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UK Politics: The Tory leadership (disg)race to the bottom and beyond - not worth a Penny.


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Scot, chill. You're obsessing over tankies. They were always there, always will be, ever since Communism was a twinkle in Karl's eye. No need to worry about them, nobody's paying them any more attention than they ever did.

As for Corbyn, what happened was, he didn't have the support to be nominated after Milliband resigned. But then some moderate Labour MPs felt that even though they didn't support him, he represented a strand of thought in the party that should be given a voice in the contest and loaned him their nominations. All very inclusive, very 'I do not agree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it'.

Problem was, he went and won the membership vote. So, a cautionary tale.

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14 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Holy shit.  And he was elected leader of Labour?  He is who they put out to be PM?  Wow…

That's his foreign policy. His economic policies were/are quite likeable.

And most of the heavy hitters he managed to beat in the contest wanted no part of it. 

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The sad irony is that in the current moment the actual policies and persona that won Corbyn that membership vote- which can be simplified to 'stop being cunts to poor people' - would be more relevant than ever now. But he couldn't bring himself to let go of opinions on international politics that range between infuriatingly naive and mindblowingly stupid, nor could he accept that an attitude that works for an anti-authoritarian outsider simply don't work when you become the authority. 

 

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That, and his 'leadership' style was awful. He froze out people who disagreed with him, allowed his biases to interfere with the running of the party and tried to run everything through his own appointed clique - everything he complained about Blair doing when he was a backbencher.

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That's part of what I was saying with his attitude. Being abrasive when you're the outsider or in a minority position is a defense mechanism or way to get attention. Being abrasive when you're the one with the power makes you a bully and that's what started to happen with him.  

Likewise, being stupid or biased on some issues doesn't hugely matter if you get most of your attention for other issues that get more traction but become a massive problem when you're the chief representative for half the country and everything you say matters. 

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5 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

 

He's stuck in some sorta 1980s culture, in which NATO is bad, and the SU is a force for good. Sorta of a political Pavlov's reflex. He automatically sides against US (and by extension NATO). 

I'm sort of 37.5% in agreement with him. US and NATO are geopolitically an evil force in the world, that sometimes accidentally ends up on the right side of history. But the SU was an even greater force for evil, which maybe only accidentally landed on the right side of history once with the Viet Nam war.

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As a bit of an aside, I was watching a James O'Brien clip on Youtube and he quoted a verse from 'All Creatures Great and Small' (the hymn, not the TV show). This is a verse I never knew existed, but WT actual F!?!

Quote

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

But also, have we come all that far since 1848? It does seem like some people still believe this "natural" order.

It does seem to be missing from more modern renditions of the song, conveniently forgetting the class system is based on this fallacy of divine ordination of one's place in society.

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3 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I'm sort of 37.5% in agreement with him. US and NATO are geopolitically an evil force in the world, that sometimes accidentally ends up on the right side of history. But the SU was an even greater force for evil, which maybe only accidentally landed on the right side of history once with the Viet Nam war.

Nobody in their right mind would claim, that the US and NATO are force of good, that has made the world a better place. But as you said, compared to the SU, it was still the lesser of two evils.

Ukraine has this somewhat strange Russian Vietnam vibe about it. A seemingly overly powerful invader, open to committing war crimes is losing the war against a smaller enemy, that gets supplied with hardware from another powerblock, that won't enter the conflict openly.  And a goverment in the invading country, that is not willing to openly talk about the costs of the war, and that it won't be able to win it, but insteadsends more and more young men to die there. This will hopefully be over much quicker, tho.

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9 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Ukraine has this somewhat strange Russian Vietnam vibe about it. A seemingly overly powerful invader, open to committing war crimes is losing the war against a smaller enemy, that gets supplied with hardware from another powerblock, that won't enter the conflict openly.  And a goverment in the invading country, that is not willing to openly talk about the costs of the war, and that it won't be able to win it, but insteadsends more and more young men to die there. This will hopefully be over much quicker, tho.

There are certainly similarities, but there are some big differences too. 

 - Russia and Ukraine are neighbors, which makes the war much easier to fight and much more likely to flare up again if not resolved correctly. 

 - Russia is far less powerful than the 1960s US.  And Ukraine is more powerful than Vietnam was as well.

 - Russia's international standing (and economic outlook) is suffering from this war in a way that the US never was.  The US could have fought in Vietnam more or less indefinitely, which Russia cannot do. 

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Also, this 10 pound fines for people missing appointments that is Sunak's grand healty policy idea is a fucking joke and does nothing.

Like, you're running to be the next PM and this is your grand idea?

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I seem to recall a relatively recent economic hiccup that involved cheap and easy access to mortgages. Something to do with a dodgy couple by the name of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac selling sub-prime... meat? That sounds kinda weird, must be something else.

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11 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Pleased I've got a 10 year mortgage. Jesus. 

Inflation to hit 13% by end of year. What a time to be alive. 

To be fair it could be a lot worse. See Mugabe's leadership and how hyperinflation in Zimbabwe caused a piece of toilet paper to cost an absurd amount of money. 

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3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

To be fair it could be a lot worse. See Mugabe's leadership and how hyperinflation in Zimbabwe caused a piece of toilet paper to cost an absurd amount of money. 

Pfft. That'll never happen here.

*laughs nervously then vomits*

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"Levelling up" should have meant building a shit ton more houses, getting people into debt easier so they can pay for over priced assets just so that old people don't have to worry about the value of their home dropping (which inflates everyones sense of how well we are all doing) is just bollocks.

Speaking of which, I see that Premier League footballers have decided to stop making meaningless ineffectual gestures before games because they realised they were meaningless and ineffectual. Wondered how long that would take.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/aug/03/premier-league-players-will-no-longer-take-the-knee-before-every-match-blm

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The hatred and prejudice of the sorta youngish toward those perceived as Not Young is part of the ongoing crises, of course, along with white supremacy, classism, racism, bigotry, intolerance, etc. etc. etc.  Too bad the first wave of covid didn't last longer, because then, the expressed desire and solution to all things was just have the elderly -- and the financially distressed -- die while everyone else continued biz as usual, would have been fulfilled.  Why yes indeed, one does remember very well these expressions in the first Covid threads right here on this forum.  Expressed by the same posters, in fact, who then later lie and say they didn't say or think that -- even while doing it again right in front of our faces. :rofl:

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