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

as i say, dickery on both sides, some parents give zero fucks about their kids's educations. but the police state response to that is ugly as.

I had a recent arsey phone-call from the school when we took him to an autism friendly Romeo + Juliet showing at the Playhouse. It had already been discussed with his form teacher who regarded it as an educational excursion and said no probs. But for some reason it automatically sets in motion some mechanism where some arsehole has to phone me up and read me the riot act. Excellent use of resources in this austerity era of course.

I'll desist from any more of this, it should be on another thread - but just wanted to get it out!

i think there was a "what the fuck's up with the education system?" thread years back but couldn't be arsed to look for it

No need to desist, I'm getting an education here as a non-parent and it's all very relevant imo

Did youse all have good attendance records? Maybe ask in the posited separate thread if it gets goin

skived a *lot* between 13 and 17. social services etc. wd be interested in a thread.

Same except not sent as opposed to skived and uh well rural irish social services lol

cd xpost with the work ethic thread as well tbh.

Nothing degenerate I could do as a teenager could outshine my mum who got caught breaking into a bakery in Kilbrew at the age of 12 and ended up in care. But I did have a dedicated social worker and would leave school most days straight after morning registration and we had sourced the 67 pence for 10 Berkley Superkings so we could look cool instead of learning!

i've previously owned to up to being compelled to carry a briefcase so

My older brother had one when he went to high school as well, but weirdly he pressured my mum for it himself. But he actually found a briefcase clique amongst his generation!

I didn't personally skive whole days very often but I was the go-to guy for excuse notes because I could imitate adults handwriting.

with my most mild-mannered latin teacher i'd sometimes watch a session of cricket rather than attend class

lol!

(xp) Ditto

... not really.

Tom Watson is backing Trump's air strikes.

The government has said it approves but won't participate.

do they seriously think our kids don't tell us about the week at the end of every term when they watch DVDs all day while the teachers are finishing their marking?

― Raul Chamgerlain (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 6 April 2017 17:36 Bookmark

never will i forget the (thirtysomething, fairly grumpy) physics teacher who brought in a home-taped vhs of ren & stimpy episodes

good man

my ex used to tell a top story about being bollocked by one of her more confused teachers because she told her she couldn't turn a video over to watch the other side

don't really know where to put this but kind of exasperated over lefty friends who are so far onto Putin's dick you'd think he was running the soviet union

You mean because he's not 'the west'?

(As in, you mean people favouring him without thinking just because he's cast as the opposite to 'the west')

yeah exactly but also kneejerk fondness for the USSR i suspect

Yeah it's a distinct problem, sort of artefact from the 90s I guess

I could have sworn I heard Salmond saying "the teutonic plates are shifting" on Marr earlier. It probably wouldn't be the most hilarious misspeak, but that would be almost a Tony Soprano A- standard malapropism there.

Many years ago, I joined a FB group called something like "a GrOuP FoR PeOplE WhO LiKe SlAyEr, NickElback, NirVana aNd LiMp BizKit", and as a result got added by a girl from South Africa. It was kind of cool seeing her life - she studied journalism, has become a published journo over there, does a lot of good work for social justice and against islamophobia (she's muslim). Anyway at one point I started seeing RT links shared on her wall a lot, and she posted some declaration by Putin going "we will always fight for the rights of the Palestinian people" with her commenting "this is why we love him".

It bummed me out more than the other times I've seen RT news/Putin boosterism amongst clueless leftists because a) she's an actual journalist and b) she seems to have her heart in the right place, while a lot of the other people I've come across kinda just wanna go "WAKE UP SHEEPLE" regardless of the actual issues.

I guess 'Russia' just has a certain counter-cultural cache or something - due to the old Cold War binary scheme?

I think "enemy of my enemy" is part of it and Cold War nostalgia/skepticism might play a part for some people too, but I also think Russian media has been very smart and savvy the past decade or so - RT, especially, jumps on any cause that could make the West look bad (many of which are leftist*), they had those billboards in London with pictures of Bush and Blair leading the war in Iraq and a "this is what happens when you only hear one side" tagline. They've placed themselves as the opposition to the "mainstream media" as well. A lot of the people they manage to recruit with this stuff I think are way too young to have much of a stake in Cold War era stuff, they've grown up with the USA as the one hegemonic world power.

