DT Politics Thread

[TENEMENTFUNSTER]

 

 

In what way is the current political system bankrupt? I think they way in which they parties pick their candidates is pretty awful(do PPE at oxbridge, become an advisor = safe seat) but apart from this aspect the actual system seems fine to me? The policies introduced(continued erosion of civil liberties, total lack of economic or game theory knowledge, lack of expertise, pandering to the lowest common dominator) are a problem but that is due to the policies people vote for not the system.

 

That's quite a lot in itself right there. It is quite a restricted and similar group of policies folk have to choose from and it's getting smaller. More and more people are becoming disaffected by a political class that are completely disconnected from the voters. Hardly anyone votes. You don't think that makes the system a bit fucked?   

[tom_widdows]

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/robin-lustig/russell-brand-not-only-dangerous_b_4155341.html

 

 

[TENEMENTFUNSTER]

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/robin-lustig/russell-brand-not-only-dangerous_b_4155341.html

 

I understand what Lustig says and in some parts agree but he does rope in the aftermath of the various Arab springs in regard to the importance of voting, basically fledgling democracies, hardly a reasonable comparison with a country who are more and more disinterested in politics. It's a bit more of a personal attack rather than actually addressing much of what motivated Brand's viewpoint, in fact it largely ignores his well put points. Brand himself said in the interview he was hardly likely to describe an alternative to the status quo in a 10 minute interview.

 

The fact is Brand remains largely correct, though advocating not voting won't help, a legitimate point Lustig makes. But is he wrong to say what he thinks is wrong with the system without describing in detail what an alternative would be? 

 

[maverick sheep]

battle at the minute is between greens and ukip for the dregs. significant though because if ukip start getting elected (they're aiming for an MEP in Scotland next year) then we have allowed viscous right wing scum to waltz into mainstream politics.

 

 

Not sure it's even avoidable 

[tom_widdows]

battle at the minute is between greens and ukip for the dregs. significant though because if ukip start getting elected (they're aiming for an MEP in Scotland next year) then we have allowed viscous right wing scum to waltz into mainstream politics.

 

 

Not sure it's even avoidable 

 

Like of UKIP always gather support in hard times because they are easy for those looking for a scapegoat for their problems to get behind.

 

Personally i reckon Farage is gonna give up in a couple of years. As UKIP gets more popular the press put a bit more effort in and are discovering the dithering old fools and borderline national front young muppets that form a fairly big chunk of their team and old Nigel is getting sick and tired of them fucking with his grand vision

[TENEMENTFUNSTER]

Ukip wont do anything at all lasting.

 

Neither will the greens.

[manc_don]

Retort to Russel Brand's piece in the New Statesman

 

 

[/size]Dear Russell,[/size]Hi. We’ve met about twice, so I should probably reintroduce myself: I’m the other one from Peep Show. I read your thing on revolution in these pages with great interest and some concern. My first reaction was to rejoin the Labour Party. The Jiffy bag containing the plastic membership card and the Tristram Hunt action figure is, I am assured, in the post. I just wanted to tell you why I did that because I thought you might want to hear from someone who a) really likes your work, b) takes you seriously as a thoughtful person and c) thinks you’re wilfully talking through your arse about something very important.

[/size]It’s about influence and engagement. You have a theoretical 7.1 million (mostly young) followers on Twitter. They will have their own opinions about everything and I have no intention of patronising them. But what I will say is that when I was 15, if Stephen Fry had advised me to trim my eyebrows with a Flymo, I would have given it serious consideration. I don’t think it’s your job to tell young people that they should engage with the political process. But I do think that when you end a piece about politics with the injunction “I will never vote and I don’t think you should either”, then you’re actively telling a lot of people that engagement with our democracy is a bad idea. That just gives politicians the green light to neglect the concerns of young people because they’ve been relieved of the responsibility of courting their vote.

