be in for Troubles 2: Electric Boogaloo, or a NI unification referendum, or God alone knows. I wouldn't expect a marked increase in violence but who can say for sure? And the various groups are much smaller than at their heights, but they're mostly still there, carrying on as criminal gangs more than anything, but no doubt all able to get guns and bombs together for a new campaign if needed.

Angepain posted:

there are nonsectarian parties in Northern Ireland? I thought that was against the law or something

spectralent posted:

Today I met a man who hadn't heard of the Labour Party and didn't know the groups of politicians were called "parties". This man had registered to vote.

Liu posted:

oh by all means take your loving time. It's not like Russia rubbing their dicks all over us is a concern or anything.

Tesseraction posted:

I like to imagine they did but it was all harmless poo poo about jam and allotments so they tore their hair out in frustration

Oberleutnant posted:

Capitalism.txt, 1905 edition:

dispatch_async posted:

https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/870310676501278720

lmao

Random Integer posted:

At this point Im starting to wonder if Theresa May actually exists and isn't just the result of some kind of Fight Club-esque national psychotic break.

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

You know I wouldn't be surprised if that was due to medication. Not taking SSRIs for a few days makes your body do poo poo like that when you get excited and want to coordinate your body at the same time.

Dead Cosmonaut posted:

It’s like the ending of the movie Brazil

You see the FBI coming to arrest Nigey and Trump and the rest of the Russian stooges

But as the camera slowly pans out from your face it’s just you zoned out in a room with a projector displaying nothing but Trump tweets in front of you

ShredsYouSay posted:

He's Ukips education spokesman. Words fail me.

Paul.Power posted:

XKCD illustrated the issue pretty effectively here - relative to previous changes (since 20,000BC, at least), right now the earth's average temperature is changing really fast.

baka kaba posted:

Cheers guy! I'll have to run the options by Team Awful so if anyone else wants a go feel free the icon is called pigfuckin.gif if you need inspiration

I guess I should say the icons need to be 90x90 (making them 2x or 4x and shrinking them down is always a good plan) with square corners, and in PNG format. The others are all here

Loving Africa Chaps posted:

Hello person who has never had a hangover

NotJustANumber99 posted:

It wasn't a boat was it? Just a boring science torpedo.

OwlFancier posted:

How the gently caress is a science torpedo boring?

ShaneMacGowansTeeth posted:

I think if we wanted a military dictatorship, we'd probably need a fully staffed and funded military

Oberleutnant posted:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/02/kill-them-the-volunteer-army-plotting-to-wipe-out-britains-grey-squirrels

quote:

For the last eight years, Prince Charles, as patron of the Red Squirrel Survival Trust, has promoted campaigns to exterminate the greys.

Cerv posted:

Lord_Adonis brought up the military coup in the first place and it was explicitly pro-Remain. sorry i didn't realise your version was supposed to be even loopier.

Gort posted:

One thing that really bugs me is humanity's fetishisation of animals that are really crap at living in the world we've made, and our all-out hatred of the ones that are really good at it. People hate raccoons, rats and grey squirrels, but they idolise pandas and red squirrels.

I get wanting to preserve biodiversity, but going on bloody massacres against the animals that are actually able to make it on their own is insane.

Cerv posted:

military coup in the UK and the possibility of socialism in one country are both very unlikely, but if I were a betting man I'd say the former wins

Oberleutnant posted:

I don't have any particular opinion on culling animals for environmental reasons. What I very much do have opinions on is the people interviewed in that article, who are a bunch of dorks who hunt squirrels weith thermal imaging equipped air rifles and then make waistcoats out of the pelts, and sit around in conference rooms pretending to be elite anti squirrel special forces planning a genocidal campaign against dirty foreigns.

El Perkele posted:

Please, for the love of god, do not conflate invasive species removal with racism and xenophoby, even in jest.

big scary monsters posted:

That's the approved humane method for killing fish too. The big stick you use is called a priest.

darkwasthenight posted:

Pandas are fluffy and cute and iconic, and as such are walking weapons in the Chinese cultural arsenal. People were going crazy for the two at Edinburgh Zoo last week and I didn't get it at all. It's a money spinner.

Praseodymi posted:

All species are vital to the ecosystem you numpty.

Pissflaps posted:

A 'Corbyn win' would be him going to the queen asking to form a government.

Gorn Myson posted:

Hes just recently been outed as a Truther and someone found an old video of his where he talked about how Adolf Hitler secretly escaped to Argentina. When confronted with this, he admits that he still believes them but says that hes definitely not a conspiracy theorist.

Tesseraction posted:

Did you know that feminists want to kill all white men?

MikeCrotch posted:

He wants to say Cultural Marxism but the keksters are avoiding that term after people pointed out it was invented by the real life nazis

forkboy84 posted:

That time Propagandhi wrote a song mocking Fat Mike's weak piss liberalism was fun. And also took shots at Lars Frederiksen being really silly.

Incidentally, Propagandhi are a much better band than NOFX too.

Miftan posted:

A lot of anarchists I talk to are of the opinion that you should still vote for the lesser evil.

Oberleutnant posted:

Remember a couple of years ago when Google Glass with the built-in cameras were a big deal for a minute? There was at least one story that was doing the rounds of a woman working as a waitress who felt really uncomfortable when some fedora wearing creep was recording her while she was working.
Obviously Google Glass didn't last, but wearable tech is still a big thing, and people are already voyeuristic and narcissistic enought to be livestreaming everything, all of them time, and for it to have an audience. All it's going to take is a few more years - maybe a decade - of tech development and I think we're going to start seeing cheap and discreet wearable cameras all over the place, livestreaming poo poo constantly, and it's going to be a massive issue for personal privacy.

In the last year I've seen a few stories addressing the trend of living in environments of constant surveillance like "dazzle camo" makeup and hair styles, and "anti surveillance clothing". Obviously these are designed to highlight the debate around facial recognition in particular, rather than to be functional, everyday solutions, but it's a really interesting issue, and it feels like we're on the cusp of it becoming a major factor in society.
I don't think people are now, or will ever be, ready to give up on the notion of personal privacy.

learnincurve posted:

Don't forget our old friends sterilisation and castration.

It always amazes me that the kind of people who support the far right on the internet simply do not comprehend that they would either be seen as cannon fodder, or the very first under the knife if the real fash ever came into power.

ShaneMacGowansTeeth posted:

https://twitter.com/piersmorgan/status/870751543431180289

haakman posted:

ChainsawCharlie posted:

What is the difference between having a gun that will also kill you and not having it to protect you?

Bobstar posted:

Distract from nukechat using... plugchat!

Look at these horrifying things they use in the US theatre!

Namtab posted:

Why would the guy admit that?

goddamnedtwisto posted:

Why do they provide pencils rather than pens at the polling station, anyway? I'm sure someone once explained it to me and it was a very good reason but buggered if I can remember it.