The Political Thread

[Professor Bear]

Scrooge is an outlier - you know what the Scotch are like - and billionaires are generally good people.

[TordelBack]

This also explains why the perverted bastard could walk around with no pants on in front of his nephews and no-one did anything.

Sir!  Sir!  Bear's making pedo jokes! 

That's your chances of helming a billion dollar War Cars movie franchise right out the window.  Well, not more than two parts of a trilogy anyway.

[Professor Bear]

I'm not saying I am an unreliable creator, but I had to Google what War Cars was.

[sheridan]

Sensible, centrist, fully transparent think tank beloved of impartial BBC political editors The Adam Smith Institute has a solution to Britain's housing crisis, you guys - and unsurprisingly, it's a doozy.

This reply was good:

You know, the more I read this organisation's content (blog posts, research reports, policy recommendations), the more I become utterly convinced that you must all live in some strange, cloistered, unhealthy place so far removed from reality and other, normal, people that rubbish like this seems sensible. There is no better case for democratic socialism that spending an hour or two reading this ridiculous waffle. What are you thinking? What is going on in your little heads? Do you ever hear yourselves?

[Steve Green]

Sensible, centrist, fully transparent think tank beloved of impartial BBC political editors The Adam Smith Institute has a solution to Britain's housing crisis, you guys - and unsurprisingly, it's a fucking doozy.

Technically a necropost from 2015.

[Professor Bear]

Yeah, to be fair, that blog post was written when everyone thought Andy Burnham was going to be Labour leader, nothing like Trump was on the immediate horizon, and that the economic and political consensus was going to continue along the trajectory it had been on for a while.  The ASI may very well have mellowed since.  LOL.

What's fascinating about that post is that past periods of economic depression have typically led to the establishment of shantytowns for various reasons (usually to accommodate an influx of financial migrants, ala the US' Hoovervilles and Brazil's favelas), and neoliberal thinking is to get ahead of that not by preventative measures, but by legislating specifically for the monetisation of homelessness.

Non-sequitor: "tiny living" is now a thing because years ago people started renovating vans, buses, lorries and caravans on a large scale into livable home spaces because they couldn't afford to get on the property ladder, and now it has turned into a hipster trend because of course it has.

[Theblazeuk]

The latest Corbyn speech twisted by reporting as slamming "Cheap Labour from Abroad" has been another lesson in how, no matter how much I disagree with his Brexit stance, there's just a sickening level of distortion in the press + pundits on whatever Labour does or says. And worse a complete lack of good faith amongst all of them as any attempt to highlight it leads to accusations of tinfoil hat conspiracies (see the Newsnight kremlin photoshopping and photo selection).

The actual speech is about sending public service contracts abroad, rather than to UK firms, and limiting the economic harm caused by outsourcing. Given that huge swathes of our IT jobs are moving to India, it doesn't just affect Manufacturing. Shame about the Brexit dividend bollocks though but take issue with that, not by distorting it as some kind of UKIP speech about immigrants.

[Professor Bear]

Collective hysteria is part of a healthy democracy.  Without it we might have voted for that far left guy who ate a bacon sandwich weird.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Normally I wouldn't condone public vandalism, but when someone destroys a Hollywood star belonging to that spiteful, chubby manchild with grasping little hands, then I say fair play. 

[TordelBack]

FFS Donald, have some fecking dignity - irrespective of how you cheated your way into that office,  you still represent 325 million people on the world stage. Calling former staff - and your only senior black staffer at that - a dog: what an ill
mannered insecure person you are. Maybe if you had retained a shred of respectability you could simply rise above the accusations of disgruntled ex-employees,  like almost everyone else in business manages to do (in public at least).  But because you've positioned your presidency - and life - in the gutter you have to screech at them like a junkie whose fix has been stolen.  Pathetic excuse for a man.

[The Legendary Shark]

Problem: Trump is unpopular.
Reaction: people like him should not hold high office.
Solution: Skynet!

:-D

I get the feeling that T'Rump is being universally trashed in order for the Powers That Shouldn't Be to institute a more rigorous selection process so that only the "right sort of people" get elected as front men presidents.

Whatever one thinks of the man, he's certainly fulfilling his role as a distraction brilliantly.

[Funt Solo]

He's not a distraction, or a joke, or a passing fad.  His policies are having very real effects on many immigrant families here in the US: breaking them apart through forced separation and deportation whilst interring their children.  He is attempting to produce a supreme court with a strong conservative bias with the very real aim of overturning abortion rights legislation (Roe vs Wade).

Just a couple of examples. 

Government isn't a myth: it has real effects.  Your blether about him being a front-man puppet for unseen forces sounds like Mills-esque lunacy.

[TordelBack]

No-one should be allowed to continue to serve as figurehead - and executive - for a nation after publicly writing this:

"When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn't work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!"

Sharkie, I appreciate that you don't believe in the electoral system, or indeed the idea of 'leaders', but leaving aside that and all of Trump's other actions, that people in power should be allowed to say these kinds of things with impunity... It's appalling to me.  They're the words of a spiteful vindictive spoilt child, in the mouth of a person with unimaginable power.  In my head, that single tweet should be enough to start the process for anyone's removal from office. 

[The Legendary Shark]

I don't disagree, Tordels, but as you know I'd rather take the power from the man rather than the man from the power.

[Tiplodocus]

I don't disagree, Tordels, but as you know I'd rather take the power from the man rather than the man from the power.

What does that actually mean?