Inverted

Yes, we should all get bogged down in semantics and apologism for outright incompetents rather than tackle clearly abhorrent statements. There’s nothing more vapid than petty point-scoring, like this “but both-sides”, nit-picking, whataboutism. Brexit was won by lies, or at least - to be polite - arguments based on broad conceptual standpoints that placed material predictions firmly at the rear. Remain attempted to make economic predictions to illustrate Brexit’s dangers - and at best this kind of factual approach makes no impact, and at worst opens them to scrutiny if they aren’t accurate. British liberalism’s great weakness is its obsession with formal precision, and thus its inability to state its case in a way meaningful to the average person. Rees-Mogg intends to paint himself as a patriot, as a man of principle, and as inculpable for any failure of Brexit. Do we refute those positions to the average voter by trying to divine some objective interpretation of his meaningless weaselling attempts, whilst he’s likely moved onto the next lie/obfuscation, or do we refute this charade he puts on by cutting through his smokescreen and asserting the core truth that he’s a morally bankrupt profiteer with no concern for the average person?

When people ask what's wrong with having so few working class people in politics, this is exactly why it's wrong. The Brexit catastrophe has at every step been pushed along by a sector of the political class that has never known material insecurity. Johnson, Gove, Rees-Mogg, Farage et al have never spent a night lying awake, listening to their parents argue over how the bills are going to be paid next month. They don't know what it really means for one twelfth of the GDP to evaporate at once. They might have assets invested, and even make a fortune out of reacting to economic change, or make a bit of a loss, but they don't understand what inflation, for example, feels like to someone trying to do the weekly shop, or handle their gas and electricity bills. This makes it easy for this kind of people to fight a stupid ideological political battle over "sovereignty" and their hatred for foreigners, without any regard for the practicalities - particularly the human cost of their project. When Rees-Mogg said we have to be prepared to suffer for the next 50 years, all he was doing was coming dangerously close to honestly formulating the Brexiteer attitude: that it's purely about theoretical gratification, and that working or vulnerable peoples' livelihoods are wholly expendable.

Just the right-wing being the usual paragons of free speech.

Just popped into say that Uli Hoeness is a fat old rich bigoted cunt and convicted criminal who knows nothing about football. It's a disgrace to a club of Bayern's stature to cling to such a figure.

https://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4581_en.htm The EU's fined Google €4.3 billion for tying Chrome to Android no reducing competition in the internet browser market. I guess this week it's going to be "the EUSSR hates success and leeches off business" as opposed to "the EU is just a tool for international capital and doesn't stick up for the normal person".

Also, considering that the Lib-Dems have doubled down on being the country’s most staunch Remain Party and trying to market themselves as the “real opposition”, it’s pretty astounding that Farron and Cable weren’t even present for the amendment vote that scraped in favour of the Brexiteers. Goes to show that they can talk a good game, but no matter how crucial an issue, and how perfect a chance to make a difference, the Lib Dems will let you down. Always. Astounding that they even have the few constituencies they still do.

I agree that the idealised Labour voter does still exist in large numbers, and you've got to remember that Scotland is part of that "north" too, and my family up to my grandparents would class themselves as diehard Labour types who vote Labour primarily because that's what our "kind" did (my grandad, a beer delivery driver in his day, even has a framed photo on his dining table of him meeting Blair). But it's a dying demographic, both in the literal sense (touch wood for the old man) and also in the sense that many of them have less need now for what the left offers. People in their 50s don't need cheaper housing - they have mortgages paid up already and they'll be damned if the government tries to drive prices down. They don't need rent control. They don't need more graduate-level jobs or apprenticeships. They don't need lowered tuition fees. They don't need the freedom to travel around Europe to work or study. They don't need cheaper public transport, they've mostly got cars or they've got it free. They're getting older, they've not got much more they need out of life or the state, and in their age they grow a bit paranoid or embittered and worry about the stuff they read in the papers, which is primarily immigrants and the EU. Labour it seems to me is stuck between turning back to try and claw back that demographic, or pressing on and trying to position itself as the party of tommorow's "working class", if that even will have any meaning in a decade. In Scotland it's not quite the same as that, but traditional left-wing voters get picked off by the SNP because they're essentially a blank canvas type party which positions itself wherever on the spectrum is liable to attract the most Scottish voters, which right now makes them centre-left.

Universities produce left-wing voters because quite simply most jobs require a university education these days. You can't become a fucking air hostess or a party planner without a degree these days. Right now if you're not in some kind of higher education, you're either gearing up for a life on the dole, or you're one of the lucky group who've managed to get an apprenticeship in a trade, or have a family job lined up for them. This conception people have in the wider world of uni students being some fringe group of elite middle-class ideologues is totally outdated - a uni student is essentially the average prospective entrant into the job market. And the market these days is horrendously competitive, and employment is extremely insecure. It's natural that people in that position support pro-jobs, pro-housing, pro-employee policies, etc. And even more strongly, they'll oppose the loss of workers' protections and the potential loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs that Brexit will cause. The old idea of the working class is outdated because the worker of the future - and by worker I mean even those existing in more precarious financial conditions - will be educated beyond a high-school level.

