Monte Carlo

From an English POV it's looks like that old saying, "a camel is a race-horse designed by a committee." Our last UK coalition was a newish experience for us, but I hated the "we-did-this / they-did-that" jockeying all the time. Vote someone in, let them implement their manifesto, if we don't like it vote them out.

Yes, from a British POV, proportional representation is the old hippy adage made flesh - "don't vote man, the Government always wins." Smug Euro coalitions, all back-scratching and wallowing in shabby consensus it's what's given us awesome governments like, er, France and Spain. Germany is different, because they have all the money. I don't like elements of FPTP, it's brutal, what's happened to UKIP shows a democratic deficit. But they know our system. They have to develop grassroots political structures the hard way. Like hardy perennials in a well-tended garden, not fly-by-night knotweed. That's how it works here. I think, however, a younger political generation coming up might not see it that way, but that's their prerogative. The only constant is change, and it will almost inevitably be a curiously British iteration. As for Scotland. *shudders* it's a one-nation state of swivel-eyed loons at the moment. Not the Scotland I knew. It's like an old mate you haven't seen for a while suddenly joins the Moonies or something.

I can see it for me... Scotland is going to be the next "Cuba Crisis" when Scapa Flow gets rented to the Russians to use as a forward naval base The forty-plus horsemen of the Ajockalypse are heading south, swords bloodied and fire at their heels.

I'm sorry, but Ed Balls losing his seat was a moment of almost perfect sweetness. The smug bastard helped crash the economy and was utterly shameless in denying it. A study in entitlement, condescension and hubris, he is no loss. I hope he takes the opportunity to return to the stone from under which he crawled from.

I agree numbers is a sound bloke. He makes solid arguments, even if I don't agree. I hope there are no hard feelings.

Milo trolls like a boss http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/05/07/avengers-director-joss-whedon-is-feminisms-battered-wife/

It's called a secret ballot for a reason. It's a pretty big deal in this country not to have to disclose who you voted for if you don't want to. And it's bad form to ask. I hold centre-right, libertarian views. None of the parties represents me and I'm not minded to compromise. I voted this morning. Who it was for was based on a personal and perhaps not entirely rational set of factors I don't feel like sharing on the internet. But the two main parties are like either cheek of the same arse.

No. Mind your own business.

Their cliche fantasy name generator has gone into meltdown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lcc62nrl9Y Enjoy this advertisement for an Italian motorcar. I thought it was quite amusing, in a sort of thirty-seconds-of-advertising way. Then I read about Joss Wheedon's flight from Twitter (quel horreur!). Were you not aware, Kulture Kommandos, that the (impeccably PC) Mister Wheedon was hounded from Twitter by SJWs and feminists for a sub-plot in his new superhero movie. What was the subject? [spoilerS AHOY] Black Widow reveals, as part of her indoctrination into whatever elite cadre of KGB assassins she was part of, she was neutered. Sterilized. This made her feel, "like a monster." Now of course, a reasonable person would think (if, indeed you even took the time to bother), "well Scarlett Johansen is hardly going to agree to a script that suggests women unable to conceive are 'monsters,' and Joss Wheedon would most likely walk the plank than allow such a sentiment into his movie. Ergo, the character is talking about the whole horrid process of being groomed from a young age into a killer, the final insult being sterilized so as to ensure she would never be hobbled by getting pregnant." Are you with me? Except, of course, out there in SJW media land, the creatures stirred from their lairs. They sniffed something delicious... the opportunity to suck the sweet, sweet marrow of being offended! Cue the entirely predictable storm of abuse and threats over the marginalisation of women, and especially women with fertility problems. You're the monster, Joss! (Wheedon is a gentle, bearded soul who clearly wears Birkenstocks and drives a Volvo. Anybody with a scintilla of wit would deduce he meant no offence, whatsoever). So far, so good (as far as another ludicrous day on the internet is concerned). Now, back to our car advert. Here is a very expensive advertising campaign by a major European car manufacturer. And they've launched a campaign for their car based on the premise that MALE SEXUAL DYSFUNCTION IS HILARIOUS! HE CAN'T GET IT UP! HE NEEDS A LITTLE BLUE PILL! Ha ha ha ha ha! No, the trope of the randy old goat, desire thwarted by circumstance, is invalid. This is mysandry writ large! Hound Fiat into making an apology for this brutal assault on a sensitive issue that marginalises older people. Fiat, you BASTARDS! This didn't happen, by the way. Not a pipsqueak. Why? Because a lot of sensible people let it go. They saw a joke. They chuckled and moved on. But what if the gag had been about female sexual dysfunction? An old woman in the throes of HRT, or frigid? Blimey, they'd be piling sandbags up in front of Fiat HQ right now, wouldn't they? What this says about the SJW crowd and contemporary feminism is something I'll let you ponder and discuss. But for me the words hypocrisy, Gramsci and moronic are all springing to mind. Poor old Joss Wheedon. He just wasn't SJW enough, was he?

