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

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.

I’m in the centre of London and a combination of a good freezer for pennies-on-the-pound ‘yellow label’ reductions from the nicer supermarkets, really cheap fruit and veg from various greengrocer stands (the one on Kingsway by Holborn tube and the other one in front of the Marchmont Street post office are particularly good so heads up if you work nearby) and rock-bottom rice-and-spice prices at three decent Asian shops mean I eat like royalty. In Zone 2, access to a good Turkish shop and a veg market (eg. Ridley Road/Nag’s Head) will always see you right.

Londoners don't know they're born.

however, everyone else knows londoners are born, unfortch

</chippy provincial twat>

it's near watford, right?

No (Jack) Fulton's Foods, no credibility, London!

I still think about the massive bags of reject fish fingers I would get for pennies from Jack Fulton’s. Loved that shop, even if my local one was in poxy Headingley.

The ones that were joined together like a pair of trousers were a particular prize.

Fishpants.

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/08/06/article-2023164-0D52712400000578-721_468x286.jpg

(L-R: Jack Fulton, Geoffrey Boycott)

The good captain never seemed to have those fish fingers that disintegrate into squelchy pieces when you lift them off the tray.

L-R - Edward Heath, Alec Douglas-Home

l-r: ant, dec

Things must be getting dire, I can understand over 75% of what’s being discussed in this thread again

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ee/d8/9d/eed89d48aaee1b52b0d8875045ebeb44.jpg

just for you, Tom!

He’s the opposite of a fish avenger!

yeah i was gonna say

Scourge of the Cods

The fish finger trousers were not like those trousers.

he could have used impulsive or violent spasm.

Aye, but I think it's worth making clearer that this isn't an intellectual position that these people can be argued out of - it's what gets them hard.

The fish finger trousers were not like those trousers.

― Tim, Tuesday, 18 September 2018 10:17 PM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Fish groin

xp
it has been a day of deeply troubling and unwelcome imagery though, just when thought Vince Cable's erotic spasm wasn't bad enough, along comes a yeti-mushroom to tip you over the edge!

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/18/bmw-shut-mini-plant-brexit-no-deal

"for a month", my arse!

Bank Holimonth

"hmmm..do they usually weld the doors together and add electric fences to the perimeter during lulls between contracts?"

/1 Unions have negotiated a week on full pay and three weeks on “banked pay” for the post Brexit-day shutdown which is being attributed to disruption “in the event of a No Deal Brexit”

— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) September 18, 2018

dunno what "banked pay" is.

in reality it probably means "not in your bank account, mate!"

at the risk of repeating myself

lol we're all gonna die

The chances of Labour suddenly deciding to back a people's vote in the next six months or so look reasonably high given McDonnell's comments today, especially as the likelihood of a pre-Brexit election becomes increasingly remote and the pressure from Momentum members and unions becomes more intense.

I'm not totally into that idea tbh, why bail the Tories out? (well yeah to stave off The Great Depression etc, but I still want to see them go down with their ship as it were - even if it means rationing and eating the bark off trees!)

But one positive would be seeing the Chuka wing losing their main raison d'etre, and having to pretend they represent some different policies to the Tories for once.

Also you have first past the post, so the Tories would be back 10 years later.

I'm sure Bannon's Bowel Movement or whatever it's called will be lobbying hard for UK PR soon enough.

jobbying hard morelike amirite

you're correct

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DnYMwRcVsAE49c4.jpg

People who live in council houses should be made to feel proud of their homes, Theresa May will say later.

The PM will announce £2bn to build new homes in England, in a attempt to remove the "stigma" of social housing.

wtf is she even talking about? there are 15 year waiting lists and a housing crisis getting as bad as the post-war one. The only stigma is the social one on slumlords who they've made life so easy for. The graph tells the full story of how to make a housing crisis by abandoning social housing and leaving it to private sector failure, again.

It is interesting to see that c.1968 was the peak for social / state housebuilding.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/media/images/58255000/gif/_58255383_eng_wales_births464x297.gif

the real "baby boom" was 1920 apparently.

but the late 60's was a notable period as well!

interesting, so in the UK the baby boomer generation wasn't really a baby boom at all (apart from immediately after WWII) - the peak was at the beginning of gen X

People who live in council houses should be made to feel proud of their homes, Theresa May will say later.

The PM will announce £2bn to build new homes in England, in a attempt to remove the "stigma" of social housing.

I don't even know where to begin with any Tory having the gall to come out with that statement. It's like a serial murderer saying, "Won't someone think of my victims for a change?"

I'm not totally into that idea tbh, why bail the Tories out?

At some point, as the chances of an election recede, Labour could start to see it as their best chance to inflict a government-shattering defeat on them. Particularly as pressure is growing on the leadership from both wings of the party.

Obviously there isn't a cat in hell's chance of the Tories agreeing to it unless it's somehow forced upon them. Labour's current plan, which seems to be to vote against any deal the PM comes up with, isn't likely to be warmly received by the electorate if the alternative is crashing out without a deal. But that might be the same with a people's vote as well.

People who live in council houses should be made to feel proud of their homes

'should be made' is a weird, vaguely threatening way of framing an allegedly positive policy

The most charitable reading I can muster here is that administrators and policymakers should be coerced, not the inhabitants themselves. But it comes off as a telling slip more than anything.