EU referendum are you in or out

[Dio]

I don't have any good answers, but I am certainly not going to object when people who say racist things are arrested for it.

[Cloudane]

Well I never. No, no, no, no

[Harlequin]

As last time, more votes for a second referendum than any other option but vociferously opposed by others.

[(o)(o)]

General Election increasingly likely, Labour now flying past the Tories in the polls and Tory inner cabinet talking of annihilation at the booths and JC holding the keys to No 10 for a decade. There will be much rejoicing if it comes to pass and we see the pox infested Tory and Libdem and TInGe parties being consigned to the dustbin of self serving sewage, where they belong..

Happy Days

[tufty]

I don't really know the answer, I just don't think it's a problem that can be resolved with "add more censorship and shut more stuff down"

No, it can't be resolved with censorship and shutting down, at least not in the virtual world. As you say , that will only drive it further underground, further radicalise, further bolster the idea that they are being repressed. Unfortunately, it's been my limited experience that attempts to engage simply don't work.

As an example, on another (largely american) forum that I frequent, there is one member who is a radicalised trump supporter. He's been around since the start, and on everything apart from politics, he's, dare I say it, "aligned" with the general consensus of opinion, and capable of a accepting dissenting views. However, when it comes to Trump, everything that comes from the orange shitgibbon is gh0d's own truth, and everything else is fake news being spread by "leftists". All muslims are bloodthirsty murderers and deserve to be shot. Mexicans likewise. Trump never supported the alt-right. All "leftists" are violent criminals. Global warming is a "leftist" lie. Everything in the media (MSM) is a pile of "leftist" fake news. He doesn't read Breitbart or listen to Alex Jones, but every link he proposes links back to Breitbart or Alex Jones (or AmericanThinker). Stuff Trump does which is clearly wrong is somehow the fault of Obama or Hillary. He's a racist, anti-semite, woman hating moron. We've been "engaging" they guy since before Trump got elected, but he's only got worse.

I've come across this in a few places, wth the same results (or worse, when there's a "nest" of them). I'm not sure you can do anything about them online. But when it spills over into real life, they need to be made aware that it's not acceptable, stat.

[tufty]

Happy Days :D

Not really. If Labour take power now, *they* will be responsible for the inevitable shitshow of whatever Brexit ends up happening. JC in Downing Street for 10 years? I don't give him 10 months post Brexit.

[Dio]

Well I never. No, no, no, no

Middle panel, left side.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng ... nt-players

Free speech in action!

[Rhythm]

Bah, last night was another fuckfest (and not in the good way). Genuinely becoming resigned to "No Deal" being the actual result in a few days time.

Fuck hoping for a General Election. Unless anyone campaigns on a platform of sorting the wider problems in British "democracy" out then I'm not fucking interested. I've watched the country get fucked by Tories all my life whilst Labour have done interim bumming... they both need ousting, stat. We need proper, policy-led proportional representation from parties who'll think longer than just getting re-elected next election

[tufty]

Yep, but what we'll get is Farage's new crew.

[gilesgoat]

Yep, but what we'll get is Farage's new crew.

Which is more or less precisely what happened in Italy when people got fed up of Berlusconi, with the result that now we have Lega with Salvini ( almost worse than Farage ) and M5S with Grillo the combination of which is worse than tory+labour with the prime minister saying things like - you can find them in his speeches :

".. if you don't like what I do/say, take a boat, the world is full of places go somewhere else" .. or "it's ok those migrants die, that will make them stop trying to come here" or "women should stay home and make babies" or "we should admire/be closer to Putin" .. and the list of crap goes on and on and on ...

It seems a "no win scenario", whoever comes next seems to be worse than the previous .. what happened to all "the good politics/ideas that were ??" ?????

[Rhythm]

Yep, but what we'll get is Farage's new crew.

Yep. Fact is that a 2 party system like this will never be convinced/motivated to help push for anything else - hence why we saw such a unified resistance to AV. But people will be convinced that it's the people, not the system, that's actually at fault

[gilesgoat]

Yep, but what we'll get is Farage's new crew.

Yep. Fact is that a 2 party system like this will never be convinced/motivated to help push for anything else - hence why we saw such a unified resistance to AV. But people will be convinced that it's the people, not the system, that's actually at fault

<attempted hystorical analysis>

In Italy, for quite many years we had '2 powerful contrasting forces' that were "Christian Democratics" and "Communist Party" with "other forces" like "Socialists", "Radicals" and some others.

Those were "strong parties with strong ideas/history" literally "historical parties" going back all the way before/during/after WW1/WW2 with ideas about society/economy/etc.

They did their thing .. until things started to get really "stale", society changes, things changes in a way "they were not up to the job" until corruption and all the rest put people in a feeling of "nothing changes, nothing improves, they are all always the same".

People wanted CHANGES, radical strong changes.

When Lega Nord came up "they were all laughed up they were a bunch of nutters" doing things like "going and collect the holy water of the river", "re-enacting dubitious historical moments" .. they were the kind of stuff like "we are here to run a new crushade to re-gain the UK empire from the foreings" dressing up in medieval costumes ... ( they really did things like those ).

But they evolved .. riding on "a wave of bad resentments/things that were silently and less silently growing up" "because some things/problems/stuff never been touched/changed" they managed to tap into "the right people with the wrong feelings" and turns out "they were more many than expected".

But the thing is "the promised and looked to be something totally different than the current establishment" .. and that's the whole point "people were ultra tired to see the same people at power and things going always the same - nowhere".

Then came Berlusconi .. "big thing about Berlusconi" was he's not a politician, he's a businessman ( sound familiar ? ) again "he will do different things than the others" .. and in part he DID !! Mostly for his own personal gain but he actually did some good stuff that the previous ones never did.

So in the end it seems especially when you have ONLY "two forces" things eventually get really stale and "nowhere" and people want "something different give me anything different as long as something new happens/change".

The risk is "yes it will change" but "nobody said it's going to be really that much better" OR at it usually happens, in Italy at least "you get one new really good things and 10 other really new worse things"

The result overall is that sooner or later we find again in the situation "we don't know any more who/what to vote for" and "they ( the parties you could vote for ) are all crap" .. it's always and always trying to pick up "the least worse of all the bad options"

So yeah, Tories and Labour and some things of the system "should go" but replaced by what/who ?

Not Farage please .. not him .. let's maybe vote Green or something else.

But yeah it would appear that when you have only 2 things to choose from it's not good enough to make anything work, 2 is not a good number.

</attempted hystorical analysis>

[Cloudane]

Yep still quite convinced we'll get no deal. We'll see.

I've come across this in a few places, wth the same results (or worse, when there's a "nest" of them). I'm not sure you can do anything about them online. But when it spills over into real life, they need to be made aware that it's not acceptable, stat.

Yeah I see those people a lot online who have invented "The Leftists" as a scapegoat for everything. Sadly I do know one IRL. There's one pub he refuses to go in because they rebranded the disabled loo as transgender.

[Rhythm]

I didn't think I knew any IRL (although there are a few estranged friends I hear about through the ex's Facebook account). My (ex) in-laws voted Leave but it turned out it was purely because they believed the bus lie, thought it would be remiss to not vote for more NHS money.

All this changed at the weekend though, when my local Parkrun got cancelled because travellers had set up near one of the car parks. Not only did Parkrun feel it was OK to admit why they cancelled the event, but the responses online to the announcement were fucking shocking. Turns out certain types of racism and dogma are entirely OK

[tufty]

Gyppos? There's been a spate of that over here, too, with attacks on "roms" in Paris based on a persistent rumour (via facebook, obvs) that they had been kidnapping children. Because that's a thing.