Psychoactive Substances: Rolling UK Politics in The Neo-Con Era

I doubt George Osborne or Iain Duncan Smith ever got a kicking for wearing a trenchcoat instead of a tracksuit

You're aware of the story of a young Michael Gove having the shit kicked out of him in Aberdeen I presume? Can never bring that one up enough.

tragic tale of gabardine in aberdeen

:-o

Ha, yes, I am aware of that one. Gove is the one politician who I could buy being motivated by beatings and humiliations experienced as a youth.

these people are psychopaths

Just imagine the mouth that adolescent Gove must've had on him. Where can I find that story?

Re: council housing, I was and still am boggling at the nerve of the housing woman.

Homeless applicant: "Hi, I'm fairly open to living wherever you put me, as long as it's not the scary place I lived in for six years, the place that sent me crazy."

Housing officer: "We have an offer for you in the scary place that sent you mad, and if you don't take it I'll declare you intentionally homeless." *tight smile*

There is always one person in every housing office like this, and woe betide you if that's your case worker. Also irritating: housing officers that piss time up a wall by taking half your appointment to explain the amount of people on the waiting list as if you don't already know this, and your place within that.

Gove is the one politician who I could buy being could only have been motivated by beatings and humiliations experienced as a youth.

http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/ignore-the-spin-boris-is-keeping-is-water-cannon-because-theyre-unsellable-scrap/

Meanwhile in London...

Fp'ed that Cardamon post, all that shite about dramatising a feeling or whatever seems like a poor excuse for just simply letting rip with what is currently a very prevalent type of UK class bigotry. I deleted my angry post this morning because I am trying cut down on being a dick, but I still find the sentiments in the op appalling and unjustifiable and am calmly registering my dislike of it for the record.

these people are psychopaths

― conrad, Wednesday, July 15, 2015 1:56 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^this

xp you can buy em on alibaba now anyway http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Howo-bulletproof-Anti-Riot-Water-Cannon_60141793692.html?spm=a2700.7724857.35.1.urfNhr

i dont' think anyone (other than matt dc) really understood what cardamom was really saying in his post but never mind, keep piling it on.

really

Fp'ed that Cardamon post

I found it more bizarre than reprehensible tbh.

xp yeah i mean his point was supposedly seeing where a certain kind of bigotry comes from and resisting his own tendencies towards that, right? tho i don't particularly buy into his thesis, or see it as anything but a tiny particular aspect of the much broader daily mail style demonization of the working classes etc etc

The whole anti-chav thing became a formalised meme (if you can call it a meme) around 2002 IIRC? That's well before the Tories got in, but it seemed to popularise (and legitimise) a lot of face-value classist sentiment that continues today. The only time I saw a backlash to anyone using it as a term prior to around 2007 was on ILE.

Yep. A cheap cash-in book on the 'chav' phenomenon around 2003 was subtitled 'A guide to Britain's new ruling class' iirc.

There used to be a bit of an argument as to whether it was a term of class hatred or just a new term for yobboes, but I guess that debate is pretty definitively over by now.

i believe it started as a regionalised term for yobs and grew to a national expression of class hatred.

Isn't it used blankly as "someone uncultured"?

ie that if they are hardworking or not isn't the defining attribute.

yeah i've never thought chav was synonymous with someone on benefits.

xp i dunno, i'm always quite surprised when i come across it these days, not to mention alarmed. it's a bigoted pejorative term nowadays no denying.

It's a bit old (Burberry) hat now, isn't it?

Chavs

But before that there was...

charvers

The bullshit bit of the Cardamon post was the 'should we judge these attitudes too harshly?' bit when the answer is 'of course we fucking should', especially given the minuscule overlap between anti-welfare bigotry and people who have actually been beaten up by gangs of thugs.

i dont' think anyone (other than matt dc) really understood what cardamom was really saying in his post but never mind, keep piling it on.

― cod latin (dog latin), Wednesday, 15 July 2015 15:21 (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok

That's a teenage girl being kicked to death by kids who, let's be honest, came from families that were long-term benefit claimants and who, had they not been sent to prison, would have just continued along those lines

are people who've been in real conflict with real scum to be forgiven or not for hating 'people on benefits'?

I think I understand these bits where instantly and bizarrely the perpetrators of a terrible crime, and another less terrible crime ('real scum') are defined as the progeny of 'benefit claimants' as though that is of key importance.

What I'm saying is that due to getting me head kicked in, I can relate to some extent with what such people are doing, the idea of getting revenge on the benefits people (who have been melded with 'violent people') is indeed a potent drug.

I think I understand this totally vile sentence too! Just because he frames this as part of a (genuinely sad and horrible) story of something that happened to him doesn't mean that relating to this kind of thinking should be in any way ok.

I dunno, based on the reactions here, you lot must either have had similar experiences but nobly forgiven and never want revenge just a little bit, or just never had similar experiences?

Pretty sure I understand this dumb sentence too. The responses to these posts have been fairly mild considering they essentially amount to 'I know it's wrong to want to wipe out the poor but I do fantasize about it and I understand people who do actually want it and if you don't then I guess you are either the luckiest person alive or some kind of saint'.

