The Independent C/D

I keep posting "he should be hung from a yardarm" on daily mail stories but they seldom publish my comment as roger, tunbridge wells

Even more genius than the 'rap music' comment:

Anyway he's got a point about black only organisations. Also black only nightclubs, & newspapers, fine by me I don't want to join go or read them. except its again one rule for one lot and another for the majority of us. Talk about a divided society.

- rikrok, London, 17/1/2010 9:06

Talking of YAB, one of Liddle's threads (or not as the case may be)...
http://www.millwall.vitalfootball.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=26191&start=1

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/bruce-anderson/bruce-anderson-we-not-only-have-a-right-to-use-torture-we-have-a-duty-1899555.html

"After much agonising, I have come to the conclusion that there is only one answer to Sydney's question. Torture the wife and children. "

man, they'd better not let liddle edit the indie. would be so sad to see this important voice of the left lost to the dark forces of conservatism.

LJ would like you to know that he's mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore.

To be fair, Bruce Anderson is to The Indy as Bill Kristol was to the NYT. Surely they only publish his lunatic ramblings so the five remaining readers have something to "WTF?" at on their way to work?

Up sprang Sydney Kentridge, one of the great liberals of our age and a fearless defender of unpopular causes, from Nelson Mandela in the old South Africa to fox-hunting in modern Britain.

ah yes, mandela. still a divisive figure after all these years.

I think "in the old South Africa" was the specific caveat there.

Interesting how he doesn't even try to disguise the weakness of his argument:

"Admittedly there is no evidence…"

"That might sound frivolous…"

Also disgusting the way he reduces a moral argument as "courtroom niceties", ie "only I, Bruce Anderson, have the courage and clarity to make hard decisions."

This, otoh, is just bizarre:

"Anyway, which is the greater aesthetic affront: torture, or the destruction of the National Gallery?"

I think "in the old South Africa" was the specific caveat there.

that would probably be a sub's work

xp After careful consideration, I think I would prefer neither.

"Don't you understand, you equivocating milquetoast liberal? You must choose! Torture or the destruction of the National Gallery! There is no option C! This is THE REAL WORLD!"

This is so OTM:
http://unspeak.net/the-greater-aesthetic-affront/

Gavin O'Reilly, the chief executive of Independent News & Media, has said that a deal to sell the Independent titles to Alexander Lebedev will be announced "within 24 hours".

Lebedev is probably a pretty unpleasant character, so he'll fit right in to the fine tradition of UK newspaper proprietors.

Billionaire buys Independent for £1. Insert your own joke here.

I bought it for the first time in ages last week. It was unbelievably poor - almost completely lacking in content.

can't believe something run by gavin o'reilly could be a piece of shit

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/movie-dross-that-leaves-all-joking-aside-2012958.html

this is one of the worst articles ever of the last week that i've read in the last week

I got as far as "comedy".

David Miliband's snapping at Harriet Harman underscored why the party made the right choice. He was furious at her for clapping a repudiation of the Iraq war, because she voted for it at the time. Think about what that reveals.

He thinks once you have taken a public position, it is disgusting to change it – no matter how catastrophic it turned out to be. (A million deaths in the name of Weapons of Mass Destruction that didn't exist is a catastrophe by any standard.)

-- johann hari

the stones on this guy

I've just finished reading that article and, the thing is, Hari is broadly right. He just insists on piling on the emotional slap with a trowel that it's so easy to dismiss him as a doe-eyed whiner.

he's presumably got in mind some paragon of integrity who did publicly change his mind over iraq, can't think who.

http://www.johannhari.com/2006/03/18/after-three-years-after-dead-why-i-was-wrong-about-iraq

(he's also since changed his mind about the body count, unless he really thinks 150,000 died in the first three years and 850,000 in the last four, which seems unlikely.)

yeah i agree with most of what he says. but also with deborah orr, a little, yesterday -- isn't ed promising what new labour promised, in more propitious circumstances, in the 1990s? what is stopping labour from introducing a land tax -- i can remember the first time i saw one proposed, in the new statesman, many, many years ago -- is the sort of thing ralph miliband analysed. by personalizing it, making it all about blair, i think people are getting things twisted.

also...

