>>94321
>The controversial claim made by Vote Leave during the referendum campaign that the UK was giving the EU £350m a week was a trap set to antagonise the Remain camp
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57880118

Turns out Vote Leave played you lot like a fiddle.

>>94334
"Haha! We lied and they pointed it out! Exactly as planned!" I'm going to have to watch this interview now to understand this so-called trap. I freely concede that "Let's fund our NHS" is not a promise to fund the NHS, and many Remainers seem convinced that it was, but the idea that Brexiteers lied openly and it was all a big trap to fool the people who saw through it is a 4D chess move I really cannot get my head around.

>>94336
Surely it's just a mixture of dead cat strategy and rote repetition? If they're talking about the £350m lie, they're not talking about something else. If they're quibbling about the amount, the topic remains "we are sending Europe money" (and there they always concede "Well yes, but also if you look at the net amount..."), and if they're constantly going "Let's talk about the £350m, now, that's not quite true" the key words being repeated are "The £350m", so by attempting to refute the claim on a logical level they actually wind up spreading it on a practical "most of the audience is only half paying attention to the telly because the dog's barking" level.

Is 14 years in prison for journalists who write about the embarrassing things the government has done "embarrass the government" an advantage of Brexit?

>>94338
They've had it far too good for far too long.

>>94332
I think that's the 'oestrogen infusion' tier.

>>94332
A large plot of wasteground that I can build a mansion on. There are plenty around here. I would happily pay 10 grand straight into an MP's pocket to receive such a thing, and nobody else wants them (or at least, they haven't had this brilliant idea).

>>94335
Have you considered offering this money to a landowner instead?

>>94340
It's difficult to conceive of a less deserving person.

>>94341
You could throw it my way. I can't guarantee any political favours, but you'll definitely get an intimate dinner for two at a Harvester of your choice (from a list of two).

>>94302

I thought "big dick energy" specifically meant NOT having a big dick? That's why it's energy. Like, in the spirit of having a big dick, despite not having one.

>>94306
No, it's just what they're calling confidence nowadays.

>>94306

You can have BDE regardless of the size (or indeed existence) of your knob.

>>94306
Big Dick Energy is the energy that makes you suspect someone has a big dick. In many cases, you won't actually know; the energy only makes you suspect it. For example, Romelu Lukaku has BDE but Christian Benteke does not.

I really don't like BDE. Not because of what it is or what it means, but only that it never quite became ubiquitous so someone always needs it explaining when it's brought up.

He doesn't sound very glad at all.

Apparently half 2 is the perfect time for my neighbour to start screaming at the top of his lungs that one of his children is a bastard who is bang out of order.

>>94292
I hope you shouted to him that he's a bastard who is bang out of order for shouting at half two.

>>94293
No, but I've been very noisy this morning. Having the radio on, loudly shutting cupboard doors. That'll tell him.

>>94294

You should spend a half hour at 8am yelling at the top of your voice directly at the shared wall "I can't believe that my neighbour and his son are such bastards. *pause* They are both bang out of order!"

>>94233
What exactly is it dogwhistling? I'd think the India-laplanderstan disputes, but that's mentioned directly underneath the image so that can't be the dogwhistle, it's just a whistle.

>>94231

Overall the tone that leaflet gives off, to me, is that it takes the Asian/Muslim vote for gtanted on the basis that the other guys are racist. I'd feel pretty patronised if I were a brown.

It's the same losing strategy that has cost them the white working class vote, funnily enough. Tenner bet the same justifications will come out afterwards too, except instead of xenophobic white van men it'll be anti-semitic imams.

>>94235

But Modi is pretty openly an enemy to Muslims and Johnson genuinely does want to sidle up close to him, the most recent evidence being him delaying putting India on the red list so long because he wanted to visit. Him being shown shaking hands with a brown man doesn't scream "racist" but him shaking hands with someone who's making discriminatory laws against Muslims might be a reminder to Muslims that he wants to get closer to that same person.

Not that I have high hopes for Labour either way. I'm not really sure what the point is here.

>>94231
Ah the Zac Goldsmith playbook. Both parties have really done a shameful thing in playing up Hindu and laplanderstani nationalism for votes and I'm sure it will all end well if we play the 'your surname means you're on our side' politics. Because when has that ever go awry in the entire history of the world.

