the day after the deadline: can the union survive brexit and other deep questions

*terrifying loo moth

bugger

jfc that list

Things the snow taught us

1. Wear sunscreen.

how the heck did they get into that horrible windowless shithole?
Hibernation? I remember getting stung by a wasp one December in similar circumstances. They come out when the weather warms up and crawl around sluggishly. Easy to swat - or step on, in my case.

I have not been worried about the state deficit for sometime, ever since Mr Brown found out that the UK state can literally print money to pay its bills. Mr Osborne, originally a critic of this in opposition, then discovered its charms in office as well. It turned out to have no adverse consequences on shop price inflation, though of course it caused massive price inflation in government bonds, because it was accompanied by severe pressure against bank lending to the private sector to avoid an inflationary blow off. I always adjust the outstanding debt by the £435 bn the state has bought up, as this is in no sense a debt we owe. So our government borrowing level (excluding future state pensions which some here worry about and which have always been pay as you go out of taxation) is modest by world standards at around 65% of GDP, and at current interest rates is affordable.

Most of the state debt we owe to each other anyway. The government owes it to taxpayers who own the debt in their pension funds and insurance policies. The state can always raise enough money to pay the donestic bills backed by the huge powers to tax, and as we have just seen when credit expansion and inflation are low it can also use liquidity created by the monetary authorities.

Here's John Redwood just casually demolishing the entire case for austerity in two paragraphs on his blog.

re the bees: given the number, it's quite likely there's a small nest somewhere in the outer wall of your building -- that's not an unusual location. they choose spaces where bricks or even just bits of mortar have fallen out -- which can also give access to the gaps and spaces within

and of course bees are small (as you possibly knew already) and can easily crawl through the interstitials of the building, particularly the gaps that allow electrical cables through internal walls and ceilings. like wasps, they will crawl towards the warm and then assume they're nicely outside at a better time of year for a while

t/s bees and wasps vs John Redwood

i vote we lock john redwood in a perspex box with thousands of bees and wasps and let nature decide the victor

We would all be the winner

Turner Prize imo.

lol my dormant proofing editor instincts kicked in briefly there and i reached to correct perspex to Perspex®

perpetual lowercase = fine
failing to respect a registered trademark = NOT COOL

Knowledge is knowing that 'Frankenstein' was the name of the doctor, not the 'monster'.
Wisdom is knowing that Dr Frankenstein is the monster.
Awareness is knowing that everybody who works for The Sun is a cunt.

— Tim Ireland (@bloggerheads) March 7, 2018

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/07/ousted-ukip-leader-henry-bolton-launches-new-political-party/

One Nation Under A Groove

Maggot Brain more like.

"There is a need for a truly professional political party that believes in Britain, that preserves our national identity, culture, heritage and confidence and talks our great nation up rather than down."

yes, now more than ever what we need is a truly professional political party, one led by *checks notes* uh a guy who got kicked out of ukip for shagging someone too openly racist for the uk's most racist party to tolerate

And who was prepared to chuck her to the kerb to stay on as leader until he got chucked, at which point he went back for her aww and showed a man of principles! As in 'I think there's one over there"

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7b/Zone_Romantica.svg/1200px-Zone_Romantica.svg.png

Corbyn goes in on Saudi human rights at #PMQs. May accuses him of "mansplaining" after he says it's International Women's Day tmrw.

— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) March 7, 2018

Sick burn

oh god it's even more cringeworthy than you'd imagine

.@jeremycorbyn: 'to mansplain - verb informal - explaining (something) to someone, typically a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronising.' #PMQs #IWD2018 pic.twitter.com/dZQuPByChF

— Theresa May (@theresa_may) March 7, 2018

The Irony Lady (what with only 28% of her party's MPs being women)

Britain First jailed for nine months

You know who else was jailed for nine months

by the rate Britain First numpt is ageing, he'll be pushing a bunny-hatted Frank Field around in a pram, before he get's out/knock's out his political manifesto.

