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

(Thought Farage was obvious)

Aha.

Yeah, Johnson's entire approach to this is transparently self-serving. Farage is in it for the hatred.

Many xposts - Ah gotcha - misread it and though that the glaring omissions weren't mentioned in that para.

politicians stopped viewing bigotry as something to be argued against and became something to be tiptoed around or pandered to

jo cox sounds like one of those politicans:

Let me be clear from the start: it’s fine to be concerned about immigration – many people are.

This doesn’t mean to say they are racist or xenophobic – they are simply concerned about pressures on GP surgeries or schools, or how once familiar town centres are changing, or whether they’ll be able to compete with migrant workers to get a job.

...

But I strongly believe that concerns about immigration – as legitimate as they are – are not a reason to vote for Brexit.

Had my emails from kezsia and Corbyn - apparently recalled parliament on Monday?

yes.

has anything emerged about the reported other victim of the attack? what was going on there?

I have said many disparaging things about her in the past year. I am still horrified at what happened yesterday, but despite her being a nice person I was never impressed with her as a politician. She was a standard Blairite and what happened yesterday doesn't change that one iota. I have been having this argument with someone today and apparently my attitude is unacceptable so I will stfu.

hmm, drops microphone, right?

I hadn't heard of her til she co-wrote an article in the guardian last month the day after the elections saying we nominated jeremy corbyn and now we regret it

not trying to be controversial, it's something I have been having an irl argument about today. Some of the sanctimonious bullshit is starting to annoy me.

The eventual by-election: Conservatives have said they won't field a candidate, so it will be Labour verses UKIP, doubtless...

Anyway, I did wonder who would take up the Labour candidacy, not because of safety issues, more who will fill those shoes.

btw, hey, let's not be reasonable, right?

I probably agree with stuff evaluating her lagacy/position, but I really don't feel like getting into that now. It's for another day.

You're gonna love this page, right?

https://www.gofundme.com/jocox

I really don't feel like getting into that now. It's for another day.

It really isn't for another day. She was not a major politician, she might have been in the future.

As I see/say, there's a legacy in the form of a charity page. That is her political legacy.

Like most people I hadn't heard of her before yesterday, but I would imagine that even as a passionately pro-immigration MP you must just get this steady drip-drip of anti-immigration crap from your constituents that makes it difficult not to mediate it back in that kind of vague equivocating fashion occasionally. You get the opposite as well, I'm sure, but the Overton window has lurched so far to the right now that even your more liberal standard Blairites are starting to look like Michael Foot in comparison.

I jus don't think I can talk about the things I disliked about someone rather than the things I liked.

The eventual by-election: Conservatives have said they won't field a candidate, so it will be Labour verses UKIP, doubtless..

UKIP not standing. Neither are the Lib Dems (fwiw).

is there any level of immigration that you guys would find problematic?

if immigration is problematised in terms of they are simply concerned about pressures on GP surgeries or schools, or how once familiar town centres are changing, or whether they’ll be able to compete with migrant workers to get a job.

1. that's not an immigration problem
2. sorry
3. sorry that's not an immigration problem

is that a no?

immigration obv causes some problems, in that local authorities faced with an introduction of significant immigrant population will need resources they perhaps hadn't accounted for - both in terms of sudden increase of population not provided for plus extra things like translators etc. - and in intercommunal strife between immigrant groups and longer standing residents.

the problem is these logistical problems are never presented as what they are, which is just "problems" and not Armageddon, and immigration is constantly posited as a Malthusian thing ("we're full"), or clash of civilizations/attack on native white culture and way of life.

altho obv that positing is most often done sotto voce or thru dog whistles

if the immigration rate put the uk population growth rate in the top 20 or so I think it would be a problem, but as it is many countries are dealing with much larger increases of population and it's not normally a bump of educated working age people

Is there any level of immigration that you guys would find problematic?

I can see there would be practical difficulties with accommodating an infinite number of people, but from an ideological POV: no

Actually let me rephrase that: fuck off, no

cool

It's just that the right keeps claiming that these people cause problems - and they cause problems because people reject them. So what is the issue? Is it people coming into the country or the reaction within the country.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/17/mainstream-politicians-clueless-on-how-to-deal-with-migration-debate-says-jo-coxs-husband

This is quite good, Guardian article quoting Brendan Cox

Britain First group photo purportedly including Thomas Mair:

https://twitter.com/Elliot_Eastwick/status/743876605832011777

I thought that had been debunked already

i did not know that, but yes, lack of verification is why i said purportedly

https://twitter.com/MLP_officiel/status/743729155469041664

not a brony account, unfortunately

I thought that had been debunked already

could you point me to the debunking CS? this is the original tweet sharing the photo and there's a repeated claim that the ID has been verified by two ex BF members:

https://twitter.com/Far_Right_Watch/status/743870797844971520

It seems credible and that is in front of Dewsbury Town Hall. That pic pretty much sums up how farcical various attempts by right wing groups to get things kicking off in Dewsbury have been for the last decade. The last EDF one was a complete flop as well.

nick i cant because i saw it on a friend of a friends fb thread. Of course the debunking could be fake. Im sure the truth will out soon enough

seeing lots of people say it is him now.

