[demonrail666]

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.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

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.

[demonrail666]

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.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

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]

[h8kurdt]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

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.

Yer wha?!!

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

[ilduclo]

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

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

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

OK, on the print media thing anyway, I take it back. Definite bias to leave there.

 

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?”

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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

[h8kurdt]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

Looking at those circulation figures again, it is amazing how dominant the guardian is online, compared with it's actual sales figures. It's free access online obvious has an affect but at the same time, The Daily Mail has no paywall either, and it still sells a shit ton.

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.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by h8kurdt

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.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

Why would anyone buy it?

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.

[h8kurdt]

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.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

Out of curiosity I looked at the prices for digital-only subscriptions to The Times and the Telegraph. Once you've exhausted the trial discount periods they both want £26 a month. That's crazy money for an online-only subscription.

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.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by grimesbf

Boris Johnson. Another clown. Just great.

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.

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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

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

Armeggeddon for the Cons and Lab

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