Plus Islam is a backwards belief system that has no place in a modern society like all religion and India is a fair-weather friend at best with a society too dysfunctional to be a viable focus for British trade.

323 votes in it. The Tories could have won that if they actually bothered campaigning rather than just leaving Galloway and Labour to throw muck at each other.

>>94144

Im not sure why this lad was banned, it seems like a reasonably logical and coherent post, with only a mildly ambivalent tone compared to our usual cunt-off standards.

I think there's an angle that gets overlooked with all this sort of stuff though: White people are the majority in most of this country. And? Well, that shows us the fallacy we have been operating under when we act on the assumption race is the primary factor. White privelege is really just a statistical illusion that comes from grouping the largest ethnicity majority together and disregarding class. When you put class back in it's a different picture.

It's a demonstration of why class is important; race isn't irrelevant as a factor but it isn't anything like the standard narrative would have you beleive. We've spent years compensating for the race factor but completely neglected the class aspect, even though it's by far the more impactful.

The problem at it's core is that we look at these broad trends of data, and we treat people as though they are statistics, not individuals. But in reality, there is no such thing as the "average person". When you cater to the groups that appear to be the most statistically disadvantaged, you exacerbate the hardship suffered by people who the statistics never applied to in the first place.

>>94174
>Im not sure why this lad was banned, it seems like a reasonably logical and coherent post, with only a mildly ambivalent tone compared to our usual cunt-off standards

Mods = sods.

>White privelege is really just a statistical illusion that comes from grouping the largest ethnicity majority together and disregarding class. When you put class back in it's a different picture.

I don't think anyone has realistically seen it as the a significant factor.

The government have devoted an entire section of the report to white privilege because they know that's what the media will pick up on. It's in their interests for this to fit into the ongoing culture war narrative; why blame it on government cuts to education and Sure Start centres or highlight the woeful amount of funding allocated to help children affected by lockdown catch up when you can blame it on political correctness those bloody wokies? We all know wokies hate the white working class because of Rotherham showed us that.

>>94176
>It's in their interests for this to fit into the ongoing culture war narrative

Otherlad here. I think it goes a bit beyond that. The system of incentives to avoid doing or saying anything really challenging throughout your career (whether it be as an academic, politician, journalist, working professional, or any position with a bit of potential political clout) is so strong that only the most hollow and counterproductive forms of dissent are allowed to bubble up to the surface. Anything that might genuinely disrupt the current order of things is quickly diverted, stamped out, mocked, misrepresented, or just plain ignored.

Most people are free to have their career unaffected by their political views, but that's only because they have little to no political power as an individual beyond voting for very similar parties once every few years -- usually on the basis of information designed to manipulate and mislead them. As soon as you go near one of the fancier middle class jobs where you may actually manage other people or have your views heard within circles that matter, you will rapidly notice that doors will close for you if you express the wrong thing. No one will necessarily swoop down and tell you that you're not allowed to talk about class politics, but you may notice that you are unable to get certain positions, you're not considered for "moving on to the next step" of your career, funding is harder to access, and so on.

I suppose my point is that saying vicious but fruitless identity politics is "in their interests" is an understatement, it's the by-product of an political-economic system that is both deeply unequal and subtly punitive.

>>94176

>why blame it on government cuts to education and Sure Start centres or highlight the woeful amount of funding allocated to help children affected by lockdown catch up when you can blame it on political correctness those bloody wokies?

Well, I mean, apart from the fact that the wokies will scream the house down about anything that seeks to redress the balance for being reverse racism or whatever they call it nowadays? I don't know.

From the Tories side of the table it's no doubt a very opportune situation, but from the left it's absolutely suffocating because you just know they'll focus on fighting back against any and all claims made on mere principle.

This is not a left vs right issue, the right is just laughing and taking advantage of it. For the left it's a matter of life and death, because it is currently infested with a terminal brain parasite that will doom us all to neoliberal hell for eternity and more if it doesn't recover.

>>94174

>White privilege is really just a statistical illusion

It's a talking point that we imported from the US, which has an obvious and very recent legacy of segregation and legally-sanctioned discrimination. Their racial politics are, if you'll excuse the pun, far more black-and-white than ours.

We don't have a black community, but black communities plural. The Windrush scandal was a huge problem for the black Caribbean community, but it had no direct impact on the majority of black British people who are of African origin. The overwhelmingly Muslim Somali community faces very different issues to the overwhelmingly Christian West African community.

