Be Excellent To Each Other

Too many highlights from last night's debate on the Brexit papers (charmingly addressed as 'an Humble Petition to Her Majesty') to cut and paste using my netbook's annoying trackpad, but it finishes with this gem from Dennis Skinner:

And for those wondering how things work in the 21st Century, the Speaker explains all:

So then, another upbeat assessment of our prospects, Kern?
Fuck me, the day I rely on Dennis Skinner for anything other than wry, ironic laffs and incredulity that he's still even A Thing, I'll throw in the towel.
Mind you, he's looking increasingly moderate in Corbyn's Labour Party.....

Pretty solid point I reckon.

I disagree. I did Media Studies at college and it was mostly pointless. Of course, this could have been down to me but that's another story.

Is there any evidence that young people are more susceptible to this? Average age of Dail Mail reader is 58.

58 year olds wouldn't have done any media studies either, so that actually supports the hypothesis.

I'm not sure media studies particularly carried much of a message of critical thinking and analysis of message, if I'm honest.

Potentially the equally mocked philosophy courses are the closest you'd get to that!

I think education in general is what's most important. If someone is fairly clued up on a variety of topics then it's probably easier for them to discern reliable sources.

FAKE NEWS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_studies#UK
"Soon after in 1966, the Centre for Mass Communication Research was founded at Leicester University, and degree programmes in media studies began to sprout at polytechnics and other universities during the 1970s and 1980s"

I was about to disagree but then I did the math and realised (a) it's almost 2020 and (b) we're fucking old. So fuck you, son.

Another day, another mass shooting in the US. Almost nothing worth saying that hasn't already been said a long time before.

I'm left wondering if Mr Trump will start calling the killer a "degenerate animal" and start demanding urgent policy changes, like he did after the New York truck attack the other week. He probably won't. Odd that.

Politicians sending "prayers".

These people were already praying whilst they get shot. They don't need prayer, they need to be in a country not filled with automatic firearms.

A line that probably wouldn't air in The Simpsons these days....

Boris now really needs to be fired. Or worse. It's one thing being a "loveable" buffoon, quite another when your incompetence causes someone to have their prison sentence in Iran doubled.
I really don't have the words.

If he were ever going to be held accountable for his actions, his career would have been over years ago.

True, but I'm not sure he's had a fuck up of quite this sort before

It's a sign of Mrs May's weakness that she cannot fire her own foreign secretary. It's not the first time Mr Johnson has misspoke on official business either. The only light I can see is that he doesn't appear to carry the support he once did so, although Mr Rees-Mogg is rising.

Another sign of the Prime Minister's weakness is ministers thinking they can have their own independent foreign policy. Even if it's an allied state, you'd expect a minister to be aware that you need to run any meetings by the Foreign Office and Number 10 first. Pathetic.

One of the things worries me most about the future is the lack of political knowledge from younger people, both teenagers and 20-somethings. Nowadays these younger generations see the difference between left and right, or "liberals" and "conservatives" as a fight between "political correctnes"s and "honesty", or about LGBT rights and so on. They see neo-liberal economics as a given, and are pretty submissive when it comes to workers rights. They see as normal to work 10/h per day, or more, to work for unpaid internships after college. To be "hired" as a contractor without any kind of social benefits. To have under minimum wage wages as a means to learn and progress on their careers. They see this as a normal process before having a reasonable confortable life, maybe when they're forty, while still working more than 10/h a day by then. They see using Uber something that greatly helps their quality of life without even thinking about the erosion of social values.
It seems the sickness of the american political system spread everywhere. It's no longer funny to see people calling the Democrat party as "the left". It's the new status quo.

To me this is the biggest problem our world faces right after climate change, and i find it even more difficult to thwart.

http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2017/11 ... ign-policy

Dunt is very good regarding the current total lack of ministerial discipline in the cabinet, including Johnson's latest (and perhaps most serious) gaffe and the eye-boggling news about Priti Patel having secret meetings with Israel that the Foreign Office and the PM had no idea about.

