Never a bad time for a despatch from Mr. Tony Jay:
The Brexception that obeys no rules
I’ve said this before and I’ll no doubt say it again at exhaustive – and exhausting – length via a voluminous geyser of made-up words verticastically velocitated from my dangerously bulging verbumlocium, but every day it gets just a little bit harder to find the requisite testicular fortitude to write about the blood-drenched bowel-movement that is the Conservative Government of Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.
Not because it isn’t a proto-fascist regime that merges shameless greed with the kind of brazen incompetence that fertilised British military graveyards for centuries, because it is, and not because it isn’t staffed by classless morality voids hosting the cold, dead hearts of fairground lifers, because it’s that as well, and not because it isn’t funded by people whose major qualifications are bringing to the table first-hand experience of installing repressive crime syndicates at the top of collapsing nation-states plus a gajillion roubles in need of laundering, because it’s definitely that too, and saying so frequently and loudly is both honest and good for my mental health. No, it’s because every single passing moment seems to bazooka yet another great steaming log of barefaced bastardy right into the collective face of a dazed and confused populace. There’s just so much of it, and we’re not talking small portions here. Today’s United Kingdom is the 1950’s Roadside Diner of faecal feastery, where all the plates are hubcap sized, no one leaves without polishing off a jumbo-sized ‘chocolate’ milkshake, and your place in the centre booth is reserved for every single one of the early-riser, morning, mid-morning, elevenses, mid-day, brunch, lunch, matinee, post-matinee, dinner, late dinner, Mediterranean dinner, evening meal, supper and late-night bargain bucket servings. There’s literally no time to pause for breath and give anything they do the furious dismemberment it deserves because whenever you try, oh look, here comes another facecake of cynical cruelty booming down the chute and it simply … does… not… stop.
For example.
We recently had the annual Tory Party Conference, which was held, in a fairly deliberate trolling of the city’s Labour voting majority, in sunny Manchester (that’s funny, BTW) and it was, as usual, a dreary montage of boosterish mouth-flappers sprinkling culture-war chum all over their paeans to God, Queen and Country in front of mostly empty conference rooms while the vast majority of delegates were gainfully employed elsewhere snorting lines of uncut Antiguan Boom-Boom Powder off the arses of ZHC rent-boys and betting wads of public cash on the results of pit-fights between starving dogs and handcuffed Union organisers. Just an average week on the jolly for the Natural Party of Government, nothing out of the ordinary or vaguely troubling to a complicit News Media still coming down from the addictive sugar-high of the previous week’s Labour Party Conference. In advance of that gathering the haunted ventriloquist’s puppet and short-term seat-warmer known as Sir Keir ‘Is there anybody there?’ Starmer and his backroom team of overcaffeinated twitter trolls had trailed it to the Press as a make-or-break opportunity for the charisma-sink that walks like a man to finally introduce himself and his inspiring political vision to the Great British Public, but instead had mismanaged a cringemakingly inept power-play that shone a merciless spotlight on how crap they are at basic politics, then alternated between semaphoring their pathological hatred of anyone who’d actually want to be a member of the yucky old Labour Party (look at us,
RupertMister Murdoch, Sir, we don’t like dirty lefties either) with mind-numbingly boring speeches cribbed directly from Federation of British Industry press releases circa 1995. All that didn’t really matter, though, because even before Labour’s deputy-leader stood up at a fringe event and drunkenly – but accurately – called the Tory Party ‘scum’ (sales of fainting couches, clutchable pearl necklaces and daggers for back-specific stabbing quadrupled in an instant) and one of Britain’s oldest and traditionally Labour-supporting Unions disaffiliated itself from the Party in disgust at its uncoordinated lunge to the Right (because nothing breeds Unity like witch-hunts and factional purging, amirite?) the News Media already had their “Labour in Disarray” stories typed up and headed to the printers, leaving plenty of time for them to concentrate on their day job of parsing Tory Party statements for signs and portents that might hint at the ups and the downs at Clown Prince Flobalob’s Unseelie Court of Woe.It’s a very different story when they write about the Tories. Their Conferences are much more like televised rallies or communal cross-burnings, scripted right down to the pauses for electronic applause and devoid of even the illusion of democratic input, which is just how the access journalists like it. No mussyfussy swellings of dissent to be navigated through here, just staged backslapping and lines of meaningless fluff the pundits back at the studio can cherry-pick from to pretend that this time the Nasty Party are genuinely serious about whatever populist nonsense they’re blathering on about today. While write-ups of Labour Conferences read like a mean Auntie Karen phoning in an anonymous complaint to the cops about ‘those people’ down the street, traditional reporting on Tory Conferences resembles nothing so much as Politico meets The Island of Doctor Moreau. Yes, they may arguably be a collection of horrific man-beast hybrids driven by unnatural lusts and a hunger for man-flesh, but can’t we just put that to one side for a moment and recognise how their impressive message discipline gives them an advantage in the War of Optics?