[/size]Why do pensioners (many of whom are not poor old grannies huddled round a kerosene lamp for warmth but bloated ex-hippie baby boomers who did very well out of the Thatcher/Lawson years) get so much attention from politicians? Because they vote.

[/size]Many of the young, the poor, the people you write about are in desperate need of support. The last Labour government didn’t do enough and bitterly disappointed many voters. But, at the risk of losing your attention, on the whole they helped. Opening Sure Start centres, introducing and raising the minimum wage, making museums free, guaranteeing nursery places, blah blah blah: nobody is going to write a folk song about this stuff and I’m aware of the basic absurdity of what I’m trying to achieve here, like getting Liberace to give a shit about the Working Tax Credit, but these policies among many others changed the real lives of millions of real people for the better.

[/size]This is exactly what the present coalition is in the business of tearing to pieces. They are not interested in helping unlucky people – they want to scapegoat and punish them. You specifically object to George Osborne’s challenge to the EU’s proposed cap on bankers’ bonuses. Labour simply wouldn’t be doing that right now. They are not all the same. “They’re all the same” is what reactionaries love to hear. It leaves the status quo serenely untroubled, it cedes the floor to the easy answers of Ukip and the Daily Mail. No, if you want to be a nuisance to the people whom you most detest in public life, vote. And vote Labour.

[/size]You talk of “obediently X-ing a little box”. Is that really how it feels to you? Obedience? There’s a lot that people interested in shaping their society can do in between elections – you describe yourself as an activist, among other things – but election day is when we really are the masters. We give them another chance or we tell them to get another job. If I thought I worked for David Cameron rather than the other way round, I don’t know how I’d get out of bed in the morning.

[/size]Maybe it’s this timidity in you that leads you into another mistake: the idea that revolution is un-British. Actually, in the modern era, the English invented it, when we publicly decapitated Charles I in 1649. We got our revolution out of the way long before the French and the Americans. The monarchy was restored but the sovereignty of our parliament, made up of and elected by a slowly widening constituency of the people, has never been seriously challenged since then. Aha! Until now, you say! By those pesky, corporate, global, military-industrial conglomerate bastards! Well, yes. So national parliaments and supernational organisations such as the EU need more legitimacy. That’s more votes, not fewer.

[/size]You’re a wonderful talker but on the page you sometimes let your style get ahead of what you actually think. In putting the words “aesthetically” and “disruption” in the same sentence, you come perilously close to saying that violence can be beautiful. Do keep an eye on that. Ambiguity around ambiguity is forgivable in an unpublished poet and expected of an arts student on the pull: for a professional comedian demoting himself to the role of “thinker”, with stadiums full of young people hanging on his every word, it won’t really do.

[/size]What were the chances, in the course of human history, that you and I should be born into an advanced liberal democracy? That we don’t die aged 27 because we can’t eat because nobody has invented fluoride toothpaste? That we can say what we like, read what we like, love whom we want; that nobody is going to kick the door down in the middle of the night and take us or our children away to be tortured? The odds were vanishingly small. Do I wake up every day and thank God that I live in 21st-century Britain? Of course not. But from time to time I recognise it as an unfathomable privilege. On Remembrance Sunday, for a start. And again when I read an intelligent fellow citizen ready to toss away the hard-won liberties of his brothers and sisters because he’s bored.

[/size]I understand your ache for the luminous, for a connection beyond yourself. Russell, we all feel like that. Some find it in music or literature, some in the wonders of science and others in religion. But it isn’t available any more in revolution. We tried that again and again, and we know that it ends in death camps, gulags, repression and murder. In brief, and I say this with the greatest respect, please read some fucking Orwell.

[/size]Good luck finding whatever it is you’re looking for and while you do, may your God go with you.

[/size]Rob

[/size]

[TENEMENTFUNSTER]

That too is excellent.

[mizer]

What would the flag of the rUK be if Scotland left?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25205017

 

 

This design includes the black background and gold cross of the Welsh St David flag

 

 

The second seeks to address the same issue, but by borrowing elements of Wales' current national flag - the field of green and white that lies behind its red dragon.

