Brexit mega thread part 6: Invasion and Evasion

[Opal8]

New thread

I've been watching The West Wing. On DVD. Borrowed from the library.
I'm soooo last century.

All those men in baggy chinos and crisp, yet floaty, white shirts, though... And all that hair.
Makes such a nice change from Putin/BJ/Truss/Patel/most of life right now.

Yeah me neither - Succession is basically a bunch of rich white men talking about money.

I had the same problem with Succession, it's good but the characters are all arseholes, and after a couple of episodes I get fed up of watching them and give up for a few weeks.

@Peregrina

So much so that it's impossible to avoid the conclusion it was deliberate. Maybe a conscious "if we can't have it, nobody can sort of notion ?^

In many cases not so much deliberate but showing a profound disrespect for the countries which had been colonised. My primary schooldays had a lot of Empire in them, with the subtext - look how we civilised the savages - nothing about any culture or learning they may have had for centuries before the Europeans came.

Oddly enough one of the earliest books I remember reading (so 1950-something) was a story set among the (then so called) Marsh Dyaks of Borneo which was sympathetic and positive about their culture and how they lived at one with and respected their environment, and their courage and bravery. Of course the actual protagonists were white children, but the tone set it apart. The British children learned from the Dyaks rather than the other way round.

@HappyWinter

I had the same problem with Succession, it's good but the characters are all arseholes, and after a couple of episodes I get fed up of watching them and give up for a few weeks.

I think the problem is less that they’re arseholes - that worked ok for Godfather, Peaky Blinders, Tarantino, Macbeth - it’s that they’re boring arseholes.

Love the west wing (ds2 may be named after a character...)
But yeah, it's dated somewhat
I used to love the thick of it - but no need for fuctional political parody these days...

Yeah...
Just yawnsome

They are boring, it gets tedious watching them argue about money and power. I'm willing them to escape their pointless existences. It is well made but I can't get into it.

You couldn't make The Thick of It now .

Yesterday's "You and Yours" programme? any idea where it was in the show

My bad - it was an interview in the following program 'World at one' 28 minutes in.

Just as a follow-up to my remarks about E. Europeans having "living memory" of Russian actions and few illusions about them, there's an article in Le Monde today by a Slovak writer.
You can run it through DeepL, but this is my rough and ready translation of one paragraph:

We Slovaks know exactly what it means to be liberated by our Slav brothers, the Russians. They came to save us from imperialism in 1968, when we naïvely believed that we could decide on the fate of our country. There followed two decades of occupation. Some of us were shot although we were putting up no resistance. For that is our age-old national survival strategy - we do not fight, you do not have to kill to enslave us. The Russians killed us, just on principle. For what would an occupation be without murders?
www.lemonde.fr/livres/article/2022/03/10/arpad-soltesz-nous-autres-slovaques-nous-savons-exactement-ce-que-cela-signifie-d-etre-liberes-par-nos-freres-slaves-russes_6116929_3260.html

That reminds me of the time when I was young I asked a mini cab driver if he was Russian and he said ‘No Polish’. I said, ‘oh I was close’. Which triggered a strong anti-Russian tirade: ‘Nie Poland is NOT close to Russia! We are a strong independent country, the Russians are DUPKI (arseholes) we will NEVER be RUSSIA!!’

🤭

@TatianaBis

That reminds me of the time when I was young I asked a mini cab driver if he was Russian and he said ‘No Polish’. I said, ‘oh I was close’. Which triggered a strong anti-Russian tirade: ‘Nie Poland is NOT close to Russia! We are a strong independent country, the Russians are DUPKI (arseholes) we will NEVER be RUSSIA!!’

🤭

A Polish friend of the family (who escaped Poland in 1989 to Canada via the UK, hence our knowing him) got really agitated when my DF explained to an Italian friend that in Poland he used to drive lorries.

(The Italian for lorry driver is "camionista")

*NO, NO, NO COMMUNIST"

(Poles and Italians tend to have a Catholicky thing going on. Along with the Irish ...)

@FrankieStein403

>Yesterday's "You and Yours" programme? any idea where it was in the show

My bad - it was an interview in the following program 'World at one' 28 minutes in.

thanks Frankie

@DGRossetti 😂

Petrol at supermarket gone up by 5 pence to 159.9, diesel is now 164.9 and that is the cheapest in our area.

Unleaded up £0.8p per litre since Monday

There were queues so I am wondering if the price is going up tomorrow.
My sister told me Holland is cutting excise duty on fuel and VAT on energy from April.

Also got the new council tax bill. I bumped into the postwoman on my way out and she handed my the envelope with a 'sorry, more bad news'

Yeah here too.
3% increase

Two Scottish men rescued people trying to escape Ukraine. One of them was an Irish medical student -
www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2022/0311/1285734-racheal-diyaolu/

Nearest fuel jumped overnight from £1.69 for diesel to £1.79.

Supermarkets still the best bet but the one I just went to was out of diesel. I shudder to think what I'll be paying when it comes time to pick DD2 up from Plymouth for Easter.

Big jump in council tax here too, there's a lot of anger because we've been lumped in with Bury St Edmunds. And all the investment is going there whilst our patch gets nil.

Ours mostly gone on the so called local "Community hub"

What a Vanity project that is

So, a Russian billionaire, founded a founded a pro-Brexshit think tank that helped de Spaffle and Gove lobby for Brexshit, and then turned out to be a suspected Russian spy (suspected by Tory MPs no less), with money laundering links.

Tell me again about this "democratic" mandate...

Tell me again about this "democratic" mandate...
So why isn't Gove and Spaffle's behaviour regarded as treason?

Although the Brexiter argument will be that the mandate for the hard Brexit came from Johnson winning the 2019 election.

Sky is reporting that No 10 stopped Patel's proposal for more humanitarian route to let Ukranians come to the UK

news.sky.com/story/ukraine-war-number-10-put-brakes-on-home-office-plans-for-more-generous-refugee-offer-sky-news-understands-12563556