#yet another tory shitshow

[lost-carcosa]

[lost-carcosa]

And naturally she's just put priti patel in her shadow cabinet.

Tories: “we lost the last election because of how far right we moved so to show we’ve learned we’ve elected Kemi Badenoch”

[werewolfetone]

You know speaking of conservative propaganda about the French Revolution and fuck Edmund Burke in particular, I NEED everyone who studies frev but not the utter shitshow in the British Isles at the time to Know how much everyone fucking hated Edmund Burke for what he said about frev there as well. Everyone in the British House of Commons thought he'd gone off the deep end, including the Tories, who didn't like the revolution but at that point didn't really care very much, but especially Burke's former best friends in the Whigs, who all either up & left the party when they heard he was being put in charge or publicly chewed him out for it. And in Ireland, when a young Lord Castlereagh said something along the lines of "hey... maybe Burke isn't all wrong..." in the Irish House of Commons, his uncle wrote to him & told him to cut that shit out because he'd ruin his career by agreeing with Burke. Genuinely if you told someone from Back Then that today Burke's ideas on the revolution are mainstream, they'd probably laugh in your face, because EVERYONE disagreed with him for one reason or another. And yet.

[hella1975]

Dude seeing as tho you’re an econ student, can you explain why inflation happens?? Like why can’t prices just stay the same?? I genuinely don’t get it. Like wdym we’re gonna have 22% inflation next year?? Like thats insane. Like why are they upping the energy bills?? Why can’t they just stay the same, every other country has a cap on it, why are we raising ours. Im literally so confused rn

no this is so valid of you and i promise you EVERYONE is confused like the annoying thing about economics/politics is that it's the BACKBONE of a society yet normal people dont really know much about it unless they actively try and find out, which is how we create blunders like brexit bc people are just uninformed.

so inflation is a general rise in prices. that's all it is. it's can be a good thing, and it's an example of when the market fixes itself because like anything in economics, it's part of a trade-off. IF INFLATION DIDN'T HAPPEN THE MARKET WOULD FAIL!!! IT DOES NEED TO HAPPEN IT'S JUST WHEN IT HAPPENS TO THE EXTENT IT IS HAPPENING THAT IT GETS VERY BAD!!!! IF IT DIDNT HAPPEN AT ALL WHILE ALL THESE EXTERNAL FACTORS CONTINUED THEN THE ECONOMY WOULD LITERALLY CRASH!!! MONEY WOULD LOSE ALL VALUE!!! AND NOT IN A GOOFY 'HAHA YESSS NO MORE MONEY!' WAY I MEAN IN A INSTANTLY CRIPPLING THE WORKING CLASS AND ALL THOSE THAT CANT STAY AFLOAT WAY!!! THIS IS IMOPORTANT!!!! it all comes back to the very basic model of supply and demand and creating new equilibriums, which to my absolute dismay im gonna have to whip out a diagram for, so here she is Thee Supply And Demand Diagram:

so we can see here that shifts in supply or demand create new equilibriums, aka the point where both lines meet. when supply moves right (increases) and/or demand moves left (decreases) (e.g s1 -> s2 and d1 -> d2), we see prices fall, just like the opposite would see prices rise (aka inflation!). to apply that to what's happening at the moment, general supply chains are just really fucked. russia has cut gas to europe, hence a plumet in supply there and the energy crisis we're now in. ukraine (the 'breadbasket of europe') isn't producing/exporting as much as normal, hence another plumet in supply etc etc. basically every supply chain at the minute is having issues and that immediately causes prices to jump. why is the uk in particular such a shitshow at the moment when these external factors are affecting multiple countries? because this is happening in a post-brexit post-covid-handled-by-the-tory-party post-prime-minister-popularity-contest-during-a-national-crisis economy. it's not looking good bruv. low and behold, we are in a cost of living crisis.

if prices didn't rise to meet these external factors, aka if we stick with the energy example, then we see a plummet in supply with prices staying the same. spending isn't being dissuaded and NO ONE is being pushed out of the market. the reason prices rise is to slow down consumption of the supply and make it last longer, so keeping prices the same, while better for everyone in the short run, would completely fuck us over in the long run bc we'd just run out COMPLETELY and it would be a GLOBAL PROBLEM.

the worst thing about inflation is that it hits poorer people the hardest. you know i said earlier that higher prices push people out of the market to slow the rate of consumption? yeah that's poor people getting pushed out of the market. the people who cant afford energy stop getting it first while richer people can usually ride out crises and recessions. a good thing about the inflation we're facing at the moment is that it's coming from external factors; there hasn't been an actual crash in a part of the economy. take the 2008 recession for example. that was caused bc of the crash of the housing market in america, and as a result it took YEARS for the world to get back on its feet. economic turmoil at the minute though should recover quite swiftly as long as our government gets their shit together (which hopefully if liz truss makes enough of a tit out of herself we'll get a labour government in the next election). in fact inflation is supposed to go back to around 2% (the target rate) in approx two years and is supposed to start falling by next year. still, that's a long time for a normal person on a normal salary to get by with such high costs, and it's not gonna be fun.

as for a price cap, the uk does have one! im pretty sure it doesn't apply to businesses though and only applies to households, which is why particularly there's been a lot of news about pubs closing lately. but like you said, the cap keeps getting higher and higher lately and it's literally because the economy will not survive if we keep selling energy at the current rate; it has to be more expensive bc of everything i just explained. the issue here is that there are things the government can do to ease the financial burden faced by the people and to speed up the economic healing process, but they're not doing that and THAT is where the problem lies.