I have said many disparaging things about her in the past year. I am still horrified at what happened yesterday, but despite her being a nice person I was never impressed with her as a politician. She was a standard Blairite and what happened yesterday doesn't change that one iota. I have been having this argument with someone today and apparently my attitude is unacceptable so I will stfu.

― calzino, Friday, June 17, 2016 5:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, your attitude is unacceptable. If within 24 hours after someone's death, a brutal political murder, you are mostly concerned by trying to convince the world that she wasn't good at her job, something is wrong with you. "A human being was slaughtered BUT LETS NOT FORGET SHE WAS SHITE AT HER JOB, DUNNA CHANGE AN IOTA".

Yeah, good on you mate. Such brave a statement. You need to keep your morality in check. And do so while, indeed, shutting the fuck up. For shame.

Listen here you fucking tin-eared moron! i'll comment as much as I like about what happens in my area and I didn't say anything like what is represented in your bullshit post. You go check your own morality you sad sack of shit.

Q.E.D.

calzino if you look upthread you'll see me making a massive clown of myself and I urge you to do as much as you can to avoid being my successor. You've a good community of people here on ilx and if you fall out with everyone and go charging roughshod across the unspoken standards we have here ilx won't be a resource you can use for discussion

Everyone itt agrees that there are problems with 'blairites' but surely you would agree that in perspective considering what's happened here these problems with jo cox and her position re: corbyn are sort of just accepted and not needing to be gone on about? Like I'm pretty sure corbyn himself accepts that, no?

is there any level of immigration that you guys would find problematic?

You people who say there aren't red-eyed pterodactyls plucking people from the streets of trumpington, let me ask you this, is there any level of red-eyed pterodactyl plucking you would find problematic, etc

Everyone itt agrees that there are problems with 'blairites' but surely you would agree that in perspective considering what's happened here these problems with jo cox and her position re: corbyn are sort of just accepted and not needing to be gone on about? Like I'm pretty sure corbyn himself accepts that, no?

no-one is "going on" about this aside from you and LBI?

Dunno? Possibly

calzino isn't the first person I've encountered today who's been trying to make an intervention to make sure people remember that jo cox was actually not so good because she was not quite as far to the left as we would have liked

I can see the angle but jeez get some perspective and I say this as someone who has often needed to get some perspective

Like there's a danger we're all going to become 'blairites' or whatever now? And a stand must be made against all this 'sanctimony'? Like that's more important than challenging the attempts to de-politicise this that all the top scum are up to right now? I dunno, calzino might not have meant that and I can't speak for them

I met Jo Cox once, during her Oxfam days in an Oxfam charity shop, when I lived in Yorks. I was flipping through the crates stacked with useless yet overpriced lp's and at one point, after she was done chatting with personnel etc she joined me going through the lp's. I didn't know who she was, but she joined in. We had a banter and laughed at how silly the cover of the Band On The Run lp is (it really is silly tbh).

That was it. We weren't friends, we didn't bond (other than shared giggles over that stupid record). Just that one moment. But moments like that are exactly what make you see that at the end of the day, this was a human being, a mother, a person. Years later she became an mp and I thought: good for you.

You, "Calzino", are dehumanizing her by focusing on her political beliefs - that you obviously don't care for - and reducing her to merely that. Her beliefs may or may not be what you - or I - believe in. But seriously, why be such a huge prick within 24 hours after Cox was murdered, and reduce a person to her political beliefs? Why?

One shouldn't need to have interacted with a murdered politician to understand she was like you and me. I don't pride myself bringing up the anecdote, but I do it because you seem so out of whack and adamant to spit on someone's grave. For what? Because she was with Labour? That's it? If you want to make a big song and dance about how she was a "Blairite" and opposed Corbyn, go ahead, make a fool of yourself but now is not the fucking time. A caring person, a mother - whether someone from your constituency or not, from your political views or not - was murdered. Instead of trying to demonize a murdered woman, the taking your inability - along with your juvenile cursing - elsewhere.

*"the taking" (which sounds like a terrible movie) = take

I don't think what calzino said here was any kind of attack. He was commenting on a state of affairs, quite calmly and sadly I thought. A few of us, just as much as him, have been suggesting that the social anomie that frames this murder is not the legacy of one particular political party - in fact that a lot of politicians of all stripes have contributed to a climate of public intolerance fueled by a social structure collapsing along faultlines of poverty and alienation.

Last night I watched people argue repeatedly that the problem is politicians being too mean to each other, that we need a climate of mutual respect. Irrespective of whether political policies respect people or have real devastating consequences in their lives. It's pointless to pretend that this brutal murder, probably committed by a mentally ill man with a long history of being a would-be nazi thug, is not going to be nailed to a host of political agendas. It's already happening, these are the games career pols play, they can't help themselves.

So unless you're bellowing abuse at this woman's bereaved family, or painting some extreme slanderous conspiracy about her because you're a nazi fantasist, I think it's ok in a space like this to calmly opine about what happened and why. Which is all I've seen anybody doing, including calzino.