What are /r/ukpolitics' favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Article IX of the Bill of Rights 1688 provides:

> That the Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any Court or Place out of Parlyament.

That is one of the foundation stones of the UK’s constitution. No Parliament is ever going to repeal that in order to make certain types of Parliamentary speech into a criminal offence.

That makes this entirely pointless, possibly even actively harmful to any other efforts to address the issue.

Russia has begun purging journalists who have been investigating this already.

Expect a few more journalists to disappear or be murdered as a result. Cracking work again by bellingcat. Spot on time and time again. They are really frightening the Russian embassy twitter accounts who slander them.

It's a bit rich to see Phillip Davies talking about democracy and claiming he's a strong believer.

Let's take a look at Phillip Davies's past and see how strongly he believes in the democratic process. A man that has so much contempt for democracy that he promised to campaign for carers to have free hospital parking, instead he actually voted against them having free parking. A man that uses filibustering to prevent legislation he disagrees with going through.

Ah yes, Phillip Davies truly believes in the democratic process. Perhaps it's only great and glorious democracy when it goes your own way.

while they're not wrong in this case, this whole enterprise strikes me as an incredibly bad idea. i mean look at newsguard's advisory board; these aren't people i want determining for me the accuracy of journalism

i think any effort to determine the relative accuracy of news outlets like this is doomed to failure, because it's just fundamentally unquantifiable, and far too susceptible to the personal biases of the people making the decisions

I watched that programme Black Black Oil on iPlayer last week. It's clear that what theUK government says about climate change and what it is doing are completely unrelated things. (Fascinating TV by the way)

I have literally written a book on proportional representation.

I'm a HUGE fan of MMP, I think it's the best form of PR. I think it will have the greatest positive impact if adopted.

On the other hand, STV (the Irish system) has you vote for candidate names, not party lists, it's pretty simple to understand, (1, 2, 3), and it has 95% of the anti-corruption benefits of a MMP system (due to changing the incentives for politicians - essentially rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior, in a lot of places that FPP does the opposite). It's something that I think the British people would be more likely to get behind.

Long story short, there isn't enough of a difference in actual effect between MMP and STV for me to actually give a damn which one is used, so long as SOME form of PR is used.

I was thinking exactly the same thing. I think you've hit the nail on the head. Because the feverishness with which May is seeking to make Brexit happen -- come hell or high water -- whatever the cost -- ignoring more recent opinion polls -- just doesn't make sense. I think she has been told what to do by those who are up to their necks in offshore money. There are good articles in the Guardian which show that Cameron's timing on upping the anti with the EU and moving to Brexit fits in lock-step with the unfoldment of financial transparency laws. He should know as this off-shore money business (his father) paid for his Eton fees -- like-wise May's husband is in the same line of business and that enables May to do what she does with greater financial security too. See the book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World".

P.S. It just clicked for me that the Russians are probably so keen in their Brexit support and enablement simply because they like the UK money laundering and off-shore holding. When the USSR collapsed the vast state assets were essentially given away to the powerful and influential, including friends of Putin. Probably the Russian Brexit motivation is not as sinister as "rule the world", but rather just 'hands off my cash'. A parallel that makes this more plausible to me, is that the International Socialists (with Paul Foot and others) wrote very convincingly the Soviet tanks and troops in Eastern Europe were not there to fight the West but rather simply to keep the occupied population squashed and from rebelling. We in the west often miss these simpler explanations while seeking to support views of world domination.

​

A striking resemblance to the actions of the blackshirts. The irony of them picking up the book about islamophobia and mocking it, and then picking up the other book "The Jewish Question" and shouting anti semite is surreal

In fact, I think it's this book The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation, a book written by a jew. I've not read the book, I was just interested, so from the comments in the Amazon review I found this interesting about the author:

>Abram Leon, a young Belgian revolutionary who died fighting in the resistance to the Nazis in World War II, shows how anti-Semitism and capitalism are linked. He illustrates the special history of the Jews as a "people class," persecuted and manipulated by capitalism. This Marxist study shows that Zionism, rather than aiding the liberation of the Jewish people, aids imperialism, the main breeder of anti-Semitism and Jew hatred. NathanWeinstock's introduction explaining the life and struggle of Abram Leon is inspiring.

The willful ignorance of these troglodyte dullards knows no depths.

His Dad quite literally wrote a book called 'Blood in the Streets' which detailed how one could make a profit from economic turmoil.

https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Streets-James-Dale-Davidson/dp/0446353167

​

https://letsencrypt.org/

Just to get your site on an SSL. Although there's no login on your site or any input (that I can see anyway), it's always best to secure the site, the link above allows you to do it for free.

Other than that, great work. I agree, parliament's site is a structural mess.

It's actually more complex than that. The king isn't always compelled to conform to Sharia. The king can make his own rules, called niẓām. Sometimes, these niẓām*s go against the "Sharia". The Saudi state has a close relationship with the Wahabbi scholars, where Wahabbi scholars give the state religious legitimacy and the Saudi state respects the scholars opinions on various social/religious matters. Sometimes they cooperate and sometimes they conflict. Vogel's *Islamic Law and Legal System is a good read, and this article goes into more detail on the debate.

I'd highly recommend reading (left-wing) economist Mark Blyth's book <em>Austerity: the history of a dangerous idea</em>. Failing that, you can find lectures that are essentially excerpts of the book on youtube.

