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

enh, not exactly a bonkbuster

Inside, it was dark, save for the television, which flickered in the corner, the volume turned down. Laura pressed herself back against the door as she shut it, breathing hard. As her eyes got used to the light, she saw John sprawled out on the armchair, sound asleep. She walked closer to him. She bent down and smiled, her face just above him. His eyes opened, then she felt a hand reach up into her hair and pull her gently forward. With adrenalin still pumping from the incident in the bar, she lowered herself onto him. His kiss was
passionate and hard.

oooo, ids presidential fan-fiction!

For many, President Carson was considered the most formidable politician of his generation. An even better communicator than President Reagan, he had come from behind to win the Democratic nomination and then the election, two and a half years before. In doing so, he had ended a fallow period for the Democratic party. He had torn it from its obsession with the old principles of redistribution and had broadened its appeal. Now he was seen as a common-sense man, the 'guy next door'. But he had used this image ruthlessly in his dealings with the Republican-controlled Congress. Power was President Carson's driving ethos. He had always believed that simply by his being there, things would be better as long as the public liked it, that was enough. And he had quite brilliantly positioned the Republican-dominated Congress as too ideological when it imposed a new budget on him. By ersuading the public that he had made the best of it, he had positioned himself as the 'anti-politician' defending them against Washington politicians. He fostered the
appearance of an outsider, but he knew how to play the political game with the best of them. The deals, the federal contracts, they were what he was brilliant at.

Now he was seen as a common-sense man, the 'guy next door'.

maybe even... a quiet man?

This definitely deserves its own thread.

He watched her, his head resting
gently on the back of his chair, his hands folded around the sides of
his cup. Her sensuous beauty always held him. Her Madonna eyelids
made her look as though she'd just woken up, particularly as they were
framed by thick black hair falling across her shoulders; she was as
captivating to him in the morning as last thing at night. Thirty years
younger than him, she was for Acquilan, at one and the same time, a
fine work of art and an exacting companion who stimulated all his
senses. He laughed gently and she smiled.

I think Acquilan is the bad guy, having skimmed this

Good god

next level from the BBC
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CSboWjvWsAAzvP4.png

the actual story, reported on the guardian
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CSboWkKWcAAIvhq.png

the DUP, still a class act

you know youre backward when your statelet has a more bigoted marriage policy than the republic of ireland

do find it sort of funny that it's the party of the former gunmen that have the best lgbt policies in ireland

I know right

people outside NI think that the abortion laws are almost uselessly strict in NI because something something Catholics, but no, it's mainly because the DUP are a bunch of godbothering woman-hating loons iirc

If there is a hell it will definitely contain Ian Paisley jr and Ian Duncan Smith "In 2010, the Catholic magazine The Tablet named him (IDS) as one of Britain's most influential Catholics".

Well Played

The fear of being purged is keeping many Labour people quiet

Not quiet enough unfortunately.

Good to see Labour protests to the IP Bill are being documented here *lol*

lo; @ grainy photo of Seumas Milne doing 'clockwork orange' type stare

... which looks like it was taken in a prison.

capitalism is a prison iirc

This is fairly damning.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/11/david-cameron-letter-cuts-oxfordshire

Not too surprising.

That's a great piece.

His constituency falls within that county council, and presumably Oxfordshire's Tory councillors all gave enthusiastic assent to the government's economic programme in May. It's classic 'one rule for me, one rule for everyone else' - we'll be seeing that a lot when ministers react furiously to cuts to their own departmental budgets.

I'd dispute whether he's really that ignorant of how deep his own cuts go, he just doesn't want to look like he's shitting on services in his own constituency.

yeah it does have a vibe of "pull your socks up" type admonishment to pin blame on the councils themselves. like if they were more canny savers everything would be grand. which prob works in people's minds. i mean i dunno if councils have a good image generally because i live in tower hamlets, but i doubt it.

I imagine he only wrote the letter in the first place because of a question in the Commons or an irate and, more importantly, vocal constituent, got to be seen to do the right thing even when you don't give a fuck. What's with the Guardian, this is like proper journalism, there's articles comparing Jeremy Corbyn to Mark E. Smith to publish.

wonder how austerity measures at council level are affecting contracts with private sector partners. you'd imagine that more stuff would be outsourced up to a point and then some of those contracts would start to get chopped away as service levels were reduced. fuck services for children and the elderly, maybe it's once there's more potholes than road *and* the cheques stop rolling in to clancy docwra, that's when cameron will start hearing noises from the sorts of people he pays any attention to

It reminds me oddly of a management technique I encountered first about ten years ago, in the context of a small financial services company that had been bought out by a large financial services conglomerate.