Everything about the Tories is filmed through a lubed-up lens that allows their Infotainer groupies to maintain a comfortable distance from the sharper edges of harsh reality. No context, no residual memory of things that happened a day, a week, a month or a year ago, instead everything a Tory says is treated as functionally ex nihil, a discrete bubble of words and themes floating autonomously above the mundane world it’s supposed to reference, existing safely outside of the normal channels of cause and effect and vanishing noiselessly into the ether when its mayfly utility comes to an end. Political reporting in this country is basically like a drugged up 60s cult gathering held after hours in a Soho nightclub, replete with bonged-out middle-class journalists sprawled limblessly over patchouli-scented beanbags nodding away at the Enlightened One’s stream of faux-profound absurdities, only occasionally emitting a muffled “Far out, man” as their tiny minds are blown to kaleidoscopic smithereens by the dichotomy of contradictory platitudes but somehow barely cognizant of their raised backsides being rhythmically slapped by the metronomic thrusts of kaftan-wearing men with neat moustaches and unsuspecting wives at home.
Anyway, wandering off the point there.
The Tory Conference concluded with Slobberty Flobberty himself gurning and harumpetyrumping his way through a third-rate stand-up set that had even reliably pro-Tory commentators rolling their eyes at how lazy and policy-lite it was. We’re in the middle of a global pandemic that is killing hundreds of people a week, shop shelves are randomly bare because supply chains are breaking down, the NHS is already in crisis mode, the Government’s signature ‘achievement’ is daily being exposed as a ticking time-bomb for the economy and Northern Irish peace, the world itself is about to hit a definitive cliff-edge in the ongoing climate change catastrofailure, but Johnson just shambled on stage and ignored and/or blatantly lied about all that gloomy bring-down jive in order to give his fans a hour of the sneering after-dinner baffleslop the Tory Party faithful crave almost as much as they do tax-breaks and acts of performative cruelty inflicted on people different to them.
Whereas you guys had Trump rallies where he’d channel the bile of a million resentful vacuum cleaner salesmen standing naked in motel parking lots at three in the morning ranting drunkenly about their bitch ex-wives and how they don’t get no respect from their kids while, back in the room they paid for with unpaid alimony, a bored hooker empties out their wallet and pockets their tubs of prescription painkillers, Flobalob is more like an elderly comedian doing a winter season at the Margate Lyceum armed with a set of Mother-in-Law jokes and cracks about the stupid NiCLANGS. He knows his audience, and he knows what they like. Some perfunctory waffle about enterprise and bringing well paid jobs to all areas of the country to pad out the routine, sure, but the bulk of it was just the time-worn litany of digs at popular Tory hate-figures dressed up in a bit of fake-Latin to put his ‘Borisworld’ spin on it. Corduroy Clad Communists, Snooty Shifty Eurocrats, Corrupt Union Bosses, Smelly Eco-Hippies, Woke Black Lesbians, on and on and on in a flobbadobbing treacle of Three Word Phrases that somehow managed to avoid saying anything very much about anything at all but left his audience satisfyingly wet about the gusset and willing to forgive him once again for the occasional act of gross corruption and ongoing national humiliation.
It must have been a very draining hour for everyone’s least favourite half-melted Pilsbury Dough-Man, because as soon as he’d dropped the mike and signed “Best Wishes, Love Boris” across a few sagging breasts he was out of there and on a plane and heading south for yet another freebee holiday at the sprawling Marbella estate of former 90’s ‘It Boi’ and celebrity/politician fraud Zac Goldsmith, failed London Mayoral candidate, recently booted Tory MP, and even more recently ennobled (by, go on, guess who, rhymes with Doris Bonson) Baron Goldsmith of Richmond, the Minister of State for Pacific and the Environment [is that even grammatical? – Ed]. Son of the execrable asset-stripping proto-Brextremist James Goldsmith and brother of Jemima ‘Poundshop Lady Di’ Goldsmith-Khan, Zac has the kind of effortlessly privileged heritage that fellow Old Etonian Johnson would turn a hedgehog inside out and wear it like a codpiece to possess, although he does have the edge in the “Rode TV Celebrity to electoral success and the Top Job” Challenge Stakes to keep him warm at night. Having realised that the febrile late-Weimar atmosphere of Tory Britain is a difficult one for a socially liberal libertarian environmentalist millionaire to prosper in, even one with a record of Islamophobic dog-whistling that must go down great guns with his occasionally Pro-Palestinian sister, Zac has settled down with his share of the family fortune to make even more lovely, lovely money alongside his unelected role as UK Minister for Lemuria and Wherever.