>>94177 is right that there are pressures towards groupthink and reductivist narratives, but I think we underestimate the effects of media economics. The media as a whole and journalism in particular are heavily reliant on unpaid or very poorly-paid interns and junior staff. Talent is much less important than your ability to live in London on no money, so the media has become a dumping ground for posh kids who are just too dim to get a job at Daddy's bank. Unsurprisingly, an industry that is almost entirely staffed by posh thickos reflects the values and attitudes of posh thickos.

>>93927
Right, employment is all that matters who cares if wage growth -inflation makes everyone except the wealthy need a government stipend to subsidize their income after their teensy savings get drained dry causing median value real estate to crash.

The worst possible monetary risk for labor is a post inflation deflation. Unions are going to wake up one day in the distant future acting like they're surprised their pants were stolen.

Porridgewogs can get an interest free loan of up to £28,000 over six years to buy an electric car. The jammy bastards.

https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/grants-and-loans/electric-vehicle-loan/

Absolute state of 'the Tartan Army' in London today.

Rebuild Hadrian's Wall and keep their wee ginger tadgers on the right side of the border.

>>94115
I'll have you know my ginger tadger is perfectly average, thank you very much.

>>94115

Fully in agreement as long as the wall runs south of my house too.

>>94116
Fair enough. How come you think it's a trolling tactic then? I've only been here a few months, I thought the board seemed full of irreverent lefties who have a specific sense of humour.

>>94121
Because sometimes their leftiness angers me, so I assume it must be trolling. Surely people can't be that lefty.

>>94122

Would you say you've been triggered?

>>94122
There's no truth here, only fact.

>>94123
Yes. I almost posted on /emo about it.

>>93913
>How can we open this anon "EU's" eyes to show him we are doing our best to meet him/her somewhere to figure out this Brexit
First, we could maybe actually try and do our best to meet them somewhere instead of stamping indignantly like a petulant child as we've been doing for most of the past five years.

>>93918

There's that "Royal We" again.

>>93930
Classic english

>>93943
Please stay in the /zoo/.

>>93946
I can't escape the safari zone

>>93256
and has exactly one tree in the middle.
just get sheep*

*caveats. So many caveats. And, in case our resident deviant is reading, don't fuck them. They don't like it. And it's quite illegal.

>>93257
>They don't like it.

They might do if you take them out for dinner first and compliment them on their fleece. I can't imagine many beastophiles engage in foreplay and instead ram their knob straight up that poor sheep's unsuspecting clopper.

Flash sale on robomowers. I'm starting to suspect Big Mower is behind all of this.

https://www.myrobotcenter.co.uk/en_gb/gardena-sileno-minimo-250

Correct, why they will do anything to increase consumption boggles the mind. It creates lower wages, more pollution.

The only thing better than communism is socialism. Instead of sharing a lawnmower you could have a community vote of who the community likes the least. Then this person could be made the slave laborer and could mow everyone's lawn for free until they die of starvation. Then after that the community has the next vote for lawnmower.

>>93903
In terms of economics, I have absolutely observed that if the economy is doing well, that doesn't really mean anything to me because if I get 10% richer and so does everyone else, then I am not any richer at all in real terms. If a rising tide lifts all boats by the exact same amount, there's very little reason for someone who's unhappy now to look forward to that.

Margaret Thatcher said that it's not about equality, it's about equality of opportunity. If she meant the same as I mean above, that getting richer is only good if you're getting richer than everyone around you, then Margaret Thatcher was right about that. It feels weird to say, but Margaret Thatcher was right. Shame about all the stuff she was wrong about.

>>93903
If the man lives in Shenzhen then he's already richer than her and will likely continue to get richer. Albeit his quality of life will suffer from a lack of 'live, laugh, love' ornaments.

>>93904
This reminds me of the problem the extremely wealthy suffer in that they underestimate their own status because the people they hang around with are now also rich. If one is to enjoy one's success therefore you must hang around car boot sales rather than the auction houses. Or just not care, a plate of turkey dinosaurs is going to make you smile no matter your bank balance - unless like me you invested your life savings in a certain island theme park.

Anyway, I think the thing is really about hope in the future and while you can get sociopathic about it you're obviously less happy knowing that things are stagnating and you'll never get that 10%. Especially if that 10% has a genuine impact rather meaning slightly more tat from Amazon.

