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

I think ILB did a wonderful demolition of one of his masterpieces.

I used to know a cousin of his and he was smug, annoying, egocentric and even looked a bit like him.

A lot of people seemed to have travelled a ways to attend QT in Liverpool, if only one person in the audience called out Boris Johnson for racism. Half of Twitter thought JJ was wearing a wire or at least kept his phone on to feed lines.

Kate Andrew’s squeaky little voice, argh - I’m American and it drives me nuts, can’t imagine how you lot cope. Is she someone who came to work at a right-wing think tank on an ALEC/Atlantic Bridge bursary?

I think I read Atlantic bridge once yes

there's a time for building bridges and a time for burning them!

lol! there was someone complaining last night that Kate is Brexit neutral thus proving the BBC's Remain bias.

American right-wing lobbyists want Brexit so they can get 65 million new private health customers in a trade agreement - a Labour government would also prevent an NHS sell off.

I don't understand how shadowy think tanks like IEA with no funding transparency, whose main raison d'être seems to be promoting the privatisation of the NHS can get away with having registered charity status. I'm sure it's simple enough to get away with it, but it's an absolute travesty.

Ian Dunt has trenchant views about the Manics

Hard to think of a band who have been around so long, and thinking meaningfully about politics and the state of the country for the whole of that time.

— Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) April 13, 2018

thinking meaningfully about politics and the state of the country and Robin Cook licking too much pussy

Also that album functions as a kind of silent solidarity/secret handshake. If someone was into the Holy Bible, they're probably one of the good ones.

— Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) April 13, 2018

Robin Cook lolling in his grave lols!

ian dunt's name is such an open goal for poorly-formed joeks that it's no fun to clown him :(

This thread, oh man this thread

I've decided to make some motivational posters using some tweets about brexit, alongside a picture of the person who wrote the tweet. pic.twitter.com/RbqzIiiQ8v

— mark (@ydnhkrm) April 11, 2018

"See ma frying pan? Gave it a wee dunt... gave it a wee dunt in front o' the kitchen knife..."

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pTfC3YpMDMw/hqdefault.jpg

kind of a twat's thing to do really that Twitter thread but i'm sure he's just another reasonable angry voice

what is the appropriate thing to do w these ppl?

oh i don't feel very protective of them but there's something very pass-agg with a just whiff of (let's say) grammar snobbery about the way he's gone about it. also lol remoaners.

showing their faces doesn't say anything or add anything imo

what is the appropriate thing to do w these ppl?

the gulag, obv

I do wonder about the extent to which the photos used are not of the person actually tweeting, believable though they often are.

xpost yes it does, seeing a smiling bottle blonde saying refugees deserve to drown makes it more specific and interesting and funnier, of course. I do think it's funny and depressing.

SEND THEM
ALL HOME,
EXCEPT
MO FARAH

alls I see is white people, I don't make any correlation between facial features and how abysmal their opinions are!

calzino suffers from gammon-blindness iirc

you might be right!

please donate to my gofundme in support of much-needed gammon-blindness research

The PROPOGANDA one and the guy with the ice cream cone are pretty good imo.

Of course if that was a bunch of trump supporter selfies under moronically composed build-the-wall lyin’-comey tweets I reckon I’d have flung my phone across the room by the third one.

Those are far from Windass quality

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYUpoAHWkAAnSI7.jpg

Hah! Dean gets a blue tick for spelling his name correctly.

every element of that is fucking perfect, just a glittering gem dredged from the social media mines

I'll tell you whom we have not clowned hard enough yet. Young Master Woodger

https://m.soundcloud.com/maxwell-woodger/king-louis-rejection

I think it's too understated to be passive aggressive or snobbish, however easy it is to imagine it tipping over into that, but I wld oppose those who see passive aggressive and snobbish behaviour as aberrant bad behaviour

I also am strongly in favour of seeing ppls faces next to their idiotic sentiments, it takes all the sting out of it

I'll tell you whom we have not clowned hard enough yet. Young Master Woodger

it's true, ilx has been slack about clowning privately-educated young men with connections to the name 'louis' who have shared embarrassing pictures of themselves attempting to play music

better that than having shared embarrassing attempts to be funny upwards of two hundred times a day

you'll forgive me if i decline to take posting tips from the ilxor who willingly provided all the raw material required for that one

actually you know what lj, i'm genuinely sorry for my last couple of posts

you've always rubbed me up the wrong way on ilx but that's my issue, not yours, so i'll keep my snarky posts to myself in the future

Today was a Good Friday.

The 13th.

actually you know what lj, i'm genuinely sorry for my last couple of posts

bizarro gazzara this is disappointing

On Syria I see the Welsh Labour leader and Nia Griffith are looking to be sacked.

i woke up this morning and it dawned on me that this might be the first time since 1945 when the leaders of the US and the UK are both inept, stupid an desperate enough to bring down the apocalypse

Actually I don't think the Welsh Labour leader can be sacked but one can dream.

xp
tbf even a hawkish dunderhead like Truman seems strong and stable by current standards!

In a lot of ways, precisely because of its veneer of respectability, the Times is the most corrosive, contemptible rag in all our shit press https://t.co/KlyhgE8JWs

— Tom Gann (@Tom_Gann) April 14, 2018

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dau7eqMXcAIgiYt.jpg

yes The Times is much worse than it used to be.

Apologies for journalists working at News International

it is often said they have a lot of editorial freedom from N.I. interference, as such an august (cough,splutter) and respected publication.

I'm sure there are apologists for Assad working in UK universities (whether it's these particular academics I don't know). There are working academics with a whole range of repellant views. But this has to be read alongside a string of Times front pages on a range of issues (trans rights, safe spaces, no platforming etc) whose main aim is to discredit and undermine any kind of leftist influence in British higher education. The kinds of conspiracy theories it talks about are reprehensible but concern for the people of Syria doesn't seem to be high on their agenda.

https://leilashami.wordpress.com/2018/04/14/the-anti-imperialism-of-idiots/

This, from an (I believe) anti-authoritarian British-Syrian leftist human rights activist who has spent a lot of time on the ground collecting first hand testimonies from Syrians is worth reading as an alternative. I don't agree with all of it - there's an erasure of left-wing voices who have consistently attacked Assad, I know people who are to the left of, say, Corbyn who are disgusted with his position on Syria. It strikes me as pretty spurious at best to state that the left was silent wrt previous attacks on Syria. And there's a sprinkling of horseshoe theory in there as well. But I can't find much to fault about the last three paragraphs.

As with antisemitism, or Putin apologism, this tendency does exist on the left no matter how much we might want it not to and it needs to be called out. Certainly anyone waving a Russian flag around at a Stop The War protest needs to fuck off.

(Corbyn isn't mentioned in this fwiw)

i agree with that. the most obvious dishonesty of the Times piece is the way it wants to elide the difference between genuinely shitty kneejerk "anti-imperialism of idiots" with any dissenting or nuanced voice that refuses to subscribe to our government's message on goodies vs baddies - i.e. what academics should be doing