Rolling Brexit Links/UK politics in the neo-Weimar era

2016 in summary.

Bad:

Brexit
Trump
Syria
Yemen
Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Castro meet their makers

Bad to come: Fascist Prez to be elected in Austria, Renzi to get fucked with a potential run on Italian banks/Eurozone/one for the road

Good:

Zac got fucked over and over.

Zac's double humiliation was not bad at all, but there is still a mayor in London who loves "affordable housing" and could do without a triumphant Farron.

Zac should go and chain himself to a jumbo jet to continue this campaign

The comments sparked an angry response from Sadiq Khan who described them as “out of touch” and “just plain wrong.”

The Mayor told the Standard: “One of our biggest strengths as a city is our diversity, with Londoners from different backgrounds living side by side.

"So whether these out of touch comments were designed to shock or not, anyone who thinks abolishing affordable housing altogether, supporting ‘buy-to-leave’ empty properties, and building on Hyde Park is the answer to London’s housing crisis doesn’t understand the first thing about our great city.

“I was elected as Mayor because of my commitment to tackle the housing crisis. I know – and most Londoners agree – that this means building more new and affordable homes for Londoners to rent and buy, and protecting our public square and parks.

"I’ll listen to any ideas people have about tackling the housing crisis, but in this case Mr Schumacher is just plain wrong.”

he's serious

Them "free-riding council tenants" comments by Patrik Schumacher were just beyond the pale, he probably doesn't realise that even if "affordable housing" was abolished it wouldn't make fa difference to most w/c people.

This dumbass probably has no idea how people qualify for council housing.

don't think sadiq khan has a magic wand to wave but his rhetoric is often the most wishy-washy myopic apologist bullshit still not a surprise to see him play the big man when unambiguous scumbags say their unambiguously scumbag stuff

and by playing the big man yes it's with lukewarm boosterism of "affordable" housing

go get em sadiq

The high-life existence of the starchitect is not a world to encourage one to have socialist leanings, especially as the nature of the business is often aggressively pro-gentrification. But was going say at least he is shooting straight, unlike some people.

good fun comments Conrad!

btw a letter in current LRB replying to Owen Hatherley says: Brutalism was the reactionary tool of an architecture profession in league with the concrete and cement industries !!

That would simply never even cross my mind as a definition of the British people, which I have always seen for what it is: as a patchwork of different lives, experiences, cultures and ethnicities that are inextricably, compellingly and beautifully interwoven.

ya there is a word for this and it is multiculturalism

Stephen Kinnock: Christianity is a load of horseshit

Also Stephen Kinnock: Hey look, it would simply never cross my mind to deny that Jesus Christ is the son of God who died on the cross to redeem the sins of all mankind so that all who believe in him should have eternal life. This misunderstanding indicates the lack of a shared language

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/09/peak-kinnock/comment-page-5/
Short but totally otm about vulgar Labour centrists and their massive charity incomes.

"When you toss in Stephen’s salary and expenses, the Stephen Kinnock household are bringing in just shy of a cool half a million pounds a year from public service and charity work."

Boris on Andrew Marr, what an embarrassment this bumbling mumbling fuck is the Foreign Secretary. Bit of George III manspreading at the end of the show, with an obscenely long tie draped over his crotch, calling Keir Starmer, Keir Schtarmer.

Argh, see also calling KS 'a lawyer'. Boris, you twat, he's a QC and was head of the DPP and comes from a background where none of his family members are chatterati.

I don't know how BJ can concentrate on his standard long winded obfuscation at every awkward question with an oversized comedy tie like that, worn in that fashion. I thought KS looked like he could have easily won the debate if it had been a bit more orderly (i.e taser BJ every time he goes on a long winded monologue ).

He gets away with murder, Boris, to think John Prescott used to get crucified for being ponderous, rambling and incoherent, but ghastly prole vs. lovable Etonian rogue, only one winner there.

Made the mistake of watching the Sunday Politics after that. Andrew Neil, Helen Lewis, Tom Newton Dunn, Toby Young... why oh why is the BBC so left wing and biased? I can only assume Toby Young was joking when he said the danger of the Richmond by-election result for Labour was that the Lib Dems might begin to be seen as the official opposition... with 9 MPs.

TD, what do you think is Helen Lewis's political position?
I think she thinks she is on 'the left' but to most of us she does not seem to be.
But appearing beside Toby Young would make most people seem to be on the left.

Soft left. Someone who'd accept a paycheque from the Daily Mail is not exactly left-wing though.

I'd hope any writers at the NS who consider themselves left wing would have massive objections to their publication blowing smoke up the arse of the Blair cadaver.

she blocked me on twitter for i think, disagreeing with a tweet. something of minor significance afair.

xpost

New Wasteman amirite

TD, what do you think is Helen Lewis's political position?

My point is token wet leftie and three right wing arseholes, that's the BBC idea of political balance.

I don't think she is much of a lefty.

Probably not, but what passes for left in the British media.

https://medium.com/@lauracatrionamurray/momentum-vs-inertia-e525c8f9e217#.k10k6lzdj

Momentum being strangled by Trots rn.

Very depressing.