It is surprisingly accessible, like all of Blyth's work, and it explains a lot. It's a bit more subtle than alternating spend-cut cycles with alternating governments because the idea is ultimately not a political one, but it got latched onto by some politicians because it suited their objectives despite having been proved time and again not to work.

It also has something to do with the distinction between the asset and productive economies, though IIRC he only tangentially touches on that in the book. But the cost of living is directly attributable to the misallocation of capital between the two, and austere welfare policy is in large part attributable to the cost of living.

As to the OP, I'd point out that there was never a credible economic case for brexit — and that's a large part of why the remain campaign failed, because their argument was wholly economic, and a negative argument at that.

Nor was immigration ever a sufficient reason. There are other reasons (I argue, but I am biased) for brexit that are semi-macroeconomic and semi-political, but better expressed in terms of harm avoided (at some lesser cost) rather than benefits gained.

Maybe it will end up being a good thing then ha. I'm a NordVPN user and have it on most the time, so no issue for me.
But I agree, VPN companies right now.

https://www.amazon.com/Time-Jump-Positive-Independent-Agreement/dp/1909698512

The book for reference.

E: Also.... dude's got mad prediction skills

https://twitter.com/DCBMEP/status/745978947159138304

>> If I dare offer a prediction, I would suggest 52-48 to Leave seems right- just like Norway in '94. Very tight. Passion and turnout counts.

> The thing that annoys me the most about this is the whole WTO argument fall back never came up in the actual debate yet Brexiters pretend that every single Brexiters voted in unison with it and therefore we have to do it.

I've suspected this for a good while and yesterday I finally got a concrete example.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0004w8c/politics-live-09052019 iPlayer link is good for another 29 days.

About the 30 minute mark (just about to dash out, soz no exact time) Martin Daubney the Brexit Party candidate freely admits that this point came up in the debates.

Problem is it was from Cameron and others on the remain side as a dire consequence of leaving.

I can't recall any winning side in politics taking a warning from the losing side and then whole heartily adopting it as their core ideology.

This is fucking madness.

>How are they allowed to lock two men in a van for 8 hours on a hot day? Surely that’s a human right violation or something. If it was a dog it wouldn’t of been allowed for over an hour, without someone breaking the windoe

14c.

https://www.accuweather.com/en/gb/glasgow/g3-8/may-weather/328226

But they've got detailed drawings of the plan how to carry it out profitably.

(edit: They've already written the book)

Portfolio Before Country.

>" Another comment, which accuses Hodge herself of racism because she “supports the racist state of Israel”, would fall foul of the IHRA definition but is not judged antisemitic in Labour’s new code of conduct, which has removed the example of “claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour”. "

Thank-you The Times for demonstrating exactly why the IHRA definition is bullshit, calling Israel a racist state is not antisemitic, it is a racist state: fact.

EDIT:

Quick straw poll to get the subs opinion on whether calling Israel racist is antisemitic: https://www.strawpoll.me/16122420

Wow. It starts as an optional installation, quickly becomes a default on public machines and soon becomes rammed down your throat at the ISP level. How soon until they throttle "untrustworthy" sites to "fight disinformation"? They just love centralizing power.

This is just another neo-conservative/US government linked information warfare tool. Look at their Advisory Board, are these the people you want determining what can and can't be trusted?

Time for you all to invest in a VPN.

While it may not stop or prevent, it will at least slow them down.

I personally use TorGuard, but there are other good ones, I also used to use Private Internet Access

She's about the most aloof tory I've ever seen. Of all her qualities, it's one I care about least, but she seems repulsed by the public, children especially, and seems to have a strong aversion to human beings in general.

I don't know where the public gets these ideas about her being down to Earth or strong and stable from. I can't think of a mainstream politician in recent times people know so little about and attribute so much without evidence. This is her gift, to be so secretive and non-committal everyone sees what they want to see in her.

"She made Boris foreign secretary? That's ingenious!". "Junker and co. all think she must be mentally ill? What a brilliant negotiating tactic!". "She just shit herself in public? A move straight out of Sun Tsu's The Art of War!".

There's now a trend amongst the far right to try to rewrite history by suggesting Hitler and the Nazis were left wing. They refer to it as National Socialism to try to paint it as being socialist. Recently Donald Trump Jr literally said that the Democrats were closer to the Nazis.

It's not just that they're idiots who don't understand history, they're aware but want to deliberately muddy the waters and stop people from confronting fascistic ideas.

Have a look at something like Telegram or Signal - remember nothing is 100% safe or secure, but some approaches are better than others!

I find it contradictory that it is a criminal offence to tamper with someone's physical mail, but the government is fine with placing easily exploitable back-doors into our communication services and accessing our private information.

We have a right to protect our physical and intellectual property.

edit: added Signal as another option

Last 6 months i have now felt the need to move VPN service to Panama based company (NordVPN) , Encrypt my OS (Bitlocker), encrypt my secondary storage (Veracrypt) & encrypt my android (SuperSU)...

People should not have to do all this to get privacy in the 21st century.

Interested to see how much they focus on the CA aspect of the campaign.

So far the script is aligned pretty closely with the book All Out War which I've found to be a pretty good read.

Amazing work /u/sasalek. If you're willing to this would be great to have done weekly and stickied at the top.