A stay at this Marbella estate goes for something like £25,000 a week, which is a nice little earner for a holiday pad on which he very likely doesn’t pay any Spanish tax because of the convoluted holding company/offshore investment mechanism by which Zaccy Boy owns the property, but it should raise some interesting questions in the wake of the release of the Pandora Papers. I say should, because of course, it really won’t. The British Press mostly ignored the revelations, and even the ones that didn’t have shown little to no interest in pursuing the question of who, exactly, paid for Flobalob’s week-long jolly? It certainly wasn’t him, Bully Bunter doesn’t pay for a damned thing, which would mean he either got it as a freebee from a man he recently made a lifetime Peer of the Realm so he could stay in his Government, which is very bad, or some other incredibly flush ally of Tory interests stumped up the cash, which is even worse and probably illegal. But these are Tories, so no one is going to risk their necks asking difficult questions of people who sign their cheques in Arabic or Cyrillic. Suffice it to say that a lot of Oligarchs, including Big Daddy Vladdy, have similar sized estates in this part of southern Spain, so I’m sure Flobalob didn’t lack for company around the courtyard dining table of an evening, even if he did wake every morning wishing he’d said no to the third bottle of iced vodka and wondering why he wearing make-up and a dog-collar.
One question that was raised about all this in the Media, but only in a sort of desultory “I see the Chumley-Warners are favouring red roses for their borders this season” fashion, rather than the more virile “There’s a story here and we need to break it!” manner you’d expect if these were actual journalists covering a proven liar and coward. Just why was Flobalob so eager to get out of the country after the Tory Conference? We all know he likes to get away from the hard graft of, well, anything more taxing than drinking someone else’s wine and groping somebody else’s wife, but this jaunt required an extension in the Parliamentary break that in itself drew attention to his Lord Lucan style flight from Blighty. What was going on? Was it an outraged husband with a shotgun? A window opening up in the schedule of Marbella’s top liposuction practitioner? Had he killed again? …
TO BE CONTINUED (Tomorrow, same time, same place)
MagdaInBlack
That “make up and a dog collar” image is going to stick with me for a while. ?
Frank Wilhoit
Not to be an American exceptionalist for a moment, but I do think it is significant that the Owen Paterson business got the pushback that it did. Nothing like that (i.e., like the pushback!) could still happen here.
For the rest, I blame Asquith for not having had Northcliffe scragged.
dopey-o
I read Tony Jay’s dispatches with endless delight, but sometimes his writing style makes me wonder.
Is he snorting too much of the roach powder, or is he just inhaling the smoke and fumes inside the post-Brexit crater that once was this sceptered isle?
ETA: Thrid!
Kalakal
Do we get the Owen Paterson saga tomorrow? I would leave to read you on that woesome saga of corruption, steeped in incompetence and devoid of any redeeming feature whatsover. It out Hancocks Hancock
Kalakal
@Frank Wilhoit: The tipping point was the Daily Fail putting the boot in. When you’ve lost the Fail…
Burnspbesq
Irish unification gets closer with every round of non-negotiation between her Majesty’s Government (which she has no hand in choosing, or they might be competent) and the EU.
Dan B
And in local (this side of the pond) news Melania was just awarded the Heart of Lincoln Award at the Log Cabin Republicans (LGB) annual bash. It was held this year at Mar A Lago. The event was sold out.
The LCR was not allowed at the GOP convention.
And Chris Christy was the featured speaker at the Republican Jewish confab.
Quisling is too gentle a description. These people would blame Obama and Hilllary as they were shoved onto the cattle cars.
Chetan Murthy
One wonders about all this madness in the West. I was thinking about it today, and remembered what de Tocqueville had written around the time of one of the mid-19th-century French revolts: he wrote that the land reforms of the first Revolution had turned so many peasants into small landowners; and this had paradoxically resulted in their making common cause with their massive-landowner neighbors, even though their economic interests were divergent. B/c the peasant would think: “hey, with any luck, I could end up like him (the richie-rich guy)”.
Even for people who don’t own land or houses, their 401ks are somewhat like that: it makes us all petit capitalists, and sets us all at each others’ throats, even if we don’t realize it. I wonder if this explains why Labour has so much trouble in the UK, why the Dems, for all of the good things they do, for all of the track record they have of making the economy grow, have so much trouble here.
rk
So I take it Brexit is not going well.
