A Little Bit of Politics ...........

[mezzaninedoor]

The PM has got to go cross party to sort this out.
She can't keep Corbyn outside the tent in order to sort this out.
She will also need to extend article 50 by 3 months Im guessing.

[MyNameIsTerry]

When she mentioned A50 extension for a short period the EU stated it would be 12 months each time to cover financial years. Seems fair enough to me otherwise they would be stuck in our ridiculous "another 2 weeks should do it guv" scenario.

Way to late for cross party stuff. The MP's who said it should be cross party from the beginning were right at the time although I bet those meetings would have needed a strong chairman and lots of gavels would have been gone through

[mezzaninedoor]

stream of conciousness and partly from reading the book 'Factfulness'

In a perfect fact driven world journalists would always present the News in a completely accurate way and theyd give us plenty of relevant context to ensure that the News has the impact and heft it requires. We live in the real world though where journalists are in the job of attracting readers & viewers, we as readers love things to be simple, not complex, also we seem to quite like drama. As a result the worldview we have is more often than not skewed - a poor representation of what the worlds really like. At the heart of our messed up world views seem to be the belief that things are far worse than they have ever been, at least that’s what it feels like sometimes. Regarding global warming Im sure theres some truth to that but some things couldn’t be further from the truth. There are far less people living in poverty than ever before across the world which makes the use of food banks in the UK seem ridiculous as a country that’s in the G7 of Nations. That’s probably amazing as 200 years ago 85 percent of the world was living in poverty, we’ve come a long way, that doesn’t mean we stop addressing the areas where poverty is still a horrible trap that people fall into.

People are living longer the world over, is that a good or bad thing? Far less countries are ruled over by sexist and oppressive patriarchies, the world isn’t really divided by east & west anymore, natural disasters are less deadly than they have ever been. I guess if you are in the eye of the storm the general picture isn’t really a salve for you though. I guess my takeaway at the moment is that the world is full of have & have nots & that is subjective and perhaps drives some of the behaviours we see.

[MyNameIsTerry]

That's the important point though isn't it, Tony? Who is in the eye of the storm and who is melodramatic. We have people saying a small % using food banks makes us third world. I wonder if people from poor countries would laugh or cry at that nonsense?

What was that BBC article not long ago, something about the worst pay rises since Napoleonic times? Things are so bad all the kids with the nice clothes and choccie bars are worse off than my parents & grandparents who had sod all. I often wonder whether they base this poorness on middle class comparisons because anyone with any remote awareness of the past knows just how poor poor actually was.

Human beings. Let the machines or the ants report on the news and we will get it how it is. It's full of bias due to the owner, the business statement of purpose, even the individuals.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Tony, did that book mention anything about how the media seem to flit from story to story?

Given todays events that probably mean the Saltire has gone to half mast I was wondering what happened to all those MeToo Parliament cases? Not long ago we had a resurgence when the Labour ones came out but it just seems to drift away for nothing to be heard.

It's like how a mass shooting in the US dominates our news for days and then we never here of it again. We don't get follow up. Our US members must see such cases for ages and get follow up but our news just seem to forget about them.

[mezzaninedoor]

Terry, it didnt really mention the medias fleeting interest in story or narrative.

Its interesting as the TV media rarely seems to get under the nails of a political story these days and Panorama exposes etc seem rarely to look at politics like they used to. It seems we have the worst bunch of politicians in generations and yet they are under less of a microscope than ever

Its especially odd that politics doesn't get the analysis it should at the moment, bearing in mind that geopolitically there is a lot to wonder/worry about dependant on your political persuasion. A lot of people would say that NATO, EU, G-20, G-7, WTO, US-China, Russia-West are all potentially going in the wrong directions to salve the problems of the World economically. Africa though richer than its ever been is still denied equal footing on the world stage.

Cyber, 2019 is expected to be the year that the USA & the West start to retaliate to the Chinese & Russian et al Cyber threats, what might this mean to any integrity that the West wants to have when it looks like under the covers the West will start to exploit the tools that other nations do already with Cyber. Will Russia and the West contest Cyber battling over the Ukraine elections in March for example. Ukraine feels like a blue touch paperin world relations.

