"n'er cast a clout til May be out aka NO BREXIT: hell is other voters -- UK election 2017

Not a great a sketch, because it can't decide whether it is taking the piss out of Tory voting Pimlico Plumbing type wealth creators or the working class Tory voters.

it was always totally tin-eared about class (and women)

(in brackets bcz not strictly relevant to this skit -- but actually the aspect that enraged me most)

Meanwhile, his sister Rachel has announced she has defected to the Liberal Democrats to stop a hard Brexit, telling a "moving" tale of how her 19 year old son Oliver cried on the morning after the referendum and said, “Boris has stolen our futures.”

I'm sure the thou doth protest too much BJ nephew will get this detail deleted from the internet at some later point, but can imagine him played by the young Charlie Boorman in Excalibur for a dramatised version of this moment.

Nuttall now standing in Boston & Skegness (CON HOLD) after failing to identify a winnable Labour seat.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-aR-7DWAAEPLm8.jpg:large

JC's excellent first week continues

praise from cesare borgia

Barwell was just sounding weak as piss on the housing crisis and trying to argue that the building of 500000 new council houses would somehow exacerbate the problem. It takes some fucked up Tory rong-thought to come up with that conclusion, but most of the PLP wouldn't probably argue with more "affordable housing" being the answer.

the LibDems are campaigning on building more social housing as well, the uncompromising stance the Tories are taking on this would be hard to defend in a debate.

debates are for the feeble

I'm gonna end up saying this every week until it happens but Blair expelled from the party has to happen

Labour need to make people realise that in fact the Tory party and Theresa May, well sort of hate most of the people in this country.

the problem is that most of the voters in this country seem to hate most of the people in this country. eg that sociopathic "poor people shouldn't have children" tweet Matt posted - sadly I just don't think that would be even close to a dealbreaker for the electorate. most of them probably agree.

I'm wondering if this is a specifically English/British trait because you're very right lex, the little lord of the manor "my family and bollocks to everybody else" mentality feels like it runs thru the history of Englishness, you could write a great book about it, but am I just sulking about a world-view that's more or less universal?

TM seems quite confident that she can actually make the working poor poorer and deflect all their anger onto "benefits scum" rather than Tory tax credit cuts they ought to be pissed off about. But of course some working people don't like to admit their shit wages were ever being propped by benefits. I think the basic need to feel superior about others and complete indifference to others problems is a probably a universal thing, history is littered with evidence to support this imo

am I just sulking about a world-view that's more or less universal?

why be cynical about your fellow countryfolk when you can be cynical about the whole hunan race?

there's a reason I'm Alright Jack was given that title and it nails a similar vibe in 1959

I have the feeling that this is the sort of stuff that works and works and works with the electorate until suddenly it doesn't and then yr authority pretty much evaporates overnight.

Re: Blair, it's very noticeable that Gordon Brown, who wasn't a good PM at all, has had the good sense to keep his mouth shut for the time being.

there's fascinating stuff about the suppressed history of the Blitz and the amount of opportunist burgling that went on while people were hiding in the air raid shelters. Dickens and Fielding full of scumbags, Pecksniff or Blifil feel like great universal Brits and I hate the idea of universals, fucking Polonius man, the archetypal stolid business Brit

IT TAKES A NATION OF SHOPKEEPERS TO HOLD US BACK

I dont think its specifically English and I think its more than fuck everyone else, its cathartic nihilsm. Cut your own head off to spite the rest of your body who cares. Anger as addiction

I have the feeling that this is the sort of stuff that works and works and works with the electorate until suddenly it doesn't and then yr authority pretty much evaporates overnight.

see 79-97 tory government. They certainly weren't worse in the last five years than previously, but all of a sudden they can't buy a vote. Perhaps the 'not being worse' was a factor in them losing the uncritical support of fascist newspaper barons, idk

last five years, ie lingering death of Major government

xxxp Polonius Danish tho

lol

I like the idea of an amoral, feckless spiv, lothario type who is profiteering from the blitz and the wartime black market as a fictional theme because it is an antidote to the overrated Band of Brothers type shite (see Nolan's next bullshit movie). But don't want the British electorate to vote with that mentality.

according to my dad during WWII my granddad was working a reserved occupation - skilled engineer and all that, tho I'm not sure how old he would have been anyway - and as conscription kicked in the factory took on a bunch of spivs who'd evaded the draft, proper Private Walker types. one day my granddad mentioned to one of these guys that the thing he missed most under rationing was a bit of cheese. so he comes in on Monday morning and opens his locker and there's the biggest wheel of cheddar he's ever seen in his life, and this lad giving him a wink and a tap on the side of his nose. my granddad told him in v Anglo-Saxon terms to get rid of it quick cos he thought he'd end up in jail.

