New Testingstan

pretty great, actually!

which side had your support?

It was a very hard choice, but eventually I said fuck it & voted Leave.
It's so far more or less having my desired outcome i.e. destabilising the global economy. If Comrade Jeremy can weather the upcoming leadership challenge & subsequently purges the red tories from the parliamentary labour party, we may even end up with a pro-worker anti-austerity party in charge of the country & free of the neoliberal EU agenda. May even lead to the EU entirely disintegrating, which would be nice.

Ideally the whole thing would have kicked off with the UK radical left in a better state, but this was as once-in-a-lifetime chance, so.
Once everyone stops crying about miblennials vs babby boombers & how we should ignore democracy because this time it didn't go the way they wanted or whatever we can hopefully get about building something substantial. There's certainly a lot of potential, if we can get the white working class focused on our real enemies rather than the immigrants who should be seen as natural allies.

Chaos is a ladder, basically

The idea that Jeremy Corbyn is going to make it out unscathed and start some kind of revolution is absurd. His MPs hate him.

As is the idea that destabilising the global economy is somehow a good thing.

Nor do I see how this result which will initially throw power to the far right is going to lead the left, Unless the theory is we;ll get so sick of the tories that we'll go labour in a landslide. But if Scotland leaves us that'll be a long time coming because even at their height a lot of labour mps came from there.

Well, i just gotta say I'm now patiently waiting for the UK to completely disintegrate when Scotland becomes independant, and Northern Ireland chooses to be re-unified with the Republic of Ireland.

It'd be poetic justice.

Yeah it's going to be a real barrel of laughs /sarcasm

Look, if the great people of the united kingdoms democratically decided to commit national suicide, who am I, a french citizen, to contest their rights to it?

After all, wasn't this whole fuss started over a question of national sovereignty?

by fucking morons

The English oppressed my ancestors so I'm glad that they're going to collectively suffer as their economy slides into the toilet as a result of this. As a bonus, it means that Scotland and possibly even Bad Ireland will get their independence from the UK after all. Which is also good. Kind of sucks for all the black people and immigrants who will suffer because of the tidal wave of racism and xenophobia, but you can't make an omelet without ruining millions of lives.

On a related note, the master of modern social commentary has already weighed in on the subject.

And in more important news, the crazy woman elected in Taiwan province has doubled down on her lunatic policy of separatism and provocation by not admitting that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China. The government has cut off all communication with her illegal regime as a result.

When she was first 'elected' a mainland newspaper ran an editorial observing that she as a 59 year old woman with no husband or children she was erratic and devoid of feelings of love and empathy. Sad to see that is being borne out in practice.

I don't know if Leave is the right choice. But to me it sounds like you're in a damned if you do, damned if you don't sort of predicament with regards to staying/leaving.

That said, most of the leave arguments that I've been exposed to were flat-out bullshit.

Stofsk wrote:I don't know if Leave is the right choice. But to me it sounds like you're in a damned if you do, damned if you don't sort of predicament with regards to staying/leaving.

That said, most of the leave arguments that I've been exposed to were flat-out bullshit.

Leave is objectively not the right choice. The Leave campaign consisted almost entirely of promises that were said in advance to be false and have been proven to be exaggerations at best and outright lies at worst.

Also the economy is taking hard, there's no plan for what to do now and the best the UK can hope for is to crawl back into the trade zone except this time without their massive memberhsip fee discount.

It's a clusterfuck all round. I'm genuinely hoping Scotland goes through with their plan and leave the UK for the EU.

While I can;t blame them for wanting to. I'm pretty sure it makes even less sense for them now oil prices aren't so high.

Bounty wrote:

Stofsk wrote:I don't know if Leave is the right choice. But to me it sounds like you're in a damned if you do, damned if you don't sort of predicament with regards to staying/leaving.

That said, most of the leave arguments that I've been exposed to were flat-out bullshit.

Leave is objectively not the right choice. The Leave campaign consisted almost entirely of promises that were said in advance to be false and have been proven to be exaggerations at best and outright lies at worst.

Also the economy is taking hard, there's no plan for what to do now and the best the UK can hope for is to crawl back into the trade zone except this time without their massive memberhsip fee discount.

Yes, but my point is: many of the leave voters have been left behind by neoliberal economics. So the economy tanking hard means very little when you don't even have a place at the table, which a lot of people in England and Wales who don't live in London have felt.

Leaving won't help them, but staying hasn't helped them either yet so far, and the remain camp dropped the ball on convincing them otherwise.