The EU has to deal with populism and nationalism, sometimes the man in the street cant see the difference between patriotism and nationalism, I for example feel Im a UK patriot but Im not a Nationalist. It feels like the nationalists/populists will score victories across the EU & possibly a No Deal Brexit in the UK in the coming months and this will mean a torrid political time for Europe.

I dont have any answers but I have lots of questions and though I read around lots of stuff I dont find that the Main Stream Media or the non Main Stream Media are providing the analysis that I need these days. Theres huge gaps in the political narrative at the moment across the world.

& all the above is without understanding where Syria, Yemen, non EU Migration will take the World in 2019

[jray23]

It's like how a mass shooting in the US dominates our news for days and then we never here of it again. We don't get follow up. Our US members must see such cases for ages and get follow up but our news just seem to forget about them.

Nope, it's the same here too. It's an endless cycle of hype and emotion-driven broadcast, every few days is a new topic hit on over and over again. And as you say, instead of using that time to really dive deep into complex situations, it all just focuses on surface-level headlines designed specifically to pit one side against the other. It's quite sickening really.

It's quite predictable, even. This weekend it's about the (temporary for now) end of the US shutdown, by mid-week next week I guarantee it will be on to something else, if not a news event like a big mass shooting (since there's small ones every day here) then it will be about some new political or social squabble, perhaps Trump will call California socialist or a new study will unveil that immigrants get in more car accidents than natural citizens, and everyone will weigh in, first the pundits, then after the politicians see the reaction they weigh in, and in a few days some actors and singers will post crying on Instagram that it's a horrific story as if they knew anything about it in the first place. If it's especially marketed as "us vs them" there will be angry people holding signs outside and yelling a lot. Then the other side will say they were paid to do so by their opposing side. Everyday people will post on Facebook that they either support or hate the topic, and feel like they changed the world somehow, even though half of them don't vote and 90% of the half that do vote can't even write three logical paragraphs explaining their political views. Then rinse and repeat the next week all over again.

It's not even just in the Trump-era, it's been like this for a solid 10-15 years at least.

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[MyNameIsTerry]

The sewer continues to breed rats:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknew...cid=spartanntp

A former whip. But then we've seen the behaviour of whips recently with their dirty tricks when we saw that nonsense list of sexual offences they compiled to blackmail MP's into doing what they want...sorry, persuade. Given this MP's opinion of the law it's easy to see how the whips may be quite vile unscrupulous people.

So, expelled by Labour. 1922 Committee I'm guessing. Hold a by-election so we can boot her arse out and strip that pay. Or do what any employee would and give her a proper sack where you stop being paid for the job you aren't even doing...because you are in jail. I wonder, if she decided to run as an independent, whether she would have her team in the next cell with full broadband and phones rather than someone having to smuggle one up in their backside?

You have to despair at Westminster.

Good to see a judge apply a custodial sentence in this case though, not only a MP but a solicitor too. Hopefully they will look to her professional memberships next. Plenty of lag looking for bent solicitors about though so she will be ok.

[Lola-Lee]

That car! doesn’t look like it would go very fast.You name it Terry I have seen it all when it comes to what people stick up their asses while visiting inmates.

[MyNameIsTerry]

That car! doesn’t look like it would go very fast.You name it Terry I have seen it all when it comes to what people stick up their asses while visiting inmates.

Yeah, but has anyone ever tried to smuggle in a load of election campaign stickers up their bum? I bet you have seen it all. I used to work in the mobile phone industry when I was young and saw some pretty shit phones...but nothing like the shit phones you see /asking "does it come with a plug" means a whole different thing in your line of work It is a testament to the quality of them though and they should use it on big posters in their ad campaigns. "The new iPhone. So tough you can carry it around up your bum and still get a signal afterwards

Perhaps she supped it up with a V8?