Chetan Murthy
@Dan B: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National_Jews
“The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.” — Harlan Ellison
Mike in NC
I cringe at the thought of the Fat Orange Clown holding another of his sickening hate rallies.
Geminid
Thank you, Mr. Jay, for your informative missive from the land of Nope and Sorry.
I am wondering if you would care to share your thoughts on the “Momentum” organization. I first heard of them a couple years ago, in connection with with Labour’s intra-party wrangling. More recently in the U.S , Momentum has been mentioned as a force behind the Sunrise Movement. They are not a membership organization, but rather seem to be trying to create a “Movement” by organizing a cadre of activist leaders who attend Momentum “Trainings.”
Do you know anything about them?
Also, I see that Momentum is organizing here in Virginia. They host social events like picnics, brewpub get-togethers, etc. Being single, I’ve thought of attending one to, you know, cruise.
Is this a good idea?
scav
@Kalakal: I am so anticipating hearing a proper wade through of that particular septic puddle of traditional English rectitude. After Paterson, I might just go long and await the combined Welsh and Pictish border raids as Little England collapses because of awol Walkers crisps.
Dan B
@Chetan Murthy: No matter how things change they stay remarkably the same.
Tony Jay
@MagdaInBlack:
I was at work when it came to me so I had been drinking and plumbing the Dark Web for a few hours by then.
@Frank Wilhoit:
I think the main reason for the Paterson pushback was threefold –
1) It was so fucking blatant. Nowhere to hide for the various MPs who were ordered to act as a human shield around Johnson’s friend and fellow slimemold. If the Media didn’t just swallow it, stamp it with ‘This is Normal’ and move on, it was going to stink like a month old pair of Y-fronts.
2) Once the tidal wave of disgust from their electorates hit their social media inboxes those MPs, who must have already been looking at the swirling miasma of graft and arrogance that Johnson has brought out into the open and wondering if “The other lot are nancy boy bolsheviks!” will be enough to keep them in their seats at the next election, let it be known this couldn’t stand.
3) Johnson is in office because his carefully constructed TV persona gives the Tory Party electability-by-proxy. If his embrace of open corruption wipes that out and returns the Party to early 90s style ‘Party of Sleaze’ unpopularity….
I think the word I’m looking for is ‘Overreach’.
Chetan Murthy
@Dan B: I saw that both Latino and AAPI voters in VA increased their margins (in favor of Dem over GrOPer) over 2020, in the 2021 Gov. election. I wonder what South Asian VA voters have done, and whether I’ll have to hiss in their general direction.
Villago Delenda Est
Tony Jay is the Charlie Pierce of the UK.
Warblewarble
When Irish unification is achieved, should streets be renamed and statues erected to Alexander Boris dePfeffel Johnson(how I love that de Pfeffel).
topclimber
@Chetan Murthy:
What is stupidity but entropy made word?
ETA to make word flesh. Because BJ deserves the very best.
Chetan Murthy
@Warblewarble: When it happens, I’d like for the statues to be upside-down (so, he’s perched on his head) and ditto the street-names, with right-side-up names for proper Irish heroes in addition.
Keith P.
Funny.
Gin & Tonic
I’ll always remember, when we were on vacation (holiday) in Spain 10-ish years ago, rented a car in Valencia and drove south then west, maybe to Alicante(?) before heading toward Granada and Sevilla. Somewhere along the coast south of Valencia, driving on some twisty road where I should have seen Cary Grant in a convertible, we rounded a corner to see a very large and clearly very new Russian Orthodox church with a beautiful view of the water. “Huh.”
topclimber
Bruv, it is hard to see the difference between snark and reality in your writing.
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
Is it the same Momentum? I’m aware of them as a left-wing grouping within the wider Labour movement that supported Corbyn’s leadership as a counter to groupings like Progress and, more recently, Renaissance, who support dragging Labour further and further right. I wasn’t aware that they were expanding internationally. Hell, I’m amazed they’d have the money. Left wing groups tend not to have the sugar daddy backing that right wing groups get.
NeenerNeener
@Chetan Murthy:
Yes, the American middle class believes they are all (temporarily) financially embarrassed billionaires.
Dan B
@Chetan Murthy: The South Asians in Seattle area seem iffy for their political leanings. My friends from Delhi don’t spend much time with other Indian transplants. I believe that political differences is a large part of that.
Good to hear about AAPI and latinx in Virginia.
debbie
@Chetan Murthy:
My spiteful side would like to have seen their faces the moment they realized how very wrong they had been.
smedley the uncertain
Does this gerbil get paid by the word? Wile he offers insights to the Brexit world, they get lost in the cutsey verbosity of his fire hose. tl:dr!