Sure, go right ahead. You posted only questions, but not your perfectly smart but dangerously left-leaning colleague's responses. Maybe we can compare them to actual proposals/demands made by the montagnards bolsheviks British left and discuss their merits and flaws. It doesn't really matter, an of course there's a healthy dash of rhetoric... because the only answer is a People's Committee will have to decide. And once they've decided they'll have to enforce it. This will, at best, lead to a massive flight of capital elsewhere. And, at worst, political coercion. Numbers, old boy, Socialists are only good at one measure of equality, and that's making everyone equally miserable.

Did it. Googled the Russian bits.

O. M. G. Concept art fail.

Ha ha Age of Ultron was filmed at an old police college in NW London. They kept it a pretty big secret. A friend of mine from up that way did report helicopter gunships strafing the Northern Line last year, though.

I see where you're going with this and I'm not playing the game. In 2004, when the UK could have put transitional controls on the new Eastern European entrants to the EU, the Labour Government chose not to. Edit - and by this I mean immigration into the UK and access to benefits - the most generous in the EU. A man called Andrew Neather, who at that time was a political advisor to the government, let slip that this decision was partly down to "rub Conservatives' noses in diversity." This confirmed what many of us suspected, in that immigration results in votes for parties with lax immigration laws and generous welfare policies. The rotten boroughs of East London have been found to rely on the type of corruption typical in the Asian subcontinent. Hey, have some evidence. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-32428648 I'm no racist. I think immigration, properly managed, is a Good Thing. In fact, as an economic liberal, I think freedom of movement of goods, labour and services is a no-brainer. But Labour, our centre left party, have plenty of form when it comes to this. As does Mister Obama when it comes to Mexican immigration. It's always convenient when your big-hearted and generous policies also result in more votes, ain't it?

How can you have freedom of speech lite?

We can only hope.

At least the OP is following Troll 101, and not replying to his initial lure. I'll take away the minus and make it a straight 'D.' He could do *so* much better.

I think most of those are infantile and offensive. I sympathise with those who are offended. But their feelings are trumped by American First Amendment rights. Them's the breaks.

Yet you still de-railed the thread more egregiously than I did, presumably because I pressed your ideological funny bone. No, I don't think the mainstream centre left is about to build a Gulag in East Anglia. I do think, however, they are utterly capable of using the law to shut down debate about their pet concerns. I do think they care more about 'social justice' than freedom of speech. I do think they will import client voters from overseas. In fact, I know these things. I'm an evidence-based chap and I've lived through several centre left governments (in fact, as a small child, I remember the lights going out and bodies left unburied. The British left was still packed with fellow travellers with interesting off-duty links to Russian 'diplomats.'). This is what they call 'a direction of travel.' One only has to see the mob mentality of the Scottish National Party (nationalism and socialism smashed together, as if by some grotesquely political version of the large hadron collider) to see where it can all end up. Gulags? No, unlikely. Soft authoritarianism, a sort of leftish McCarthyism? Absolutely. I like reminding the Left of where they came from. Their political DNA is mired in blood in a way Western liberal conservatism manifestly is not.

Sorry if I moved your cheese, but I think my post was unambiguous in it's condemnation of authoritarians across the political spectrum. The Left does seem to enjoy something of a free pass for it's ideological peccadilloes vis-a-vis repression and murder, though, hence my comment.

Shouldn't you be on the Bioware boards or something? Unless you are trolling, in which case a 'D' minus.

Bruce, man, 1938 was your time. You'd have loved it. Munich with Chamberlain. "Look, Hitler only wants the Sudetenland. That's it. Nothing else. Just let him have it, he'll stop then. Honest. Then there will be Peace in our Time." Look how that turned out. Perhaps the people in Texas are trolling. Perhaps they are denuded. Perhaps they aren't the type of people you'd want to invite around for tea and cake. But they aren't breaking the law of the place they live. They are exercising hard-won rights. This might be difficult for you to understand, but to the protagonists in this affair these are deadly serious (nay, inviolable) rights. Existential, even. And, perhaps, they look across the world and see their 'leaders' ignoring Christians in orange boiler suits being beheaded on the shores of the Mediterranean and are issuing a wake-up call. Today's Nazis are intriguing. They feast on failed states and leech from the soul of a world religion. They use first world guilt as a shield for rape and murder. And we stand and watch and worry about cartoons.

Dredd blowing up a Yuppie's car for being poorly-parked was a highlight for me.

Oh, have just noticed the Tom Hardy replacement in above picture has fashioned some gaiters from silver duct tape. That is nails.