Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[uax6]

When is the Vogon Constructor Fleet expected? I fear it's actually going to be a relief when it arrives....

 

Andy G

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

What do we all think is the rational response that should be made to the current state of the world at an individual, personal, level?

 

I ask, because I’m blowed if I can think of one, and would welcome suggestions.

 

(I’m still reeling a bit from my accidental look into the mind of the US rightwing through Facebook, but even without that I think I’d still be asking the question)

 

 

 

On a practical level, I have my work cut out trying to secure my future at that of my kids in terms of a reasonable chance at economic survival.

 

Though, I have considered a YouTube channel, on the basis that screaming into the void might prove cathartic!

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

What do we all think is the rational response that should be made to the current state of the world at an individual, personal, level?

 

Build another wagon - kit or scratch. The act of creation is an act of defiance against the culture of destruction.

[monkeysarefun]

 

 

If "On The Beach" is a template for how it all turns out then @St Enodoc, various increasingly drunken mates  and I  will apparently be singing    "Waltzing Matilda"  endlessly over and over again, even when its raining quite hard.

 

 

 

Edited February 9 by monkeysarefun

[teaky]

On 06/02/2024 at 19:32, Edwardian said:

I am a left-wing collectivist extremist bent on giving ever more power to the State and to unaccountable bodies ... according to Liz Truss.

 

Evidently this is because I care about the environment and want an inclusive society that embraces, inter alia, ethnic minorities and LGBTQ+ communities. Here was I thinking I was a boring old centerist trying his best to respect other people, be a decent person and wave my kids off to a happy life in a free country with the rule of law , a functioning democracy and a sense of fairness. Silly me. Actually, that just makes me some frothing, raving Marxist.

 

Decent right-thinking people, on the other hand, don't believe in these things. Assuming that these "secret bigots conservatives" believe in the opposite of the things that "left-wing" extremists" believe in, they must want to disadvantage ethnic minorities and LGBTG+ folk, and to keep power with the unaccountable super-rich sovereign individuals and captains of industry and their corrupt cronies and client press. 

 

Obviously that would be better.

 

Thank goodness someone has the courage to stand up and say these things.

 

Take it away, Liz.... 

 

 

Unf-king-believable.

 

 

 

On the topic of the Cheese Woman.

 

Courtesy of Private Eye's "Number Crunching":

 

£26bn

Annual UK trade with Canada, with whom talks (after expiry of a deal on EU terms) collapsed last week, leaving tariffs of 245% on UK cheese exports.

 

0

Times Brexit cheerleader Liz Truss has said ‘This is a disgrace’ since announcement.

 

Edited February 9 by teaky

[monkeysarefun]

42 minutes ago, teaky said:

 

On the topic of the Cheese Woman.

 

Courtesy of Private Eye's "Number Crunching":

 

£26bn

Annual UK trade with Canada, with whom talks (after expiry of a deal on EU terms) collapsed last week, leaving tariffs of 245% on UK cheese exports.

 

0

Times Brexit cheerleader Liz Truss has said ‘This is a disgrace’ since announcement.

 

 

 

 

Fear not. The Australian Trade Agreement she championed is kicking goals , check out what I've  found in my fridge.

 

 

 

EU? pffff ..... Shmee you!

 

Edited February 9 by monkeysarefun

[teaky]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

 

Fear not. The Australian Trade Agreement she championed is kicking goals , check out what I've  found in my fridge.

 

 

 

EU? pffff ..... Shmee you!

 

So you only need to buy another 25,999,999,998 and we're back in the black with our trade deals!  🥳

[Edwardian]

2 hours ago, teaky said:

So you only need to buy another 25,999,999,998 and we're back in the black with our trade deals!  🥳

 

Ah, then, so very, very close!

 

[Welchester]

38 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Ah, then, so very, very close!

 

 

Perhaps to be very, very drunk is the answer.

[Schooner]

On 06/02/2024 at 20:24, Nearholmer said:

weakened party

 

Next in the series?

 

On 06/02/2024 at 22:38, Edwardian said:

So there's hope.... 

Goody gumdrops :)

 

 

On 08/02/2024 at 13:49, Andy Hayter said:

Not a vote winner though.

Not among traditional voter bases, no. With apologies for being particularly blunt, with a little luck they'll all die before they've irrevocably f*cked the country (world?) chasing their promised dreams.

 

None of our insitutions have much developed from their Victorian origins. Barely standing through the Information Age, they will not survive the coming of AI in the next year or two. None are fit for purpose. I suspect the party which acknowledges this and presents a coherent plan for reform would do well.

 

On 09/02/2024 at 08:53, Nearholmer said:

What do we all think is the rational response that should be made to the current state of the world at an individual, personal, level?

Obviously only a personal answer, but... Don't give up. Find out. Engage. Challenge. Mean it. Don't wail on a problem until you can champion a solution. Help as best you can, and support others who help too. Get comfy, and strap in. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

 

Maybe just me, but each of the above helps balance the swings between apoplexy, apathy and 'what a bunch of a-holes'y!

 

 

Then there's this unprecedented situation (I know, not another!) which will likely lead to further Interesting Times:

https://www.ft.com/content/29fd9b5c-2f35-41bf-9d4c-994db4e12998

 

Kettle's on, anyone for a brew?

[Ian Simpson]

Interesting to see young men in the UK bucking the trend by becoming more (if more weakly) liberal as well.  I hope the Conservative Party are proud of themselves.

