DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

i don't think it would be completely unfair to speculate that it was a mainly column b but certainly column a would have been weighed and measured too? not a criticism, but certainly this was also a very good political opportunity to do as described, more fool he that didn't take it at the level of the game he's at.

Somewhere out there, MEL P is sharpening her pen, ready to enter this debate like Godzilla.

"Melanie Phillips", that totally non-fictional columnist.

please can they make liz jones write about it

When you think about it, your ex-husband having an affair IS a bit like fleeing the Holocaust.

Somewhere out there, MEL P is sharpening her pen, ready to enter this debate like Godzilla.

Mel just the girl to take down Ed's evil witch of a mother, I mean:

"a long-standing supporter of left-wing pro-Palestinian organisations" and is a signatory of the founding statements of both Jews for Justice for Palestinians

I can almost see the Phillips' eyes bulging, head revolving, bells clanging, klaxons, sirens etc

Many xps to Stevie: yep!

Slimey squirmy Quentin Letts making an ass of himself on QT now. Unbelievable.

Wrong thread?

Quentin Letts accusing Miliband senior of being a "useful idiot" is beyond parody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JIvARoGbS4

(xp) Letts, in contrast, being a useless idiot amirite or a meringue?

Best of all was the spontaneous laughter from the audience when Letts tried to paint a picture of the Mail as anti-establishment outriders tweaking the noses of the powerful and privileged

with friends like that..

that was followed by some UKIP clown putting his hand up to say he supported the Daily Mail in this then admitting he hadn't read any of it

Daily Mail exec demands apology over anti-semitism claims

yeah they've never had a problem with Jewish refugees coming to the UK

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_FKUpGU_Jbp0/TE_BYKvF4iI/AAAAAAAAEYE/mYO03sMhqiM/s1600/Daily+Mail+1938+refugee+Jews.jpg

"yeah, he should apologise to me for hurting my fist with his eyeball!"

it's a bit "YOU SIR, ARE A RACIST" to me

Daily Mail exec demands apology over anti-semitism claims

well, they managed to brass it out during the ken livingstone kerfuffle a few years back...

the "YOU SIR..." defence holds a bit more water in that instance

I wasn't aware that it was possible to libel a newspaper, thank you Daily Mail exec for setting me straight.

2 Tory resignations... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24424332 I'm guessing any reshuffle won't involve getting rid of Osborne...

I was in Smith's constituency this weekend. Don't think I did anything that could have made her reconsider her place in government though.

"The badgers moved the goalposts" - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24459424

http://toys.usvsth3m.com/owen-patersons-badger-penalty-shootout/

First skim, I read that as "badgers for goalposts."

xpost

isn't it?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/tories-to-cut-aid-given-to-poorest-customers-by-energy-companies-8870684.html

This is the sort of thing you do when you're actually trying to lose the next election, right?

casting aside people who don't vote for you anyway while introducing aspirational house buying schemes doesn't seem like a bad strategy, vote-wise

Bit concerned about the "hostile environment for 'illegal' immigrants" thing having a knock-on effect undermining the legitimate rights of anyone who isn't white British. Can well imagine the landlord offering a flat to let just never returning calls from people with Asian/African names.

hostile is a great choice of words isn't it?

word

lol agreeing with yrself

:D

British television, best in the world, mate

Won't be watching. Don't watch Channel 5 on principle.

casting aside people who don't vote for you anyway while introducing aspirational house buying schemes doesn't seem like a bad strategy, vote-wise

I'd say there are a lot of people who will be affected by this (eg PENSIONERS) who might well vote Tory. It's also pretty dumb if they think it's a way of reducing prices, they're thinking that if they reduce subsidies for the poor then it will lead to lower bills for everyone else, that's just blind hope really. It also offers Labour a massive open goal at a time when energy is already at the centre of political debate.

The help-to-buy thing is suicidally dumb and short-termist but they might be out of power by the time it comes crashing down.

Pretty sure the other main channels have had similar scrounger-based programming in the last year or so (xp)

cf BBC1's entire morning schedule

Watching Channel 5 is like putting money in Desmond's pocket though.

^^^yes, this. Am about as likely to buy a copy of the Daily Express (or Asian Babes).

The only BBC1 thing I ever watch in the AM is Homes Under The Hammer, so I can vociferously judge inbred BTL landlords in Crewe, to an amusingly over-literal soundtrack. As soon as I hear the annoying gorblimey tones of the Scroungervision man who follows, I'm off.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/11/genetics-teaching-gove-adviser

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/10/11/1381519721664/Education-secretary-Micha-009.jpg

not even getting started on these. reaction in brief: time to start arming and organizing.

He claims research shows that as much as 70% of a child's performance is genetically derived.

damn, need to find those posts i read a while ago explaining in great detail why this is almost certainly bullshit or at least highly misleading

http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/520.html

lots of technical stuff about heritability but this is killer:

Does a trait's heritability tells us anything about its malleability, about how easy it is to change the trait with environmental manipulations? The answer is "no, of course not", even assuming (1) the basic biometric model holds, and (2) we are talking about true heritability and not biased-to-nonsensical estimated heritabilities.

It's banging on an often-sounded drum, but it's worth doing because it makes the point clearly: height is heritable, and estimates for the population of developed countries put the heritability around 0.8. Moreover, tall people tend to be at something of a reproductive advantage. Applying the standard formulas for response to selection, we straightforwardly predict that average height should increase. If we select a population without a lot of immigration or emigration to mess this up, say 20th century Norway, we find that that's true: the average height of Norwegian men increased by about 10 centimeters over the century. But that's much more than selection can account for. Doing things by discrete generations, rather than in continuous time, height grew by 2.5 centimeters per generation. (The conclusion is not substantially altered by going to continuous time.) If the heritability of height is 0.8, for this change to be due entirely to selection, the average Norwegian parent must have been 3 centimeters taller than the average Norwegian. This, needless to say, was not how it happened; the change was almost entirely environmental. The moral is that highly heritable traits with an indubitable genetic basis can be highly responsive to changes in environment (such as nutrition, disease, environmental influences on hormone levels, etc.).

Conversely, the very low heritability of eye number does not tell us that it is easy to increase how many eyes someone has by exercise, education and training, manipulating diet, manipulating ambient light, trepanation, etc.

That's fucking terrifying.

Beyond that, isn't it fucking terrifying how the same people who complain about the big government or the nanny state interfering with individual liberties will quite happily buy into this idea (as seems to be implied here) that you have to do this job, and I have to do this job, because of the determining law of our 'genetics'.

not even getting started on these. reaction in brief: time to start arming and organizing.

― I like to tackle hard and am crazy (Noodle Vague), Saturday, October 12, 2013 9:56 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this

or maybe just this

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/10/11/1381519721664/Education-secretary-Micha-009.jpg