But everything we have learned from the last Great Depression tells us that, if things get worse, the only way out of mass unemployment will be a big fiscal jump-start to the economy, funded by taking out more government debt in the short term. He mustn't rule out being Franklin Roosevelt and instead commit to being Herbert Hoover, just to appease the very people whose macho platitudes caused this funk in the first place.

it isn't quite like that. hoover let banks collapse. fdr withdrew the stimulus early (hiyo) didn't he? i don't know.

ed promising what new labour promised, in more propitious circumstances, in the 1990s?

Let us cling to the one tiny shread of optimism we have left.

We Are Not the Optimists

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/the-independent-launches-iii-2109899.html

that's one in the eye for the Metro in the first line there!

I like how the HTML tags have been left on the tab bar as well, as it helps to emphasise what a fine and problem-free name i is for a paper

Cool, a version of 20 minutes in English.

the indie costs £1?

stone the crows

Same as the Graun.

Apparently Lebedev has been arrested in Russia?

Looks dodgy...

Alexander Lebedev 'surrounded by Russian police'
Masked police have raided the bank of the Russian media tycoon, who is reportedly 'upset by the circus'

You dislike the Circus in Russia at your peril!

Really don't understand who this is supposed to be aimed at. The covers of the Independent could be eye rollingly bad, but the ones on i seem totally bizarre. Someone writing a book about the comparethemarket.com Meerkat and MacDonalds banning happy meals in San Francisco, hardly compare with the political upheavals in the US.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/utter-PR-fiction-but-people-love-this-shit-so-fuck-it-lets-just-print-it-2269573.html

lol

ugh everyone is retweeting this today -- surely we've been through the whole http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/doesnt-matter-what-goes-here-2269573.html thing already at least twice

yeah sorry forget about that.

lol indie

lol "fuck"

Darius Guppy is entertaining.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/darius-guppy-growth--it-aint-happening-2295967.html

Bit of background for people who may not have heard of Mr Guppy.
Darius Guppy: Here in Iran, we look with horror at the country that Britain has become

Best bit - Look at Britain's urban hell and you will see young girls and boys armed with knives, swearing, half naked, vomiting the previous night's attempt to stifle their pain and their emptiness. Turn on the radio and listen to laddettes boasting about what they did with their boyfriends in bed the day before, but tune in to Iran's airwaves and you will hear poetry and beautiful music.

wow wtf did they print that on paper? no way im reading it, though when he brought up usury i wondered, it being the indie, where he might take it.

he's a mate of boris johnson iirc

I cannot imagine they did - it's the ultimate tl/dr. I managed to get all the way through but it never reached the splenetic highs of his previous work.

He phoned up Boris to try and get the address of a journalist he wanted to "have a word with" back when he was directing his ire at tabloids rather than international capitalism.

but tune in to Iran's airwaves and you will hear poetry and beautiful music.

Plus live coverage of this afternoon's stonings at Qom on Iran Sports Xtra

OMFG that Guppy article is like reading Ezra Pound on economics back in the 1930s.

Darius chatting with Boris...

http://www.channel4.com//services/videoplayer/popup.jsp?name=Dispatches_BorisAudio

"...he will not be put into intensive care..."

OMFG that Guppy article is like reading Ezra Pound on economics back in the 1930s.

― aka best bum of the o_O's (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, June 14, 2011 2:10 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

i've never been bothered to get into it and barely know what it is, but it's sort of fascinating how little 'social credit' survived as a thing

it's got a small element of accurate analysis of the way banking system works, a big slice of scrawled-on-the-back-of-a-mental-hospital-napkin economic theory, and a dash of anti-Semitism to go