[Nearholmer]

There’s a whole load of “stuff” going on with young people, where they’re trying to map-out places for themselves in the ever-emerging new landscape, and a part of it is visible through social media memes.

 

- a lot of variously bitter and wryly funny stuff about the difference from the “boomer” generations in terms of personal progress and expectations. One good one runs “my parents at 29 vs me at 29”, with contrasts like “expecting their third child vs interviewing for a new third sharer in our apartment”;

 

- a weird obsession with the Roman Empire, as the embodiment of a society in which progress was forever forward, great works were done, and men could do manly stuff (travel, fighting, killing, conquering, facing down wolves etc) and come out of military service with social respect, and a small plot of land. It’s a meme that attracts young blokes from all over the world, and not one of them seems to have spotted that 80%+ of blokes in the Roman Empire were colonised and exploited, and died before 35yo with very bad teeth;

 

- outright “toxic masculinity”, including the deeply disturbing “involuntary celibate” line of thinking, and things like rolling-back abortion rights;

 

- etc.

 

My sense of it overall is that both young men and young women are spooked by the uncertainty of the future, the fact that about the only certainty is that it won’t be like it was for their parents, but that young women feel slightly “on the up”, that some of it not being like the past might actually be positive for them, whereas young men feel that it’s all negative …… any privilege stemming from being lucky enough to be born a boy is disappearing, there is no automatic passport to being one rung up from the bottom of the hierarchy simply by possessing a willy, so they turn to conservative politics, actually reactionary politics, because it offers the promise of rolling back some equality, giving them back someone to stand on top of.

 

Obviously, this gets compounded where the equality point extends to race or religion, as well as gender, and if you look at the most toxically reactionary groups, they are ones who are being threatened by equality on all fronts, while simultaneously having their historic purposes and earning ability through physical work whipped away from them.

 

The only people who like equality are the ones who expect it to raise their relative status, or at least not diminish it, those who have elevated status under the old condition, even if the elevation is as tiny as a gender pay gap in their favour, simply hate the idea of equality, and will fight tooth and nail to resist it.

[Edwardian]

We might add to that summary concerns that the generality of more liberally inclined youth are (a) too concentrated in towns for the effect of their votes to reflect their numbers and (b) they are anyway relatively less likely to vote than the Old Haters amongst us.

 

We've had a couple of by-elections here, both lost by Conservatives to Labour, but in both seats the right-wing Reform Party came third, both displacing the centrist Lib Dems and in one seat causing combined Reform and MAGA*-Tory vote to exceed the winning Labour vote. 

 

Labour will win the next general election. This will halt the worst excesses of the present government. It will not, I predict, effect real or effective change to solve the many deep-rooted problems we have. Labour is both too embedded in a broken and corrupt system and too fearful of its returning 'socially conservative'** core voters to be more than Tory-Lite, with an ironically less diverse cabinet than the current Loonies. 

 

* Here 'Make Albion Great Again'

** For which read 'xenophobic reactionary anti-wokist', if not even worse.

[Nearholmer]

49 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

government. It will not, I predict, effect real or effective change to solve the many deep-rooted problems we have.

It won’t.
 

It’s the least-worst option for us, but it isn’t a solution to the UK’s particular flavour of the deep-rooted problems, let alone the roots of the deep-rooted problems, the things that lead inexorably to the destruction of the natural environment that we depend upon, resource wars, lebensraum atrocities. refugee crises, the corrosion of democracy where it does exist currently etc.

 

The people who choose reactionary politics are choosing completely the wrong answer to the problems, one that actually makes the problems worse, and therefore harder to solve, but they aren’t wrong when they identify that things are badly, badly wrong, and in many cases they aren’t wrong to identify themselves as among the worst affected by that wrongness. The fact that they choose to put a fire out by throwing petrol on it is a product of a combination of lack of alternative options, a bit of personal folly/ignorance, and the fact that a tiny number of people worked out long ago  how to lead the disgruntled by the nose for their own purposes by  provoking their disgruntlement and offering false hope of relief from it.

 

 

 

 

[Edwardian]

Finding real answers is hard though.

 

Easier to kick back and think of those strong men running the Roman Empire!

[Andy Hayter]

I am coming to the conclusion that the General Election is going to be ABC - anything but Conservative.

[alastairq]

Given the lower order results....I find I am rather pleased we don't have proportional representation, and power sharing...strangely.

[Annie]

[GMKAT7]

Good morning folks,

 

Annie, is that both a cat and not a cat at the same time?

 

And is it both alive and not alive at the same time?

Or has it ceased to be?

 

Noting that it is not blue and may not be Norwegian.

 

Yours in uncertainty,

Nigel.

Edited February 23 by GMKAT7
Missing letter.

[Edwardian]

11 hours ago, Annie said:

 

Adorable.

 

2 hours ago, GMKAT7 said:

 

Annie, is that both a cat and not a cat at the same time?

 

And is it both alive and not alive at the same time?

 

 

My only cat joke is:

 

Erwin Schrödinger is pulled over on the road by the traffic police. 

 

The policeman asks Schrödinger to unlock the car boot.

 

The policeman opens the boot and looks inside. Then he says, "Sir, did you know there's a dead cat in your boot?"

 

"Well there is now", replies Schrödinger.  

[alastairq]

A reality check?

 

 

[Schooner]

See also the excellent, vital, terrifying final ten mins analysis below:

 

Been waiting for the moment to start pestering my MP and reach down the back of the sofa for any extra donatables. Think that time has already arrived.