Incidentally does everybody know about the CommonsVotes app? It's an app that shows you the voting outcomes for each vote in the Commons. It shows the number of MPs from each party that voted, and it shows specifically how individual MPs voted.

Just had a thought, maybe we could start making this a regular thing each Monday. A roundup of the laws to be voted upon that week, and the outcomes of the votes from last week. Thoughts?

I am going to recommend a history book as the best way to understand British politics today.

Andrew Marr, <em>The History of Modern Britain</em>

Marr is an excellent storyteller and covers the politics of postwar era to 2007.

By taking a decade-by-decade approach of the hot political topics of the time is it is an excellent cover of the story how we got to where we are today and earlier political struggles that brought them about.

Only 99p for the book. Also got made into BBC TV series, if that format suits you better.

>"We're not reforming the NHS because it's easy. Let alone popular. We're doing it because it is right and necessary. In fact, it is more than that. It is unavoidable and it is urgent."

Ahh, I suppose such logical deductions will be based upon vast amounts of solid, reliable, objective and statistically significant evidence that will be presented to the public for review any time now...

No? Oh of course, as simple minded, ordinary members of the public we simply need to sit back, relax and bask in the glory of our infallible leader. We only need to believe in his powers and have eternal faith in he who surely has our best interests at heart.

Radical re-organisation of the public's health service involving selling off huge sections for the highest bidder to make money from? Ignoring the small fact that, despite its own perfectly treatable afflictions, it continues to be rated as one of the most cost effective in the world? Looking the other way while the Secretary of State for Health accepts 'donations' from private healthcare providers, and is married to the managing director of a lobbying firm?

Fuck off Cameron, no really, just fuck off. You're as transparent as you are slimy and seeking to make money at the expense of the health, well being and happiness of the country is as low as it gets. I don't share your belief in Tory ideology just like I don't share your belief in god.

Oh of course - giving up powers to the worst nest of corporate lobbying in the world is something I'm sure most left-wingers are up for.

My point was that the electorate can make their decision in 2020 in the full knowledge that the actions of both sides won't be overruled or superseded by the Commission, on something like TTIP, or refugee policy, for instance.

Trust me, you're going to see millions of NordVPN ads if you don't use adbloc.

People will be going dark across the web and with that the government will make it harder for themselves to watch people.

Oh, that and Opera being downloaded but that will give the Chinese our browsing histories.

Just an FYI for all of you who don't want your chat apps spying on you. To be secure you need to use an app that Is end to end encrypted by default, Is fully open source and auditted and does not save unencrypted backups of conversations. Whatsapp fails on the unencrypted backups and not being open source and auditted. The two you want to look at are:

Wire and Signal

> the Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any Court or Place out of Parlyament.

Doesn't that outlaw eighty percent of twitter on the spot? (jk)

Is it saying "you can't impeach or question speech made in parliament" or is it saying "you can't impeach or question the parliamentarians' right to free speech and debate in parliament"?

If the latter (which I assume it is) then it is still open to question to what extent a "parliamentary perjury" law impeaches MPs freedom of speech, isn't it?

If Michael Coke leapt to his feet screaming "Fire! Fire!" and 23 tories died in the ensuing stampede, could he not be prosecuted?

I heard a very depressing theory on the "Talking Politics" podcast a few months ago. The idea is that equality within a society can arise only during and after a destructive force such as that presented by the Second World War. Without such such destruction, the "natural" forces of politics and human nature will inevitably result in those with more resources exploiting the system for their own ends to become richer.

EDIT: It was Walter Scheidel, <em>The Great Leveller</em>.

The Financial times claim that the live(d) in a converted barn with a mortgage, whilst he pretended to live in a stately home that was rented out for events and used for a backdrop for his big donation announcements.

GoSkippy is not a big business, opendemocracy and others have been unable to verify his wealth, the regulators in gibraltar confirmed that his companies were undercapitalised and had no money.

https://www.similarweb.com/website/goskippy.com#overview

Then all of a sudden he becomes the biggest political donor in british history, ever.

All the while posting furiously pro Putin talking points, meeting hte russian ambassador and oligarchs and mysteriously finding diamonds in diamond mines in places that experts say are non productive.

Oh, his wife is the daughter of a Kremlin official, drives a car with the number plate X Mi5 SPY and was involved in a honey trap scandal by russian intelligence targeting UK MPs (mike hancock) and also NATO officials, separately.

Seems legit!

What you just described is how I read the "low barrier to entry". That they aren't selected based on their ability to document sincere insight the world, but their ability to conform to the filters that manufacture consent.

Though maybe this is an epistemological error made given that I have Pete Coffin's recent episode on meritocracy on the brain.

As a transwoman and alumni of Goldsmiths, this makes me so angry. Despite having just the one publication from a psychology conference, Kennedy is not a qualified psychologist or neuroscientist (both of which do exist at Goldsmiths). Nor is she a legal expert. If reports that she also teaches under the name Mark Hellen there, then that makes her an MA in ICT - not at all qualified to talk in an academic context on this topic, let alone lead a full group of people on it.

The idea of proposing false allegations against anyone is downright stupid. To be an academic that also advocates for this is not only absolutely pathetic, but an abuse of a position of power that I think should have them lose their position!

> And either way, democracy is about doing what the majority want regardless. That's how you build a stable society.

Oh, no. No, no, no.

