[Philip Marlow]

Gordon Brown is apparently not fucking around.

[Youngian]

Wasn’t Gordon pally with Paul Dacre? That didn’t bring him any political advantage.

[Philip Marlow]

Can’t remember, wouldn’t surprise me. If Brown’s learned - albeit a bit late in the day - the lesson that attempting to neuter the far right by pandering to the more politically convenient aspects of its agenda is a fool’s errand then I’m pleased. Somebody who isn’t immediately dismissible as a hard left Corbynite extremist saying these things publically isn’t to be sniffed at. Well, not too loudly anyway.

Macron, I’m beginning to suspect, would have done a deal with the reanimated corpse of Maurice Papon in preference to coming to an accommodation with the left.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Not sure of Gordo's expertise on this really. The populist right and it's media infrastructure didn't really exist in his era. And the currrent top populist right, asylum, was much less salient then, as a result of Blair's strict asylum act. That's a pretty successful example of concession to the right. As I think the plan Biden agreed with Senate Republicans would have been.

You can be booming like Poland was and they can still boot out a sane government. They can whack up taxes on vanity policies like Orban, and still win a landslide. If brown people are doing low paid donkey work, they're bad. If brown people are getting good professional jobs, they're bad.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Fuck off, Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... od-mansion

Angela Rayner passed over as Reeves given use of Dorneywood mansion
Chancellor preferred for 21-room mansion, in contrast to Tony Blair’s choice of offering it to his deputy John Prescott

Blair-Prescott is tan exception, as is Thatcher-Whitelaw, and Thatcher-Howe. Literally no other PM has given it to the Deputy Leader.

[Andy McDandy]

Under Brown it was migrants. Eastern European ones in particular.

The issue for the right is always "fucking foreigners".

[Tubby Isaacs]

And if the main rightwing party stops policing itself, then it's an even bigger challenge for "liberals". John Major wasn't perfect, but he was the last Tory leader to mostly swerve this shit. Hague by 2001 was on to "Labour are making Britain a foreign country", and it got much worse.

[Philip Marlow]

‘Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.’
-HL Mencken

[Killer Whale]

Amateurish trolling. Make it 0.33l and then we can talk.

[Philip Marlow]

OH GOD MAKE IT STOP.

This is the sort of thing that used to be published by free listicle sites and was frequently cited as an example of the gulf in quality between online journalism and the quality press.

[Bones McCoy]

One can only assume someone on the Guardian editorial board has an advertising executive partner.
Fucking weak filler bullshit, even for silly season.

The term ought to be "Britcore" as any fule kno.


I actually read it, and assume the Graun is sharing interns with the Sun.
Scrolling down, they have the temerity to beg me for £4 a month.

[Andy McDandy]

Several entries are variations on "platty joobs", or imply a very specific background. Namely "twentysomething London based media fucktrumpet".

[The Weeping Angel]

17. Remembering your school “houses” were all named after either famous colonisers or famous murderers.

Unlike the author I didn't go to public school at my comprehensive we had year groups.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

We had houses at our liberal comp.

[The Weeping Angel]

Well we didn't. Were these houses named after colonisers and murderers?

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Did you want them to be?

I suppose as they were Saxons, Celts, Normans and Danes, yes.

[Andy McDandy]

At primary school they were named after trees (I was a Sycamore). At secondary, after famous people from the Stourbridge area (Foley, Hardwicke, Lyttleton, Whittington). I was in Hardwicke, after Cedric, the actor.

In both cases, there was a blue, green, yellow, red scheme attached to them. So "Green 3" meant year 9 Hardwicke.

[Killer Whale]

I genuinely can't remember my grammar school house name. Deliberately erased from my memory, I think.
I think one of the Orca calves was in a house named after Tanni Grey-Thompson.

[Bones McCoy]

Names of different birds of prey.
Murderers I guess - if Pigeon lives matter.


Returning to the author; Dylan Jones.

It's nepo-baby quality work, does wor Liz have a son?

[Andy McDandy]

Apparently not the respected music journalist of that name.