It's a clusterfuck all round. I'm genuinely hoping Scotland goes through with their plan and leave the UK for the EU.

I agree it's a clusterfuck. Though I find it ironic that people are talking about the leave voters being motivated by nationalism and how this is bad, and in the same breath going on about how Scottish nationalism is ok if it leads to them leaving another union.

When we look back on this, I'm fairly sure we're going to use the phrase "penny-wise, pound-foolish".

The Spartan wrote:When we look back on this, I'm fairly sure we're going to use the phrase "penny-wise, pound-foolish".

I agree it's a clusterfuck. Though I find it ironic that people are talking about the leave voters being motivated by nationalism and how this is bad, and in the same breath going on about how Scottish nationalism is ok if it leads to them leaving another union.

It's a funny twist. When Scotland voted for independence the first time, many people - me included - were against it because it would push them out of the EU. Their relationship to the UK was less of an issue than them isolating themselves from the Union.

Now, though, they are out against their will and want independence precisely because they don't want to leave the EU.

While I do acknowledge that the Brexit was a horrible idea that will cause social and economic havok worldwide, I will admit that the part of me who is descended from Irish rebels, criminals, and terrorists would get some amount of perverse pleasure if the Leave campaign gets hoisted by their own petard. I know my grandmother in particular, were she still alive, would probably have gotten a lethal dose of schadenfreude if everything goes to Hell and Northern Ireland decides to reunite with the southern counties (or, as she would put it, the "Occupied territories" and the "Free State", respectively), particularly since unlike the Scottish push for independence, the idea of Irish reunification wasn't on anyone's radar until this whole debacle started.

Yeah I think Brexit will mean the end of the UK as we know it, and boy I'm just soooo cut up about that let me tell you

I think though this might also hurt the EU. If I've appeared to have been sympathetic to Brexit (not really here but I've definitely talked about this on facebook with guys like Bounty) it's only because I think the EU needs to have a good hard long look at itself and what it stands for, and I think in the wake of Britain potentially leaving... they won't be introspective. So far even it seems like the EU is encouraging the UK to leave as quickly as possible. So much for solidarity I suppose.

And it's because... the quick and unstructured leave by Britain will be disastrous for Britain and the EU is riding on a disastrous departure. If Britain leaves and is actually successful and its economy recovers, that looks bad for the EU, and a few other countries who are on the borderline might tip over and leave.

I have now read Craig Schaefer's entire catalog. Kindle Unlimited is a wonderful thing. In some ways I think I actually like his straight fantasy series more than his two urban fantasy series. I really should have tried it sooner.

Stofsk wrote:Yeah I think Brexit will mean the end of the UK as we know it, and boy I'm just soooo cut up about that let me tell you

I think though this might also hurt the EU. If I've appeared to have been sympathetic to Brexit (not really here but I've definitely talked about this on facebook with guys like Bounty) it's only because I think the EU needs to have a good hard long look at itself and what it stands for, and I think in the wake of Britain potentially leaving... they won't be introspective. So far even it seems like the EU is encouraging the UK to leave as quickly as possible. So much for solidarity I suppose.

And it's because... the quick and unstructured leave by Britain will be disastrous for Britain and the EU is riding on a disastrous departure. If Britain leaves and is actually successful and its economy recovers, that looks bad for the EU, and a few other countries who are on the borderline might tip over and leave.

Though I can understand the desire of the EU that if the UK is going to leave, then they should do it quickly. No one is going to want to invest in either the UK or the EU so long as the specifics of the Brexit are up in the air. The more Britain hems and haws over it, the more it will slow things to a crawl. They basically want Britain to shit or get off the pot. Either invoke Article 50 now and start the Brexit negotiations, or Parliament will need to put its foot down and declare that there was not enough of a mandate to leave. The problem is that it doesn't appear that any of the MPs have the courage to do either, since by all appearances it looks like both options are tantamount to political suicide.

From what I gathered it seems the Tories are betting on electing a Dark Horse candidate that will go through with the Leave option. One who has not much to lose apparently (that "New Iron Lady" gal).

Did you know that you can be charged with flag desecration in Louisiana for burning a Confederate flag?

And in totally unrelated news, the Baton Rouge police just murdered a black guy.

Facebook's trending stories sidebar was weaving a fucking narrative yesterday morning.

CAPT Bud Roberts from JAG was on the NCIS season premier last night.

That makes me very happy.