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

Obviously the Ashcroft book has been in the pipeline since way before the election, but I wonder if the Mail is going harder on this because of Corbyn. Dacre's evidently decided it's time for Cameron to go, and no longer considers Labour an electoral threat, so they're free to go all out.

Osborne genuinely scares me.

Conspiracy theory? Possibly, but maybe not: http://the-orator.co.uk/2015/09/pig-gate/

Another election pledge reneged.

Yeah, fair point until the sanctimonious "you won't catch me laughing" jibes at the end. This has been going round on twitter about *why* people are laughing and *what* they are laughing at.

http://theleveller.org/2015/09/british-really-laughing/

Little that hasn't already been touched on, but to the point.

The free school meals story came out a couple of days before the pig thing and would be a ridiculous counterproductive piece of political maneuvering in any case.

Free school meals is the sort of thing that people get up in arms about, actual well-known non-politicians who people listen to, so I doubt it's going to be easily buried.

nice piece in the leveller, cheers

some sober reflection isn't amiss even under these circumstances

The "won't catch me laughing" line is a joke Branwell. Virtually every sentence of the preceding text contains an innuendo!

I get it now, "gag" as in gag-reflex, ho.

'you would never catch me making a pig gag' is a pretty good double entendre.

the leveller piece is great, but i am fairly sure a lot of people are laughing because the front page of a newspaper is saying the prime minister stuck his penis in a dead pig.

Yeah, 60+million people in this country. Some are laughing, some are not, some are laughing because pigfucker, some are not.

That's not enough, I want the whole world to be laughing at the pigfucker.

Even Osbourne?

Osborne has already done that.

He only bit the head off a bat as far as I'm aware. (xp)

*golf clap*

Apologies, I did not realise it was supposed to be a joke.

Saw a lot of "it is possible to care about school dinners being cut *and* laugh at pigfucking" type stuff floating around Twitter yesterday so saw that and thought it was more of the same.

What is it, psychologically, that makes us assume (and this seems especially prevalent in the internet era) that people can't hold two thoughts/ideals/opinions/actions/whatever in their head at once? ie. be upset about school dinners *and* laugh at pigfucking; vote for Corbyn *and* not be a Hezbollah sympathiser? It's not at all uncommon for people to hold quite sophisticated, complex (and contradictory, sometimes) values/opinions etc.

And when I say 'us' I just mean 'some people on the internet'.

I think it's more a reflection on/complaint about the relative degree to which people share hilarious memes/hilarious makes-you-thinkpieces

See also "stop wasting time thinking/talking about/helping refugees when there are people homeless and/or starving in this country". Compassion isn't finite, you fuckwits.

xpost

lol yeah, always the people most concerned w homelessness and deprivation here who come out with that stuff.

I am pretty sure some zillionaire is keeping a number of George Osborne's more choice youthful misdeeds to himself, to be unleashed when needed. Another possibility is that people generally agree that between Osborne, Boris Johnson and Cameron, it's Cameron that's the least decadent - so the other two should consider this a warning shot. I'm sure in researching Cameron's past, Ashcroft and Oakeshott found plenty to be getting on with concerning the others.

What is it, psychologically, that makes us assume (and this seems especially prevalent in the internet era) that people can't hold two thoughts/ideals/opinions/actions/whatever in their head at once?

hardly worse now than in the past, hardly possible to measure.

hilar

i know it's maudlin but that was somebody's son, somebody's brother, somebody's dad

Also it was under reported, on twitter and elsehere - c4 news top item was a nothing item on how we've become addicted to screens.

doesn't it qualify as genocide when the number of declared fit to work casualties is in the thousands? they are effectively liquidising them whatever way you look at it.

that suicide story is really sad, awful.

the leveller piece is excellent - i've no idea why the author decided to hang it on "this is what you're really laughing at" rather than sth like "this is why you should be despairing rather than laughing. everything else about it is good though.

and it's actually gone offline. i'm getting really paranoid about a lot though.

Speaking to 300 guests at a Conservative party fundraiser on Monday night, he said that he had to go to hospital earlier in the day for a bad back, which he put down to “over-energetic” wood-chopping in his Oxfordshire constituency over the weekend.

The surgeon told Cameron that he would need an injection and asked him to lie on his front.

The doctor then said: “This will just be a little prick, just a stab in the back.”

The prime minister said that “rather summed up my day”.

wonder how much he paid someone to write this.

Hoping wood-chopping isn't some Bulingdonian euphemism.

he's good with the matey quips though, he's like george w bush that way - it's a frat-daddy hallmark

https://twitter.com/lordashcroft/status/646354379398905856

'Avalanche' of Labour MPs could turn to Lib Dems - Sir Vince Cable

Teddington Lib Dem Councillor Jennifer Churchill Defects To Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party

lol @ lib dems actually advertising for entryists.

How do you reckon Tim Farron feels about the last 10 days?

https://rickpdx.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/perfect-loop-ralph-wiggum.gif?w=500

hahahaha

fun

http://www.lrb.co.uk/2015/09/23/nick-richardson/short-cuts

parties for the idle elite "should be like jury duty"? you mean they should be something that everyone is invited to to regardless of class background or social distinction? huh. that's quite an ambition!

Osborne praised for 'not stressing human rights' in China

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/11A01/production/_85739127_hi029238979.jpg

yep, that's definitely the face of a man who cares little for human rights

he looks like Rowan Atkinson

like, eerily so

Not as eerily as he resembles Dylan Moran.

And resembling a prick for that matter.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/25/john-mcdonnell-labour-will-match-osborne-and-live-within-our-means

Don't understand this. What would it mean to have a balanced current budget but still allow borrowing for investment? At what point does an investment become a current-expense?

yr balance sheet will have two entries, the cost of the investment, and the current value of the investment.

ILX needs to go on an economics crash course.

varoufakis the right man to teach a course on economic crash alright

An economic crash and how to prevent it AMIRITE!