Ordinarily it would be scheduled for 2021. Strictly speaking, a newly appointed PM doesn't have to call a gen election but it sort of de-legitimises their position if they don't. Especially if they're pushing a controversial policy.

if it’s not required, why play russian roulette? isn’t that what may did?

if it were me (lmao, right) i’d solve the crisis at hand first and worry about elections later.

i feel bad for the remainers btw. plenty of people offering to carry out brexit, but remainers have no figurehead. greens, liberal democrats, labour remainers suffocated by corbyn’s perpetual evasions, the snp... all scattered. oh “change uk” also... still adds up to nothing.

Given they have 75% of Parliament and most of the mainstream media fighting their corner, it could be argued the Remainers don't need a figurehead.

and yet they can’t accomplish anything, farage is leading in the polls, and his milkshake grabs all the headlines.

judean people’s front
the people’s front of judea
campaign for a free gallilee

sure

i mean im not sure we disagree properly, im more on info gathering mode as usual, but i can drop the matter

[eta: and agreeing to disagree has to be a prerequisite for any exchange]

Yer wha?!!

speaking of “print,” watchu guys think of the evening standard?

Noah’s ark theme park......damaged by rain

https://www.courierpress.com/story/n...OfVDQCKomX40iU

which one is the most “respectable” leave paper?

i notice i never read any of them lol. but im curious

-

eta: my research sez the telegraph. yes?

hahaha

today’s cartoon is hilarious

i cant link it but

[man answering phone] “yes i’ll be voting for you in the leadership contest. who is this, by the way?”

that’s paper circulation or online subscriptions?

i havent bought a regular physical newspaper in something like 20 years... maybe did the occasional sunday times (ny times) a decade ago... more for show than anything lololol

Didn't the Guardian just announce that they're now making a profit and it's down to the online subscription they offer? Gotta hand it to them for changing their way of making money when newspapers are collapsing left, right and centre. Doesn't help that their print papers cost £1.50 or whatever it is now.

I'd actually read the times if it wasn't behind a pay wall. Hell'll freeze over the day I give Murdoch any of my money.

funny thing about murdoch is he has fingers in many pies. and every pie is different.

when you watched the simpsons you made murdoch rich. sunny? murdoch. sons of anarchy? murdoch. fargo? justified? the americans? archer? all murdoch.

mulder’s basement room, eh? the cigarette smoking man is murdoch.

fox news horror on one hand, fox searchlight indie movies on the other. complete opposites.

i actually pay for a subscription to barron’s and marketwatch which are owned by... yep, murdoch (via dowjones). will cancel soon as i no longer have time to read them (i prefer bloomberg these days) but those are good publications.

on and off i have flirted with subscriptions to the wall street journal: excellent paper, fair, balanced, reasonable. and yes right of center but not shameless propaganda like fox news. owner? murdoch, lol.

fox soccer/fox sports where ive watched bundesliga for a decade (ok, maybe less)... murdoch. yep.

the way i rationalize my purchases is i need their info more than he needs my money. my marginal contribution to him is insignificant, his marginal contribution to me is more significant. and so, seeing as how i marginally profit more than him from the transaction, i pay.

and some of the media he owns is really good. so, take into account the support of these valuable journalists and tv producers and filmmakers for the good work they do. plus a small cut for the bastard—satan gets his due. it helps to spit on the floor when you enter your cc info.

because they need their news in paper form? for waiting rooms, coffee shops, technophobes, libraries, etc. (libraries still hang newspapers in those wood racks).

pulp costs money. more than file servers anywyay.

