BF2S Forums Where are all the whiny peaceful "Enlightened" European now?

none of those things caused the financial crash or were spurs for austerity. the tories spinning a global financial crisis into a bit of political point-scoring against the previous govt is not exactly unpredictable (it's even less surprising that they, like the republicans, have turned around and let the city/banks off the hook with deregulation). well done for swallowing it whole. you can be opposed to the wars in iraq and afghanistan AND defend the fact that it wasn't new labour that caused a eurozone crisis.

your hatred of brown people, blair, and of course jews seems to paint the world in very stark absolutes. sad!

how surprising that the UN report into mass child poverty and inequality in the UK doesn't mention new labour's recklessness with the economy once. it even states that the UK has a large enough economy and had a good enough treasury budget to navigate the global financial crisis and neoliberal/european strategy of austerity in ways that were far less harmful to society's most impoverished and vulnerable. and yet you'll blame roma gypsies and tony blair. ha ha ha

Last edited by uziq (2019-12-18 04:40:05)

austerity has cost the country about £100bn, at a conservative estimate.

these things are a matter of political will, not good economic house-keeping.

vanity wars in iraq and afghan were huge disgraces, to be sure. but to incur 5x the economic damage to the nation's poorest, whilst giving tax cuts to the rich? quick, blame immigrants some more!

hitler was a vegan, austria have an established pedigree in producing politicians that care more about how their meal was prepared or planting trees than refugees.

something deeply creepy about kurz. expect to hear a lot more from him in coming years.

also, i don't think it has to be pointed out, but the left are way better on green policy in general. they are communitarian, after all. it's kind of depressing that a populist party actually having a green policy is newsworthy, tbh.

Last edited by uziq (2020-01-01 23:47:42)

what's more interesting about the PM is that she's 34 and used to be a cashier. first person in her family to go to university. worked summers in a bakery.

i bet jay is absolutely apoplectic with rage. she's basically AOC all over again.

talented and driven women being elected from completely nondescript backgrounds: see who gets bothered by this. it's always the ones with pretentious quotations in their signatures attesting to their 'liberalism' and 'democratic'' ideals..

Last edited by uziq (2020-01-02 17:29:46)

anyway.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 … SApp_Other

Michael Gove has told businesses that trade with Europe they need to prepare for “significant change” with “inevitable” border checks for “almost everybody” who imports from the EU from next year.

In the first official confirmation that the government is going to impose trade barriers post-Brexit, he warned there would be checks on food and goods of animal origin, plus customs declarations and mandatory safety and security certificates required for all imports.

“You have to accept we will need some friction. We will minimise it but it is an inevitability of our departure,” he told delegates at a Cabinet Office event held in central London on Monday, entitled Preparing Our Border for the Future Relationship.

so gove and johnson, who sold brexit as 'there will be frictionless trade' and 'there will be £350 mill a week more for the NHS', respectively, are now trotting this line.

last week johnson used a major conference to talk about cooperating less with europe, not more.

but it doesn't matter because, in dilbert's words, 'now we have our brexit', and the white little englanders can start getting serious about johnny foreigner!

Populist claptrap turned out to be that? What a surprise.

Fear not, importation of hormone-packed beef, chlorinated chicken dross and toxic herbicides will be entirely frictionless.

It would be interesting to know what was really behind all this:

Johnson's ego

City traders

Trump wanting a trade deal

Russia wanting Britain out of Europe

no mention of how worker's families or loved ones fit in. prettty hard to induce talent from abroad when you have no system in place to accommodate for, you know, their family life.

they're talking about 'skilling up' workers and yet you don't get any points towards your application until you make £23,000.

how many kale pickers make £23k a year? or £26k?

most nurses, carers, primary school/nursery staff, etc, don't make £26k a year. which is pretty funny, putting nurses somewhere beneath 'unskilled labour' in job categorisation.

predictably the CBI are in uproar about it because a bunch of industries are suddenly going to become very, very uncompetitive. english people don't work the sort of jobs that migrant workers do for < £23k a year. no unemployed english person is going to go wipe up geriatrics' shit and piss for the zero-hours contracts/temp work that most migrant carers do now.

Last edited by uziq (2020-02-19 05:45:07)

So much of the country's wealth controlled by some of the richest people here, but yes some people in education aren't paid much because of takeout from middling restaurants like Olive Garden or sports bars with deep fried pickles.

The upper middle class votes for the policies that contribute to wealth inequality. They make up the support base of the Republicans. They largely do this out of selfish reasons. The gulf in wealth and lifestyle between the lower middle class and upper middle class is so wide that the term middle class is probably being abused.

Blaming the rich solely for the mass inequality in this country is as accurate as blaming the Jews for all of our problems. I don't think it helps to pretend that the upper middle class is innocent in all of this. As I said before with other issues in America: Americans are other Americans worst enemy.

I like to talk about Olive Garden takeout because it is a good example of what little the upper middle class would lose if we had a broader social safety net. And it displays how little Americans would cut each other's throats for.

it's true that the upper-middle class are turkeys voting for christmas on that number. but the wealth is trickling up far, far past them. it's that pernicious (and useful) myth sold as aspiration: one day, with the right idea, you can join the millionaires at the yacht club! people will even vote against their own interests in the immediate term to sustain this future hope.

Are you trying to miss my point or are you an Olive garden fan? I picked the Olive Garden for exactly the reason it is deceptively low class. I live in the NYC area. Do you think the Olive Garden is the very best Italian food I can afford?