Political Discussion Thread

General Discussion Off-Topic
#7112

I can agree on Labour not being set up to handle Brexit, but it still had to be dealt with, and it wasn’t done well. Honestly, blame him directly or not, Corbyn alone has a lot of baggage even on Brexit, and a party without a clear direction on the major issue of the day isn’t one that’s going to do well.

Yeah though, probably shouldn’t be a surprise. I still was surprised mind you, given how much Boris is in the news, but it probably shouldn’t have been. To be fair, I didn’t pay that much attention to the run up to the election either though.

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#7113

Tiocfaidh ár lá indeed. I’ve no idea what the future is in that direction, and no view on what it should be, but I’ll certainly be watching.

Yeah, I tried to avoid it, it hurt me too much lol. We’ll survive, but I’m seriously pissed at my country right now.

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#7114

I don’t see a lot of people proud of their government lately.
I mean less than what’s “normal” and I don’t see many lights out of these numerous tunnels.

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#7115

Alrighty, I was going to sit this one out while you and @MickityMike waxed of Ireland, as I know little of the homeland, but you writing the first Gaelic words I’d ever heard got me all feels inside and I want to share now. My grandmother (mommy’s mom) was born in Belfast in the summer of 1940. At the time it was a huge Western Ally shipyard, so naturally the 3rd Reich bombed the ■■■■ out of it with nighttime air raids for the next 3 years.

When I was 8 years old my mother and my grandmother were at Seatac on the western seaboard of the U.S. and a smaller single engine prop plane was flying low and loud over the tarmac right outside the windows. Though we were indoors it was loud. I noticed my mother’s screaming just barely audible over the din. When I looked over I saw my grandmother convulsing on the floor of the Seattle Airport and of course ran to her aid. I later learned that it was because of the bombings during her infancy. She won’t tell us much of her life between 3 and 16, but I’d guess this manifestation of addiction and rage in my family has a correlation to unresolved generational trauma.

Positive note. I qualify for Law of Return. Immigration lawyers were working on the cheap right after Trump’s inauguration. :smirk:

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#7116

Here’s my favorite part!

I was drunk the whole time!

Like seriously, I havent been sober here for awhile.

I’d pretend to remember what was discussed but… eh. According to facebook we’re on for civil war though. So that’s neat.

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#7117

Serious (-ish) question: if the looming Civil War II is going to be between the left and right (broadly speaking), one would think the left may want to begin stockpiling weapons and ammunition. I could be wrong, but again very broadly speaking, seems like the rightists have a bit of a monopoly on weapons stockpiles.

Maybe this version of civil war will just be really -no, I mean REALLY- short? I’m also guessing that those who fantasize of such things have no actual idea the sorts of horror civil wars entail.

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#7118

No, ironically that comes after they abolish gun rights and before the gulags.

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#7119

:rofl:

That’s almost good as the song I just posted in videos about Sylvia Plath being in the RA

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#7120

She’s in good company.

#7121

And the fun begins. First target is the horribly biased (at least in Johnson’s opinion) BBC:

Meanwhile Labour backers are concerned about the BBC being pro-Tory…

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#7122

I’ve never been so profoundly depressed by politics as I now am. Seeing the left tear into Corbyn isn’t helping. He had massive issues, no denying, but he still got a higher percentage of the vote - and a greater number of votes - in both elections than his predecessor Ed Miliband. I’m not a massive fan of first-past-the-post, truth be told. Not that the election doesn’t reveal BJ has very substantial popular support… Hence, the depression.

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#7123

I offered my condolences some days back, I think. Kindly accept that, for once, I was quite serious about that.

The left is playing ‘Find the Scapegoat’ and Corbyn sadly is in the best position to get blamed.

Everyone seems to know what should have been done after things went pear-shaped… 20/20 hindsight is a marvellous thing.

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#7124

Huh? I’m most grateful for condolences, they’ve certainly been flying thick and fast in my various social circles lately.

#7125

A TV license fee, you say?

-Tricorner hat twitches-

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#7126

Quite. It’s either that, or having your programming interrupt your regularly scheduled advertising.

This, incidentally, is why American Football is a poor fit for BBC sports - they have no adverts to fill all the dead time with.

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#7127

Meh, our tax money already goes to PBS and we have advertising. Whatcha gonna do?

However, if I had me druthers, I suppose I’d take the adverts (as you lovely people call them) over a ‘license’ or tax money being used to fund TV shows.

#7128

Give more money to PBS so they don’t have to rely on advertising or fund-raisers? I mean, there’s been some good TV out of public broadcasting.

Educational TV and current affairs need public funding, otherwise you get heavily derailed content (kids shows that exist solely to promote games, “documentaries” on the History channel that involve considerable economy with the truth)

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#7129

I don’t disagree that PBS has some good shows on the telly from time to time. However, my tricorner hat is kinda against giving tax money to TV stations run by the gubmint.

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#7130

The idea behind the BBC is that, although it’s funded by public money, it acts completely independently of government. That’s why Boris wants to gut it’s funding - he can’t control the messaging from it, so he wants to shut it up.

PBS is a bit more varied - there are considerable differences between the various PBS stations - but generally their coverage of news and events has been a lot more balanced and detailed than the likes of CNN and Fox.

The real question is: who do you want controlling the messaging delivered by the media - do you really want to give up all control to the corporations? (Not that you seem to have much of a choice in the US atm…)

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#7131

I have my issues with the BBC but when I look at the state of the US news media, I’m damn glad they’re there. No media’s unbiased but they have some clever sorts on there and I appreciate the breath of air from commercial interests; added to that the example of Fox News (and indeed Sky News in the UK) demonstrates that private models are hardly free from the manipulation some associate with government power. I’ll also say that when I did lodge a complaint with the BBC about one of their interviews (covering Trump) they responded appropriately and to an extent reflectively, which I appreciated.

I also have a very personal affection for them which arose from a unique set of circumstances. In my final year of undergrad I lived in a house - divided into individual rooms and one office - which backed onto and was owned by my college, but had a front door onto the street, so got public mail and was mistaken for a standalone house.

Because of the latter, enquiries came through about a TV license. Nobody got anything through the generic house mail (our letters went through college), but I did open them out of interest, and enjoyed following the increasingly irate demands for responses about payment. I think about 6 piled up in all, each more fervent and threatening than the last.

The house was mostly students, but there were rather two senior public figures there, one of whom had the office, the second of whom stayed intermittently in the basement room when on college business… I can thus claim to have facilitated getting both the renowned author Robert Macfarlane and Dame Fiona Reynolds, director general of the National Trust, under official investigation for non-payment of a TV license. A true achievement.

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