Imposing a dictatorship from the left is desirable.

this is maybe getting into insider baseball stuff that should be somewhere other than the general UK politics thread, but I tend to think that the trots (or the AWL at least) are actually right on the problems with OMOV

But the idea of not having a decision-making conference and instead having “decisions” made through online votes is pseudo-democratic and manipulative. Unlike real-world general meetings and delegate conferences, it allows for no real deliberation, challenges, amendments, persuasion or democratic control; it puts power in the hands of a bureaucracy that sets the questions and of the capitalist media. It makes it impossible for members to decide what they want to propose and what they will vote on, rather than just being able to click “yes” or “no” online to choices formulated by the office – or by a convoluted system of procedures that will, at the end of the day, come down to control or domination by the office.

Such systems have been used to undermine both democracy and political radicalism in left-wing parties such as the Brazilian PT and Podemos.

https://theclarionmag.wordpress.com/2016/11/02/momentumqa/

there's some truth in it but it's a bad faith argument, most of yer actual Trots are against the process because they measure comrades' worth in sheer number of hours spent arguing in meetings, which is a great way to exclude swathes of people from engaging with you, and more or less the same system that makes the main political parties so unrepresentative and hopeless now

Imposing a dictatorship from the left is desirable.

― harold melvin and the bluetones (jim in vancouver), Monday, 5 December 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In particular circumstances only :-)

like it shdn't be beyond the minds of our best and brightest political thinkers to integrate modern media technologies and democratic debate. sitting everybody in the same room to argue it out consistently results in other forms of unsubtle manipulation. and people with shitloads of other things going on in their lives -childcare for a start - shouldn't be excluded from the decision-making process just because they can't attend enough meetings.

i was reasonably impressed with the level of democracy in podemos when i saw my uncle, who is a member, mucking about on his account on the laptop over breakfast one morning in the summer.

he suggested a measure which then would show as an option for people to vote on among other suggestions. and voted on a couple things both to do with the national direction and his local branch.

are you sure he wasn't being manipulated by the capitalist media while he was doing it?

yes but more rt.com than the economist

I think Momnetum Kids is a great idea but others also want to engage and don't have as much time. Also I think that far-at-first engagement could turn into more ppl turning up and being more active over time. Mnay people will want to see the thing working and convinced it will make a difference first.

this is maybe getting into insider baseball stuff that should be somewhere other than the general UK politics thread

yeah idk, the reason I put it here is bcz Momentum's decline could hasten the end for Corbyn. The organisation is big and tied to him for the forseeable. xps

far-at-first engagement could turn into more ppl turning up and being more active over time. Mnay people will want to see the thing working and convinced it will make a difference first.

yeah, i've heard Party people advocate a real "show us you mean it! get out there and knock on front doors and when you've done that long enough maybe we'll take you seriously" approach to newbies and not only is that alienating and privilege-y but it means you tend to end up accepting a particular type of personality which has up sides and down sides

supposedly Lansman's proposal for how the conference would operate is that everything would be based on the MxV website, the conference would choose 9 from the top 18 most popular resolutions on MxV (without a chance to amend them afaict?) then an online OMOV ballot to choose 3 of the 9 resolutions to become Momentum policy. looking at the current most popular proposals on MxV, which are mostly pretty vague, I'm not really convinced that this is a viable way of turning Momentum into a truly democratic organisation.

no that's also fair. somewhere in the middle of the death-by-committee crew and the change.org massive there ought to be a viable way of extending democratic participation whilst remaining functional.

NV - the word for that kind of attitude is rockism.

oh yeah, totally, but the worst kind - in a realm where that thinking has real, shitty consequences

a Party run by the sort of brass-necked bastards who'll knock on your door uninvited on a Sunday morning for a chat about local elections is the last thing anybody needs

Arron Banks has been arguing with Mary Beard on twitter over which of them knows the most about Roman history

https://twitter.com/Arron_banks/status/805837627589066752

LOOOOOL

oh wow, wish i could follow the whole conversation but i can't be bothered picking thru Twitter - there's your "experts vs interested amateurs dudes who think their opinion is valid about everything" argument right there

the highlight is when Banks reveals that his extensive study of Roman history = he learned about it at school, and is then unable to remember the names any of the writers he was taught about who back his view and not Beard's

lol!
"I studied roman history extensively - you don't have a monopoly on history !"

ha, I looked up his wikipedia page to remind myself exactly how he made his money, and it's already been amended:

Arron Fraser Andrew Banks (born 22 March 1966), also known as Aaron Banks is a British businessman and political donor. He is the co-founder (with Richard Tice) of the Leave.EU campaign.[2] A former Conservative Party donor, he came to prominence in October 2014 when he donated £1 million to the UK Independence Party[3] and has since donated in total £6 million to a variety of anti-European Union campaigns,[4] such as the cross-party Grassroots Out. Banks is an expert on Roman History and certainly knows more than anyone else, that's for certain.

This profile was hilar:

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/10/arron-banks-man-who-bought-brexit

In 2001 he married again, this time to Ekaterina Paderina, known as Katya, a Russian from Yekaterinburg whom he met while attending a Britney Spears concert at the O2 Arena in London as the guest of an insurance
firm. Katya came to Britain in the 1990s to study marketing at Portsmouth University. She overstayed her visa but married Eric Butler, a merchant seaman who, at 54, was more than twice her age. The marriage ended within months, prompting officials to investigate whether it was a sham.