Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

Started by Josquius, February 20, 2016, 07:46:34 AM

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How would you vote on Britain remaining in the EU?

British- Remain
12 (12%)
British - Leave
7 (7%)
Other European - Remain
21 (21%)
Other European - Leave
6 (6%)
ROTW - Remain
34 (34%)
ROTW - Leave
20 (20%)

Total Members Voted: 98

Sheilbh

Let's bomb Russia!

Josquius

Why no credits? Very strange.
Guess they're trying to go down a nothing to see here sort of route?
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Tamas

Quote from: Josquius on March 11, 2023, 06:10:45 PMWhy no credits? Very strange.
Guess they're trying to go down a nothing to see here sort of route?

Yes, like this:


Sheilbh

#24378
GB News tried to do an Alternative Match of the Day - and oh my God :lol: :bleeding:
https://twitter.com/dinosofos/status/1634689700404314114

First minute and for at least the first half I assumed it was a sketch, but by all accounts real.

Apparently by far the best guy was the pundit they got, Barry Silkman who has a pleasingly journeyman career - needless to say not quite Shearer, Wright, Lineker levels :lol:


QuoteWhy no credits? Very strange.
Guess they're trying to go down a nothing to see here sort of route?
I think the "sorry" at the start and that it's the biggest story going means that doesn't really work - same with the DG doing an interview.

My guess is it looks weird as fuck when you go from that theme tune and title sequence straight into some crowd noise highlights.

Edit: Also apparently asked the crucial question of whether Man City did enough today to knock Arsenal off the top spot, despite that not being mathematically possible and this classic: "I imagine Gary Lineker would quite like Brighton because it's full of rainbow flags and woke people." Truly incisive football commentary :lol:

I do feel a big part of this - as with going up against the England team and Marcus Rashford - is that in the heads of lots of the bellends The Football is the heart of authentic, white, working class culture and a bastion against woke tosh, but they're not actually fans (they strike me as rugby fans :P).  So they keep being surprised when the vast majority of football fans rally behind the England team, not people booing them, or behind Marcus Rashford fighting for free school meals or the virtual picket line we've seen in the last day. It has more connection to the actual existing working class (especially among young people) in this country than the imagined five pints of lager and some casual racism working class that these people keep trying to appeal to.

Basically they're always surprised to discover that some of the most divisive politicians and commentators in recent years are less popular than current or former footballers :lol:
Let's bomb Russia!

garbon

GB News should shut down just on the basis of that alone. :D
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."

I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Josquius

1: Wimbledon before it was cool. Nice.

2:"And no virtue signalling!" they proudly proclaim before not a minute later jumping into bashing Gary Lineker :lol:
Man the sheer hypocrisy of this lot is just unreal. How the hell do people swallow it.
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Jacob

"Virtue signalling" = "people expressing opinions or political standpoints I disagree with, even implicitly".

Sheilbh

Just hilariously bad:
https://twitter.com/dinosofos/status/1634695487642124288

And in a way shows that sports broadcasting is actually a lot more difficult than shit banter in the pub.

Also nothing quite as likely to attract your average punter as using a reference to a quote from the Home Secretary as a gag (the "tofu-eating wokerati" bit).
Let's bomb Russia!

Richard Hakluyt

I don't think the tories know much about the white working class; so they take their knowledge of the white lower middle class and extrapolate downwards...a grave mistake as the working class people are far better people than the lower middle class  :P

Josquius

Define working class and lower middle class. They're much of a muchness in my book. I grew up with a few kids whose dads worked menial office jobs and they were no better or worse than working class kids.
It's with the lumpen kids I found the shit heads.

Quote from: Sheilbh on March 11, 2023, 06:47:48 PMJust hilariously bad:
https://twitter.com/dinosofos/status/1634695487642124288

And in a way shows that sports broadcasting is actually a lot more difficult than shit banter in the pub.

Also nothing quite as likely to attract your average punter as using a reference to a quote from the Home Secretary as a gag (the "tofu-eating wokerati" bit).

So how much actual match of the day comparable content was there? Or was it all just virtue signalling? :lol:
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mongers

Southampton - Portsmouth
Bournemouth - Southampton
Bournemouth - Weymouth

Not football fixtures, but I'm surrounded on three sides by bus replacement service. :bleeding:

My only 'escape' it Salisbury - Bath - Bristol-Cardiff.
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again"

Sheilbh

Quote from: Josquius on March 12, 2023, 04:43:11 AMSo how much actual match of the day comparable content was there? Or was it all just virtue signalling? :lol:
I was wondering how they'd do it given GB News doesn't have (and can't afford) Premier League rights. So they didn't have highlights and, from the clips I've seen, it was just four men talking (badly) about football that they've watched :lol:
Let's bomb Russia!

Sheilbh

Meanwhile very positive idea from Labour - I've said before I really like Rachel Reeves but this is very interesting (and in scale bigger than Corbyn 2019 commitments in this area). See what the detail is hopefully with green energy there is a publicly owned stake in these companies/investments.

I think the energy transition stuff is the most interesting bit of Labour's agenda - £28 billion a year is roughtly at the level experts say is required to move to net zero and the goal of a zero carbon grid by 2030 is very ambitious. How any of that (or this) will happen without significant planning reform is beyond me - so, hopefully, we get significant planning reform (this thread may be of interest, but grim reading: https://twitter.com/MichaelDnes1/status/1630578526293204993).

