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

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/zainadin-fazlie-deport-home-office-taliban-afghanistan-shot-dead-refugee-a8536736.html

stories like that go way back to the 30's. In Wachsmann's KL book there was an account of a Jewish guy who got into the UK with fake papers, told the HO he was going to be put into protective custody by the Nazis. The HO deported him, he died in Dachau. Just saying cos Tories (inc the Labour ones) often talk about this fantasy of what a welcoming country this was in that era for refugees, notwithstanding unaccompanied children etc.

I'd happily shoot every fucker responsible for this

never in doubt

stunning stuff from @bellingcat. https://t.co/v5nSpSpjJ4

— Edward Lucas (@edwardlucas) September 14, 2018

I am shocked

Looking forward to Craig Murray's explanation for this.

S.S. is a common abbreviation for “sovershenno sekretno”, Russian for “top secret”

lol I'm sure back in the Soviet Union days they wouldn't have given the fucking game away on the passport.

well, thats one for Craig to pursue anyways!

I went down to Salisbury
To listen to the choir,
A pair of Russian tourists
They were staring up the spire,
Staring up the spire, they were,
Silent and aghast,
Against the sky, hurtling by,
A piggy flying past.

— Pam Ayres (@PamAyres) September 15, 2018

pam knows what time it is

she's obv an MFI agent!

operating under deep upholstery cover.

Craig Murray can prove she's not even been to Salisbury since April 2008.

bellingcat but an actual kitten, with a bell

there was a poll quoted in the Observer yesterday (from a sample of 2000 people) that most would vote for a new centrist party. In the last week we've had Macron mugs, him talking like a cunt to an unemployed person, an oh yeah he's got a record low approval rating and Nation Rally is going neck and neck with his coalition. On the other hand Lord Jim O'Neill, aka Baron O'Neill of Gatley, former Goldman Sachs chief economist and Gideon's go-to economist (for what that is worth!) in The Times yesterday: "I find myself struggling to be that scared by the prospect of a Corbyn government. They have captured the mood of the times."

That poll probably says more about the appeal of 'none of the above' right now than anything else.

true, but that isn't what the "politically homeless" are currently saying. And I've not seen much comment from them on the current state of Macron's centrist coalition.

Then the party needs to have a leader that has appeal, a coherent program (not just "a people's vote" with anything else as an afterthought), an organised campaign that cuts through etc., to even transform this vague desire into votes.

The usual disingenuous bullshit here

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/17/four-in-10-people-think-multiculturalism-undermines-british-culture-immigration

bloody mail graun at it again. They are prepping ppl for the new centrist party's manifesto launch!

Fifty-nine percent believed that the diversity brought by immigration has enriched British culture, but half said public services were under strain from immigration and that migrants were willing to work for less, putting jobs at risk and lowering wages.

your problem is with capitalism not immigration, comrades

half said public services were under strain from immigration

i think anyone on the left needs to shut this down immediately whenever it pops up

It's more impressive that half don't think that, given the constant barrage of nonsense they're subjected to - including from The Guardian.

On a scale of one to 10, do you feel immigration has had a positive or negative impact on the UK, including your local community?

Large city 6.19
Smaller city or large town 5.95
Medium town 5.63
Small town 5.58
Rural group 5.2
Overall UK 5.72

but that question just asks about impact, POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE.

"is this apple red or green?" "yes"

On a scale of one to 10, do you feel suburbanisation has had a positive or negative impact on the UK, including your local community?

On a scale of 1 to 10, how many bullets would you fire into rubes?

On a scale of 1 to 10, how heavy or light are you?

I also think that the word "multiculturalism" means very different things to different people. If I welcome free movement and settling from anywhere in the world but don't like segregated faith schools of any sort or the arbitrary selection of patriarchs as "Community Leaders" does that mean that I am for or against multiculturalism?

for

dying at this synopsis of rowling's new book.

It’s set amid the 2012 London Olympics, that last precarious moment of national unity. There are whispers of blackmail and double-dealing in the corridors of power and something suitably nasty and gothic that happened in the country seat of a Conservative MP. Strike and Ellacott must walk the line between corrupt Tories, devious coalition Liberals and brutish proto-Momentum activists.

the line that goes straight down the middle of all of them, one assumes

with maybe a slight diversion for some antisemitism, cf banking goblins

that is truly worthy of John Lanchester, and I don't say that lightly

Seems a bit shabby for the Lanch fwiw. For all his many faults he at least understands what's happening right now.

right now at 4.38 pm on the world wide web messaging board app i love lanchester

"it was the perfect crime; who would have suspected the hapless, pension-aged socialist on his allotment. But now Cormran Strike knew the truth and it was up to him to #stopbrexit"

"At 9.30am, the moderate MP Philip Jeffers put his hand on his mouse, opened his computer window, and navigated to the microblogging service Twitter. 'Read some Orwell', he typed testily. The bathroom was a well."

it's incredibly frustrating to see the dire consequences of brexit framed as the consequences of a NO DEAL brexit. whereas, we all know, surely, that the best possible brexit we could ever get will be dire, will lead to a much worse financial crisis than a decade ago. that car manufacturing, all high end manufacturing could well come to an end in the UK. you can already feel it and it surely, if you are poor, already feels much worse than the crisis a decade ago. it's all so crazy and scary.

Spot the odd one out in this gallery of ghouls: https://www.leavemeansleave.eu/who-we-are/

"Use black and white photos so they can't do the wall of gammon thing."

fuck that’s a lot of old white men

Andrea Jenkins is made up.

https://www.leavemeansleave.eu/shower-of-cunts/

Fun trip down memoryhole mews I gotta say

The Labour Party conference will probably be written up as a cross between a Nuremberg Rally, and a weekend at Stalin's Dacha. It always is.

And, likewise, the Labour Right are gearing up their mudslinging. So...

— Richard James (@RJSHutton) September 17, 2018

Many lols, but

When a mundane (albeit, inept) anti-capitalism mural was wrongly dubbed anti-Semitic

Mr James can get all the way to fuck with that one.

ugh yes

Yes, I tried sic's fake link. Someone some day is going to be looking at the web logs for that site and this'll maybe make them think.

the other day I saw local kids had somehow dragged a trampoline onto the roof of what used to be some local authority old folks flats, that have been closed + abandoned since 2012. They had already tried to burn the building down last month, so the roof is not exactly structurally safe for 6 people jumping up and down on this trampoline on a top of part of it. Try your avuncular posh uncle act telling these young people that things could get worse for them because of Brexit. The Worst already happened long time since, and they really don't give a fuck! And also according to recent UNICEF figures some of these are in a much worse Household Food Scarcity situation than their Romanian peers!

waking up to hear Vince Cable's going to deliver an "erotic spasm" at the Lib Dem conference :-(

oh god wtf no