Fucking hell! Be interested to see how many people do have a steady subscription to that. The Guardian charge a fiver a month which in comparison I should be happy to pay.

oh that’s probably not how it works

first you do the trial subscription

when it’s about to expire you call to cancel (they make you call, sometimes just chat)

that’s when you say “meh” and they offer you a deep discount

i pay $4/mo for the nyt down from the standard $16. i don’t really read it a lot. i told them i pay $4 for washington post and they matched it. it’s more a reference than an actual newspaper. lots of stupid shit. [but paul krugman is great]

barron’s (weekly) plus marketwatch (24h ongoing) $11mo, half their nominal $20+ price tag

wsj they say it’s $40, but it’s really $20 (im not getting it right now)

the economist works different, i didn’t get a chance to bargain? it’s $45 per quarter ($15/mo)

the ft supposedly sells for like $600/yr but i got an offer for $250 which comes to 20-ish a month (did not take it at the time as i was trying to sort things)

etc.

so, more like this then?

still waiting for european elections results, just read this re: antagon’s news from the other day.

sorry about the bad copypaste but the paragraphs did not transport. [i’ll try a rough re-break]. this is from the “charlemagne” column on the economist

—

THE HUGS DON’T WORK
Cosying up to populists rarely ends well for political moderates

On a freezing morning in Vienna in December 2017, Charlemagne heard a tempting case for what might be called “the hug strategy”. He was drinking coffee with an ally of Sebastian Kurz, the young leader of the centre-right Austrian People’s Party who was hours from a coalition deal with the hard-right Austrian Freedom Party (fpö). “He has grown up,” said the Kurz-ite of Heinz-Christian Strache, the fpö’s leader, adding that, in any case, Mr Kurz would be able to manage his new ally. Having already edged towards some fpö positions and won back some of its supporters, the incoming chancellor would render his coalition partner irrelevant in government and thus contain the hard-right while governing pragmatically. It all sounded very clever.


It proved otherwise. Mr Kurz’s big hug failed to stifle Mr Strache. At recent rallies in the South Tyrol and Linz your columnist watched the vulpine vice-chancellor charge in to the boisterous oomph of Johann Strauss’s Radetzky March before unveiling his latest designs: Austrian passports for German-speakers in northern Italy, mosque closures, an end to the “population replacement” of white Europeans by immigrants. Support for the fpö remained high and stable at around 25%. Its ministers undermined the independence of Austria’s state broadcaster and attacked the rights of asylum-seekers. Karin Kneissl, the fpö-backed foreign minister, danced with Vladimir Putin at her wedding. Some containment this was turning out to be.


On May 17th it all came crashing down. Two German newspapers published a video secretly filmed in a villa on the Spanish island of Ibiza in the summer of 2017. In it, a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch suggested to Mr Strache that her uncle take over the Kronen Zeitung, Austria’s largest newspaper, and use it to pump out pro-fpö messages in return for government contracts. The fpö leader responded enthusiastically and expressed admiration for how Viktor Orban, Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, had crushed the independent press in his country. The scandal—dubbed “Ibizagate”—prompted a tearful Mr Strache to announce his resignation and a chastened Mr Kurz to dissolve the alliance. “Enough is enough,” the chancellor said. Yet he had hardly been ignorant of the risks of the coalition from the start. He merely thought he could manage them.


The sorry tale is part of a bigger saga. All over Europe populist nationalists like Mr Strache are challenging moderate politicians, many of whom are adopting a version of the hug strategy by emulating some of the populists’ language and policies, or bringing them into government, or both as in Austria. In Bavaria’s state election campaign last autumn the conservative Christian Social Union tilted right on migration and picked fights with Angela Merkel’s moderate Christian Democrat Union. Ahead of Sweden’s election in September the previously liberal-conservative Moderates lambasted multiculturalism and did deals with the hard-right Sweden Democrats in local government. Spain’s centre-right People’s Party formed a regional government with the nationalist Vox party in January and aped its hardline positions on Catalan autonomy. In subsequent elections the three mainstream parties fell to their lowest results since 1950, 2002 and 1979 respectively.


