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

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!

Greeks/Barings gifs

Ooh, you sly dog you.

Richard Murphy suggests that McDonnell thinks we need to go along with deficit fetishism for appearance’s sake in the media. From the article he links

The trick is to appear responsible on the deficit, but at the same time suggesting that responsibility is not equivalent to fetishism, and other things matter too. I think this provides a powerful motivation at this time for a policy that is designed to obtain balance on the current balance (taxes less non-investment spending) rather than eliminating the total deficit. This is far from ideal from a macroeconomic point of view, as I discuss here, but as a political strategy in the current context it has considerable appeal. In the UK it allows you to attack the ‘excessive and obsessive austerity’ of Osborne, who is ‘failing to invest in the future’, while following a policy that it is difficult to label irresponsible.

But since the current-budget deficit makes up the greater part of the total deficit, this seems like accepting an overall commitment to austerity-lite. What’s the point of this dichotomy - borrowing for investment: good, for upkeep: bad? He says this austerity shouldn’t hit middle and low earners, but the idea of clawing back however many billions 2020 by taxing the rich seems completely hollow.

fully expect osborne to start 'investing for the future' when he the cons have finally 'fixed the roof' (ie he has his primary surplus in late 2018-20). providing he's not derailed by events dear boy events in the interim

http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/13785482.Tragedy_as_baby_who_slept_in_car_with_homeless_parents_dies/?ref=twtrec

I really hope this is more complicated than 'sorry no roof'.

Vasco de Gama - I agree, it seems like Murphy is repping almost entirely for the sort of political positioning that failed under Miliband.

re: Richard Murphy my post was confusing there - he actually seems to be distancing himself from McDonnell. The post I quoted is by Simon Wren-Lewis

The writer also addresses my objection in the article.

Apparently current-budget austerity + capital investment is an 'old-keynesian' idea
http://www.3spoken.co.uk/2015/09/corbynomics-and-current-budget-balance.html

We’ve lost a huge figure of postwar politics. A hero in world war two as Beach Master at Anzio and a brave politician, Denis Healey told his party hard truths about Britain having to live within her means.

Fuck this guy, srsly.

had to check the quote and was surprised it wasn't a Labour MP

Taxpayers' Alliance: Cut pensioner benefits 'immediately'

The cuts should be made "as soon as possible after an election for two reasons", said Mr Wild.

"The first of which will sound a little bit morbid - some of the people... won't be around to vote against you in the next election. So that's just a practical point, and the other point is they might have forgotten by then."

TPA are some of the vilest people in this country, i'd condone assassination as a reasonable measure against any of their members.

Jerry Sadowitz could use that as part of his stand-up routine. Because he's a comedian.

"So on a purely practical basis I would say do it immediately."

IDGI - all Jeremy Hunt was saying is that poor people have no value outside of the work they contribute to an advanced capitalist society. I thought we were all agreed on this matter now?

Replace them with machines and grind their bones into nutritious powder.

Almost as bad = Gideon has tainted St Vincent.

This government's strategy -- in the way in which Osborne seems to go over there every couple of months/talk about it endlessly, and now Hunt's remarks that we work like the Chinese -- is to place a bet on China, an economy which is faltering.

But where people know their place!

The fact that George Osborne likes overgentrified indie-rock should surprise precisely no-one, surely?

Oh nothing surprising about it at all, anymore than it's surprising that posh boys at Eton should be into gangsta rap, too. It just saddens me.

Fighting the urge to google this now. xp