On a party political level interesting they're going to meet Democrats. David Lammy has very close relations with senior Democrats and his big job as Shadow Foreign Secretary is to get Starmer a meeting of some sort with Biden - feels like that's inching closer:
QuoteLabour planning £8bn Biden-style green energy revolution
Rachel Reeves to visit US to learn from senior Democrats about ambitious regional recovery plan
Toby Helm Political Editor
Sun 12 Mar 2023 07.00 GMT
Last modified on Sun 12 Mar 2023 09.44 GMT

The Labour party is planning to put the UK at the head of a worldwide green industrial revolution, with a massive US-style, public-private investment scheme targeted at the most deprived regions.

In an interview with the Observer, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, who will travel to Washington in May to meet senior Democrats, says a Labour government will follow the model of US president Joe Biden's hugely ambitious regional recovery plan, using the climate crisis as the catalyst for economic revival.

She says Labour's new national wealth fund, to be endowed with an initial £8bn of funding from the state but which it is hoped will then pull in private investment, will be given a specific remit to focus on green industrial revival in deprived areas with regional targets to create hundreds of thousands of jobs outside London and the south-east.


Ahead of the spring budget on Wednesday, in which the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, will be under pressure to prevent an exodus of UK green industries to the US and the EU – both of which are preparing incentives to lure green firms from overseas – both Labour and the Tories are determined to ensure the UK will not be left behind.

Hunt is set to announce a £20bn investment in technology to reduce Britain's carbon emissions in the budget, as well as plans to boost the nuclear sector with a competition to develop small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).

Many UK companies, Reeves said, were desperate to invest in areas such as offshore wind, tidal energy, green hydrogen and carbon capture and storage, but feared that without government backing – on a partnership model like that pioneered by Biden in his Inflation Reduction Act – they "would not get off the ground".

"The Tories are the last people in town believing that the 'laissez faire' approach of leaving it all to the market can work. Everyone else recognises that, in a world of such huge change and increased competition between nations for this investment, you have to have this partnership approach," she said.

"All of this is up for grabs, no-one is doing a lot of this stuff at scale yet. We could be global leaders in some of this. There is a real urgency because growth is so low. This would be real levelling up, where the government has failed. We have got a serious plan and we just want a chance to get on and get started with it."

Several key UK-based companies are now examining where best to operate. Jaguar Land Rover's owner, Tata Motors, has reportedly asked the UK government for more than £500m in state subsidies to build a battery factory in Somerset, a move seen as crucial to the future of the entire British car industry.

Reeves said: "The government said we were going to get electric vehicle production and batteries here but we haven't and Jaguar Land Rover (Britain's biggest car maker) are on the verge of making a really big decision. It is crucial that batteries are produced by JLR in Britain or, as night follows day, more car production will move overseas."

In January, the UK battery start-up Britishvolt collapsed into administration, with the majority of its 300 staff made redundant after talks about rescue bids failed. The company's efforts to build a large facility near Blyth came unstuck as it struggled to find a cash injection to pursue the project. It has now been bought by an Australian company.

Labour has already committed to investing £28bn a year – or £224bn over its first eight years in government – on climate measures. Reeves says it will aim to create 450,000 new jobs over a decade from green industrial projects – in which the UK public will have a stake – including 50,000 in the north-west and Yorkshire, and 30,000 in the north-east, the East Midlands, the West Midlands and the east of England.

Reeves is planning to meet key architects of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) during her May visit and make a speech from there to "show the UK can deliver global leadership on climate change, on new industries and on the future of economic thinking".

Biden's IRA was signed into law in August last year and aims to spur investment in green technology by devoting billions of dollars in subsidies through grants, loans and tax credits to public and private entities. It has a strong focus on electric vehicles and the battery industry.

Since it was announced it has drawn investment into areas such as Michigan, a rust belt state, where Ford has revealed plans to build a $3.5bn electric vehicle battery plant that would create 2,500 jobs. The company explicitly referenced the Biden legislation as being a factor in its decision to locate there instead of Canada or Mexico.

The EU is expected to unveil more details this week of its net-zero industry act, which is also designed to lead to a big acceleration of green technology in EU member states, with recent changes to state aid rules also in the pipeline.


The Institute for Directors recently called for a UK version of the Inflation Reduction Act to "incentivise much-needed green investment" and prevent the UK being left behind.

Reeves said: "The exciting thing about some of the new industries of the future, whether it is floating offshore wind, or carbon capture and storage, or green hydrogen, is that they are going to create good jobs in places outside London and the south-east, in former industrial areas, in coastal communities. We are taking inspiration from president Biden and the US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen."

Separately SNP leadership results tomorrow. It's not been an edifying experience. On the other hand recordings have come out of the SNP Chief Executive (and Nicola Sturgeon's husband) telling SNP councillors to close ranks to protect the stability of the council and the party on North Lanarkshire Council after several young men (all party activists) came forward and accused an SNP councillor of sexually harassing and assaulting them. One has waived anonymity and is now 22 but says he was sexually harassed by this councillor when he was 14 and participating in ths Scottish Youth Parliament. Apparently the party were first warned about the councillor 6 years ago.

Obviously lots of echoes of the Patrick Grady allegations. He was chief whip of the SNP in Scotland and accused by a young man (and party activist) of sexual harassment - as well as the SNP group leader inviting his accuser to meet with him. When he went to the meeting it turned out Patrick Grady was also there. Again the young man says he's been drummed out of the party and there were leaked comms saying the priority of the party was to support Grady and close ranks.
Let's bomb Russia!

Josquius

The Tories again stop the Scottish government from doing something which seems like a pretty sensible minor law rather than a grave attack on the union.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/13/uk-government-poised-to-block-scottish-bottle-recycling-scheme

 :hmm:
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The Larch