[hhawkeye]

🌻



hi!!!

currently on my mind is obv the state of the uk government i'm really enjoying this shitshow but also worrying that if another election is called theyll vote the tories back in again because ????? and even if labour were to win i dont think much would change lmao keir starmer is. so useless and yknow every party is so split by like. "should trans people exist" somehow being a difficult question. anyway that's all bad and depressing SO

it's like 11pm and i think i'm gonna settle in for the night with maybe a new tv show or movie. i have not decided yet.

[inspector-alfendi-layton]

It’s dark.

Everything is dark. Yet I can finally feel something: legs, arms, lungs. Upon this realization I instinctively try to draw a deep breath, only to choke on the bin bag now surrounding me. I quickly dug at the plastic wall, opening a small hole.

Lungs that had long been absent of air voraciously filled with oxygen, causing me to cough. Luckily, it looks like no one heard anything; the Mystery Room remained empty.

Yes… completely empty.

“…I’m sorry, Clive.”

He must’ve left the building already. A rare pang of guilt ran through my chest. I was well aware that it was wrong to involve Clive in this... he had already suffered enough, and most of that suffering was my fault. However, I had no choice. Emeer is a moron, Mr. Fawcett couldn’t help as a ghost himself (not to mention the whole pregnancy debacle), Greggslover is too pure to handle Tory magic, and Alfendi…

I quietly tore the bag open further, allowing myself to stand. I nearly stumbled as I stood, only able to get up by clutching onto the nearby desk. The feeling of standing from the bag, cool air against my skin, breathing… all sensations I had missed as a simple spirit. I have no idea how Mr. Fawcett could live… err, unlive like that. As for my surroundings, they were a disaster. All surfaces were covered in stacks and stacks of files and multicolored binders. Indeed, Alfendi had been trying to find dirt on me from within Scotland Yard… how foolish.

My attention quickly turned to the only light left in the room. Clive had left the crystal ball on the floor, and I quickly swooped it up off the ground upon spotting it. It was still warm from the ritual… he must’ve left in a hurry.

The ball emitted a faint glow, just barely illuminating my surroundings. Although Clive and myself had used up much of the power stored inside, it seemed to have already begun to recharge itself.

Careful not to drop the orb from my shaking hands, I made my way to the window in the corner of the office. This was finally the moment of truth, to see if Clive had really succeeded. I held the orb close to my face, illuminating the reflection…

Alfendi’s face gazed back from the window.

Against all odds, the ritual had worked! It was a good thing I decided to keep Alfendi’s corpse as “insurance” after he betrayed me. Not only that, but this situation would inadvertently solve other problems as well. I could finally reach objects on high shelves, escape Bill Jr., get rid of those ridiculous cat ears, and best of all, I was back in the running for the Sexyman Contest, if what crazyplrpsexyman said was true! I must’ve killed around four birds with one stone! The depths of my genius can be truly frightening. Even if I won the contest as Alfendi, it would still be a win for the Tories! And if I secured another win for the Tories, surely I could gain more power, power stronger than even the crystal ball could muster.

However, even the most genius plans hide a flaw or two. The first was obvious: although Clive had been mostly successful in the ritual, it partially failed. Annoying as this setback was, it was expected, considering Clive isn’t a Tory himself. Although I was able to use Alfendi’s lungs properly, his body still had no pulse. Not only does this leave me looking… haggard, to say the least, it also left his skin cold to the touch. This was partially due to how he had been murdered as well: a viscous stabbing directly to the chest. Unfortunately, the orb failed to heal these wounds… I suppose it makes sense. Like us Tories, the orb hates free healthcare.

The only other flaw in the plan became apparent as I grabbed Alfendi’s phone. As soon I switched it on, worried notifications from his family filled the screen. Yes, while I was using his body, I would have to somehow keep everyone in the dark about the true situation at hand. I could only imagine the shitshow that would start if anyone found out about what I’ve done. I mean, I’ve done some pretty terrible things, but murdering someone and using their corpse as a meat puppet had to be high on that list. The hardest part would be keeping calm around Layton. Although I’m aware Alfendi’s father is a different Layton to the one that murdered me, it would still be difficult not to bash his face in once I see him. I would take care of the actual murderer (ironic, I know) eventually, but now wasn’t the time.

