Jack Saundrs

They'll do this and then they'll tell you that anyone opposing it is an impractical Utopian dreamer who doesn't live in the real world

Cover of a French picture book for children, a little girl with cropped hair in a green dress is playing the recorder

Pages 3 and 4 depicting le briquet (lighter) and la cigarette

I was given this 1976 picture book for French children for the boy and I was not prepared for it to be FRENCH French

I know it's axiomatic to these weirdos that all our state's enemies are lunatics, incapable of rational self-interest, but why would Iran want to multiply opposing forces for no reason?

There's a lot of centrist dad wannabe "realists" in the replies here going "well he can't rule things out, what if they attack us?" and, I dunno, maybe consider that ruling out UK involvement would considerably reduce the chances of that eventuality?

I feel like this absolutely sums up what's going on here. It ought to be impossible to not know where this stuff is from: it's the newspapers. It's all day every day on every front page. It's what our own fascist elite tell us every day they want. And yet, everyone is confused.

Maybe it’s because I’m a colonial historian but so many of these white nation states seem to behave exactly like they did in the 19th century: ‘your leaders aren’t right for you,’ ‘we’re only killing you/colonizing you/installing puppet leaders for your own good’

Would guess it's meant to be something like the French Carihbean speciality poulet colombo?

It's a bit "garlic bread" in phoenix nights

Think they're more likely leaning in a "London has fallen" direction

Got to appreciate a true innovator - "the English have too many seasonings" 👌

Oooh, new ridiculous trans-atlantic food discourse unlocked!

I think as a matter of principle it was always bad for "we can bomb and murder countries into the shape we fancy them being" to be an accepted consensus amongst European/n.americans, but when we're talking Trump/Netanyahu specifically, it's wild anyone it's an acceptable thing to think

in case anyone ever needed confirmation that it's not about building a democratic Iran, it's about collapsing Iran and turning it into a land of rubble that can be bombed every six months

What he said after losing Runcorn to reform

Of course, viewers in Scotland will already be familiar with this sort of sudden suspension of "never tell the voters they're wrong" norms

I teach a class about Conservative inter-war electoral hegemony, partly based on Ross McKibbin's stuff about the structural advantages the Tories get from middle class cultural hegemony - so it's bleakly funny how offended Labour are by large sections of the middle class being leftishly inclined

guess you'd have a fair few of those cos the Miners Fed/NUM gave a lot of political authority and political education to lay reps and had few paid officials relatively speaking - so lodge chairman to MP was a viable career path (in the way chief shop steward to MP wasn't in other industries)

Attlee's Sec of State for War Jack Lawson was first elected straight out of the colliery (but by '45 he'd been an MP for 26 years)

It's not some abstract/complicated thing to signal - no-one is confused about UK's position vis-a-vis Russia!

Do Russian arms firms operate here? No.
Does Britain assist Russia in military operations? No.
Does it export military parts to Russia? No.
Do Russian politicians get friendly visits? No.

Not sending that signal (not just to muslims but to everyone who saw the obvious, that this was a genocide), would not have taken that much. Most people don't believe Britain specifically could stop the IDF.

It required treating Israel as a state committing crimes against humanity, not an ally.

In mainstream punditry "Gaza" is framed as being about taking sides in a faraway conflict but it's really about a whole load of signals the government was sending right here in Britain.

These are our allies, they're free to commit crimes against humanity, say otherwise you are scum terrorists

Thanks, will check it out

Putting aside anything more radical, if the government had managed to be as critical of Israel as, for e.g., Ireland, Spain, maybe even just at France's level, they wouldn't be in this mess.

We can laugh at this little fash twat but this poisonous dreck is mainstream stuff now: we had *weeks* of this shit from Ashworth and Debonnaire after they got binned, gladly repeated on news stands and broadcasts, presumably with the intent of fending off repeats. Repeats like this, in fact.

Think if I were running a party that hoped to win a majority at the next election with 25-30% of the vote and a leader the majority of voters dislike, the variety of places where people are coalescing around different alternatives to prevent party candidates from winning would surely be concerning?

Yup

Reform, in classic Powellite style, just stand demagogues, which basically means the pundit and political class, perhaps the occasional unpleasant celebrity

Labour, whose whole thing under McSweeney has been "only we understand the proletarian lizard brain", just keep standing the same kind of people they've rated as "the right sort" since the mid-90s (lawyers, management consultants etc.)

Minor thing, given how much political discourse uses "authenticity" and "out-of-touch politicians who know nothing about real life" as essentially a metaphor for not being anti-immigrant, it's notable the two nativist parties stood an ex-academic turned race hate pundit and a management consultant

Given that we're told that Muslims as a bloc are communalist, anti-Semitic, misogynist homophobes, you might assume voting for a non-religious white woman, standing for a LGBT friendly party, led by a gay Jewish man, might lead you to stand down all those sectarianism headlines.