Of course at the same time they're also incentivating the far right across Europe, but somehow that cognitive dissonance doesn't bother people.

* some friends who work for an anti-detention organisation got a call from RT; they told them to fuck off

RT has roughly the same viewing figures as Welsh-language local news shows iirc. Russia probably picked up a fair bit of support from sections of the left during the Iraq war but I honestly don't think I have met anyone who was 'pro-Putin', other than my extensive network of old Russian ladies, in years. That includes all the Russia geeks I know. idk, maybe my dad likes him.

The key thing is that hardly anyone on either side is particularly interested in Russia other as a canvas to project their own imagination on. It is easy for the left and right to dismiss most reporting as inadequate / biased, almost nobody learns Russian at school, it's still kind of a pain to visit, relatively few people do a it of business there, etc, so you can just make it up according to your ingrained biases.

It's not really about viewing figures though surely, it's about shareable content. The people I know who try to convince me of Putin's greatness (mostly online, though it has happened irl too) don't tell me to watch a TV channel, they show me a video they saw on facebook.

I honestly don't think I have met anyone who was 'pro-Putin'

Was in a bar in Edinburgh last night when a fight broke out - well, one guy took a swing at another guy and broke his glasses - the aggressor standing up and saying to the other guy, "Right, ya Putin bastard, ootside noo!" before being bundled out.

― Eats like Elvis, shits like De Niro (Tom D.), Monday, 2 January 2017 14:31 (three months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Xp, most of RT's shareable content is just repackaged reports from other news organisations around the world. It is also pretty light on overt Putin boosting these days.

Sputnik is much more aggressive but has very limited reach.

I like this case for universal welfare provisions, and against means-testing.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2017/04/08/aaron-bastani/free-school-meals-for-all/

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/15/steve-hilton-im-rich-but-i-understand-the-frustrations-people-have

Oof...

'Favourite' bit of that was his little 'I don't know enough about French politics to comment although I am sick of people calling Le Pen racist' remark which sums up the mindset of these libertarian cunts as well as anything.

The policy announcements from Labour this past week have been good recently - just need to diligently keep plugging away.

Looking a bit over in France and Melanchon there seem to be ideas that could be bought over here (and they seem to have been bought over from the Latin American left). I'd like to see this mapped.

diligently plugging away is wholly insufficient

The election is scheduled for 2020. Pace yourself.

what are you advocating 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨

Corbz could double up with a hologram, it seems to be working well for Melenchon!

More hats.

Now 47, Hilton has lost none of his restless, bouncy energy, and talks flat-out for our whole journey. I want to know what a nice, green liberal is doing promoting Trump on Fox, but my questions seem to strike him as typical of the left’s lamentably lumpen way of looking at the world. I’ve got Fox News all wrong, he says. “It’s the only place where there is actual political debate going on in America.” When I ask if he didn’t wince to see veteran Fox presenter Bill O’Reilly mocking the hairstyle of congresswoman Maxine Waters (he called it a “James Brown wig”), a suppressed smile dances round his mouth. “I just think people make jokes, say things, you know.” What Trump said about grabbing women by the pussy “was disgusting, yes. But let’s be honest, it’s not just Donald Trump that treats women with disrespect and sexualises them.”

things may perhaps happen between now and 2020. merely diligently plugging away gives the government a free hand.

Lots of the bad stuff that has already happened wasn't voted against by about 80% of the PLP you know, caek.

yes and that's one of the many reasons why plugging away is definitely not good enough?!

ok 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 so you suggest it would be better if labour were, like, a lot better or something - got ya

if the choice is between praising "diligently plugging away" and being terrified by the idea that that's the best we've got to expect between now and 2020 then i'm on team terrified.

i don't have the answer, but then i'm not leader of the opposition.

“It’s the only place where there is actual political debate going on in America.”

If anything this is the lumpen olde view. If we're post-truth we're post debate.

team terrified you should get some t-shirts made up

dissenting members of the plp could wear them

probably get on the telly in the papers

then we'll see some improvement