Lost in the fog of verbiage…
Chetan Murthy
@smedley the uncertain: read it in chunks. part of the joy is to bask in the stream of invective.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: I think it’s the same Momentum in the U.S. as in Great Britain. It’s hard to tell because they seem to keep a low profile. I looked into them after their role in the Sunrise Movement came up, and could not come up with much. I did find an article about a Labour MP, said to be a Momentum founder, and a talk he gave to Scottish lefties about how independence was a bad idea. Some of them complained that he was patronizing.
Tony Jay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Just trying to give the Fall of the House of Oo-Er some compensatory chuckles as the building collapses around it.
@topclimber:
Snark is the only way to make sense of the reality. I’ve tried everything else and it didn’t work.
James E Powell
Where can one go to find out information about how Brexit has worked out for the voters who thought it was the best idea since boiled beef?
CarolPW
@debbie: What, you would like to see them (their faces) in the gas chambers or the corpse ditches?
ETA parenthetical
Geminid
@James E Powell: I’d type “Brexit news,” and scroll down through the headlines, and skim relevant articles.
Chetan Murthy
@CarolPW: I think maybe what debbie is saying, is that as we line up for our turn to be shot, it’d be nice if people like that were ahead of us in line, we can see their reaction as they realize all their compromising was for naught. I mean, right before we get it in the neck, of course.
ETA: I for one would be well-pleased if D’felon D’vorce D’spousa were just ahead of me in line, perhaps with Seema (Vermin) Verma and a few other traitors.
Baud
@James E Powell:
This isn’t exclusively about Brexit but there’s a lot of Brexit content.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/
Another Scott
Looking forward to Part II.
I glance at IamHappyToast every day and must admit that things seem very, very disconnected from reality over there at the moment.
:-/
Winning??
:-(
Thanks for the reports, and hang in there!!
Cheers,
Scott.
CarolPW
@Chetan Murthy: Comparisons of anything today to the holocaust should be very carefully considered. That’s a repug ploy and we should not participate in it. If (when) repugs start(ed) killing black people who support(ed) them should we be happy and gloating?
It’s a bad look for a party that is supposed to value empathy.
Baud
@Another Scott:
I don’t know what those numbers mean.
James E Powell
@Baud:
Thanks.
sab
@Another Scott: Yikes!
Brachiator
Talk about burying the lead. The Owen Paterson mess is a big deal, especially because Boris Johnson thought he could get away with instructing Conservative Party MPs to vote to save the guy. Even the usually servile press had to rebuke Boris and Patterson ultimately resigned.
I note that the BBC Political Reporter, Laura Kuenssberg initially tried to dismiss the Patterson Mess as minor inside the British Beltway stuff. Good thing she is stepping down soon.
I have heard that Boris might try to elevate Patterson to the House of Lords. I don’t know if this is really possible, but it would not surprise me.
I have no idea what Boris and his BREXIT guy Frost are trying to achieve in threatening to suspend Article 16. Are they just trying to keep the public on their side by presenting Ireland and the EU as perpetual enemies.
I love that Boris vacations in Spain while the BREXIT supporting public are told that it is their patriotic duty to live and vacation only in the UK. This is beyond hypocritical.
jeepers
Well I think Boris and the gang should revisit Gallipoli or go for a dive to the bottom of the Bosporus or perhaps a light afternoon ride into Russian cannon.
England is one of the nations that truly exceeds the US for self destructive hubris but we’re working hard to catch up.
SC54HI
For a visual accompaniment to Tony’s masterful commentaries, I recommend following Cold War Steve, who is truly a latter-day Hogarth.
James E Powell
@Brachiator:
A Conservative government is an organized hypocrisy – Benjamin Disraeli
Another Scott
@Baud: I assume they’re satire. A reflection of the slanted polls and reporting over there (same as over here).
Cheers,
Scott.
Chetan Murthy
@CarolPW:
It’s been carefully considered and the answer is “these are Nazis.” Even Godwin (of the eponymous Law) is on-record as saying that these fuckers are Fascists and his Law does not apply to them. They revel in Nazi imagery and repeating Nazi words and phrases. TFG reveled in his plans (announced at campaign rallies) for a deportation force. They separated families of asylum-seekers and put their (even infant) children in camps (a direct violation of The Refugee Convention). They’re Nazis. Maybe that’s not a winning formula for convincing the Fascist-friendly housewives of suburban Virginia, but then, I’m not a politician, just an observer, and so I have the luxury of being accurate and not the burden of being persuasive.
I cite again A.R. Moxon:
Baud
@Another Scott:
Thanks. British humor often goes over my head.
