UK Politics Thread

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Re: UK Politics Thread

Postby Anglerphobe » Tue Dec 19, 2017 2:15 am

Journalists here have been spotlighting the online harassment of MPs and its possible relationship to the parties themselves and to the media. The tribal bombast with which the tabloids have been treating Brexit has been blamed for its part in this by Harriet Harman and Diane Abbott, among others. The argument is that hostile coverage both encourages and "normalises" vitriol against politicians.
This is fairly astute conclusion in my opinion. I think it would be an unlikely coincidence that people being referred to in these three DM headlines have received floods of threats and abuse from people calling them traitors who should be various expelled from government, hanged, or raped.
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The Daily Mail itself recently ran a headline about the abuse that one unnamed Conservative MP allegedly received from what it describes as "Corbyn's trolls". Now, this is not at all sufficiently substantiated, but pretty plausible. Elements of Corbyn's harder left wing support have form for harassing their political opponents both online and off. Labour's leadership elections were marred by this sort of behaviour.
This could really be regarded as another dimension of the frightening acceptance our society as a whole seems to have for using social media to write disgusting things about or to people, but there may be some more significance here, given the fact that (most of) these people are elected to represent the interests of their constituents. These people potentially being influenced by threats and coercion is the whole nation's problem.
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"Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive,
Thou, teaching thrift, thyselfe couldst never thrive.
So, like the whetstone, many men are wont
To sharpen others, when themselves are blunt."

Anyone who has any kind of opinion fucking disgusts me.
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Re: UK Politics Thread

Postby Grimstone » Tue Dec 19, 2017 2:50 am

Wait, people still wear those ridiculous wigs??
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Re: UK Politics Thread

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sat Mar 24, 2018 9:46 pm

So, uh, this is a thing.
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Re: UK Politics Thread

Postby Marcuse » Sat Mar 24, 2018 10:45 pm

I'm not sure how overspending on campaign funds would mean that "Brexit is based on a lie" though.

Certainly it's not good for campaign spending limits to be exceeded by anyone, and claims abound about both sides. David Cameron's government used public money to fund a leaflet campaign across the entire country to "inform" people about the risks of voting to leave which was entirely negative and really amounted to campaign material, but that was never calculated into Remain spending figures. If Leave did also overspend, I'm sure their supporters will claim they only did it to level the playing field, and nobody will investigate Remain overspends nearly as hard because they lost.

But really, I don't feel like this will change anything, nor is it particularly new information. I've been reading about the problems with Leave trying to foist off millions in donations they couldn't spend without breaking campaign rules, and possibly actually breaking them, since the referendum result became known and I don't see how this is different other than it comes directly after a positive set of statements of progress from the negotiations, and the strong solidarity that the EU has displayed over Russia killing people on our streets lending an even greater sense of needing to make these talks work.

It's almost as though someone decided we needed a highly negative story about Brexit right now just in case things start to feel too much like they might work out. Can't have that if you're still trying to keep the UK inside the EU...
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