I am no fan of Galloway, I think he's a mercenary opportunist whose primary concern is promoting George Galloway, with everything else very much secondary to that.

That said I have to give credit where it's due and he's an excellent orator. His finest moment, in my opinion, came in 2005 when he testified to the US Senate. It's long but worth watching the whole way through. Gorgeous George doesn't start talking until about six minutes in, before that he's being read details of the allegations and information about the Senate- boring but provides the context in which he later delivers his testimony.

In 2005 he was elected to Bethnal Green and Bow, unseating Oona King.

Alas yes. Even with the tories being a corrupt uncaring shitshow they're not aiming for a government that's reintroducing polio and where lots of children are dying of malnutrition.

The tories do have the shame of the rising levels of homeless, and the massive increase in food bank reliance but they are not worse than the kinds of socialist governments Corbyn and McDonnell seek to emulate.

If you prefer your data with less techno, you can see a 'climate action' ranking for all MEPs in this report. Page 32/33.

Every single UKIP MEP (and a lot of Tories) gets 0%.

The Wealth of Nations is referenced a lot... "The Wealth of Nations, is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith. First published in 1776, the book offers one of the world's first collected descriptions of what builds nations' wealth, and is today a fundamental work in classical economics. By reflecting upon the economics at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the book touches upon such broad topics as the division of labour, productivity, and free markets."

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

If anyone uses a computer and Chrome, this extension will bypass paywalls. It doesn't work on The Times, sadly, but it does most others like FT.

This is where he’s been updating. I was following his updates as he was telling people what was happening on the ground, but thought he’d managed to get out last night with Miles the tourist of Kabul

https://twitter.com/PenFarthing

https://nitter.net/PenFarthing to avoid the login wall

has someone put a Ladybird book of the EU in front of him?

&#x200B;

oh heck, there's a spoof one

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Brexit-Ladybirds-Grown-Ups/dp/024138656X

I always thought it was an Oscar Wilde quote, but it turns out that it was originally Samuel Johnson as reported by Boswell. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson

>Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

> April 7, 1775, p. 253

> Boswell's full mention of this statement reads:

> Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self-interest.

How about been constantly surrounded by a society that attacks, disgraces and isolates you when trying to bring up issues that clash with the current main stream narrative. Getting attacked, insulted and labelled with highly derogatory terms like 'racist', 'scum' and 'fascist'. Never having an outlet to air your thoughts, ideas or concerns in a civil open matter, been met with hate and vitriol every time you try to speak up concern about glaringly worrying facts such as these.

Your environment turns so toxic that the only places capable of having your discussions and airing your frustrations are fringe far-right toxic extremist groups. Now these far-right groups are not healthy for anyone. They are shunned, hidden and kept out of civil discussions. So guess what, without civilised open discussions, without challenges, without open debate they radicalise further and further.

Hate from all sides fuels issues here. The hate thrown at any attempts for open rational discussion about uncomfortable problems in society. Hate for hearing the truth. Hate for the fact that some of us may be wrong.

The pound is 1.1% down in the last 7 days and the FTSE index has lost £30bn in 4 days. Yet the Leave campaign are promising the moon on a stick to every organisation that depends on EU funding, despite not being a political party. We only need to lose 0.6% of GDP to evaporate the amount of money the EU costs (after rebates and returning funds). The fiscal argument for leave is none existent as far as i can see. https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2016/jun/14/pound-uk-inflation-bank-of-england-brexit-liquidity-push-business-live

Let me take a couple of these...

1. Main effects of the Coalition government's housing policies have been Five Years of Failure. Read my full argument here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/282692395/150921-Five-Years-of-Failure

2. Yes we do need to think about public house-building. My Smith Institute Report made the case for building 100 000 new public homes a year by 2020 - and showed how we can do it, and above all how we can pay for it. But of course Government ministers going in opposite direction ...

Full Report here: https://smithinstitutethinktank.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/high-aspirations-sound-foundations.pdf

I did do some for Cameron after the riots, didn't really keep it up so haven't done any for a while tho. I did UKIP this time because they've been putting some rather silly ads out recently.

'Snowflake' was originally used as an insult by the Confederates against Americans who campaigned ~~against~~ [in favour of] slavery. Make of that what you will.

Source

I love open-source software and I prefer to support it where I can, but in my opinion Open Office is terrible! I think, compatibility wise, it's not too bad but using it is horrible; I was happy that Microsoft got rid of the 1001 "Toolbars to use before you die" interface and replaced it with the neat and tidy ribbon. A lot of FOSS advocates won't admit that but the^Microsoft^UI^is^better...

Also, OpenOffice (whilst nolonger on the brink of extermination) has more or less been depreciated by LibreOffice.

Aneurin Bevan's In Place of Fear is free on Amazon today.

“A free Health Service is a triumphant example of the superiority of collective action and public initiative applied to a segment of society where commercial principles are seen at their worst”

Mods feel free to delete if inappropriate. It's not an affiliate post or anything, I saw it on a newsletter, and thought folk might be interested.

>... why would it really matter if they were about dinosaurs, ghosts and UFOs anyway?

Ahem.

Uh ohhhh major fuck up incoming

“The complaint focuses on incidents where newspapers have specifically stated in news stories that the event was commemorating members of the Black September terror group or those who carried out the 1972 Munich massacre. Labour says there are no graves for such individuals and the event did not commemorate the Munich terrorists.”