Chetan Murthy
@CarolPW:
Maybe go have a look and see how many people on the Allied side were feeling sympathy for the Germans or Japanese enemy during WWII. This is a war, and the other side treats it like that. We, *I* have empathy for decent people, not the scum that want me and mine dead or in camps.
sab
@sab: I was yikesing about the Wales budget.
Frank Wilhoit
@smedley the uncertain:The best British comedians can busk this stuff by the hour. Two who come to mind, tho’ with very different styles, are Lee Mack and David Mitchell.
Chetan Murthy
@sab: I remember when the “EU subsidy” part was reported *before* the referendum, and the Tory plans for how to make it up (stuff like removing regulations so that hazardous waste disposal sites could be opened in Wales) was also reported.
It was always going to be a giant bait-and-switch: we could see it in 2016.
Kalakal
The part I like most about the whole Paterson imbroglio is the dire penalty that awaited the corrupt git and that to avoid this awful fate his chums were prepared to openly destroy any system of oversight.**
“You’ve been found out for accepting a 100k bribe each year for the last five years you bad person you. This is a bad thing and you must pay the price for your sins. We’re going to make you take 30 days paid holiday. There, bet you’re sorry now won’t do it again! ps you can keep the cash.”
If I was operating on that system within a week I’d have 10 million in the bank and be on 40 years paid holiday. And feel very, very sorry for myself.
** yes I know it’s about removing oversight on the rest of them
jeepers
Well I think Boris and the gang should revisit Gallipoli or go for a dive to the bottom of the Bosporus or perhaps a light afternoon ride into Russian cannon.
England is one of the nations that truly exceeds the US for self destructive hubris but we’re working hard to catch up.
@topclimber:
Entropy is always a passive, underlying characteristic of reality.
Stupidity is sometimes the same but often an active, malignant aspect of reality.
PeakVT
Here’s a slightly less rabid but more specific indictment of the Tories.
Frank Wilhoit
@Brachiator: Re Article 16, one Brexiter article of faith is that the EU always folds. Any Tory who said otherwise would be in real danger of assassination within minutes. Frost knows no better. Johnson does; but a general and longer-standing Brit article of faith is that Something Will Turn Up. It is their analogue of brinksmanship.
Frank Wilhoit
@James E Powell: He wrote that long before he became Leader of the Conservative Party.
Omnes Omnibus
@CarolPW: Please watch footage from the Charlottesville rally and tell me that those people are not Nazis.
Frank Wilhoit
@Chetan Murthy: Moxon was right, and his point was relevant when he wrote; but much, indeed nearly everything, has been forgotten since then.
debbie
@CarolPW:
I was talking about the moment they realized just how wrong they had been about the Nazis. I think they would have realized their horrible mistake long before the chamber door locked behind them.
CarolPW
@Chetan Murthy: I agree about TFG and his Nazi fuckheads, but that is not what is what this discussion is about. Debbie’s comment was in reference to the Association of German National Jews supporting Nazis early on, before WWII, which is why I compared it to Black people supporting current repugs. I am happy to gloat at deaths of anti-vaxxers and WWII kapos; I don’t consider all repug-supporting Black people and late Weimar or early WWII Jews people whose faces I want to see in the ovens, gas chambers or corpse trenches.
Kalakal
For those who have not heard the detail of the Tories latest self-inflicted clusterfuck here it is in all its squalid glory – all the better for being reported straight .https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2021/11/05/this-bbc-explainer-of-boris-johnsons-worst-week-is-a-simply-devastating-6-minutes/
Chetan Murthy
@Frank Wilhoit: *grin* I think I understand what you mean; I hope, perfectly. It adds to the piquancy, to note that his book was published in 2019.
Chetan Murthy
@CarolPW: Again, that A.R. Moxon quote is the rejoinder. You may not consider them (e.g. Seema Verma, D’vorce D’felon D’spousa, and every South Asian American who voted for TFG or Trumpkin) to be traitors and Fascists; others differ.
Chetan Murthy
@CarolPW:
Again, the desire is not that they be murdered; the desire is that at the least, if we are to be murdered, they I want to see them go first.
debbie
@CarolPW:
He wasn’t comparing anything to the Holocaust. He was referring to a group of Jewish people who were sympathetic to the Nazis, at least at the beginning. See above #11.
FelonyGovt
It’s really disappointing that Labour has become such an ineffectual, internally squabbling non-entity. They’re what the US press makes our Democrats sound like.
Tony Jay
@smedley the uncertain:
I’m so very, very sorry I couldn’t provide you with the product you were expecting. I was under the impression that I’d provided a tiny wee clue as to the nature of the beast in the first few lines, but I guess from context you didn’t make it that far.
