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

"I don't understand how this big red button works"

I think he'd be more perplexed at the nuclear football being the wrong shape.

This story about Althea Efunshile being rejected as a ch4 board member by the culture secretary is absolutely incredible.

incredible but vmic

just got confused and tried to "like" NV's comment.

I cannot find out what is meant by 'vmic'.

"Very much in character"

:)

vmic - agreed in both instances :)

"just got confused and tried to "like" NV's comment."

i've done this an accidentally flag posted people, i think.

Garage and will self on question time tonight

Farage, obv. Happily Nigel hasn't made it into my autocorrect yet.

UKIP Garage is a sadly overlooked microgenre.

Used that as a pub quiz team name a few years back, idiot quiz guy fucked up reading it out, so will never know what lols it would have brought

It was even worse than Koogs implies - it was Farage, + Mensch, + a Con MP.

I was so glad that minor Europa League highlights were on the other side.

also, THIS WEEK finished with a car-crash live appearance from 'Peter' Doherty talking to Neil, Portillo and Liz Kendall about 'bust-ups'.

Garage and will self on question time tonight

― koogs, Thursday, December 8, 2016 10:03 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

really enjoyed rolling this sentence around in my head while pretending to forget that will self is a person

An interesting perspective on why QT has gone so fash recently, from someone who's been on a couple of times:

https://mobile.twitter.com/MxJackMonroe/status/806721058539769856

Makes depressing sense

It's so gross - my friend's nephew is at cadet school and the faculty there tell the kids that Britain First is toxic and if they catch them so much as Liking or sharing one BF item, there will be hell to pay.

QT is made by Mentorn and should really be taken back in-house if the BBC wants their impartiality standards taken seriously.

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2016/12/06/fake-audiences-update/

QT is a joke and probably always has been afaic, the kind of sports politics that belongs to a stupider era. but as long as there are people who regard it as a significant part of the political scene I think you're right suzy

I don't think it's enough to say it's always been a joke -- this programme goes back c.40 years to Robin Day etc etc and has often hosted interesting discussions, has introduced viewers to political ideas, has sometimes featured interesting speakers and good people.

If it's true that it's going this badly downhill (as last 2 weeks suggest) that is more bad news about present that has to be registered.

If Jack Monroe's suspicions / construals of evidence are accurate then that is seriously disturbing, scary. Someone needs to start campaigning about this now, hard as it will be.

'more bad news about present' = OUR present

This year has just been an ongoing miserable realisation that the media and political bulwarks that have been constructed to prevent even moderate post-war style social democracy are like fifty times stronger than those in place against the far right.

holy shit

They're just reflecting what they think are the real concerns of proles. A la Stephen Kinnock.

'Populism'. That must mean it's popular.

the degradation of the quality of the bbc's news and current affairs editorial has been happening over many years -- the forced resignation of alastair milne (seumas's dad!) in 1986 was 30 years ago

A bit more:
https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/10001/bbc-reprimands-question-time-producer-over-far-right-social-media-posts

degradation of quality might be long term but a fascist being in control of QT audience seems like a new development.

There's something oddly reassuring about the first comment there.

I didn't know Seumas Milne was the son of Alasdair Milne! It's like Hugh Greene and Graham Greene all over again (a bit). This exciting news caused me to look at A Milne's Wiki page:

Milne was strongly critical of later BBC Director-General John Birt whom he called "blue skies Birt". Birt's thesis on television's so-called 'Bias Against Understanding' Milne described as "balls, actually", and said "[Birt is] the most graceless man I have ever known. Ghastly man".[13]

In October 2004, stories were published implying that he had suggested that alleged dumbing down of the BBC was partly the consequence of the corporation's growing number of female executives: "Too many dumb, dumb, dumb cookery and gardening shows . . . I have nothing against women. I've worked with them all my life. It just seems to me that the television service has largely been run by women for the last four to five years and they don't seem to have done a great job of work."[14][15] Milne later clarified his position: “What I actually said was that the three people who had run the television service for the past four or five years had not, it seemed to me, done a marvellous job. I would have said the same if they had been mice or men. They happened to be women and then I was stitched up by The Times.”

kickstarter for the beeb to be run by mice for the next ten years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlP7l8vkNOk

There's something oddly reassuring about the first comment there.

― Matt DC, Friday, 9 December 2016 11:04 (seventeen minutes ago) Permalink

Agree. Spam Therapy feels like it's something that could blow up big in 2017

Uber but for spam. No, hear me out... you see a comment piece, CiF or somewhere, about the refugee crisis, or a proposed burqa ban, and feed the url into an app, which then drowns the article comments thread with strangely comforting enthusiastic plugs for non-prescription medicines or obscure exercise techniques, completely swamping the head-measuring race-hate that would otherwise dominate

er, perhaps not cool to use the word 'drowns' while referencing the refugee crisis in passing. Pls substitute 'deluges', thx

Just imagine reading some hateful Melanie Phillips anti-Muslim screed and then scrolling down to read 'Do you have problem sustaining errection?' It would make you feel so much better.

Except given that article would probably be in the Spectator it might actually be quite well-targeted.

Addressed directly to Joshua Rozenberg.

@George_Osborne
The disintegration of the Labour Party is not good for democracy. Oppositions are meant to try to win by-elections, not slip from 2nd to 4th
8:41 AM - 9 Dec 2016

A tragic blow for democracy in Sleaford & North Hykeham as the Tories hold with a whopping 0.2% swing.

Osborne relishes that rare moment such a colossal failure can find something to gloat over

it's almost as if the Tories are deliberately trying to spin the same message over and over

And the BBC and the rest of the British media.

The fact that the Lib Dems were the main beneficiaries of the Labour slump in Sleaford suggests that it's Brexit that's fucked Labour, although I'm sure Corbyn isn't helping.

This is interesting meanwhile, visualisation of the Tory seats most vulnerable to pro-Remain tactical voting. Mostly in SW London.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CyqqrV7XAAAkTAl.jpg:large

doesn't have to be just about Remain and Labour's stance on it, could be a simple return to anti-government tactical voting "Party X Can't Win Here" has been the standard Lib Dem tagline for years and years, it's their only raisin dettra innit?

Except Labour were in (fairly distant) second a year ago and it's only casting themselves as the party of the 48% that's allowed the LibDems to start repairing their comprehensively trashed reputation.

Wait hang on is this seriously a thing?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-eu-citizenship-keep-freedom-of-movement-guy-verhofstadt-chief-negotiator-opt-in-passports-a7465271.html

genius move, guaranteed to bring lulz by the bucketload

Tim Farron still not ruling out a hook-up with the Tories so a re-trashing is always on the cards. But yes, Brexit has put Labour in Zugzwang unless the May bus fails to take a corner.

haha BoJo is btw definitely plotting a pulling Churchill currently: being forced to resign because he "TOLD THE TRUTH" abt the Sauds. A Half-Churchill, anyway (Full-Churchill would mean going to the Remain Camp, which wd put the cat among the pigeons of his support base at the increasingly dotty/pernicious Telegraph).

I feel I need to add cooking someone's goose to this smorgasbord of metaphors, tho whose goose is up for grabs. Last Chance Saloon!

dammit now you've given me a foie gras craving