I finally snapped out of my thoughts. There would be time for thinking later, for now I had to focus on getting out of here. I turned back to the desk and searched through the stacks of paper. Just as I suspected, there was a large binder concealed under the stacks labeled with my name. A quick skim revealed all that was needed to know: this was the evidence Alfendi had compiled against me. I stowed the thick binder away in Alfendi’s jacket, still stained from the murder. Alfendi was no fool either, he had concealed some weapons around his desk: a short knife and a pistol, owned by the Yard. He must’ve been expecting me to retaliate. Luckily, I had managed to take him out with ease: one of the files on his desk had been laced with a potent soporific. Once he borrowed that file from the Yard’s records, I simply had someone wait for him to open the folder.

I grabbed the weapons from the desk and stashed them alongside the binder. With the crystal ball held close to my chest, I slowly opened the door out of the office…

The coast was clear. Before leaving, I grabbed Alfendi’s phone. Considering what Clive had just done for me, the least I could do was text him back.

“The spell worked! Thank you, Clive. I’m glad I can at least count on you.”

You’re almost there! Behind the desk, there’s a large black bag containing the insurance. You don’t have to look in it. (Seriously. Don’t look inside.)

Use the crystal ball on that black bag!

"Right, a black bag..."

I turn towards the desk, which was barely illuminated by the orb I held. My hands trapped the orb in a vice grip. From the moment I touched the orb, dread had begun to fill my body, as if the orb itself was filling me with dread.

I knew that dropping it would be a huge mistake.

The dread... It's probably just the Tory vibes being given off by the orb. I should stop worrying about it.

As I approach the desk, I catch sight of a crumpled black bin bag with... Something inside.

The curiosity of what was in the bag was gnawing on me, but I knew that I wouldn't want to know. I'd been through enough. I didn't need something else to plague my mind.

I was behind the desk now. I push the office chair out of the way with my foot, not wanting to risk dropping the orb.

Now, how do I use this thing...?

And that was when I felt it. The dread intensified, but instead of it leeching into my body through my hands, it felt as if it had switched, beginning to drain... Something. Something from within me. Perhaps some sort of energy.

In an instant, the stuffy room was filled with light, and the air around me rippled. The bag began to writhe, making a horrible rustling sound.

Then, nothing. Silence. The dread stopped, the orb went out, plunging the room into almost darkness, save for the light coming through the crack in the door.

I almost dropped the orb, but thankfully I came to my senses. I take a moment to catch my breath, and carefully set the orb on the floor. With the state I was in, I knew that I wouldn't be able to find the stand it was kept in, even if there was a light on.

I scrambled out of the room. I couldn't stay in that place any longer. I didn't even care if I got caught at this point.

It is done.

I take a moment to contemplate my options, and calm myself down. I decide to sneak out of Scotland Yard before I'm seen. If it was successful, we should all hear off Bill soon...

[beautiful-basque-country]

Weird question but what’s your opinion on the future of Spain?

I’m originally from Portugal and I’ve been looking at the Spanish elections and ui, looks like your fascists are rising again, and very quickly. Portugal will have to go into early elections soon too (due to multiple failures to approve the budget of the state) and this will inevitably result in the rise of the right and far right, mostly due to rising fascismitis but also due to disatisfation with the ruling Socialist Party / ruling leftist group. Which means we will be governed by right wingers, and they may even be joined by Chega, our version of VOX who is BFFs with them even though they often include Portugal in Spain’s map 🙄

Also, here in the UK England was already very Right but now it’s becoming even more Right and less and less democratic. Scotland will gtfo and will leave us here alone in tiny Wales stuck with the tories (right-wingers). Unfortunately Wales doesn’t have good conditions to leave so we will have to be ruled by right-wingers.

I’m assuming the rise of the 🇪🇸 Right is making and will continue to make the nations want to gtfo, but because they’re right-wingers they won’t allow that, which is likely to result in a very big shitshow. What do you think will happen? Do you have any hope?

Kaixo!

Let's go a bit back so we can understand our present day better. In 1975 Franco died, and 3 years later, there were the first democratic elections after the coup of 1936.

Spaniards have supported a fascist regime for 40 years that had almost no opposition, blame it on lefties fleeing the country to exile, being imprisoned or executed. Or just thinking that being silent was the way to be.

So let's not think that one day Spain went to sleep being full fascist and the morning after it woke up being super democratic and progressive. Nope. There was a social francoism that didn't disappear from one day to the other.

And it hasn't disappeared yet.

And the natural successor of this francoists in democracy was PP. But after 40 years of corruption, the party was compromised and losing voters. And socially - not just in Spain, but in Europe - being a fascist is already becoming just another respectable political option due to a misunderstood tolerance.

It was the perfect time to take a tiny nazi party created in 2013 - and that had had like almost no votes since that year - and make it huge via mass media so the disenchanted PP voters had somewhere to turn to.

Spanish election law lets Vox (3M votes in the last elections) have 52 congress members and Pacma (animalist party) not a single one despite having 1.5M votes. And while they only have 52 members out of a Congress of 350, they're featured on mass media as a super big party, and whitewashed as "right wing party" - center-right even!!! - instead of "nazi party".