THAT photo of Corbyn holding the wreath under the shelter is in front of the graves of Salah Khalaf aka Abu Iyad and Atef Besiso, as the next paragraph acknowledges.....

“Labour acknowledges that the cemetery contains the graves of senior Palestinian Liberation Organisation individuals Salah Khalaf and Atef Besiso, who were assassinated in the early 1990s and have been accused by Israel of having had links with Black September, something the PLO has always denied. However, it insists Corbyn did not take part in laying wreaths on their specific graves.”

Salah Khalaf aka Abu Iyad wrote a memoir in the late ‘70s ‘My Home My Land: A Narrative of the Palestinian Struggle’

https://www.amazon.co.uk/My-Home-Land-Narrative-Palestinian/dp/0812909364

In it he recounts how he picked the two gunmen who led the Munich Massacre

This Time article also talks about it - http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,340700-2,00.html

“Then came the 1978 memoir of late Black September leader Abu Iyad, in which he explained how he handpicked the two commandos who led the attack within the Village: Issa, who served as lead negotiator and became known to millions of TV viewers as "the man in the white hat"; and Tony, a short but fiery fedayee, or "fighter for the faith," who was in charge of operations.”

“And another Black Septembrist, Abu Daoud, perhaps gulled by the false peace of the 1993 Oslo accords, published a memoir in which he described how he and Abu Iyad masterminded the operation. “

I read a book on it called The Long Hangover by Shaun Walker.

It is specifically about how Putin uses Soviet history to restore an identifier that was lost in the 90s during the fall of the Soviet Union. Small things like rebranding national holidays to be celebrations of the Soviet's overcoming the Nazis as opposed to remembering the sadness of all those lost in the war. There are still statues of Lenin in every town square in Russia pretty much. And there is a collective reimagination of the purpose of the Gulags that they were a necessary evil and that Stalin did wonders to promote the Soviet Union as a world power.

Really interesting book, I'd recommend it.

>The only book to tell the full story of how and why Britain voted to leave the EU.

>This is the acclaimed inside story of the EU referendum in 2016 that takes you behind the scenes of the most extraordinary episode in British politics since the Second World War.

>With unparalleled access to all key players, this is a story of calculation, attempted coups and people torn between principles and loyalty. It is a book about our leaders and their closest aides, the decisions they make, how and why they make them and how they feel when they turn out to be so wrong.

>In All Out War, Tim Shipman has written a political history that reads like a thriller, exploring how and why David Cameron chose to take the biggest political gamble of his life, and why he lost.

If you were only allowed one book about Brexit, it’s the one most people seem to recommend

Having seen Klein's The Shock Doctrine. Or a channel 4 documentary about it. I have thought for a while that the (arguably) perceived danger of the deficit, was being used in this way to usher in a new virulent era of Chicago School Economics, which was certainly NOT what Cameron sold to the public.

It is the disingenuous nature of the current government that i find most appalling. The problem is that at the election the british public seemed to be hoodwinked into believing, or forgetting that the Torys are a shower of cunts.

Before the election, I complained that most under thirties were not very political, which i blamed on the fact that anyone under 32 couldn't really remember the hatred that was felt towards the Torys.

How things change.

It really isn't, and they've shown no sign of wishing to reform or change course whatsoever. Ever closer political union naturally involves an army, which has been called for by members of the EU for many years. Remain insisted it was pure fantasy that didn't exist. And more to the point with regards to your comment, the EU has repeatedly managed to push past things / subvert democratic processes to get what they want.

Choice quotes provided here with dates/sources: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Juncker

> We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back. Referring to his colleagues in the European Council.

> If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'.

> "Britain is different. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?"

> Monetary policy is a serious issue. We should discuss this in secret, in the Eurogroup [...] I'm ready to be insulted as being insufficiently democratic, but I want to be serious [...] I am for secret, dark debates.

> There can be no democratic choice against the European treaties

> We feel we need a Capital Market Union, Energy Union, Economic and Monetary Union but we also think we need security union.

Honestly, anyone thinking the EU is happy to respect democratic process is in open denial by this point. And the notion that the EU hasn't been planning and/or calling for an EU army since long before Brexit is also completely incorrect. Frankly if the only thing stopping the EU from this idiocy was the UK, it only proves further that we were right to leave in the first instance.

Sorry, this isn't an answer to my question at all - frankly it's a bunch of politician guff. I am more than willing to accept that many MPs do go from uni directly into politics and that should probably change or at least we should find some way for other voices to be heard. I think everyone agrees with you on that.

My question was specifically about YOU and YOUR CAMPAIGN though. You talk this language of Westminster having too many career politicians and proposing yourself as a 'real' alternative but your linkedin profile, which is one of the very few sources of information about you online, indicates that whilst you're not a career politician as such, pretty much every job you've had for the past 10/15 years has been involved with government, NGOs and big business. Perhaps you're more of a career civil servant?

So once again. Tell me what makes you a 'real person' more than Ben Bradshaw? What qualifies you to understand the problems of someone who hasn't gone to university, of someone who's working class, or of single mums struggling to make ends meet? Or even just people who's LinkedIn Endorsements aren't entirely related to government and politics. You're definitely a part of the Westminster bubble Dom and it would be much better if you spoke about it, because then people could assess you and your opponent based on your skills and experience in politics not just guff-y intangibles such as 'realness'.

