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

From the small sample I know, the view on Labour has definitely changed since the election of Corbyn. We're talking Yes voting Labour supporters though, or non-SNP voters to be more accurate.

I thought this was interesting, I don't know if ppl here who are more familiar with Scotland + Scottish politics think it's accurate?

http://modies.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/corbyn-and-snps-new-playbook.html

Rather, I'd assume the SNP are delighted with Corbyn's victory. I know I would be, if was in the SNP. Their genius is that they combine triangulation with Corbynite rhetoric when it suits them, which it did in the West of Scotland. They are the Blairite party par excellence in UK politics today and it is, to me anyway, utterly inconceivable that a Corbyn-lead Labour party will be a match for them. Instead, the script is going to go something like this, "We disagree with Jeremy Corbyn on some things but we're both against austerity and Trident. Look what happens to someone in England who shares these views we've been so awesomely successful with in Scotland. Look what happens to him in his own party! Just shows how very different our two nations are..."

Here's a preview. This is the line we'll get on a loop.

Nicola Sturgeon ✔ @NicolaSturgeon
If Lab can't quickly show that they have credible chance of winning UK election, many will conclude that Indy only alternative to Tory gov
12:35 PM - 12 Sep 2015
974 974 Retweets 812 812 favorites

The bloom's going to come off the SNP and Sturgeon eventually.

Who is Jeremy Corbyn? Chinese daily analyses Xi Jinping meeting with Labour leader

Cameron to Xi: "You see, he is the opposition: here. Opposition. We are here to introduce you to the queen and family and talk nice about nuclear power, and he is here to talk about human rights and steel works and so on. He's not with us, he is the opposite of us. I know, it's a bit weird, but.. "

Xi: "Can't you just run him over with a tank in Trafalgar Square?"
Cameron: "I wish!"

Xi: "So, how do you, like, interact with this guy then?"
Cameron: "Well, I call him a threat to national security and accuse him of hating Britain"
Xi: "Right, with you now."

Cameron: That guy protesting Tianmen Square and those Tibetans with signs, shall I have them arrested by Met police and get them to raid their homes for computers and whatnot?
Xi: Sure, knock yourself out.

have we discussed the guy who was hoodwinked into campaigning against 'cake' in brasseye now getting a major anti-drugs role within the govt?

Now *Sir* David Amess to you.

There is a piece on The Spectator talking about how many of Lab's Shadow Cabinet aren't from Oxbridge (the today's LOL series bought to you by twitter...yes I wish I was dead).

Before you even get to the assumption of 'being clever' here = attaining a piece of paper showing you sat down quietly and wrote stuff you were able to at a high recall rate quickly (also how so many families rig the system in their favour), there is the other mistake of not looking around at the mess we find ourselves in and saying that this was to bought to you by...people educated in Oxbridge. There are other things to say about the system we operate under and its not anyone's fault in partic, or of the value of people's experience and then their willingness to learn as they grow older...but really Corbyn's election has bought such a pile of nonsense to the table. xxp

wait, it was about how they aren't oxbridge and that was being sold as a negative thing?

i love the cake story as much as the next lazy left wing voter but is there any way it has any broader appeal, or can be made to have one

Well it had a 'let us note this shift' ambience - felt it was clearly implied as a negative. xp

i love the cake story as much as the next lazy left wing voter but is there any way it has any broader appeal, or can be made to have one

probs not but you'd think "man who has proven himself remarkably gullible in this area gets plum job at it" would be an easy point to make

In 1996, The New Tory Anti-Drug Tsar Was Asked To Talk About A Made-up Drug on Television. Here's How He Made A Fool of Himself

When your Prime Minister is a pigfucker I'm not sure what would constitute a cause for embarrassment anymore.

Before you even get to the assumption of 'being clever' here = attaining a piece of paper showing you sat down quietly and wrote stuff you were able to at a high recall rate quickly (also how so many families rig the system in their favour), there is the other mistake of not looking around at the mess we find ourselves in and saying that this was to bought to you by...people educated in Oxbridge.

Lol you can't possibly be expecting the Spectator to question the value of a public school education can you?

I'm not sure the Spectator would accept the premise that we are in a mess right now - you know, "Cameron's jobs miracle", economy powering ahead and all that guff.

spectator article does also say this:

Under Corbyn, the Labour party — once the clever party — has had a brain transplant...Let’s not be snobbish. Those universities are good. But it isn’t snobbery to point out that they aren’t as good as Oxford or Cambridge

and was written by Harry Mount, cousin of David Cameron, son Ferdinand Mount and #258 in the Tatler list

http://img.tatler.co.uk.s3.amazonaws.com/241x276/g_j/HMount_Tat1000_16Feb12_rex_b.jpg

My friend A worked on Brass Eye and said that everyone they approached to be in the Cake sketch was chosen because they voted through the Criminal Justice Bill, and as an ex-Shoom clubber he was duty bound to shank each and every one of them.

I'm not sure it's especially controversial to claim that Oxford and Cambridge are better than most of the redbricks. It IS snobbery to assume that an individual who has been to a redbrick can't be as intelligent or talented as one from Oxbridge. Especially if they're an Old Etonian who's been groomed for Oxford since birth.

i think it's pretty controversial to baldly state that Oxbridge universities are clearly better teaching universities than all others in 2015 tbh

i don't tbh

Lol you can't possibly be expecting the Spectator to question the value of a public school education can you?

haha no but its possibly the 3rd or 4th time I've seen something around the Lab's new leader lack of education. That Spectator blog just got me to comment. xxp

Also you know Oxbridge automatically means you can run things better. What makes a good public servant is never touched on.

xp across every subject? I don't have data for this so I'm genuinely like "really??"