Elsewhere the cost has, as in Mr Kurz’s case, been less electoral than reputational and ideological. Britain’s Conservatives vanquished the anti-eu United Kingdom Independence Party by appropriating its main policy (Brexit) but are now tearing themselves apart. In Denmark the centre-right Venstre’s rightward shift (allowing police to confiscate jewellery and other valuables from arriving asylum-seekers, for example) and informal collaboration with the hard-right Danish People’s Party has pushed the country’s entire political contest in that direction. Manfred Weber, the centre-right candidate to be president of the European Commission, has long hugged Mr Orban in the hope of moderating him. This has emboldened the Hungarian leader, toxified Mr Weber and may impede him from marshalling the broad mainstream coalition that he needs in the European Parliament after this week’s elections—unless, that is, he relies on votes from the hard-right.


A Faustian embrace


Political scientists who have studied such things could have warned of the dangers. Pontus Odmalm and Eve Hepburn, for example, have used the examples of British, French, Finnish, Danish and Dutch politics from 2002 to 2015 to chart the effects of mainstream parties moving towards populist positions on immigration. Having expected that these shifts would dent support for the populist parties, they found no such effect. Mainstream parties moving right, they hypothesise, may legitimise extreme parties and push them into yet more extreme positions—creating a bidding war that mainstreamers cannot win. This difference applies even if the outsiders are brought into government. Studying the effects of hard-right parties on qualitative measures of transparency, individual liberties, rule of law and minority rights in 30 European countries from 1990 to 2012, Robert Huber and Christian Schimpf showed that the presence of anti-system populists in opposition can be good for democracy, because they act like “drunken guests” at a dinner party and blurt out awkward truths. But they also found that there is “a substantial negative effect on democratic quality” when they enter government. Ibizagate should have come as no surprise to Mr Kurz.


But if this is not enough, Europe’s moderates may be about to get another big dose of evidence. The European Parliament elections will probably see the centre-right bloc, many of whose member parties have pursued some version of the hug strategy, lose more seats than any other group. The right-wingers, some of them emboldened by roles in coalitions at national and regional levels, are expected be among the main winners. If so, it will be yet more proof that the hugs don’t work.

finally found the bloomberg live blog for european elections

getting frequent updates right now

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/live-...tary-elections


CATCHUP: If you're just joining us, here's what we know from the first wave of exit polls:

A cautious, early takeaway is that populist parties failed to make the splash they were hoping for, while support for environmental movements like Germany's Greens surged, particularly among younger voters

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU bloc won the EU ballot with about 28% of the vote, but that was down from 35% in 2014

Merkel's national coalition partners, the Social Democrats, crashed to 15.5% from 27%, and also came second to the CDU in a regional ballot in Bremen, a traditional stronghold
The Greens were the second-strongest party in Germany with 22% of the EU vote, while the far-right AfD did slightly worse than expected with 10.5%

In Austria, in the wake of the video scandal that felled the government, Prime Minister Sebastian Kurz is on track to win but nonetheless looks set to lose a confidence vote on Monday

Greek exit polls show Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is set to lose, possibly prompting a snap national election as soon as June

Viktor Orban's Fidesz party has a commanding 56% of the vote in Hungary, hardly a surprise given the prime minister's near-total control of national media

—

live results being posted here:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2...ent-elections/
(maps & charts starting to fill up)

===

hoooleeeee sheeeeeeettt front national polling ahead of macron’s party

that’s some ugly news

i dont see any numbers yet, can you point me to some?

holy fuck the tories got CLOBBERED

i was adding up remain and leave numbers and dont know how to split labor

—

eta: sorry, laboUr

—

ps: the pound is holding steady after opening slightly higher than it closed last week

weird... i was expecting it to sink into hell. maybe that’s been already priced in. it’s nowhere near bottom however.

