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

I can't believe I just clicked through a gallery featuring ten pictures of the same slice of cake.

You're doing your bit for British jobs, in fairness.

Onlookers said the scene reminded them of Marie Antoinette, the super-rich toff duchess who said of starving peasants: "let them eat cake".

no they didn't

paul mason clearly needed to be released into the wild.

that was a wonderful read.

he does these columms for the guardian that are always interesting but occasionally veer into slightly thomas friedmanesque futurism

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/03/30/britain-sacrifices-steel-industry-to-curry-favour-with-china🔗/

This has been doing the rounds and is worth reading as well, even if it is AEP.

Yes, read this earlier -

The EU trade directorate has been rendered toothless by a British veto. So much for the canard that the UK has no influence in Brussels.

"The British are sacrificing an entire European industry to say thank you to China for signing up to the nuclear power project at Hinkley Point, and pretending it is about free trade," said one official in Brussels bitterly.

What they are blocking is a change to an EU regulation intended to beef up Europe's 'trade defence instruments' (TDI), enabling it to respond much more quickly to Chinese dumping and too impose much tougher penalties.

Hinkley fucking Point!

I fancy Paul Mason.

nice to see a lot more press attention being given to the EU/chinese tariff issue ..

Paul Mason has really let go since he left C4 hasn't he? Also needs to stop writing for The Guardian, they let him indulge in his worst yoof is connected bollocks. Some very unconvincing stuff on tech - not that I wholly agree with what I've seen of his Postcapitalism shebang.

But even in that piece there is quite a bit to unpack: so a steel will make a tank - what if that tank is sold to run over a Greek or a Spaniard yoof protesting at the lack of jobs and food.

Well, at least he got to the protest by reading about it on Facebook so that's ok.

There are about a million reasons why it might be useful for the UK to have a steel industry at some point in the future, once it's gone then starting up afresh will be even less economical than running it at a (hopefully temporary) loss. The current steel glut isn't a permanent state of affairs, if Port Talbot really is losing £1m a day then nationalisation is going to cause its own problems later down the line if there isn't a recovery, but it's still better than letting the whole thing go to the wall.

Don't need steel manufacturing capacity but do need trident because uncertain world lol

(course, trident is itself an example of an interventionist industrial policy, arms being the only industry where this is allowed)

that's basically been US industrial policy for the last 100 years?

The banks/financial services haemorrhage a lot more of the public's coffers than the steel industry, just noting the unfortunate link between industrial and defense policy. Don't know if that would hit a Tory's heart as yes Trident might cover it and post-Iraq there is no appetite (or much cash) for ground adventures. xp

didn't realise how isolated the UK/Osborne is in europe re: steel, seems like an interesting case

An entire industry being driven to the point of collapse by a combination of the Chinese government and an Indian conglomerate is pretty indicative of the reality of the UK's place in the world fwiw.

LOL: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/01/exclusive-royal-family-considering-dramatic-brexit-intervention

EU rules on state aid seemed to be pretty flexible during banking crisis.

Good example of the general cluelessness of the EU debate: it's never been about 'us' (Britain) against 'them' (Yerp). As far a defence of manufacturing goes, 'our' government are more 'them' than 'they' are.

Using outside experts who advised that the intervention would need to be presented by a figure with impeccable European credentials, a strong affinity with the continent and the character to speak out, the family has decided that the move should fronted by Prince Philip.

i think the url of that guardian article reveals the truth.

Really hope so

“He has been hugely impressed by the way the EU stepped in, not just once but several times, to save Greece,” said one official with knowledge of events. “He admires what Tsipras and Varoufakis achieved – in fact he told friends he sees something of his younger self in the charismatic, motorbike-riding, eye-for-the-ladies Varoufakis. Mind you,” added the source, “he also thinks the Greeks would never have got into this mess if the colonels had still been in power.”

I didn't realise the graun could be so hilarious, my sides reached escape velocity etc

the graun's picture of a glassy-eyed grinning phil is legit terrifying:

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/a80120bd0b1a30f2a4c55e83cc48ee7394eb8c82/0_0_4267_2844/master/4267.jpg?w=1920&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=c2f12381fccd207d788e14fadff56057

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/01/chancellor-buy-to-let-landlords-george-osborne

This another April Fool's piece?

London is the least densely occupied big city in Europe

But has some of the densest newspaper columnists.

you're all enjoying yr april fool's day, simon jenkins is enjoying his april fool's LIFE, etc etc

xp isn't a big part of that due to the amount of green space and gardens?