Anyway I'll shut up now, there's an important conversation about 'chavs' to be had.

things are pretty fucked up everywhere eh

On (reluctantly) googling this horrible murder, which is somehow connected to the Conservative Party's plans to cut the welfare budget, I discovered that one of the two perpetrators has subsequently been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. So how the poster's hard earned taxes could have 'reformed' him I know not.

Via funding the health service properly?

Yeah?

Yeah but in the formulation "a ___ wronged me once so now I hate all ___ and want them to suffer and you are an out of touch moralist if you judge me for it", among the many unpleasant things you can fill in there (black person, foreigner, Muslim, benefit claimant) you could just as "reasonably" include schizophrenic

he didn't say he wanted them all to suffer, he just said it was perfectly understandable why people might want them all to suffer

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/09/27/article-0-02CADB2400000578-486_468x421.jpg

Oxford student paper mention of Gove kicking as requested upthread ^

"Gray did nothing to save his lifelong friend. He ran away, to leave Gove and his face to take the rap"
Let's not be judgemental here, this is not necessarily a clear cut case of moral cowardice.

The first part of that student paper story: "So not going to happen" clearly.

Just me getting Clockwork Orange vibes from the photo then?

Alfred E. Neuman... with rickets.

Seems like a lot of people who ostensibly have left-wing political views are really against Corbyn because of the Hamas thing and now a 5-year old tweet vaguely supporting homeopathy. Now I'm not keen on either of those myself but it seems a bit weird to be so against the only leftie candidate based on those factors when choosing between leaders, almost like they are buying into right-wing media narratives. I dunno this is a bit of a strawman I've built and I'm probably talking out of my arse again, I totally accept that left-wingers might be against a Corbyn leadership based on his apparent unelectability (it's not really my position, I'd rather there was a leader representing me than another Blairite whether they were in government or not, I don't see the point in getting Labour elected if they are just Tory-lite, at all). Mind you I hate George Galloway and people have compared Corbyn to him so maybe they are onto something.

Sorry I'm really rambling here.

Corbyn seems like the least Galloway-like leftie politician imaginable in terms of modus operandi + personal style

Corbyn is nothing like Galloway but expect that connection to be made again and again if he wins. A big part of me wants him to win, but otoh he seems like a genuinely decent man who will be torn limb from limb if he does. The loss of temper + eyeroll in that C4 News interview suggests he lacks the temperament to deal with even a relatively easy-to-sidestep grilling. I don't really believe it will realign Labour to the left either, because the likelihood is that once he resigns or is deposed, they'll sweep back with someone even more right-wing in charge, and that'll probably happen sooner rather than later.

I suspect the likelihood is that either Burnham or (more likely) Cooper will drop out of the race between now and the ballot in return for one of the plum shadow cabinet positions. I don't really understand the second preference thing either - Burnham apparently ahead on first votes but Corbyn ahead after transfers, but I don't really understand why anyone would put Cooper or Kendall down as their first choice and then Corbyn as a #2.

united by a fondness for hats, I suppose xp

Every possible stop will be pulled out to ensure Corbyn doesn't win.

he has plenty of faults, he's not a good media performer and he isn't likely to sell his policies to anybody who doesn't already share them but otoh he's the only candidate with any sense of principle or opposition to the neoliberal hegemony. that's broadly what makes him unelectable and precisely what needs to happen to the Labour party, whatever the outcome.

also the Torygraph's hilarious "vote for Corbyn and destroy Labour forever" campaign stinks of mildly alarmed double bluff to me

A big part of me wants him to win, but otoh he seems like a genuinely decent man who will be torn limb from limb if he does.

^

NV also otm, no tories are going to be joining labour to vote for Corbyn.

xps The Hamas thing... It's a funny one. Seems that if you're a prominent socialist asking for dialogue it automatically makes you a terrorist sympathiser. It's a transparent bit of dirt-digging crossed with a canard on behalf of the right-wing, but so many people seem to take it seriously, as if Corbyn's key objective all these years has been to invite terrorists into number 10 and blow up parliament or whatever.
Yesterday the Telegraph were celebrating Corbyn's popularity, hoping his election would 'destroy' Labour. He's either unelectable or not. But the fact so many people think he's a. unelectable and b. dangerous just makes me despair in humanity.

The Telegraph has 'campaigns' now? Standards slipping not like in my day they don't like it up 'em.

a lot of leftists who may well sincerely seek an equitable solution to the Palestine issue have the unfortunate habit of wording their public statements a bit less diplomatically than "i am asking for dialogue"

he has very little support in the parliamentary labour party, right? to the point where he struggled to get on the ballot? which would surely make any theoretical Corbyn victory a non-starter even aside from the fact that labour establishment will obv move heaven and earth to crush him if he looked like he had any chance of victory

Hamas: diplomatically referring to conference attendees from an elected government as 'friends' is normal political behaviour, see also our 'friends' in Saudi Arabia, whose wealthy citizens are probably paying for all the terrorism and yet we get half-mast Union flags when their king pegs it. I call *bullshit*.

Homeopathy: a cursory glance shows JC sees it as possible complementary medicine in some cases, not a replacement for regular medicine (the cleu is in 'complementary'), on the perfectly understandable willow bark = aspirin tip. Nothing more, surely?

Corbyn wouldn't even be close to winning this if there were another candidate willing to challenge the austerity narrative, which is what every grassroots party person or left-wing/labour voter I know really wants from PLP politicians.