Sadly, it gets so much worse. 8-)
dimmsdale
Just nodding in to say “Thank you” to Tony, for an exceptionally colorful portrait of the sort of unspeakable corruption and fecklessness we’ve lived through the past four years over here. I find it hard to read about Brexit and UK politics because it’s all so familiar: the lies, the utter disregard for morality or scruples, the supine footpaddery of our media whores, and above all the seeming lack of consequences for any of the depravity, mendacity, or corruption. We are just at the threshold of ‘consequences’ here (I earnestly HOPE, though still too shell-shocked to trust the possibility), and all I can really say, Tony, is “I FEEL ya, bruther.”)
Chetan Murthy
@dimmsdale: I just wanna add my thanks, too. Tony, your writings maybe aren’t digestible as a single meal, but I take ’em over a few hours, snack-by-snack, and that’s a lovely way to consume ’em.
It is *always* great to see your work here, whether posts or comments.
thalarctosMaritimus
Thank you once again, Tony Jay!
I always need a fag after one of your dispatches.
Tony Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
You could try turning out the lights, drinking equal parts rum and cough medicine, then stripping bare ass nekkid and declaiming the whole thing out loud in front of a mirror while holding an oil lantern and ignoring the increasingly frenzied battering of your loved ones at the forbidden room’s door.
That’s how I like to do it. In Christopher Lee’s voice.
Tony Jay
@dimmsdale:
“supine footpaddery”
Wish I’d coined that one. Nice!
Chetan Murthy
@Tony Jay: Don’t think my ol’ ticker could stand the strain, my friend. Too much ecstatic delirium for my plumbing.
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
The conservative wealthy think that they got that way by the diligence and level of hard work that it took them to get through high school and therefore having earned such a high spot on the ladder of who’s who, they deserve everything they can figure out how to screw everyone else out of. And as they had to work hard to get out of that high school they really don’t think they should ever have to work that hard ever again. And then college. Thank the whatever that they had the parents that paid very well for a great college education and that they had the forethought to find ways to use some of that money to get others to do the actual thinking so that they could graduate and get that boost up the ladder of privilege that they so (think they) deserve. And as screwing everyone else is now completely normal for them, they want to conserve that placing and not have to be ashamed of how badly they fuck over any and everyone they can, so as to ascend to even higher levels of acceptance, profit and fucking over.
CarolPW
@Omnes Omnibus: Debbie’s comment was about the opinion of a Jewish organization before and in early WWII. I firmly believe that, except for the kapos, one should not celebrate other’s realization of depths their errors during the holocaust whether they were Jewish, gay, disabled, gypsy etc. It was very troubling to me.
Of course the Charlottesville rally was all Nazis, and they should all DIAF.
eclare
@Villago Delenda Est: Absolutely nailed it with that comparison.
sdhays
That sounds rather naughty!
Tony, you are a treasure. I just wish that there were less dire topics that could engage your wit. The situation in the UK sounds very depressing. I wonder how “good and hard” people are going to have to get their Brexit before they start turning on the Tories. Hopefully it’s truly “when” and not “if“.
Chetan Murthy
@Ruckus: You’re right, but thing is …. there are so few wealthy. It’s the rest of America, the actual middle/upper-middle class, that I’m pillorying. As analysis-after-analysis has showed, those classes have *at best* stayed even, treading water, while all the benefits of the last 40+ years have gone to the actually wealthy. And all it takes to get ’em all lathered-up is
“ni-r, ni-r”CRT“trans kids in bathrooms!”bla blablbla.Kalakal
@Tony Jay: An average Sunday night in, then?
Dan B
@SC54HI: Thanks for the link to Cold War Steve. I don’t think he likes Flobalob as much as Tony Jay.
/s
Chetan Murthy
@CarolPW: Can you understand that as a South-Asian-American, to see other South-Asian-Americans become traitors and Fascists, is particularly disturbing, and that as such, I want then to also DIAF ?
debbie
@CarolPW:
There was nothing in my comment about celebrating, but whatever.
Chetan Murthy
I don’t know if anybody around here watches the Spitting Image reboot, but its portrayal of Sir Flobalob and his oleaginous court is pretty hilarious. Dominic Cummings as a space alien, Priti Patel as a vampire, and on and on.
Tony Jay
@sdhays:
It’s coming. I sort of go into that in the second part of this rant, but really it’s just a matter of time and political gravity. The bullshit bubble has cushioned the fall, and the EU have been endlessly accommodating, but at some point soon the switch is going to flick from “No, this is what we voted for and it’s fine” to “Hey, maybe I don’t actually want to keep on chopping off my fingers!” and the whole conversation changes from denial to anger.
