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

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

ewwwwwww https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45553411

Cable and Swinson have actually been admitting that the ConDem coalition was not a good idea and maybe slightly damaging to their party and this country - no shit, but no talk of Farron being a mistake - he's been Yezhov style erased from all the photos and party history.

ffs man!

he could have used impulsive or violent spasm.

'slightly damaging' u say

And also according to recent UNICEF figures some of these are in a much worse Household Food Scarcity situation than their Romanian peers!

Really? That's not what I took away from this article: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/15/levels-of-child-hunger-and-deprivation-in-uk-among-highest-of-rich-nations

So while the UK is indeed doing quite poorly compared to other wealthy Western nations, it's hardly 'much worse' than Romania.

I suggest visiting Ferentari and telling its habitants 'hey, at least you're not in the UK!'

https://foodfoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/F23.jpg
here you go pom.

Nick Clegg was telling them to stop apologising for the coalition. Jo Swinson is saying they have to own up to their mistakes. I wonder which one has a future in the party!

I don't doubt it isn't bad in Ferentari and probably worse than the UK - but I wasn't talking total bollox!

Check out the report as a whole (p. 17):

https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/RC14_eng.pdf

I'm not arguing all is fine and dandy in the UK, btw – far from it. But for all of its faults, it's still a better place to raise children than Romania, as much as it pains me to say it. Don't forget that Romania has the second highest emigration growth rate after Syria and many expats are now settled in the UK.

This is purely anecdotal but I find it especially sad that food scarcity should be so high here. After the initial shock of rent and how ludicrously expensive it is compared to, well, Montreal, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that groceries are somewhat affordable. Realising that's not the case for far too many people is pretty depressing.

not so much the price of food - tho that doesn't help and it's an insidious, not immediately obvious kind of inflation - but the fact that there are a lot of communities where even if you're lucky enough to have a job it's not paying you enough to live on, coupled with a vindictive, punitive benefits system.

i always used to say that the state wouldn't let people actually die because of the need to maintain social order but we're as close as we've been in my lifetime now to people being without any form of safety net and the state doesn't care because fuck 'em, we've segregated the poor far enough away not to think about them. here, have a SureStart.

"Check out the report as a whole"

why is there a bit that says "ignore that last food insecure households graph - we just made it up"! I know it's rougher in Romania than in the UK really, but having equal or more %s of food insecure households is not painting a good picture even if what passes as poverty over there might be relatively worse.

i always used to say that the state wouldn't let people actually die because of the need to maintain social order but we're as close as we've been in my lifetime now to people being without any form of safety net and the state doesn't care because fuck 'em

I am not entirely convinced they're going great guns with the whole maintaining social order thing right now.

I couldn't find that exact graph in the report, fwiw.

xp

Xps Combined with the death of the high street, combined with shocking (and shockingly expensive) public transport, combined with long working hours, etc. It’s much easier to eat well and inexpensively in Zone 2 London than it is is most economically depressed towns and cities.