—

also usa holiday and... britain bank holiday looks like? but still...

ok this is what im getting from those bloomberg charts now ( raw copypasta: party, %, seats)

National party
Vote
Seats
Brexit Party
31.7%
29
Liberal Democrats
18.6%
16
Labour Party
14.1%
10
Green Party
11.1%
7
Conservative Party
8.7%
4
United Kingdom Independence Party
3.6%
0
Scottish National Party
3.4%
3
Change UK
2.8%
0
Plaid Cymru—Party of Wales
1.7%
1
Sinn Fein
0.7%
1
Democratic Unionist Party
0.6%
1
Social Democratic and Labour Party
0.3%
1
Ulster Unionist Party
0.3%
0
Alliance Party
0.3%
0
Traditional Unionist Voice
0.3%
0
Other parties from the Great Britain electoral college
1.8%
0
Other parties from the Northern Ireland electoral college
0.2%
0

came here to post the gbp index: how the pound measures vs a basket of currencies.

https://www.ifcmarkets.com/en/market...ices/gbp-index

been going up slightly in the face of all lololo

also most significative for brexit the EUR/GBP charts

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/EURGBP=X

the british pound seems to be catching up with reality and heading steadily down these last few hours (but trading volume is low)

lml @ that article,,,

thnaks for that link, interesting read.

there are a lot of domestic details and names it would take me too long to catch up with, but i actually agree with the main conclusion of that piece i think.

(and yes, i agree to disagree with you by default: i’m neither a preacher nor a high-pressure salesman. i enjoy interesting disagreements because they are illuminating.)

i think it’s correct to assess as in that article that no soft brexit is possible any longer: you’re either staying or crashing out. and the crash might be by choice or by getting booted (by a macron veto to an extension for example).

i think also that “remain and reform” is the right answer to the criticisms of europe that you have made (antidemocratic impulses and ruling by austerity).

right now for example italy is facing a fine for failing to rein in her debt. and yes their ballooning debt is a horror, but maybe that’s not the way to deal with it? (i’m not offering a solution here btw, just questioning europe’s response.)

i have no national dog in this fight, and i’m not partisan. actually, i confess to having small bets right now on britain crashing out—but that is based on probabilities and other factors, not on personal wishes. my bets might change as things develop. purely practical.

but from a larger perspective, values, etc, i think globalization and integration are inevitable, and so it’s in everyone’s interest that we do that in the best possible manner. yes, there will be political hurdles, but those are better than war.

letting communist china or gangster russia gain an upper hand in this race to establish global standards holds zero appeal to me. the rest are skirmishes that need constructive resolution, not breakups. the usa pulling out of the tpp was a dunce move that only empowers communist china, for example.

i think we can’t go back to old labor movements, and rather than making demands from paternalistic schemes the labor force needs to become more entrepreneurial in its offer. this can be done in the context of organized labor, where unions can operate as sellers/agents for themselves. and the role of government would be to reduce friction in labor markets so that workers can relocate/retrain/refit with minimal pain and a reasonable safety net.

but i recognize that this is a bit of a theoretical leap in the face of more immediate matters, and maybe i’ve gone slightly off a tangent hahaha. but no, that’s just to explain where i’m ultimately coming from.

so, yeah, i think remain and reform would be a better embrace of history than corbyn’s dino-marxist evasions.

this might be naive of me, but i look forward to seeing the influence of green parties in the new european parliament


ah, yeah, i sort of missed that argument due to lack of references. e.g. “hull’s depressed vote” (meaning...?)

but yeah, old-style labor is a thing of the past. nations need to pursue their comparative advantages, and embrace change, not resist and subsidize obsolete industries—like here, “coal”. lmao. garbage fuel nobody wants.


never heard that name before. but if he’s not a supporter of degenerate sandinismo/chavismo/castrismo, chances are i might like him

And now, a little more than a week later, the wannabe Gordon Gekko chancellor followed suit after three parties had voted against him in a motion of no confidence. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz had drawn a lot of criticism for his more than compliant behavior towards the far right party FPOE. Under his patronage, the Austrian People's Party - which had formerly presented itself as a centrist party that was leaning a tad towards the conservative side (though there had been clear flirtations with the far right time and time again) - took a sharp right turn and cranked the whole "we're the party of the employers, not the workforce" appeal up to eleven. This marks the first time in the post-war second republic of Austria a chancellor, his cabinet as well as his coalition partners have been relieved of their duties. And quite some relief that is. Good fucking riddance²
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/27/e...ntl/index.html

hahahaha nice. great conclusion to that clusterfuck.