>>93904

>if the economy is doing well, that doesn't really mean anything to me because if I get 10% richer and so does everyone else, then I am not any richer at all in real terms

Only for zero-sum markets like houses in desirable areas. In every other respect, getting richer just means getting richer. Western economies have seen relatively little economic growth since 2008 and countries with very low productivity (like the UK) have seen severe wage stagnation, but we experienced phenomenal growth for most of the 20th century and with it saw vast improvements in our living standards.

>>93903

I'm not sure what we can do about it though. Nearly all western countries have seen slowing economic growth, in large part because of economies like China catching up with us. Tax-and-spend can reduce inequality on a domestic level, but it can't restore our historical status as an imperial power with hugely advanced technology. British people certainly don't want to work as hard as the Chinese and I don't think they're innately cleverer, so how will we improve the productivity of our labour force to make ourselves more competitive and drive economic growth?

Unless and until there's another technological change as transformative as the industrial revolution, I think we just have to get used to the idea of relatively low growth and living within our means.

>>93904

I think that just means you, like a lot of people, are kind of a narcissist honestly. That may not be exactly the right word but I can't think of a better one. I have often noticed it's true that people will just as readily and happily see other people have their situation made worse, as their own situation improved, because the outcome is the same- You are better off than them, and that's what really matters.

In the most primitive monkey brain way, people just care about being higher up the pile than other people, and will push down every bit as much as they try to raise themselves.

It's one of the parts of human nature we absolutely should try to overcome but obviously nobody is interested in doing so, it's all about being able to flash a bigger car than our neighbours to give ourselves the big social status penis. Or, as the case may be, voting to uphold policies and governments that ensure the housing market remains exclusive and difficult to enter, because it means they keep their status over the rentier class.

I've been getting at least a couple of flyers a week from estate agents asking if I want to sell my house for several months now. I bet they're really worried they'll run out of properties to sell.

>>93241

Isn't there a massive problem in the States where low-rise apartment buildings are made out of wooden frames with cladding, that burn down constantly, only to be rebuilt more or less exactly the same?

We had one big fire in a block of flats and it became a national tragedy, but it happens constantly in the States and it's more or less jut a fact of life.

>>93241 insects can be bastards - at least we don't have termites here, but this was holding up my barn. Looked like a perfectly sound sleeper, but had been completely hollowed out by ants in a mere sixty years. If climate change means the UK gets termites, I'd worry about wooden buildings given our lack of building inspections.

>>93242

Wooden houses in the States are very often built to absolutely awful standards. Americans really don't value longevity as much as we do, and it's much more common that houses get torn down again just 40 or 50 years after they were built to make room for new developments. So there's often no point using materials that will last beyond that, especially if you're a land developer who is knocking up entire streets worth of new units for-profit.

The upside is that, at least until the recent new spike in house prices, you could buy full-size, four-bedroom suburban family homes made out of low-end timber and plasterboard for $200K. But again, you couldn't expect quality for that price.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56821462

Run-down of candidates for Chancellor in September.

Mr. Laschet could face a similar fate as Gordon Brown. They definitely missed an opportunity by not letting him take over during Merkel's final term.

On the other hand, Green Party candidates in Germany seem to have a history of being the political equivalent to vaporware when Germans then actually go and cast their vote. I guess it's that whole thing about a lot of people agreeing that a lot needs to be done to save the environment, but they then can't bring themselves to vote Green because they don't like the idea of higher taxes and petrol prices that directly affect them. Apathetic bloody planet. I've no sympathy at all.

Could end up being a very interesting election though. I was in Germany visiting a friend once while there was some state election going on that weekend, and it was a complete cliffhanger till after midnight, and ended up producing a lowest-common-denominator coalition between very unlikely partners. If you think the 2010 hung parliament in Britain was a cliffhanger, then the knife edge of German elections can be ten times thinner. It's not unheard of that three parties from diametrically opposing ends of the spectrum have to go together and still only have a razor-thin majority.

>https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/13/germany-greens-back-annalena-baerbock-chancellorship-despite-dip-in-polls

>The latest poll showed the Greens have dropped 6 points in the polls to 20% and the CDU has risen 5 points to 28%, prompting speculation over whether the Greens will manage to regain their momentum.

>The poll results have also led to calls for Baerbock’s co-leader, Robert Habeck, to take the candidacy from her, although the idea was rejected at the weekend. Their joint leadership was also reconfirmed in a vote on Saturday.