Manufacturing consent is as relevant as ever.

Sadly, most journalists seem to read it and think it's a text on best practices.

1) Read 'Why we sleep'. By Mathew Walker.

2) Make a solemn promise to yourself to get 8+ hours sleep every night for a whole week. No ifs, no buts, get to bed at 9pm if yo need to, just do it. A solid bed time routine without screens, and some daily physical exercise help.

3) Feel like you've been disassembled and put back together properly, and wonder why you didn't start 10 years ago.

I imagine within the day of the UK's Chinese style great internet wall, There will be ways around instructions to use proxy website posted all over FB, Or to really help people there can be how to download tor, (that's where silk road used to be) you can get all the porn you can imagine and more, but now that you have learned Tor when silk road went down literally hundreds of market places popped up in its place. Well kid look at this you came for the porn and you stay for the drugs. Well done MP's. Big round of applause.

Well he did actually write a book, which is so awful (yes, I've read it) that I cannot doubt its authenticity. I think your suggestion is much more likely than a ghost writer, although I'm not ruling out both.

Believe what you like about Polly Toynbee, but at least she's practiced what she's preached.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hard-Work-Life-Low-pay-Britain/dp/0747564159/ref=sr_1_1

> A frank and breathtaking book, this is journalist and broadcaster Polly Toynbee's account of her intention to live and work on the minimum wage. The 'decent living' wage set by the Council of Europe is set at GBP7.39. The minimum wage in Britain is currently GBP4.10 per hour. And often, people are working for less, their voices unheard, their faces unnoticed. The low-paid are caught in an economic double bind that victimises them and shames the rest of us. Toynbee took whatever jobs she could find, often offered for less than the official minimum wage. Living on an estate in Clapham, she started from scratch and found that if she were truly unemployed, she would not even be able to afford a new job, and that faced with starvation, it's impossible not to sink into debt.

People who use the term "Champagne Socialist" as loosely as this, I wonder which public figures they believe can speak on matters such as these, if any?

Been using NordVPN for a while - it seems to be getting better and better. Just added a bunch of new Lux servers too, outside the "5/9/14 eyes".
I hope you are right about VPNs - but it really seems they have no idea how this stuff works. I work in IT at a digital company and yeah, banning VPNs would fuck a lot up.

Especially when you can get it for 90p on Amazon

Upvoted as I also think a simple right vs left axis is an unhelpful way to describe a complex set of policies.

Regarding an introduction to economics, the best one I've read is Economics in One Lesson. There are other books that work in a more rigorous, step-by-step manner, but every chapter in this is accessible and thought-provoking, and the examples are all concrete, real problems. http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232

> Am I the only one who's smart enough to not be bothered by this?

/r/iamverysmart

>Unless something has changed recently, this charter is representing storing metadata for online communications. The same data that is stored regarding literally every other form of communication for the last 100 odd years.

Aside from what you said being just plain wrong, the myth of &quot;harmless metadata&quot; really needs to die.

> And before anyone say's "We can just have another referendum if they try to change anything big." it will never be anything big, there will just be small changes here, a new law being made outside of the UK there and within a few decades we're simply another region of The Union.

You're absolutely right. Here's a key quote from Juncker that explicitly outlines his plans for the EU:

&quot;We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.&quot;

Before a Commons battle over the investigatory powers bill this week, the poll found that 92% of respondents who were aware of the proposals – described as a “snooper’s charter” by critics – disapproved of them. But 72% of respondents said that they knew nothing about it.

Please allow me to suggest an improvement to your post. "Most of the public either oppose this or don't know it's happening."

Anyone seen this? https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p09pmbsm/the-big-interviews-starmer-the-voters-verdict

Encouraging turn around for Starmer before and after the focus group. The more he does of these, the more of a chance I think there might be.

Love the subtle Stella Artois for everyone available too. Great touch.

Misleading post.

> Eastern Europe is being depopulated

The population of Eastern Europe is 291,953,328 (2018), which is admittedly part of a small downward trend YoY (292,454,364 (2017)) but that is nowhere near classifiable as "depopulated". Source and this small downward trend can be attributed to the fall of the Soviet Union in '91.

Ironically, Western Europe actually has less people than Eastern Europe. So not only is your argument completely wrong, it's diametrically opposed to the truth.

Specifically telnet. Which is enabled fucking everywhere. I haven't been keeping up with this whole thing but if the cabinet leak was actually "Huawei has telnet enabled by default on some hardware" then Williamson should have been fired for not even being able to leak competently.

This is a similar point by the Daily Beast's columnist this week, like Hodges, Sam accuses the &quot;global left&quot; of being a bit selective. The general drill usually is - you criticise our funding Saudi Prisons, while you go on and promote trade links with Venezuala and Iran you filthy hypocrite etc etc.

Glenn Greenwald provides a decent counterpoint to these kind of columns pointing out all of the world's worst abuses and arguing that the typical commentator that the Telegraph attacks simply focus, "only on a relatively small handful of injustices at once, and chooses the ones where he thinks he can have the greatest impact."

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/we-would-remain-in-eu-now-say-small-companies-s02ktw73n

56% of small business owners want to remain, 32% leave according to that poll.

https://www.freeagent.com/company/press-room/uk-small-businesses-would-back-second-brexit-referendum/

63% want a second referendum according to this one.