Recommend "Caught" by Henry Green, written at the time of the Blitz, which offhandedly crams the bravery and heroism stuff into the last three pages, the rest of the book taken up with desultory shagging, bitching and arsing about.

desultory shagging, bitching and arsing about

new board title

Yeah I was thinking about Caught as well, although that was written during the war so before the whole commonly-accepted WWII narrative had even been written. General impression you get is that everyone thinks it's a pain in the arse.

Margaret Thatcher's dad was one such spiv!

My best friend's dad, who was a medic in three different hospitals during WWll, was always very quick to point out false spin from the war - his most memorable story was that the Royal Family were NOT cheered in the streets of the East End. They were booed with force.

brown will intervene in scotland. he can't help himself

though maybe not this time because the situation is so dire for slab

Brown Labour would be les mots justes

I like the idea of an amoral, feckless spiv, lothario type who is profiteering from the blitz and the wartime black market as a fictional theme because it is an antidote to the overrated Band of Brothers type shite (see Nolan's next bullshit movie). But don't want the British electorate to vote with that mentality.

― calzino, Friday, April 28, 2017 10:00 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hang about, isn't part of the problem British people having a dewey-eyed sentimental view of and obsession with the world wars?

I'm wondering if this is a specifically English/British trait because you're very right lex, the little lord of the manor "my family and bollocks to everybody else" mentality feels like it runs thru the history of Englishness, you could write a great book about it, but am I just sulking about a world-view that's more or less universal?

As a relative outsider I'd say in my experience this is a common impulse across Europe at least, even in countries where the welfare state is working very well. Part of it is that anecdotally everyone knows someone who's on benefits and in their view taking advantage of it - and people aren't easily convinced that having a few ppl abuse the system is infinitley preferable to establishing guidelines that makes it so people in need don't get them, or have to humiliate themselves to get them. A bit like how the death penalty always ends up super-popular in opinion polls.

Then of course there's the US rage at "welfare queens" despite the lolsome excuse for a social safety net they have.

What I would say is perhaps more of a typically British thing is how nasty people are about it, how gleeful in their hatred. This may just be because the tabloids push for it more here, but it also feels like kind of a national characteristic? Hope that's not an offensive way of putting it - fwiw I think the same characteristic is also at the root of a lot of great British cinema, comedy, literature.

we do love a pillory, it's true. I wonder how common that form of punishment was elsewhere.

Comedy, absolutely. Punching down is absolutely the way to get ahead these days, cf those Little Britain cunts

As for literature, I can't be the only person whose thoughts raced to friend of ilx and novelist engagé, dear old Parting Anus.

another looming battle within labour -- and within wider politics at large -- may well be between the old and the young

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/27/labour-ahead-polls-among-voters-40/

Among 18-24 year-olds Labour is 19 points ahead, according to figures from YouGov. In contrast, among the over-65s the Conservatives are ahead by a huge 49 points.

FORTY NINE POINTS.

More of a census than and election really

an

Good to see labour leading by a smaller margin among an age cohort that is a) smaller b) much less likely to vote than the age cohort the tories dominate :-(

look, i'll throw meself on the pyre as long as all these other old tossers join in

Comedy, absolutely. Punching down is absolutely the way to get ahead these days, cf those Little Britain cunts

As for literature, I can't be the only person whose thoughts raced to friend of ilx and novelist engagé, dear old Parting Anus.

To clarify: what I was trying to identify as British is not specifically punching down, but rather having this gleeful attitude towards the targets of one's hatred, whatever they may be. So the comments sections of tabloids laughing at dead refugees or having these fantasies about executing benefit scroungers are part of this, but so are Stewart Lee, Charlie Brooker, the whole Angry Young Man stuff in literature and cinema, maybe even punk rock circa '77.

Obviously I'm not equating these on a moral level but I think they come from the same kind of energy, which can be used for good and ill I guess, and which I don't think is as present anywhere else that I can think of.

Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh
Stop, traveller, and piss
— Byron on a recently suicided PM

Question i have is why seasoned cynic NV thinks ppl might be better anywhere else

that reminds me, still haven't tap-danced on Thatcher's grave

I don't think I do darragh, I'm wondering out loud if there are peculiarly English character traits. you could argue that different countries tend to end up with different kinds of polity/politician, and wonder whether this is an indicator of anything. it interests me if nothing else, cos god knows I hate what most people are talking about when they talk about Englishness.

Theresa May with approval ratings above 50 percent, that's shudderingly Real England and what can we do about it and how quickly can we take off and nuke the island from orbit?

They're doing well in Wales and Scotland too, lest we forget.

Begging people itt to NOT link to polls as reported by the Trollegraph of all things.

The Telegraph is the only website I can see at work, CNN too, so that's my excuse.