I think the problem you described with "young people" is actually just a problem with "people", and is equally if not more present with older people.

Younger people just have no capacity to do anything about it, because so much political power is consolidated with older people.

Edit: I'd say the argument for letting people vote at 16 is extremely compelling. If for nothing else than getting people to engage with politics at a younger age, before cynicism sets in.

All 16 year olds think about is Snapchat and Rainbow parties.

It's not fair to judge 16 year olds by your own standards.

Apropos of this, looking back, my shopping purchase on Friday afternoon were a bottle of dark rum, 4 cans of ting and a Taylor Swift CD, so I'm totes on flick with that demographic.

That's "on fleek". And you were doing so well.

Apart from the fact that the context of its usage was completely wrong

I was trying to let him down gently.

It's these little things that give away the fact I'm 27. Like the guy in the Great Escape answering something in English.

By the by, as I think of it: Oh, fun fact! 50% of the Welsh people I know are called Richard and have a doctorate in something and don't live in Wales. The others are Theodore Egg and the final one is my dad's mate. I don't know their educational stuffs though.

You're not very good at percentages either, presumably

I think that might have been the joke.

Or I know 2 Welsh Dr Richards.

I just thought he knew 2 people called Richard, both from Wales and with a PhD.

Actually yes, I totally misread it which means that I'm shit at reading comprehension and thus am hoist by my own petard.

Obviously i'm describing my own experiences, but I've been involved in politics ever since i was a teenager (and i was a high school teacher some years ago), and it was normal for younger to lean left-winged and be involved in politics at least to some extent. Both in my generation and my sister's which is older, there was nationwide protests for free university for example. It was kind of cliché, but the modus operandi of growing up was for some of them to start earning money and becoming a bit more selfish and lean more right. Nowadays most of the kids are more right winged than ever, some of them racist and misogynistic right of the bat, which makes me wonder where they'll go when they get older.

My parents are both way more progressive thinking than most of the teenagers today.

I think the young right wing is louder, but I don't for a minute think it's bigger. The left has trended higher in any youth vote you can mention over the last 15 years.

Obviously I can't speak for portugal there.

That's some fast backpedalling.

Just make baby noises.

Emily Thornberry in the Commons just now. Ouch.

We have a left majority here in the parliament, but it's mostly due to older people voting which tend to be more left winged, and 5% voters in the centre who were sick of the austerity. The youngers tend to be more right winged. Both we and Spain continue to be free from the far-right in the parliament due to our recent history, but i don't know if it will be for long.

Although more younger people voting left might not mean much when many of them don't even know what that means. There was hope in the US with Bernie Sanders. But that's gone. AFAIK I know in the UK Corbin tries to bring the party closer to its core values, but is he ever going to win anything? Is he been taken seriously by the media and the establishment?

In Brazil the left is discredited with the scandals. The country was sucked dry during decades by the right, but apparently it's way worse for a leftist to be corrupt, because then he's an hypocrite.

More fast realising I was being overly generic

Robert Peston claiming he's been told Priti Patel will be sacked within hours.

She fucking should be. Mind you, only after Boris.

Kuenssberg has said the same as Peston.

A truly withering piece on May and the Tories. Thoroughly depressing insofar as they're the government and they're in charge of Brexit.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... riti-patel

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/s ... competence

I missed this re: Patel

My prediction - May was intentionally using Patel to work around the FCO, or at least had given her the informal nod, and so can't just sack her.

That would be more plausible if she weren't a minister. Sending a backbencher over gives plausible deniability ('Oh, the member for Trumpton is a nobody and we're glad they're over there rather than in the Commons'). If someone's a minister, that implies her actions openly carry the backing of the government.

True! On second thoughts, trying to fathom the motivations of this government is probably a losing game overall.

"Survive to the end of the day."