Its not an insult, i'm trying to educate you.

HMU with a mentally ill person, ill pay for the DNA test and start the process of setting them straight.

Anything to help another person.

> When someone in the audience said they don't want her becoming Home Secretary, Diane looked as though she knew he was right - she isn't fit to be Home Secretary

She did respond by listening to him and then smiling to herself as he said it but actually if you watch it carefully at the point that she started smiling he hadn't said anything about her, all he had said was that what worried him more than Brexit was that if there was a general election and Labour got in (audience starts cheering, she smiles)

So she wasn't responding to anything he said about her personally at that point. She was either smiling at the broadly aimed insult insult (which at that point was that that Labour could get in, becasue he hadn't completed the sentence) or, more likely, was listening to what he said and then started smiling as the audience cheered at what he said (which again, the time they started cheering was just that Labour might get in)

• 49:30 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0byzx1j/question-time-2019-17012019

When they interviewed him on Beyond 100 Days (~49 min mark)there was no "innuendo", simply questions about men's mental health. How much airtime do the BBC have to give him before these people are satisified?

Cameron is such a twat, he's ended up making people distrust the very institutions they should listen to.

If you read the information not just Camerons bullshit or listen to the people who know what they are talking about the case against Brexit is very clear.

We have very little to gain by leaving that's why noone can tell us what they want after we leave, immigration will be exactly the same since we will remain within the free trade area (worst case scenario we could be forced into schengen as all other new members are), the trade deals that we supposedly want to leave for are bonkers (US? TTIP on steroids. China? Madness they have been terrible for the US, India? Same problem etc.), the economics of it is settled it's going to be a hit to the economy, then we have sovereignty like we already do parliament rules Britain not Brussels despite the hysterics.

In short there isn't a case for Brexit other than blind patriotism which will be irrelevant if Scotland leaves post Brexit.

Post Brexit we could be just England, (possibly wales) and Northern Ireland relying even more heavily on EU trade since Scottish trade is now EU trade so we can never get rid of free movement but we no longer have a say in how the EU is run.

To top it all off Brexit is shit or bust no turning back to what we had before where as if we remain we can still leave at any time.

There is no case for Brexit any more, at all, that's why you are considered an idiot for writing a column that deceives people into thinking there is.

And not racist. He called Mexicans coming to the US "rapists". But he did at least "assume" that "some" of them are good people, so he has that going for him I guess.

That's just not remotely true.

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/06/politics/trump-tweets-official-statements/index.html

Trump's tweets are considered official statements by the whitehouse. He's not just on twitter making harmless memes, he is representing the USA on every single level and his statements will reflect at as long as he's in office. I mean I just don't know how you could hand wave this away like it's irrelevant (I'm not talking about the mention of the UK but his whole twitter career) "oh he's just talking to the bunch of rabid nutters that voted for him, it's irrelevant"

He may be "tweeting for his whole audience" to some degree, but that is completely and utterly beside the point - his public statements, no matter who they're aimed at, are official statements.

Relevant

Assuming the graph gives correct figures (I'd think so), a person who has paid £1982 in tax and NIN, pays personally £17 to the EU's budget, while in comparison £11 in overseas aid and much less than any other expenditures.

It doesn't answer your question but shows in perspective, the one which often people lack to see and aren't provided with.

I rely mostly on Qwant Actualités. ;) It's probably the best tool for monitoring local and national French news from a multitude of sources, but only if you create an account and set the language and region to French/France. Any other language/region and it uses Bing instead. Bleh. Even the base search engine is better for finding French content than Google.fr - but again, only with a French/France account.

Off topic but I flicked through Aaron's book in waterstone in Picaddily yesterday.

My god what a hack .

Edit for anyone brave:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fully-Automated-Luxury-Communism-Manifesto/dp/1786632624#

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Very-English-Scandal-Murder-Establishment/dp/0241215730

> Behind oak-panelled doors in the House of Commons, men with cut-glass accents and gold signet rings are conspiring to murder. It's the late 1960s and homosexuality has only just been legalised, and Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal party, has a secret he's desperate to hide. As long as Norman Scott, his beautiful, unstable lover is around, Thorpe's brilliant career is at risk. With the help of his fellow politicians, Thorpe schemes, deceives, embezzles - until he can see only one way to silence Scott for good.

> The trial of Jeremy Thorpe changed our society forever: it was the moment the British public discovered the truth about its political class. Illuminating the darkest secrets of the Establishment, the Thorpe affair revealed such breath-taking deceit and corruption in an entire section of British society that, at the time, hardly anyone dared believe it could be true.

> A Very English Scandal is an eye-opening tale of how the powerful protect their own, and an extraordinary insight into the forces that shaped modern Britain.

Very few modern socialist states have managed to operate without heavy, aggressive interference from nations such as America, and even pre-modern socialist experiments were smashed by the remnants of the aristocracy they tried to depose. As a result the material conditions of such nations has not allowed certain key tenets of the modernist socialist traditions to become policy, severely undermining the cause of various revolutions.

This argument also applies for many capitalist nations which have developed enormous monopolies due to protective policy being lobbied against. These weaknesses of capitalism under democratic rule were identified by Adam Smith himself in 'The Wealth of Nations', but were subsequently swept under the rug because it was convenient for the burgeoning merchant classes to ignore them.