We’ll still be fucked, though.
VeniceRiley
@Tony Jay: Sounds hellish. Cannot wait to get there! Ah, marriage.
Chetan Murthy
@SC54HI: Two thumbs up!
Tony Jay
@Kalakal:
Almost average. Liverpool lost their unbeaten run today so I’m doing without the cough medicine and have replaced it with some battery fluid I found leaking out of the back of a Super Talking Action Robot I snatched from a kid outside an Aldi.
Damned tangy. Notes of menthol and burning hair.
Frank Wilhoit
@FelonyGovt: You’ve answered your own question. How do you suppose our Democrats look from outside? …and, more importantly, why?
Tony Jay
@SC54HI:
Good call, Cold War Steve is awesome.
realbtl
@Tony Jay: Thanks Tony Jay. A couple of months ago you mentioned the Tories getting ready to jettison Boris. Is this one of the big steps?
Frank Wilhoit
@Ruckus: NO. They know they are frauds. That is why they have to transform everything into performance. And the problem is the fact that it is performance; it doesn’t matter which script (or the specific content of the improv).
Tony Jay
@VeniceRiley:
Hey, don’t fret. Maybe we’ll have sorted everything out by then and you’ll be settling in a post-Revolutionary Garden of Philosophical Rapture.
Though, bring a crowbar and some tough welding gloves, just in case.
grammypat
@James E Powell: I found this but don’t know anything about this publication to be able to vouch for it’s reliability. YMMV
Tony Jay
@realbtl:
Flobalob is a brand that the Tories needed to front their whole Brexit: Live and Uncut Tour. If his brand continues being dipped in the toilet, what do they realistically need him for.
Kalakal
@Tony Jay: Heh, just enjoy the pain for Man U
Tony Jay
@Kalakal:
Ole at the wheel! 8-)
Kalakal
@grammypat: The Indy is usually pretty reliable if rather dull. It’s middle of the road unless it’s changed radically in the last couple of years
Ken
I’m sure people are working to make sure it’s anger at the EU, not at the Tories.
Kalakal
@Tony Jay: I know about fans suffering, I lived in Leeds for 30 years on and off
Dan B
@CarolPW: I’m all too regularly astounded that there are vulnerable minorities who idolize people who either want them dead or wouldn’t care if they were attacked by a mob. I also don’t have any desire to see them loaded onto cattle cars. First, I realize I’d be next and second, I’d rather they wake up.
I agree with your point of view and also realize that some people have to vent. I have too many nights when I’m muttering horrible curses on my partner’s siblings. They believe that we would not be bothered by a GOP takeover. We hear on a aily basis about people in power in the GOP who want us locked up. Are my partner’s siblings living on a different planet?
Tony Jay
@FelonyGovt:
The people running the Labour Party (not the people they’re running it for, but the morons who think they ‘won’ when they helped Flobalob beat British History’s Greatest Monster) are convinced that all they need to do to relive the 90s is be ostentatiously anti-Lefty and wait for the Tories to implode.
Other than that masterplan I don’t see them having much of anything to offer the world. They sure as shit can’t rub two political sticks together.
grammypat
@Kalakal: Thx. Was trying to be helpful but unsure if that article would do so. I read it to mean that the numbers people can see the capital letter writing on the wall, so to speak. But the average Brit is just getting a glimmer of what’s to come. I don’t consider Tony Jay as average in any way.
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
The rest of the conservative class look up – or is it down, to the the wealthy end of the spectrum because they want to be them. That they will likely never get there is part of the reason they feel the need to be racist gits, they have to feel higher than someone, and they can’t do that in actuality, so they use racism to feel like they are better than someone. (Hint, they really, really are hoping that no one notices that their racism makes them far far worse than better in any way.)
@Frank Wilhoit:
We actually are in sync.
See the above. I wasn’t trying to say they are better or even think they are, only that they desperately want to be better than someone. And they have failed at being and thinking. They will however shoot themselves in the junk or anyone else for that matter to prove that others are worse and once again they actually succeed only in proving they are.
VeniceRiley
@Tony Jay: Pretty sure we can nick those tools from the prison lol. But hey. I’m a City fan; so. Had a wonderful weekend of everything going my way.
Tony Jay
@VeniceRiley:
City fan? Well damn your eyes, man!
Joking. Looking forward to a real slam dong bing bong of a title fight. If we pip you and Chelski by a last minute Aguero moment on the last day of the season, that’s very acceptable.
Tehanu
I love these rants even though I know very little about British politics. Tony is a master of invective.