for a good analysis of the more general implications see the economist’s article in the previous page

(tldr; let all who cozy up to nazis eat shit)

Swear the bloody economist. Economists this, economists that. Just bloody marry it already.

marry?

but i prefer thrice-daily fornication...

the daily telegraph:

“Jeremy Corbyn faces mutiny as Labour grandees dare him to expel them after Alastair Campbell thrown out”

i am tempted to get a trial subscription so i can get a view from that side of things haaa haaaa haaa

i’m serious. i’m so used to the guardian and the one h8kurdt hates to hear about that the telegraph is like an alternative universe i need to explore...

know any free ones that could do the job instead?

otherwise it’s 30 days free then $3/week (not forever... only while the drama lasts... which ok perhaps will be forever lol)

The daily mail is the total opposite end of the guardian. As much as I hate most of the bilge the print I do check it everyday to see what they're banging on about. It may not be on the same level as Fox news for sensationalism it's up there for sure.

I'm certainly not gonna pay the stupid amount the Times and Telegraph are charging. Edit-Theb again there's a £2 a week option for the telegraph. That ain't so bad.

yeah thats $3 for me with their exchange rate

just tried looking at the mail: the headlines suffice, lmao

-

dude: the times (digital “international pack”) is offering me 30 days free trial then just 5 pounds per month.

copypasta:

:::

The International Pack

Here's what's included

Unlimited digital access every day of the week to The Times and The Sunday Times
Online and offline access to our award-winning smartphone and tablet apps
Unlimited digital access to our magazines and supplements, including our Saturday and Sunday magazines, Style, Culture and LUXX
Exclusive online video content from our journalists, including our weekly Times Film Show
Access to an archive of over 16,000 crosswords, puzzles and cryptics in The Times Crossword Club
Digital access to over 200 years of news in The Times archives
Free for one month
£5 a month after your trial

Start your trial
Monthly rolling contract

:::

looks pretty good but theyre remainers yeah?

yeah they have a whole section of american tabloid news.

—

boris johnson faces trial and the pound immediately rises? you cant make this shit up lololo

(seems like a political stunt to do it now not 3 years ago)

Well that's summed it up perfectly

lmao

indeed

did you guys ever sue tony blair? or did he blame it all on colin powell?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8keZbZL2ero

And there was me thinking it was only a sitcom

haaaahaaaaaa
it’s genius

i got sidetracked with that show but should resume soon

The Vengaboys are back alive! :D Scoring a number #1 hit in Austria with We're Going to Ibiza!
after 20 odd years. And I guess today, tonight? they will play it live in Vienna at a protest march



#VengaboysforPresident


We're going to Ibiza! How the Vengaboys became the sound of political protest in Austria

Yeah, that's probably the most curious piece of trivia in the whole debacle. My flatmate said he'll probably go to the gig. I'm obviously not a fan of them but it's nice to see that they found a new purpose for this novelty track. It's the perfect logical conclusion to times as absurd and chaotic as these. A late 90s novelty Eurodance act as the voice of a protest. Who'd have thunk and why the fuck not?

In other news: Brigitte Bierlein was just appointed as the interim-chancellor by president Van Der Bellen, making her the first ever female chancellor in the history of Austria . Which is cool. There are whispers and murmurs though that she is rather conservative and close to both parties that had just been ousted. Not so cool, if true. But to be taken with a grain of salt since she is technically an Independent. And she was selected by the president, who in opposition to the two formerly governing parties is decidedly left-leaning and does seem very level-headed. So she might just be neutral enough. Time will tell.