The EU has thrown down an ultimatum to Theresa May in Brexit talks, warning that it will not open discussions about trade or other issues until the Irish border question is solved.

Speaking in Dublin alongside the Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar, European Council president Donald Tusk said talks would be a case of “Ireland first” and that “the risk of destabilising the fragile peace process must be avoided at all costs”.

“We know today that the UK government rejects a customs and regulatory border down the Irish Sea, the EU single market, and the customs union,” the Council president said.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-eu-talks-irish-border-tusk-varadkar-northern-ireland-uk-solution-dup-a8246216.html

The proposed free school meal cuts to kids on UC will be forced to a Parliamentary vote now. Even the DUP are against this grotesque shit, so no majority.

"Labour’s shadow education secretary Angela Rayner has forced ministers to bring them to the floor of the Commons using an obscure parliamentary process known as “praying against” the regulations."

maybe this belongs on the bad cartoons thread but here is after all where we talked abt him already

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DXyzLb-W4AA5BOD.jpg

jesus wept, talk about making fuck all talent go a very long way. Might buy a copy of Private Eye one day, now I've got my first prescription reading glasses, might just be able to read that almost microfiche sized print that usually I can only make out on links like this.

private eye is also bad not good tbh, except sometimes on gossip from within the grown-up press

also holding rich men to ransom bcz yr the only popular commodity they have to hand isn't a negligeable talent

there's lots of shit unfunny humour, but streets of shame is v good.

Yes private eye is good not bad so long as someone tapes over I think virtually all of the cartoons

worst regular comic strip appearing in Private Eye as of december 2014

the term sub-matt was coined on the bad uk cartoons thread: prviate eye has devoted years to its full realisation

six hundred and fifty thousand pounds per annum

i find it helps to think abt how very very much the barclay twins must hate him

wish i had tried the crap that 'art attack' advised now.

Nabisco george the poet otm

"Private Eye" is good investigative journalism with some shitty cartoons thrown in. It's a shame they label themselves as a satirical mag when that's clearly not their main concern but hey.

Some of the individual panel cartoons in PE are OK, tho' generally they are not a patch on the ones in The New Yorker, or even (gulp) The Spectator. It's the regular comic strips that are so irredeemably poor.

I wonder if Matt is the best-paid newspaper cartoonist in the world, or if a British cartoonist before him has ever had such 'power' over editors and owners (maybe Giles at his peak? Or even Vicky, during the war years?)

i'm sure if said this before on ilx but i'd probably pay more for an edition of private eye in which the cartoons and 'satire' were excised altogether

matt, but every caption replaced with "christ what a racket"

I can see why his lordship's recent birthday party so was well attended now. Lovely guy, damn these contrarian norms that think otherwise, such a humble guy who earns 100 times more than you for drawing a cock than you earn for 50000 words. Btw attendance isn't optional people.

lmao @ this shit lazy doodler being the best thing in the paper, the guy that keeps the circulation above water. Tragically, it's almost certainly true.

.@Telegraph lol your readership is dying and the cartoonist who can only draw the same three people with overbites is your MVP

anyone still doubting the political smarts of the corb team, just remind them he cheerfully dunked on matt before all this went public: this is why medway is now in play

btew it totally owns that all the identical ppl in every identical matt cartoon have cock and balls for a face, banksy retire binch

here's me drawing cock and balls for free like a fuckin chump while matt makes a cool two-thirds of a mil each year doing the same thing in the pages of sir bufton-tufton's favoured monocle-popper, smdh

.@Telegraph lol your readership is dying and the cartoonist who can only draw the same three people with overbites is your MVP

They should probably also give a hefty raise to the crossword bloke and the dudes who write about cricket as well b/c they're pretty much the only things people buy it for these days.

If the brothers weren't so clearly attached to having a platform to foghorn fascism into the public discourse, I'd suggest they relaunch the Telegraph as an upmarket sports paper.