No, it's just bollocks.

He's comparing the population density of greater London to inner Paris for example.

That wasn't the point in me posting the quote, but fair enough.

Oh I didn't think you posted it because you agreed with it! Simon Jenkins is a twat.

No, it's just bollocks.
It's not total bollocks though, is it? I'm sure London is less dense even in inner zones because majority of housing is low-rise.

He skirts round the reason for all the empty bedrooms being all the boomers squatting in their giant empty-nest family homes i notice.

(xp) I used that quote so I could execute a painful and obvious pun on the word "dense". Obviously the whole article is garbage, not just that quote.

Well, OK this is from 2007, but if anything London will be even more dense now, and it puts the only European cities denser than London as Athens, Madrid & St Petersburg:

http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html

He was talking about occupation density though, not population density, obv. it's stuffed to the gunwales populationwise.

... it is where I live anyway.

Improving occupation density is the favoured hobby-horse of the nimbyish paternalistic Tory. It isn't entirely without value as an aim but let's not pretend it's about anything other than not wanting any more beastly high-rises blocking his view of St Paul's Cathedral. Well, that and letting Zone 5 residents keep the view of the nice field at the bottom of the garden.

🗻

There are about a million reasons why it might be useful for the UK to have a steel industry at some point in the future, once it's gone then starting up afresh will be even less economical than running it at a (hopefully temporary) loss. The current steel glut isn't a permanent state of affairs, if Port Talbot really is losing £1m a day then nationalisation is going to cause its own problems later down the line if there isn't a recovery, but it's still better than letting the whole thing go to the wall.

going back a few posts here - isnt the point that UK has agreed to cheap steel influx from an overproducing china in order to get them to bail out edf risk fears over hinkley point fiasco? huge amount of capex investment, which you expect wth nuclear power, high, almost double power cost, which you don't, and a massive decomissioning poison pill. at which "too much invested to fail" altar Port Talbot jobs have been sacrificed.

There are wider reasons for not wanting to impose punitive anti-dumping tariffs on steel, I think. There is a risk of a much wider trade war with a further devaluation of the Yuan and the imposition of wider tariffs on imports. China has recently imposed tariffs on steel imports but that could be read as a warning shot to countries that have already put tariffs in place. If China wanted to turn the screw (bearing in mind it produces over half the world's steel and has little use for lots of it at the moment) it could make it much harder for the EU to export other things, which would arguably hit the UK and Germany harder than the rest of the EU. Germany has a much larger steel industry to protect though.

peak '80s Tory sort of headline here:

https://www.byline.com/column/51/article/950

A senior Labour MP confirmed that he had seen Whittingdale with a prostitute at the House of Commons, although was unaware if it was Ms. King. When pressed on how he was aware of this, he told Byline that she was giving out business cards to other MP’s.

INSERT PHOTOS OF HER AS DOMINATRIX

ha ha. quite. tube crepe shots not enough

Sajid Javid has an interesting courting technique:

In January 2015 Sajid Javid, then culture secretary and now business secretary, was invited to choose and introduce a film for members of parliament’s new crossbench film society to watch. Javid’s choice caught the audience by surprise. No Star Wars, no Godfather, no Brief Encounter for him. Instead Javid picked the 1949 movie The Fountainhead, directed by King Vidor and starring Gary Cooper as the defiant architect Howard Roark. Why? The important clue, Javid explained, was the script, which had been adapted by the implacable libertarian Ayn Rand from her novel of the same name.

Javid admitted that The Fountainhead was not his favourite movie, but he said that it was the most important to him. When he first saw it, he said that evening, he thought it was “a film that was articulating what I felt”. So taken with its message was he that Javid even, he remembered, read the movie’s courtroom scene aloud to his future wife, Laura, when they were courting – a scene I find difficult to banish from my view of Javid. And still today, he went on, he made sure to read that same scene to himself twice a year.

holy shit

well there you go

hah

Given that Whittingdale allegedly took her TO THE MTV AWARDS it's not like he was exactly trying too hard to conceal anything.

Chinese government apparently determined to finish off Port Talbot once and for all.

It justified the move by saying imports from abroad were causing substantial damage to its domestic steel industry.

http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/13672/production/_89047497_de24.jpg
Cameron desperately trying to look all pensive and statesmanly while doing fuck all, in the next frame Xi is mockingly holding up a hand for him to talk to.