We foresee even more votes for them in the next elections, but let's hope we're wrong.

And yes, the more further right the government is, the more and stronger separatist movements will become.

[backtobasicbellas]

shelter my eyes from the sun (there’s things that I could say)

Chapters: 8/13 Word Count: 3,903  Relationships: Tori Vega/Jade West Summary: Jade doesn’t know it yet, but she might have just met her match in Tori Vega.

//

If someone were to ask Jade, she really wouldn’t be able to tell them how this fight with Beck began.

All she knows is that they’re going at it every second of the day, that every little thing Beck does has become irritating to the point where Jade can’t stand it. She doesn’t know how they got here - here being that being together is more like a chore, a routine they have to follow through than actually spending time with each other. She wonders if that’s exactly what Beck’s feeling too, but she knows he won’t tell her.

(Though deep down Jade knows that somehow this was a long time coming between them.)

Despite arguing all the time, they are still together everywhere they go, angry scowls on their faces and comments that turn into screaming matches despite being in a public setting. To make matters worse, Tori’s stupid phone keeps screeching and she keeps it charged by lugging around an extension chord thing that just looks ridiculously stupid. It only makes Jade crankier. So does Sinjin and his dumb gameshow that Jade just knows won’t make it to production. She only agrees to be in the audience because she wants a front row seat to the shitshow.

And as if Tori’s entire presence this week couldn’t get any more annoying, her stupid Talking Reggie app begins echoing everything she says.

“Turn it off,” Jade scolds, turning her head to shoot Tori a glare.

“Shut up!” Tori mutters into her phone.

The echo comes almost immediately and Jade holds in a groan, sinking in her seat. She begins counting down the hours until she can go home and get away from just about everyone on the planet.

“Okay,” Sinjin speaks into his mic. “So Mr. Gooberstein feels that a game show should have better looking contestants.”

“He’s not wrong,” Jade chimes in, unable to help herself.

She ignores the side eye from Beck, deciding she’d really rather not start another fight at the moment. But then Sinjin is scrambling over to them, begging their group to be stand-in contestants.

“But none of us are dating except for Beck and Jade,” Tori reminds him.

Jade resists the urge to add the word barely to that statement.

[read on AO3]

[qqueenofhades]

So dare I ask what the nightmare in detail is regarding Brexit right now?

@tollers-and-jack said: I’m asking for the rant…

@rhymeswithtessa said: I’m a big fan of your rants gimme your thoughts on brexit

@onlymorelove said: Ahem. I am interested in your rant. If you feel like sharing. 💗

Ahaha wow. Apparently this is something the people really want to hear about. Disclaimer, just remember that you asked for this, and that this is, as Captain Holt would say, a trigger for me. So if this periodically devolves into incoherent screaming/application of capital letters and exclamation marks, and what have you, just know that.

So… I wrote these posts soon after Brexit in 2016 explaining what a spectacularly stupid idea it was even then. If I said anything optimistic in those posts, in a sort of grasping-at-straws-maybe-this-will-work sort of flailing way, please disregard it. We have had empirical evidence of how this played out. Spoiler alert: it failed. It failed so comprehensively on every possible level that it seems almost ludicrous for a supposedly modern political system, but this is 2019, the world is dogshit, and we are all retreating into our little late-capitalism xenophobia bubbles with our right-wing strongmen and our populist rhetoric and the UK is now a global laughingstock. Which believe me, the ex-British Empire richly deserves, especially given the part that anti-immigration paranoia played in this whole debacle, but also, I live here and really would Rather Not.

I do not even know how to sum up the ridiculousness of the past few months, where – almost at the end of the two-year period of triggering Article 50, with just a very short amount of time to the original exit date (29 March 2019) – the UK finally managed to secure a withdrawal deal. Mind you, it was a shit deal that both sides hated, but by golly, It Made Brexit Happen, and since the Theresa May-bot has only been able to repeat over and over that she will Make Brexit Happen, there you have it. Not surprisingly, it proceeded to be comprehensively defeated in Parliament by the largest majority ever seen since World War II. It then was subject to surface-level makeovers and cosmetic tinkering about the backstop in Northern Ireland (since among many other things, the ardent Brexiteers forget that oh yeah we share a land border with an EU country and peace in Ireland is kind of a thing that should be paid attention to). The DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) of Northern Ireland, whose 10 MPs prop up the minority Tory government, absolutely hated it and would not support it, since it would effectively introduce different regulations for NI than the rest of the UK and thus jeopardise the, you know, United Kingdom. Plus it would require the EU’s assent to end the arrangement, and also we can’t have that. Because reasons.

The deal was then thumpingly defeated for a second time, people got worried because uhhhh aren’t we supposed to leave the EU in like a week, Parliament had to institute emergency measures and hold a series of votes on Brexit alternatives, those also got defeated and May would not even commit to honouring the will of the House, 6 million people signed a petition asking for Article 50 to be revoked and the Brexit process cancelled (the biggest in parliamentary history) and got ignored. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage led a pathetic procession of 200 diehard Leavers against literally 1 million people in London calling for a new referendum, the deal got defeated for a third time after they had to do all kinds of fancy-dancing to get it back for yet another vote, they got the EU to agree to a crunch extension to 12 April, and now that that is three days away with absolutely no consensus in sight, have sent May back to Europe to beg Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron to extend the deadline to 30 June. They actually had to pass a bill (by one vote) forcing her to do this in order to avoid a no-deal Brexit. The EU is justifiably exasperated with this utter, unbelievable incompetence, the fact that the hard right wing of the Tory party pulled this absurdly irresponsible jackshit without any clue how to do it, and the way the UK still thinks it can just pick an a la carte deal where we’re great and the EU sucks and blue passports and blah blah Great Britain is Great!!! And there has been absolutely no collective awareness from either major party that maybe, just maybe, trying to undo a legal and political and cultural alignment that has existed since at least 1973 when we were a founding member of this project, in two years, with no idea how, to please a xenophobic lying campaign, WAS A STUPID FUCKING GODDAMN IDEA!!!!!!!!!!!!

(we pause while the blogger breathes and drinks heavily)

Anyway, that is the short version of Nobody Still Knows What The Fuck Is Going to Happen. Technically if we stayed in the bloc past 22 May, we’d have to hold elections to the European Parliament, which bitch bitch whine whine, the Brexiteers don’t want to do. Maybe we think we’re entitled to more special treatment (no scratch that, we definitely do) because we can’t sort our heads from our asses and have been so wildly and bogglingly arrogant and incompetent that it would almost be funny if people’s lives and livelihoods and futures weren’t at stake. And we have the goddamn European Research Group (aka the hard Brexit wing) yapping about how no deal wouldn’t be that bad and we should just take it on the chin because Blah Blah Blitz Spirit, Nationalism Patriotism Our Freedom From The Tyrannical EU. (Sidenote, if someone just punches Jacob Rees-Mogg in the elitist Little Britain face, you don’t know where I was, God I hate him so much.) Every single business, manufacturer, industry, finance, medicine, food, education, you name it outfit has been warning that no, actually, no deal would be catastrophic and the UK is not remotely prepared for it. To the point we have the military on standby to deliver basic goods if it happens??! How. How is this acceptable??!?!? I don’t understand??!?!

(And the Brexiteers who are like “this is Britain let’s all just hunt hares and grow food in our back gardens,” which, yes, is something I heard actually said, are out of touch to a truly stupendous degree. Yes I’m sure that a modern first-world country wants to resort to subsistence farming to feed its 66 million people. Do they. Even. Hear Themselves. Racism is a hell of a drug, my friends! And if you want to be like “oh no it’s not about racism/anti-immigrant sentiment, it’s about the economy,” let’s just say that the newsreader covering a Brexit march said that he’d never seen so many white people in one place and was forced to apologize, because racist white people don’t like it being pointed out to them that they are racist white people. That tells you a lot. And the Leave campaign has been convicted multiple times for breaking electoral law and just flat-out Lying to the public, so the people who voted Leave thinking they were in fact getting a better economic deal were deceived outright and have indeed often expressed regret that they were so wildly and deliberately deluded. So anyway. Fun!)

I cannot emphasise enough the sheer, staggering arrogance and delusion of the people who proposed this project and then forced it through, because the British public has believed throughout its entire history that it’s better than the whole world (see again: imperial nostalgia and Oh No The Foreigners Are Coming and etc) and has been fed for a good 25 years on this point on a lot of bullshit stories about how terrible and Liberal and Anti-British the EU is, because the British popular press is a flaming dumpster fire (you think Fox News is bad, and it is, but so many of the tabloids are basically Fox News UK). So the Brits feel as if they’ve been so unfairly repressed by the EU and need to Take Back Control (once again, there is a very long history of this  rhetoric of the English being supposedly attacked and repressed by foreigners, dating back to the idea of the “Norman Yoke” resulting from the Conquest, which became a big deal in the 19th century – I am a historian, I can pull receipts for days on this). Once again, they think they can just do whatever they want, the EU is the bad guy for not giving it to them, that we should set ourselves on fire and jump out the window rather than sit at the table like grownups with the rest of Europe, and just take our ball and go home and yet still think we are entitled to preferential treatment.

I just…. I don’t even. I DO NOT EVEN. I seriously lack the words. 

So we may get another rolling series of short-term extensions, we may not, nobody can come to any agreement on what should be done, May promised to resign to get the deal through, the deal did not get through, the whole setup is so unsustainable that it feels like a general election is an inevitability, and the obvious solution would be another referendum to see if the people even still goddamn want this. But the Brexiteers, for all they bluster about upholding the will of the people to leave, resist this with all their might (what are you fucking afraid of? If you’re so confident that you’re still the majority, you should WANT another referendum to confirm it, but you’re cowards and you know you’d lose and you’re tied to this stick of dynamite for Ideology Reasons, god damn it). The message has been always that We Must Deliver Brexit and This Is What The People Want, while the people are breaking records saying that no, actually, we’d like another say, because everyone has now seen that this is an absurd shitshow that cannot be accomplished (and ONCE AGAIN WAS NEVER! FEASIBLE! IN THE FUCKING FIRST PLACE!!!!) and it hey, actually was not a bad idea to be in the EU. 

This is again, the alignment of the entire post-WWII political and legal world. It confers countless benefits, freedom from tariffs, the single market, a customs union, visa-free travel, no roaming charges, the right to live and work in 27 other countries, etc. But because the ex-British Empire (which really wishes it was still the British Empire) has its fragile racist panties in a bunch about other people coming to live here (when as ever, the problem isn’t immigrants, it’s austerity budgets and the Tories absolutely gutting government and NHS funding and social programmes and thinking that the solution to knife crime is to punish teachers for not noticing their students getting into it), they have decided this is actually the best course of action. Because we don’t want those Non British People telling us what to do. Ew gross.

As people have said, it’s like trading a gourmet three course meal for a bag of crisps and feeling self-satisfied about it, because boy we sure showed them. It has been bungled to a degree truly stupefying to everyone who isn’t a marching Brexiteer ideologue, Labour have…. really not inspired any confidence whatsoever that they’d be able to handle it better (since they have wildly see-sawed between what they will and won’t support, if they’d revoke Article 50 or support a new people’s vote or so on) and the Prime Minister has failed on an utterly fundamental degree to build cross-party consensus or engage with other European leaders or display any ability to consider alternatives. The Tories have truly felt that they can ram this through without any reference to anyone or anything else, and fuck consequences, I guess. The British economy has already lost approximately £66 billion as a result of Brexit uncertainty and loses more every day, every major firm is moving its headquarters to somewhere they can take advantage of EU law, this will leave us poorer, more isolated, less secure, with fewer options, and generally a worse deal in every imaginable way, and yet, because again, racism and xenophobia is a hell of a drug, there are still some factions who feel like yes, this is absolutely what we should do. 

It is truly a slow motion car crash of nightmares, it’s completely avoidable and yet nobody has the backbone to do that, Parliament and the PM have completely broken down, nobody is listening to the British people for whom they are supposedly doing this, and once again, the British Empire absolutely 100% deserves this. But as someone who lives here and would actually kind of like to get a job here, Jesus Christ. Jesus. Christ. JESUS. CHRIST.

[1830sromanticist]

[Corbyn] says Labour has a plan for the UK to leave the EU but also reiterates his support for a public vote on the issue, "not as political point-scoring but as a realistic option to break the deadlock".

Labour abstained on a vote earlier calling for another referendum - arguing that now was not the right time for a fresh vote.

FUCK YOU

Actually fuck off Labour. You don’t support the People’s vote because you literally abstained from that same vote today, it probably wasn’t even two hours ago. If you really wanted that, you wouldn’t have abstained or you would have voted against it if you were so confident it ‘wasn’t time yet’. This is the living definition of political point-scoring. You’re in it for yourself and to push your own agenda rather than mitigating the damage or preventing disaster. Maybe you should have stepped down when your own party told you too and stop pretending you’re Harold Wilson in the 60s and 70s. Harold Wilson actually gave a shit, you cynical arseholes. 

In summary: The Tories suck and don’t have a clue with benches stacked full of out of touch rich xenophobic bastards, Labour sucks and just wants to profit from the chaos whilst their MPs cower under the party whips like toddlers instead of taking a stand against a power-grabbing old husk defrosted from a Petrograd iceburg, and no other party gets a look in without a General Election which, let’s be honest, would end up being a plebiscite on the whole idea of Brexit and probably SHOULD HAPPEN. 

It’s not ‘subverting democracy’ or ‘endangering the faith of the public in the political process’ if you let the fucking people vote. 

LET THE PEOPLE VOTE ON IT NOW THAT THEY KNOW HOW MUCH OF A SHITSHOW THIS WILL BE. THE BRITISH PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM IS NOT DESIGNED TO HOLD REFERENDA. 

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: October 2018

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of October 2018 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

The entire Jamal Khashoggi affair has been one hell of a shitshow, starting with the Saudi Arabian government sending a hit squad to Turkey to murder him when he visited the Turkish embassy and then, after weeks of pretending that Khashoggi was alive and well, stating that he died when he got into a fight - because apparently the Saudi definition of a fight involves having fifteen people, one carrying a bonesaw, ambushing somebody before torturing and murdering them.  In response to this cock and bull story, the font of 90% of the world cock and bull stories Donald Trump states he wholeheartedly believed the Saudi’s version of events (until, two days later, saying that he didn’t) in an effort to deflect attention away from how he blew off any suggestion that the FBI should launch an investigation because, while Khashoggi may have resided in Virginia and worked for the Washington Post,  he wasn't a US citizen so fuck him.  The British response wasn’t much better either, with Jeremy ...Hunt waffling on about how Brits and Saudis had shared values just days after Khashoggi’s disappearance - all of which left us with a situation where Turkey’s dictatorial leader Recip Erdogan was somehow the voice of reason in the whole affair 

It’s funny how we’re supposed to think there’s no connection between Cesar Sayoc Jr embracing Trump’s rhetoric wholeheartedly and him sending bombs in the mail to several of Trump’s most frequent targets - sort of like how we’re supposed to think there was no connection between Trump’s rhetoric and  Brandon Griesemer threatening to go on a shooting rampage at CNN’s HQ back in January, or  Robert Chain threatening to blow up the Boston Globe’s offices back in August.  One thing’s for certain, though: those 4chan dullards saying the left can’t meme have been very, very quiet since it emerged that Trumpists’ meme ability is a tad more explosive than they’d like to admit

On the subject of the MAGAbomber, let’s not forget that countless Twitter hate preachers such as Paul Joseph Watson, Candace Owens and EducatingLiberals were all so quick to claim that the Democrats were sending the bombs to themselves as a false flag attack they were boldly predicting, and not one of them has retracted their original comment - or think that, by deleting it, nobody remembers it.  That’s not how screengrabs work.

In the wake of the Tree of Life shooting Gab hid behind a blanket statement about the “alleged terrorist” responsible for the shootings - which presumably sounded better for PR purposes that stating “We’re currently having hosting problems as a direct result of one of our many antisemetic users posting material claiming he was going to shoot up a synagogue and we sat back and did nothing, which made us look like negligent dickheads when that user then went and shot up a synagogue” 

As the Tory conference took place there was obviously going to be a lot to choose from, so I’ll compile it in one supersized entry: starting at the top we had Theresa May claim that austerity was over in spite of the fact the previous day Philip Hammond, who happens to be Chancellor, said the exact opposite - but far more ridiculous than her apparent ignorance of what other members of her cabinet said in their speeches is the fact ABBA are threatening legal action over her unauthorised use of their music for her cringe-inducing entrance; then there was Jeremy ...Hunt demanding respect from the EU before promptly comparing them to the Soviet Union; the waffling buffoon Boris Johnson went on a dog whistle spree that mainly consisted of saying Jeremy Corbyn’s name a bunch while also saying there’s nothing wrong with police using their stop & search powers to harass black people; and then we had Chris Grayling write so many punchlines about his ineptitude as Transport Secretary by arriving on stage seven minutes late for his own speech, before promptly trying to blame eight years of rail mismanagement under Tory rule on Labour

While there is plenty of justified criticism for Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov turning UFC 229 into a pub car park in Maidstone on a Friday night (which conveniently drew attention away from McGregor getting utterly annihilated in the bout), plenty should also be aimed at Dana White for his mealy-mouthed response afterwards where he failed to take responsibility for the situation, not least his complete failure to punish McGregor in any way for trashing Khabib’s bus or his repeated Islamophobic slurs against Khabib in the months leading up to the fight

Not only is Philip Green the sort of shithead who sexually and racially harassed members of staff, but he's also the kind of shithead who pays his lawyers half a million quid to issue a gagging order on it being revealed he’s the sort of shithead who sexually and racially harassed his staff - which I’m sure pissed off the thousands of former BHS employees who saw him scarper with their pension fund, as they can take a wild guess where that half million quid came from

The Tory conference must not have gone as well as hoped considering Sajid Javid repeated the repeatedly debunked lie about there being parts of London that are no-go areas for non-Muslims, and the fact Javid is regurgitating lies that Nigel Farage told Fox News says a hell of a lot doesn’t it?

Taking a page from her husband’s playbook Melania Trump claimed she is the most bullied woman in America, a week after her husband publicly bullied Christine Blassey Ford in the exact same way that his supporters had been doing for several weeks beforehand.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, she also claimed that if a woman is going to make an accusation of sexual misconduct they need to have evidence - which sounds an awful lot like telling them to keep their mouths shut, doesn’t it?

In a bid to prove that they should not be boycotted by readers wondering why the paper had turned into the Daily Express in recent years The Guardian ran an op-ed piece where Theresa May said any Labour voters dissatisfied with Jeremy Corbyn should vote Tory, which reeks of desperation just as much on May’s part as it does the Guardian’s

It appears that Esther McVey is unaware that people can see that she spent months saying that Universal Credit is perfectly fine until she suddenly turns around and says, actually, it's not fine - or maybe she can, given the amount of gagging orders she handed out to try and avoid the tsunami of criticism headed her way

Waffling gargoyle Nigel Farage demonstrated how desperate he is for attention these days by popping up on Fox News to say that Americans should be far more worried about the Jewish influence in their country than any rumours of Russian influence - a mere 48 hours after the Tree of Life synagogue shooting left eleven people dead at the hands of a white supremacist with a track record of posting antisemitic material to their Gab profile