My boss had had the fear of god put up her by this... team-building retreat thing she was forced to go on when the company was bought out. They had forced her and her team to do bean-counting exercise, and the way that they "motivated" them was that if they failed at the bean-counting exercise the first time, they would be forced to do it again, but with one fewer team member, and less resources. And this had motivated her to work 60 hour weeks and drive her staff to do the same, with this lecture of "if you think this is hard, it'll be even harder with less staff and less money, which is what will happen if we don't perform!!!!"

And she honestly had bought the logic that this was the way to motivate people.

I just looked at her like "that is completely non-logical. The way to solve the kinds of issues *we* face, is to have spare capacity to take up the slack during extremely busy periods." I could not work out the logic of how accomplishing a task with fewer people and fewer resources was supposed to do anything except demoralise what staff there were left. But this was what the overlords demanded.

Ironically, the overlords, in their process of asset-stripping and "cost-savings" and "trimming the fat" were one of the financial entities that were absolutely *fucked* by the financial crisis, and had to be bailed out by the government and essentially nationalised. (The company I had been "fat-trimmed" from, for having a bad attitude, was re-purchased by its founder for pennies on the pound.) But their entire model clearly did not work, and had to be bailed out - it is by its design only going to work if there is a government safety net to bail them out when it becomes unsustainable below a certain point. And yet it's people who have clearly been to this school of unsustainable management who have been put in charge of the actual government safety net?

But, y'know, this is an actual school of management. Which people are taught at expensive staff retreats. And they continue to apply even in the face of evidence that it just doesn't work.

About 169,000 results for Cameron "more with less"

Blairites, the reasonable wing of the Labour Party.

I'd never noticed Cameron's little pointed peg teeth until that Downing Street press conference today.

xp
Good grief! That is fucking shameless xo==, not surprising though.

By far the most striking section is on patriotism ... "How dare Cameron’s Conservatives pretend that they speak for Britain. We stand for this country’s greatest traditions: the suffragettes and the trade unions, the Britain of Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley, Alan Turing and the Beatles"

Corbyn will say that his leadership will be based on three pillars: a new politics, a new economy and the Beatles.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/11/16/uk-france-shooting-britain-syria-idUKKCN0T50KG20151116

Has Cameron specified what he wants to bomb that isn't currently being bombed by Russia, France, the US, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Canada, the Netherlands, Turkey, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates or Australia?

Is there a secret bit of Syria that only we know about?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/54/Shelleydvd.jpg/250px-Shelleydvd.jpg
" the Britain of Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley..."
For goodness sake Jez, stfu about The Beatles please!

tell Jeremy Corbyn to fuck off

No

Mind boggling at the gall of Osborne lecturing us that 'the internet has become a vector of crime, espionage, attack and harm' weeks after arselicking the world's most prodigious cyber attackers, the Chinese government, and handing them the British nuclear programme on a platter.

Good to see the press, the BBC and Labour MPs united in condemning the single greatest threat to the lives of and limbs of British citizens, at home and abroad, Jeremy Corbyn.

He could make things easier for himself.

You don't have to be evidently armed to be shot dead here but it probably helps.

It's an odd one as there have been no changes to the law, no obvious changes to policy and no apparent disagreement on the interpretation of the law but still enough room for the press to hang him.

Given the Menezes murder Corbyn's views are perfectly reasonable.

Don't trust the reporting of these meetings or the LOL "sources" that keep saying how shambolic all of it is - the reporting of the Monday night PLP meeting is becoming a platform for plenty of juicy gossip and 'journalism'.

I have seen several reports that JC doesn't really respond with challenges - all of this has to be seen in the context that 90% of the PLP don't think JC should be anywhere near the leadership. Hard to tell whether he wants to engage or whether he thinks its a waste of time or what. But isn't that what the right of the party were doing to their members? I am enjoying this reversal of sorts.

Do you think it would be pandering to the press to say 'yes if the same thing that happened in paris were to happen here a shoot to kill policy would be justified'? Or they would crucify him anyway?

That's the law as it stands and he has said he doesn't disagree with it. There's no situation in which police fire guns that they don't shoot to kill.

Wrong. After the Lee Rigby murder the police shot only to maim and incapacitate

I didn't hear the interview but 'a Labour aide clarified that Corbyn was “committed to what the existing law is"' - so someone else shut the stable door on his behalf.

Wrong. After the Lee Rigby murder the police shot only to maim and incapacitate

Yes, this is a bit more nuanced than i suggested. The Rigby killer didn't have a firearm iirc though.

The police officially shoot to neutralise a threat but they are told to fire repeatedly at the torso when someone has a gun or at the head when someone is suspected of having a bomb. This is why they've repeatedly called "shoot to wound" a fiction.

Haven't heard the interview either but yes it was the aide that gave the 'easier' answer. This is all similar to the nuclear 'debate' with JC being cast as a madman for appearing not to be as hawkish or what have you.

Distracts from austerity, where the Tories are not looking so good.