The biggest commonality between the structural, social and hierarchical failings of all nations ultimately can be boiled down to the accumulation and hegemonic control of capital. Identifying yourself as a fascist is just signalling you are comfortable for capital owning classes to discriminate across social lines and curate political influence via the monopolisation of commerce and industry. Fascist states have almost certainly been hugely more unstable than socialist regimes because they manage to concentrate the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production beyond the help of any traditional crisis buffers. I'm quite comfortable calling the far right intellectually stunted, morally bankrupt and philosophically useless, since even basic analysis exposes enormous structural weaknesses.

Coming in at Number 8 in Umberto Eco's List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism:

> The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”

> This is really interesting! Even among moderately right-wing people I find there's a tendency to demand that opponents "face reality" or the like. It's a lazy way of not having to justify one's own understanding of reality, by implying its legitimacy in the form of the question. > >

Its a way of disconcerting and playing with words. I think two academics sum it up, first Umberto Eco's 14 common traits of fascism (which apply to authoritarian thinking generally). Namely number 10 &quot;Contempt for the weak&quot;.

Also Sartre's quote about anti semites applies to authoritarians and nationalists more generally really:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

― Jean Paul-Sartre

> quite difficult to keep level-headed over.

I think thats the point, they're just playing with words, implying you are "deficient" and otherising you by saying you are mentally ill and mentally deficient and need medical attention for your inferior genes and constitution.

How dare the NYT give an accurate measure of the situation based on the critiques by the man who accurately pinpointed the kids' location and the man who was in charge of the rescue

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/13/uk/thai-cave-rescue-british-divers-intl/index.html

How dare theyyyy

>surveillance sharing through our tunnel to the US embassy

right, fine, if not a bit totalitarian considering the NSA, CIA and GCHQ's mandate combined would be total.

> nuclear tech sharing

you mean renting us expensive cold war era tech that doesn't even work? that amusingly we played a pivotal role in developing in the first place?

That's bullshit, nowhere in the definition of homosexuality does it even insinuate that it's not normal.

Just because you can string together a sentence does not make it true.

Homo means same, not abhorrent.

A significant portion of West London <em>is</em> golf course.

• Coombe Wood
• Coombe Hill
• Royal Wimbledon
• Malden
• London Scottish
• Wimbledon Park
• Richmond Park
• Richmond
• Roehampton
• Polewell
• Sandown Park Golf Centre
• Hersham Village Golf Centre
• Moore Place
• Surbiton
• Mitcham

Those are just the ones I found on a gentle cruise around Bing Maps.

Link below.

Weird how long it’s been on iPlayer. Unless they’ve taken it down and reuploaded it, it’s been there for a year or so.

Maybe burying a 3 hour film in the depths of iPlayer is their way of being balancing out the hourly Tory PPBs and thus, technically, being impartial?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04b183c/adam-curtis-hypernormalisation

You say that like the link between Labour and Lassaad Laouini is contrived and remote. But it's not. He was chosen as one of the people featured in a Labour party election broadcast shown ten days ago. Here it is on BBC iPlayer: >Party Election Broadcasts: Labour - English Local Elections: 10/4/2018

Lassad Louini's appearance starts at 2 minutes 36 seconds.

Presumably, like all the "typical voters" who appear in party election broadcasts, he's meant to be someone many potential voters can relate to.

When a person has views like "Hitler burned the Jews for his people but [Mubarak] burned his people for the Jews", then the message that "People like Lassaad vote Labour" stops being a good one for Labour to send.

I mean if you want to bring that into the fray then post some numbers as I have done so there is something to discuss.

edit: I got some for you

Guardian.co.uk = 3.34m monthly visits

dailymail.co.uk = 321.68m monthly visits

i.e. For every 100 views DM gets Guardian gets 1.

source: https://www.similarweb.com

Anything else?

I like the idea of a wealth tax, but I don't think it is feasible. How do you tax someone on, say a house. Do you make them take out a mortgage to pay for it? Do you take 1% of the house away (which the state doesn't really want) each year until it is sold and then take that proportion of the sale? How do you decide on the value of the wealth in the first place (this is a particular problem with the way we band council tax).

This sounds like it is set up for massive loopholes.

Here is the briefing for those who want to read it: http://issuu.com/tom_sharman/docs/wealth_tax_briefing_july_2014 (it does not explain how it will work).

From the book Corbynism: A Critical Approach, written by 2 left wing academics who originally voted for Corbyn to become leader:

"[Corbyn has adopted] a simplistic Manichean ‘two-campist’ foreign policy abroad – whereby ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend,’ and the enemy is always ‘the West,’ regardless of particular circumstances.

They provide plenty of examples of him opposing Britain, the US, Israel, NATO and supporting the IRA, Russia, Iran, Hamas/Hezbollah etc.

Here you go. https://www.amazon.co.uk/GPO-746-Rotary-Telephone-Black/dp/B008MV7O8K/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1539327846&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&amp;keywords=gpo+746+rotary+telephone

This is all we had before joining the EU and we were fine.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Juncker

> If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'.

On the 2005 French referendum on the Lisbon Treaty

> There can be no democratic choice against the European treaties

Originial quote in french: Il ne peut y avoir de choix démocratique contre les traités européens…

Years ago I tried to start a thing, but didn't really have the time to devote to it to build it up so I've just been doing occasional stuff off the record since.