It's not in the bag for them yet.

>>93686
>Most of the money went into large companies suffering financial difficulties in an attempt to save jobs, rather than going into new companies that might create new jobs.
I will go to my grave quite angry that I can't remember the source of a wonderful quote to the extent of "The National Enterprise Board was imagined as a socialist maternity unit, unfortunately it was quickly turned into a capitalist nursing ward" which perfectly summed up how it was messed up: If I remember correctly the vast bulk of their budget went to British Leyland.
Which makes me wonder if the NEB can really be given the blame, except perhaps for failing at what it set out to do by blowing all its money on boring not-all-that-high-tech companies. If you instead imagine that the government just bailed out Rolls Royce and British Leyland as before while leaving the tech sector to the free market without any interference from the NEB or MinTech or any of that, is it really likely Britain would be in a much more impressive place today?
Japan and the US both had much larger domestic markets than Britain, and even then a British company created the ARM architecture that powers most smartphones nowadays, though we don't seem to make much a fuss about that.

But I'm thinking aloud there instead than making a direct argument in defense of the NEB - I'm not familiar with the specifics of its involvement in technology, and while I know that ARM is ultimately derived from Acorn of BBC Micro fame (leaving open some kind of "We coddled them, now they're soft" case for why they seem quite overlooked.) I can't say I'm familiar enough with their corporate history to comment either. It's just that it seems quite possible that the big problem with the NEB (as with the Wilson-Callaghan government as a whole in my view) is not that it was "too left wing" or too willing to interfere in the market, but that it was too orthodox, too small-c conservative, too "common sense", and that we'd have gotten better results if it had been throwing money around more freely, with less conditions and oversight while leaving failing old names to fend for themselves. Something that would sit ill at ease with both Callaghan (who couldn't bare to be so irresponsible) and with Thatcher (who'd quite like the state to get the hell out of the way of the market, thank you very much.), and which would still be a controversial proposal today.

>>93692

I don't particularly disagree with your line of reasoning. What the Yanks did was barely rational, certainly very difficult to justify in narrow economic terms, but it ultimately worked miraculously well.

A Conservative government would probably have bollocksed it up in a slightly different fashion, but the Wilson government still deserves plenty of scorn for their awful industrial policy. It's all counterfactual speculation, but the problems with the tech sector weren't just neglect - the NEB (and the wider government) exerted a huge amount of control and steered a lot of companies down blind alleys. While I can't say that we would have been a tech superpower, we certainly squandered what advantages we had.

ARM is a perfectly British success story - their technology was incredibly innovative, it became ubiquitous but ARM never actually made much money. IIRC they had an operating income of ~£150m before Softbank bought them, which is basically pocket change in tech terms.

I'm told we're a global leader in biotech, but I don't know enough about the industry to speculate about the reasons or even say if that's an accurate assessment.

>>93689
Do you think innovation isn't real or something?

>>93693
Massive inequality feeds into this surely. The rich Americans today throw money at anything, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, they will spooge cash at anybody. Its not simply state driven.

>>93698

See >>93686

>>93677
Our economy needs a balanced and steady rate of inflation, not least to encourage investment and adjust to productivity gains. Mess with that balance either way and bad things will happen that can quickly turn into freefall as public confidence in the pound evaporates.

It's illustrative that one of the few examples of a deliberate price inflation of essentials was shock therapy in the Soviet Union to ensure the country avoided starvation.

>Is it even really relevant if it causes inflation?

If the government gives me £9 and a loaf of bread now costs £10 then I've not gained under UBI. That's a simplified example but it's what the argument is getting at.

>>93680
Because of their scarcity - the weather also plays a big part in the variability of food prices.

>>93678

The great economist Abba Lerner actually put forward a similar idea to this, in response to the stagflation of the 70s.

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1978/06/1978b_bpea_lerner.pdf

>>93678
>>93683
Surely if wage stagnation would arrest inflation then the past 10 years would've proved it, if not been part of a long-trend of multi-decadal deflation. Unless it's all been counteracted by the government giving free money to people with connections and property 'investors'. Oh dear I've made myself angry.

>>93678

Theoretically, maybe, but it presents a huge co-ordination problem. One of the key catalysts of the Winter of Discontent was the imposition of pay increase controls in an attempt to limit inflation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent#Incomes_policy