My understanding is that Oxbridge courses are a lot more intensive and with a lot more face-to-face teaching time than most other universities. In arts and humanities at least, which is the route the majority of politicians take. Individual teachers I'm sure vary drastically even at so-called elite institutions.

Largely irrelevant anyway as the columnist cites their position in the Times University Rankings which are based on a lot more than teaching alone, as if the quality of a university's research has much bearing on the PPE graduates they churn out.

Especially irrelevant given none of this has any bearing on whether someone makes a good politician.

Pointless article which seems to break down to "These Labour chaps used to be super swots but now they're just dim as us Tories, what!"

My understanding is that Oxbridge courses are a lot more intensive and with a lot more face-to-face teaching time than most other universities. In arts and humanities at least, which is the route the majority of politicians take. Individual teachers I'm sure vary drastically even at so-called elite institutions.

yeah this. idk, i know a fair number of people who've taught and been taught at oxford the past few years, plus who've come through other russell group universities, plus one friend who's a lecturer at one of the latter. but others may be better informed, and i have no idea about the hard sciences.

Also "Corbyn's purge of the Oxbridge set", most of them left of their own free will I think you'll find.

iirc about three pre C20th century PMs didn't go to oxbridge, I think Wellington, Disraeli and ???

xp also the impression i get is that intake to non-oxbridge elite universities is actually getting less smart since tuition fees -- that it's closer to 'true' now that someone at one of those is less smart than it was a decade ago.

none of this, of course, has any meaningful contribution to whether a statistically negligible size of hand-picked individuals who went to university at various points over the last few decades are 'smarter' in any abstract sense, which would itself have little to do with how well they would do at running the country

the world 'group' is missing there

I think they are mostly exceptional at undergraduate level and then it's most wrt getting people to work harder

Nevertheless plenty of mediocre intellects end up at Oxbridge and plenty of smarter people end up elsewhere.

http://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_large/public/thumbnails/image/2015/10/23/12/aguero-cameron.JPG

everyone they approached to be in the Cake sketch was chosen because they voted through the Criminal Justice Bill

Noel Edmonds voted through the Criminal Justice Bill?

Every *politician*, I should've said.

good old Lord Fox, whatever happened to him

boom boom iirc

undergrad teaching at oxbridge is on average much more intensive (and more expensive) than any other university in the uk. you get 2+ hours per week one or two on one with faculty (not postgrads). this is as true in science as it is in arts.

whether that means the education you get there is any better -- or whether succeeding in that environment is a signifier of greatness -- is another matter. the intimacy and structure make it basically impossible to fail. the amount of independence required to succeed as an undegrad there is not much. you could reasonably make the case that people who succeed in the oxbridge system merely demonstrate they had a pulse from the age of 18 to 21.

to be fair to PPE, to succeed in that, you have to have more than a pulse. it has a justified reputation as perhaps the most demanding degree at oxford in terms of workload, if not intellectually (that's physics and philosohpy, fuiud).

A Liberal quibbles

This is even better:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11949701/AEP-Eurozone-crosses-Rubicon-as-Portugals-anti-euro-Left-banned-from-power.html

Corbyn-like govt written about favourably in the Torygraph because its the Euro Union stopping them from power.

can't believe Portugal is flirting with totalitarianism

Bullough's Let Our Fame Be Great is really good but his politics are about as naive and nuance-free as Milne's.

Would like to read a proper article about the Portugal situation as my eyebrows rise when Corbyn fans on Twitter take AEP screeds as gospel.

Corbyn-like govt written about favourably in the Torygraph because its the Euro Union stopping them from power.

I'm not a fan of AEP but he has at least been more or less consistently anti-austerity, in the Eurozone at least. FFS he even wrote this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11869701/Jeremy-Corbyns-QE-for-the-people-is-exactly-what-the-world-may-soon-need.html

I'm not sure if the Barclay Brothers are that arsed if Portugal (or indeed any European country other than maybe Greece and France) elects a socialist government. They just don't want Britain doing so. I'm guessing their foreign reporters still have an element of free reign if it doesn't directly contradict the main editorial line.

What about Spain? Its contagion isn't it? That risk of Europe blowing up - or eventually groups forming within the European Union that will shift austerity politics out of the way, which would fall in line w/current Lab leadership.

Nothing on this in the front page of The Guardian. Useless.

This is something on the context that I'm skimming now: https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/joana-ramiro/good-student-of-europe-at-dead-end

Bullough's Let Our Fame Be Great is really good but his politics are about as naive and nuance-free as Milne's.

Right - because that was pathetic. Just picture him sitting at 3am considering as to whether he'd join Corbyn's Labour. All those weeks before and after the leadership vote, before Milne's appointment! Casting this as 'this is where something broke for good' is laughable.

This Portugal story does need more reporting, or maybe the lack of suggests there isn't much there...but given what happened to Greece...

Martin Amis, "a leading figure on the British Left" (have actually been laughing at this all morning) hates him, as he is uneducated.

Sunday Times headline! bizarre in so many ways.

Interesting letter from Paul Jenkins in the Guardian:

http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/oct/25/international-law-and-the-ministerial-code?CMP=share_btn_tw

i was just reading that - easy to picture the intense irritation and equally easy to comprehend the way that's converted into handwaving 'nbd just cleaning up the language' by cameron. dismissiveness about detail -legal or otherwise - as pedantry is a hallmark of his PM rhetorical style.

xyzzzz__ - fairly well-publicised piece on Portugal here.