I don't know what traditional Labour voter means but she's vastly at odds with most Labour voters, party members, and indeed her own constituents, but nonetheless she sticks on a red rosette and jumps on the Labour bandwagon at the right times to get into Parliament, and then instantly pulls a volte-face once she's safeguarded her position and is free to pursue her own demented personal agenda. She's got one of the safest left-wing seats in the country. You could basically put a dog with a rose stuck in its collar up for election, and return a Labour MP, and yet for some reason Labour are giving it to someone who's hell-bent on keeping the Tories in power.

Stuns me that Labour haven't a found a way to jettison bigoted deadweight cunts like Kate Hoey, who are substantially further to the right of most Tories, and who clearly have little interest in opposition. Hoey in particular wouldn't be a jot out of place in the DUP.

Greening' come out in favour of another referendum. There's a part of me that hopes that we might actually somehow get another referendum and that the country might suddenly regain its senses briefly enough to give up on Brexit and cut our losses on this ludicrous project. But there's just so much in the way. May for now insists it's not happening. So either 1: she flip-flops very dramatically, or 2: she is somehow booted out in time for someone amenable to a second referendum to come in (and for now there are not many such people close to major leadership positions). Then, we'd somehow need to set-up a referendum, which means passing the legislation required to do so, which even with a sudden swell of support for ref2 would likely take months. If there has been an election, the timescale is already virtually impossible. Even with the May flop scenario, it's still ludicrously difficult to imagine another ref being planned and completed before Brexit Day. This means we'd need to somehow receive an extension. And I don't even know how the legal or political aspects of that would work, but I assume it'd be difficult, because everything to do with Brexit inevitably is. Finally, assuming the Prime Minister accedes to ref2, that we somehow have or we get enough time to set-up the legal basis for a ref, and then hold it, we don't even know what the question is. Public opinion afaik is pro-ref2 but split on what that means - is it pro or anti-deal, or pro or anti-Brexit? Do we have a 3-way vote for Deal v No Deal v Remain? If it's pro or anti-deal, does rejection mean Hard Brexit or No Brexit? What happens if in a 3-way vote there's a pro-Brexit majority split between 2 options and Remain wins? And if it's a two way vote on Brexit itself, what happens if we've achieved all of these Herculean feats of political and legal wrangling just to have people vote for Brexit again? And ofc all of this has been quietly assuming that were the outcome to be that we agree to give up on Brexit, that the EU would accept it, though I actually am at least confident that they would.

"Chronic Innocence". It's the first book I've tried reading in Danish and I'm struggling to do more than a few pages at once tbh. It's weird how when you're reading a newspaper or a webpage, a lot of reading can seem quite easy since it's a lot of small bits of text. In any case, this is only about 150 pages so I'm hoping it doesn't take me too long.

Just a reminder that Brexit was the result of the establishment media in England falling for the act of lying, fascistic upper-class slime like Farage. That's all there was to it.

I was thinking The Seventh Seal. I've found a streaming service I'm thinking of signing up for that includes Criterion's whole range of films, so over the summer I can hopefully watch a lot more films like Persona that I've always been meaning to.

Persona - 8.5/10 Not sure I entirely understood what it was really about but it looked amazing stylistically and the two lead actresses are amazing. Not like anything I've seen before and definitely think I'll watch another Bergman film.

Alexa, show me America in two images.

Yeah it's basically pointless unless you plan on going there. It has some use as a bridge into understanding a bit of Swedish and Norwegian (and written Norwegian is almost identical to written Danish) but if that was all you were interested in, then it would probably better to start with Swedish. It's quite easy to start reading with a little practice as the grammar is not far from English, and there are a lot of words connected to the English equivalent. If you can read another Germanic language then it's even easier to guess the meaning of most words you come across. The pronunciation is extremely difficult for English speakers to get their heads around though, and it takes a lot of listening to even start picking out a phrase here and there, but my girlfriend sometimes humours me by suddenly saying something in Danish to help me practise.

Nope, I'm just a Scot who lived there for a year. My girlfriend is a Dane, so I'm trying to improve my Danish for when I go over to meet her family.

First thing I've read about the Congo Free State but I've found the book a really accessible and attention-grabbing read so far.

May’s acceptance letter does also. Fairly scathing tone considering the limits of what you can say in such a letter.

I reckon you're the type that it strikes a nerve with.

Keir Starmer, hopefully.

Had already read Animal Farm, 1984, and some of his short writings but I really had forgot how amazing a writer Orwell was. It’s presumably made-up or embellished at parts but it’s still an incredible read about poverty in the 1920s. The way he writes about homeless people and other people at the bottom of society with such earnestness, totally without patronisation, given his upbringing and education is amazing. I started it on the train to Newcastle and by the time I had got off the return train back in Edinburgh with my girlfriend I was basically halfway through the 200-odd pages.

If I had got my uni building in the background it would have been a complete Harry Potter rip-off.