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

Don't they have His or Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition in Denmark?

Obviously the adversarial nature of British politics is stupid in many ways but can be useful too, on occasion.

adversarial politics is stupid but given that at least one side represents a bigger threat to the health and security of our own citizens than any amount of foreign nerve agents it's fairly understandable

LMAO is this real? Like many I do not watch Newsnight very often.

The backdrop to the BBC’s #Newsnight programme last night : it doesn’t take much to see this as right wing tabloid style smearing of the Leader of the Opposition - using image association. pic.twitter.com/1Xr5iacXFi

— Labour Left (@LabourLeft) March 16, 2018

i was literally just coming to post that, what the actual fuck

presumably in the interests of balance they later had a background of theresa may's head photoshopped onto slim pickens' body riding the nuke at the end of dr strangelove

lol

In the face of a nerve gas attack on Danish soil, I would expect the parliament to show unity and good faith towards each other. It's seriously crazy how little many people on here seems concerned about the circumstances of this attack. Of course, unity and good faith, that's only to a certain extent, we all saw how unity after 9/11 was exploited. But again, this isn't Iraq, whether or not this is Novichok is a fairly simple question, and if Corbyn doubts that he should come out and say it.

And one of the most serious jobs of the left is to seriously get more foreign policy ideas than that everything leads to 'region-destabilizing interventions'. Who are even thinking about that possibility? The only interventions in the region has been from Russia in Crimea and Ukraine, etc, what are our ideas to avoid more of those?

no war but class war son

It's seriously crazy how little many people on here seems concerned about the circumstances of this attack

government policy kills more people than this every week, we have eyes on the real issues

Who are even thinking about that possibility?

The leader of a party who led the country into a deeply unpopular war based on forged evidence and who are still (correctly) blamed for that fuck up every day.

Though ofc Corbyn was referring to a long list of British misadventures of which Iraq was just one example. But you knew that, right?

the BBC's domestic propaganda game has got so fucking crude, it always amazes me when their WS stations get so much international respect and are considered "impartial".

i listen to quite a bit of WS it's not that impartial tbh

should be called US WS at times! But SV was saying the other day that their Russian branch is very good.

it's impartial if you assume that the current socioeconomic organization of the West is the natural order of things

does any other country have a World Service? It seems like if it wasn't already there you'd take it as a very arrogant concept.

Hollywood, maaaaan

In the face of a nerve gas attack on Danish soil, I would expect the parliament to show unity and good faith towards each other.

Yeah, this is probably the context you're missing - no one here in the UK is actually taking this like it was a terrorist attack (of which you may recall we've had several recently), it's some cloak & dagger shit that needs to be deal with and that the tories are grandstanding about w/o offering solutions. No hug session needed.

Who are even thinking about that possibility?

Seriously, when the chips are down? No one. But a lot of folks are certainly pretending to in order to gain public approval, and calling that out is important.

does any other country have a World Service? It seems like if it wasn't already there you'd take it as a very arrogant concept.

Germany does, DW - it's in English. I'm sure France at least probably has an equivalent too.

Who is pretending that Britain should invade Russia?

also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c51qJ3Ad_4

tories aren't averse to assassinating our own citizens on foreign soil, why all the fuss when russia does it

xxxp We had one, from just after WW2 till 2005, 2006-ish. It was mostly meant as something to be able to inform Dutch ppl around the world. They axed it reasoning everyone was or could be online to find news in 2005, which is reasonable imo. I've fond nostalgic memories for listening to the footie scores on short wave while on holiday in Spain, when I was wee.

In the face of a nerve gas attack on Danish soil, I would expect the parliament to show unity and good faith towards each other.

How naive can you be?

Who is pretending that Britain should invade Russia?

Chris Bryant, lol.

But seriously this is totally the subtext behind how the tories and press are handling it and the fact that no one comes out and says it in quite those terms - because, again, it will never happen - doesn't make it any less dangerous and disgusting.

Just to go back up (please note that as you get older you don't learn anything):

He screwed up the response. Went too much on the attack against government cuts, his spokesman insinuated that the government might be lying. And he is vulnerable on this subject, because his own opinions are nonsense: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/15/salisbury-attack-conflict-britain-cold-war (note there's nothing about government cuts in there, he knows that was a screwup)

When did Corbyn go on against government cuts on this particular issue?

Seumas was correct that the government might be lying. There is a substantial record of this happening.

he got heckled for bringing up the £800000 + Tory MP's have taken from Russian Oligarchs since 2016.

well that's just divisive at a time when our nation stands on the brink of destruction

sorry, our glorious nation

*lowers whip*

i'm going to enlist later, see if i can pass for 40

Thing is, Corbyn could hardly have wished for a better gift than the one given to him by Gavin Williamson yesterday, within five minutes of his speech he had thousands of people clowning on him and completely punctured the lol-statesmanlike approach the government was going for. It turned a tricky situation for Corbyn into one in which he looked like the voice of reason, even among people who wouldn't otherwise have been predisposed to agree. No wonder Tory MPs are reportedly furious with him.

Obviously the Tory grassroots will lap it up, which I'm sure was Gav's aim in the first place.

When did Corbyn go on against government cuts on this particular issue?

― xyzzzz__, 16. marts 2018 14:18 (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I posted the video upthread.

well fwiw Fred, according to BMJ stats austerity policies have been responsible for far more deaths (120 000+) which is much more domestic terrorism + Russian asymmetric warfare or whatever the fuck you want to call it added up together. So for me, he can go on about the cuts as much as often as possible please. My partner tried to top herself over cuts, last year - so it is a very serious matter.

Fucking hell Calz, I didn't know about that. Hope the situation has improved as much as can be expected with these fucks in power.

Right, just saw it now - what a mess Fred, the main thing ppl picked up initially was around Russian money making its way as donations to the Tory party.

The cuts to diplomatic services is an issue though. As is the capacity of ppl in the civil service/FO to speak enough languages (read something about this last yr). xps

xp
she took an o/d after a shitty PIP experience. She's fine now and got medical attention before any permanent damage was caused, apart from being completely skint!

"Russian money" is as likely to be coming from opponents of Putin as anyone else, perhaps more so.

yep

however much of the money from anti-Putin Russians is what you'd haltingly call 'legit' and my tuition has never been part of a dirty money laundering scandal so there

Well we don't know the details, or do we?

Going back to that youtube that was one of a number of issues Corbyn raised - the main thrust of that statement was asking about discussion with the EU/Nato, etc. The other was around money from oligarchs that is parked into London.

lj is a russian psyop CONFIRMED

How do you know Louie?

If we get the Russians out of here how will you eat?

oh I'm sure some of it has been dirty lol

To really know what is going on in the UK London's Russian community you really need talk to that McMafia writer, or Hitchens, if you can stop him talking about The Berlin Wall for 5 minutes!

Russian money to fund Louie's 2nd never-to-be-proper-published novel.

The Cyprus Connection.

feed my sandwich addiction morelike