 

 

A more modern interpretation of the design, including the colours of St David's flag and retaining the Scottish blue - to reflect the fact that Scotland would continue to share the British monarchy.

 

 

Remove the white of St Andrew's saltire and imposes a crown and Royal Standard - including England's three lions, the red Scottish lion and the Welsh harp.

 

 

The design removes the Scottish elements from the flag entirely, and adds the Royal Crest, surrounded by a garland of items symbolic of the Commonwealth nations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'kitsch tongue-in-cheek'

 

[Tyrant]

My poor eyes.

[Kowalski]

My poor eyes.

 

Not forgetting your poor ears from listening to Coldplay.

[mizer]

Not forgetting your poor ears from listening to Coldplay.

 

+1

[Tyrant]

Not forgetting your poor ears from listening to Coldplay.

 

 

Was listening to their live gig from Paris CD in the car this morning. 

[octavion]

Hun work type person today says every hun will vote no and if it did scotland will become like northern Ireland so it will never happen 

Thats my deepest fears from  the morons

[Madbadteacher]

"Hun work" not two words you often see together

[Andrew]

Hun work type person today says every hun will vote no and if it did scotland will become like northern Ireland so it will never happen 

Thats my deepest fears from  the morons

 

 

If Scotland votes no I am leaving. Think I might go to Denmark after watching the bridge.

[TENEMENTFUNSTER]

 

If Scotland votes no I am leaving. Think I might go to Denmark after watching the bridge.

 

I just actually lolled.

[mizer]

Hun work type person today says every hun will vote no and if it did scotland will become like northern Ireland so it will never happen 

Thats my deepest fears from  the morons

 

Good old British values

[mizer]

In Korean politics:

 

http://www.straitstimes.com/the-big-story/asia-report/china/story/jangs-execution-bodes-ill-china-20131224

THE execution of Jang Song Thaek, the No. 2 man in North Korea, took Beijing by surprise and will adversely affect bilateral relations.

Beijing's displeasure is expressed through the publication of a detailed account of Jang's brutal execution in Wen Wei Po, its official mouthpiece, in Hong Kong, on Dec 12.

According to the report, unlike previous executions of political prisoners which were carried out by firing squads with machine guns, Jang was stripped naked and thrown into a cage, along with his five closest aides. Then 120 hounds, starved for three days, were allowed to prey on them until they were completely eaten up. This is called "quan jue", or execution by dogs.

The report said the entire process lasted for an hour, with Mr Kim Jong Un, the supreme leader in North Korea, supervising it along with 300 senior officials.

The horrifying report vividly depicted the brutality of the young North Korean leader. The fact that it appeared in a Beijing- controlled newspaper showed that China no longer cares about its relations with the Kim regime.

 

[Kowalski]

In Korean politics:

 

http://www.straitstimes.com/the-big-story/asia-report/china/story/jangs-execution-bodes-ill-china-20131224

 

 

If that's true then that's utterly barbaric. The cunt needs to be put out of his misery.

[manc_don]

My housemate is a journalist and is convinced that due to the source (dirty Chinese media) which are known to be unreliable, its not likely. He said that the general feeling was that he'd been killed via anti-aircraft gun fire...slightly less brutal I guess...

[Tyrant]

That shouldn't shock me but it does. I just hope it's not true.

[mizer]

My housemate is a journalist and is convinced that due to the source (dirty Chinese media) which are known to be unreliable, its not likely. He said that the general feeling was that he'd been killed via anti-aircraft gun fire...slightly less brutal I guess...

 

Did they float him on a balloon?

[tom_widdows]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27105374

 

I am deeply concerned at this sort of shit.

 

I don't like pinning my hopes that the majority of the fuckwits I meet who go on about how great UKIP is are the same sort of fuckwits who wont bother their arses to register or waddle down to the polling stations come election day.

[Kowalski]

Nice product placement: