Be Excellent To Each Other

Lightening the mood a little, @hrtbps on Twitter wrote a perhaps slightly too subtly satirical article about Corbyn, which was pretty funny but a lot of folks thought it was serious. Including apparently Britain First, who've outright stolen the whole thing, including gems like this:



http://www.britainfirst.tv/jeremy-corby ... orces-day/

Absolutely amazing.

Can you elaborate further on that please... whose money is it, where did it come from?




That's a fair point and I'm sometimes guilty of jumping to a conclusion instead of asking questions. But the questions are complex and I'm not sure where to find the answers.... I could ask someone, but who? how can I be sure they know what they are talking about/aren't overly biased etc etc. I think that's a problem for the majority of the people actually.

Money collected as taxes technically belongs to the Crown. And as its taxes, it technically never belonged to the taxpayer in the first place.

So, who did it belong to in the first place? The crown?

I ask, as I've never really thought about it before. And, while I take your word on the technicality, as the taxes are (in part) earnt from 'our' activity/work I can see why people feel a sense of ownership.

It's generated by the economy, innit? I'm out of my depth already quite frankly.

That is wonderful.

Yes but without getting into the technicalities of who creates the money supply and how, the fact is that the Tory mantra is always shite like 'Socialists run out of other people's money to spend' and 'We must live within our means as a country' and 'We have to repay the debt of the Labour years' etc etc, right down to Theresa May telling a nurse whose pay has fallen for the last seven years that 'There isn't a magic money tree'.

And then when they need the DUP to prop them up in government, boom, £1 billion pounds has been found down the back of the couch.

I know £1 billion isn't even that much in the grand scheme of things, but it's the principle of thing, specifically the Tory principles (or lack thereof) when it comes to scenarios like this.

I don't really do politics but I agree with Hearthly. To the ordinary Joe on the street, this deal sucks.

Not if said Joe lives in Northern Ireland.

The fact that this is good investment in one of the country's poorest areas is no bad thing. It can't be ignored that there's no way the Tories would have spent the money if it wasn't the only way to prop up their government though.

And the impact on the fragile balance of power in Northern Ireland is pretty terrifying. I can't see Sinn Fein being terribly happy that the DUP have just become the de-facto ruling party, nor that they've been handed a vote-winning bag of cash like this.

Can you expand upon that? Because I'm not sure whether NI Joe is too keen on the DUP and I really don't know enough about NI policitics other than a few sparse bits I've read/watched. It might be too simplistic to infer that NI is getting over a billion pounds that average NI Joe's life is going to be enriched by that money. Like APOD said above money gets spent on stuff.

See, this line of reasoning I can get behind.

However, worth noting that this money has already been found in principle, this is merely an inequal redistribution. Hammond had already said pre-election (and also supported by the recent debt figures) that the austerity would be relaxed with the deficit reduction pushed into 2022 rather than 2019, but there was no significant clarity as to how this would affect spending and tax decisions - in the ordinary and planned line of business that would happen in the July budget that I think we're unlikely to get now (our money was on a further CT rate cut, which is still being suggested as a further sop to the DUP, even though NI already has a lower CT rate, so I can't see why they'd be demanding the rest of the UK reduces to come down to their level and affect their competitiveness in the UK).

I have to say though, that much as Scotland and Wales (and for that matter, England) are seeing an unequal distribution compared to NI as part of this buy off to the DUP - some of the language used in the media and the like is quite anti "the people" of NI, which is not a good thing.

Like this fine example from the Sun this morning, trying to tar them all with the same brush

I see Boris has been cheerfully telling outright lies to the delight of the braying mules populating the Tory backbenches.

Corbyn apparently stood up on stage at Glastonbury and pledged to scrap Trident. Which is exactly what he didn't do, of course.

I'm a nice guy and rarely say things like this but Boris Johnson is a cunt.

He's a right fucking chump, clearly thinks that he's destined to lead but at the same time seems to portray himself as a loveable, bumbling, quintessentially English type of character. Which in itself doesn't exactly scream out PM material. But now even that doesn't matter anyway because everyone just thinks of him as an untrustworthy, backstabbing cunt. But in spite of all this I get the impression that he still believes he will be the Tory leader.

Echoing The Vision's post above I would like to nominate Philip Davies as an MP of unparalleled cuntery. He's gone on today about how basically charity begins at home and we shouldn't be paying any money for brown children to stop starving when there's millionaires in this country that are paying too much tax.

I am assuming everyone on here is familair with his work but just in case you're not he's the kind of arsehole that does this kind of shit;

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 15641.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 57136.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 40751.html

Blame Baildon, and rural Bingley for that. Not me.i was 0.1% of WEP vote against him.

I am assuming people are voting for the party in Shipley and not him personally. Well I am hoping so.

Dunno. I could ask about, but I hang with the arts crowd, really, so somewhat red.

What gets overlooked whenever foreign aid's discussed is that whilst some of it is good, wholesome charity helping to improve the lives of our fellow human beings of which we should be proud and encourage, it's also a very effective part of foreign policy. Chucking money at country to help them behave in a way beneficial to our interests is a heck of a lot cheaper than using the military.

So after the queens speech amendment to give the NHS some money was defeated last night , the next one up is

'Should people in NI have access to the NHS if they want an abortion'

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/bl ... itics-live

Whilst I tbink of it:

It's important to note that in the recent case

http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2017/41.html

The majority didn't decide it was right to deprive NI women from NI of the ability to get an abortion free of charge, but that the law as it stands means it isn't unlawful for the Health Secretary to decide to not provide free abortions to UK citizens not resident in England. These are two are very different questions, and I think this was lost in the noise two weeks back.

Lord Kerr, in his dissenting opinion, is worth a read.

It was the cheers from the Tory backbenches that were sickening. Of course they're never going to vote for an opposition amendment, but to actually cheer at the prospect of making nurses, teachers, firefighters, police, etc - poorer, is a level of astonishing viciousness even for them.

I think they were cheering about winning the vote. Celebrating the fact that, by the skin of their teeth, they are still in power. I don't think they hate firefighters or nurses, they merely don't give a toss about them.

And me. I'm poorer because of it as well. Those nurses and fireman get all the credit. Fame hungry monsters.

Giphy "forgotten":
https://media2.giphy.com/media/K2Obpp8elmAFy/giphy-loop.mp4

FFS, giphy! You're barely trying!

What is that - an MR2?

It's a Porsche 924 isn't it?

Yeah, looks like a Porsche whatever the number is.

Whatever it is, it definitely doesn't look like "forgotten".

Except we're talking about the car, and not Davpaz. Well played, Giphy.

Giphy "fade away":
https://media4.giphy.com/media/ORmB7SrreunKM/giphy-loop.mp4

Edit: FFS!

Looks like the government's changing its position on Northern Irish women coming over to England for abortions.

Only because it doesn't want to be beaten in the next QS amendment vote, which has got a lot of cross-party support.

We're going to have to get used to trades like this, due to the wonders of minority government.

Labour. Oh. My.

This. It's made the story about Labour's troubles rather than the government's.

It's amusing me that a day before the US celebrates raising two fingers at a British King, their current head of state is reported to be wanting to sneak over here to avoid protests from the British public.

Either that, or a Lotus (looks a touch like an Elan from the front, to me, but the roof isn't quite right).

Nope. It's a Porsche 944 S2 Cabriolet. In Guards Red.
I thank you.

I'm disappointed that the funny people on the Internet have yet to make a Bercow GIF generator, although this gem probably wouldn't fit:

I love Bercow.

Trump summed up somewhat succinctly by an Australian journalist reporting on the G20 summit. (The reporter, incidentally, is a 'small c' conservative.)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... -after-g20

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40555639

When was the last time the word 'nigger' was used in the Commons? Has it ever? Well, Anne Marie Morris (MP for Newton Abbot) is a trailblazer! Setting new standards for "What the fuck did she just say!??" in 2017! Get you Anne Marie, you doomed idiot!

It's been used 200 times in the House of Commons according to a Tweet I saw earlier (citation needed) but it was first condemed as a terrible racial epithet as far back as 1941. The conservatives have come so far.

I had to google the phrase yesterday when the story first broke, as I'd never heard it before. I saw that it also used in the House of Lords in 2008 too (as that BBC article also mentions too).

Jesus fucking Christ!

Wait, she didn't say it in the Commons, did she? I thought she said it in some industry meeting.

"She also claimed that other Conservative MPs at the meeting "apparently did not bat an eyelid" at Ms Morris's language."

Sounds about right.