Definitely not using the inquest into the Westminster terror attack as an excuse to clear his name and/or conscience, Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Craig Mackey claimed that the reason he locked himself in his car and instructed the driver to get the hell out of there while PC Keith Palmer was being stabbed to death yards away was because he didn’t have a stab-proof vest as if that’s any form of consolation to Palmer’s relatives given he didn't have one either.  What's worse, the inquest somehow came to the conclusion that Mackey acted properly, as opposed to showing extreme cowardice 

To prove just how caring and tolerant the Tory party are we have Daniel Phillips O’Leary, Jake Thurman, Ross Horton, Josh Hocking,  Charlie Edleston-Haynes and friends pictured wearing shirts featuring slogans such as “Fuck the NHS”, “Enoch was right” in support of racist ideologue Enoch Powell, at least two of them with the Star of David and the word “Jude” written on them that is both anti-semitic and the terminology of the fucking Nazi Party, while one of them was also flashing a white supremacy gesture to camera while another was done up to look like Adolf Hitler.   Yes, “tolerant” is the word I’d think of there... 

There was two levels of dickheadishness from Rockstar Games in a matter of days.  Firstly they proudly stated that their devs were working 100 hour weeks in order to have Red Dead Redemption 2 finished on time, an announcement they made just as the debate about game devs treatment of their staff was back in the spotlight after reports of Telltale Games expecting their staff to work a hellish schedule in order to meet a release date, and a few days later - having coerced their staff to say that, actually, they were “only” working 80 hour weeks and not the full 100 as if that’s any better - Rockstar followed that up by announcing that independent game shops would not receive copies of RDR2 until at least a week after the major stores, hitting them hard in the pocket as a result

In yet another desperate shriek for attention Roseanne Barr wailed about how terrible it is that her character was filled off in Roseanne reboot The Connors by an opioid overdose - apparently failing to not only see the irony considering she tried to blame her batshit outbursts about Valerie Jarrett and George Soros on an ambien, but also failing to consider that they couldn't have killed off her character due to a joke, voting Trump, or thinking the bitch was WHIIIIIIIIIIIIITE that were the other excuses Barr used when trying to avoid taking responsibility for getting her show cancelled

Continuing to justify the no confidence vote she received from the local party Kate Hoey decided the wisest thing to do would be to retweet posts from Avi Yemini - because when you really want to prove that you’re a credible MP for your constituents, retweeting somebody banned from social media for both antisemitism and Islamophobia who also happens to associate with Tommy Robinson, you’re not helping yourself 

Doing a fine job of making it impossible to differentiate between NBC and Fox News we had Megyn Kelly say that blackface is not offensive as long as it’s done for Halloween, because apparently Halloween is a gateway to Purge Night

Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz decided to be an edgelord by tweeting a photo of him stood next to a cigar store Indian at Disneyland just so he could make a snide jibe in the direction of Elizabeth Warren, which implies he wasn't paying attention during those two years he was on the House Oversight Committee

If it wasn’t galling enough that Lancashire Council decided to spend £38,000 of their budget on new iPhones for themselves, they soon raked in £43,000 by doubling bus fares for disabled people

Demonstrating their levels of editorial competence, the Daily Mail reported on a story where Indonesian pallbearers caught by a gust of wind dropped the body they were carrying into a swimming pool...having failed to verify that the video footage they were using as the basis of this story was taken from an Indonesian soap opera

Ever the edgelord Rod Liddle used a column in the Sunday Times to encourage Islamists residing in Tower Hamlets to blow themselves up - mainly because he doesn't live near the area so he wouldn't have to worry about the after effects of countless people blowing themselves up in a populated area, although he doesn’t seem to understand that just because his not living in Tower Hamlets hasn’t prevented these comments sounding like the deranged ramblings of an Islamophobic moron

Am I the only person who thinks the Banksy stunt where he shredded one of his artworks the second it was sold at auction looked an awful lot like a child throwing a tantrum, only for their mollycoddling parents to say how clever they were for doing so?

It apparently didn’t occur to William Sitwell that sending an e-mail to one of his staff asking for an article about “killing vegans” or tying them up to “Force-feed them meat” makes him look like an intolerant arse, especially since he then sent another e-mail suggesting vegans were all liars who couldn’t resist a bacon sandwich.  Funnily enough his position as editor of Waitrose Food magazine did not last long after that... 

According to increasingly bitter musician Jon Crosby anyone who believes that a healthcare system that doesn't financially cripple the country’s citizens with medical bills is, and this is a direct quote, an "anti Semite Nazi apologizing communist bigot" who must be blocked from his Facebook page so he can continue posting Alex Jones levels of ignorant tripe such as that old chestnut of the shamefully ignorant, the “Hitler was a SOCIALIST!!!!!!!!!!!1″ argument, without anyone pointing out that he’s a complete fucking idiot

And last but by no means least, there’s harasser of attempted rape victims and the only person on earth who thinks blaming the victims of a mass shooting for their being shot Donald Trump, who believes that addressing Hurricane Michael is far less important than hanging around with his new best friend Kanye West