Radx: true, but the economy IS growing for the polish shop owners in Boston, England.

Its just not growing for the locals who decided 20 years ago that since the factory closed for no fault of their own it was someones duty to take care of them.

Im oversimplifying, obviously, and I do apologize.

The situation in Boston, England will not improve if they chase the Poles out. It will not improve if more local employers find it difficult to sell their produce (they might even find it difficult to find workers once the Poles are gone).

The EU is not great but it is a large accessible market. Im pretty sure Boris is trying to think of a way to stay in right now.

Demanding jobs is the road to hell. If you base your economy on giving everyone a job you end up in North Korea. The Poles in Boston are looking for opportunities, the Brits are looking for a scapegoat.

I know it's Colbert's shtick and I never really got into it, but still...

"I have friends who live and work in London. They said "don't worry,we're very sensible people."

What's sensible for people in London might not be sensible for people in Salford. Or Boston. Or Wolverhampton. London, or the South-East in general, is as representative of the UK as the East/West Coast is of the US.

The hinterland has been drained at the expense of the center, on both a global and a national scale. If you live and work in the City of London, things might look quite ok, and whatever issues there are only need some reforms to no longer be an issue. But if your factory, the factory that provided jobs for the people in your home town, closed down ten, twenty years ago and now the best you can get is zero-hour contracts, then no, things are not ok.

People up top keep telling you that the economy is growing, that everyone's gonna be better off, that it's ok for multinational corporations and rich individuals to optimise their taxes, while they cut your welfare. Banks get a bailout, you get to pay the bedroom tax.

So no, your sensible friends, if they exist, live in a different universe than many of their countrymen. That's the disconnect we've been talking about.

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"The British economy is tanking. The pound has plunged to its lowest level since 1985... The Dow lost 611 points."

Again, so what? If the economy is growing and it has no effect on you, why should you give a jar of cold piss about the value of the pound or the stock exchange? Arguably, a drop in the exchange rate of the pound makes it easier for you to export your goods and raises the prices for imports, thereby encouraging you to produce the shit yourself. The UK does have a sovereign currency, unlike the Spanish, the Greeks, the Portuguese or the Italians who have to suffer internal devaluations, because Wolfgang Schäuble says so.

"Equity losses over $2 trillion"

Why should that matter? QE has pushed up stock prices beyond any resonable level, so what meaning do these book values hold? Not to mention that a lot of people made a shitload of money by shorting these stocks, including George Soros against Deutsche.

"There'll be no more money"

QE never trickled down anyway, makes no difference. Corbyn's people call their version "QE for the People" and "Green QE" for a reason: the previous version was only meant to prop up banks and stock values.

--------------

On a more general note, the hatred, the racism, the xenophobia... in most cases, it's a pressure valve. You leash out against someone else, you need someone to blame. The narrative is that we're living in a meritocracy, which makes it your fault that you didn't inherit an investment portfolio. So you start blaming yourself. You're a fuck-up. You worked hard and not only didn't climb the ladder, you actually went down. There's depression for ya. Guess what happens if someone, a person of perceived authority, then comes along and tells you it's not your fault, it's the fault of the immigrants. That narrative is very appealing if history is any indication. Even the supposedly most prosperous country in the EU, Germany, has the very same issue in the eastern parts, where there is no hope for a meaningful job.

People need work, meaningful work. Wanna guess how many of those "xenophobes" would be out in the street protesting against immigrants if they had a meaningful job with decent pay? Not to many would be my guess.

So the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are providing the narrative. But the lack of social cohesion is a result of market fundamentalism, of Thatcherism, of Third Way social-democrats leaving the lower half of the income distribution to the wolves. You can't exclude large swaths of the population from the benefits of increased productivity, etc. Social dividend, they called it. It's what keeps the torches and pitchforks locked away in the barn.

Good article, but Greenwald is missing one key point:
it's not just the "media elite" who can't understand the Leave vote. Most "normal" people outside England and Wales are perplexed by this too.

Talk to the average person on the street in Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, etc. and they'll tell you the same things:
a) the leave vote was the wrong decision
b) it was brought about through fear mongering and lies

So that leaves two possibilities:

1. the rest of the EU are media-brainwashed idiots and the people who saw the light were Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson and the kind of people now screaming racist abuse at "foreigners" (aka anyone non-white or with a foreign ancestry even if they were born in the UK).

or

2. it really was a dumb idea.

If Jeremy Corbyn can survive as leader until the inevitable early general election.. with his popular support he... might just....

No. No. I told myself I'd never have a dream again. Everything sucks, there is no hope. Boris Johnson and whatever small, blonde, furry alien creature he has tamed to balance on his naturally bald head will soon take over.

Do you have an ant named Boris? Because that's this cockroach's name..

It's as *dead as the symbiotic life form on Boris' head.

For those that don't know: Conrad Black was convicted in U.S. District Court in Chicago on July 13, 2007 and sentenced to serve 6.5 years in federal prison and pay Hollinger $6.1 million, in addition to a fine of $125,000.
And in October 2012, a US federal judge fined Black $6.1 million (in penalties) for securities law violations during his chairmanship of Hollinger International. The fine is related to a 2008 judgement against Black by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission which also banned Black from being a director of a publicly traded US company. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Black

This is the guy that didn't trust Boris.

They did not sound drunk.
And that ram's name is Boris.

When I read this amazing book (L'Ecume des Jours, Boris Vian) I thought, no way it could be adapted. But this is Michel "Eternal Sunshine" Gondry, so I look forward to be proven wrong.

Was that Boris Johnson, the mayor of London?

Watch out, he will headbutt his puny opponents in the balls!

He was doing OK for 30 minutes or so until he tried to blame "the most bloody century in history" on atheism, I'm assuming, because of their coincidence. Argument from coincidence means nothing, especially considering all the wars that have been waged in the name of one religion or another. My guess is our increased population and increased killing technology account for why we are able to kill more people.

With his attack on the student who insisted, "Everything is meaningless", he's committing the common error of conflating two different meanings of the same word. The student wasn't saying, "There is no such thing such that it has meaning, including this statement." He was agreeing that there is no teleological reason for our existence. Zacharias twisted his words with double meanings.

His insight about emptiness coming from indulgence in pleasure and the disappointment after is accurate, as long as the pleasure being indulged in isn't self-fulfilling. When I work hard to prepare something that will make others happy, I get immense pleasure before, during and after. It's only when I'm focusing on mundane things like computer games or (sorry y'al) the Sift that I feel pleasure during, but little pleasure after.

Also, people like working towards things. If you think that you're going to be happier once you reach a goal, you're wrong. But if you think you're going to be happier while you're reaching goals, you'll probably be right. If you'd asked Boris Becker how he felt after his first championship, he might have felt better. After that he realized that there was nowhere else for him to go. Sounds like he was also particularly prone to depression on top of that, though I know nothing of him.

Further, all these arguments from the Hong Kong tycoon to Becker to Hitler are anecdotal, and not statistically significant. None demonstrate anything except that it's possible for a person to reach material goals and not be happy. If they were conclusive, then by the same token one would only need to find a single suicidal believer to disprove religion from the other side. Statistics showing significantly less depression among religious people than non-believers would be meaningful, and they may exist. But they still wouldn't demonstrate lack of faith to be a wrong position, just a less advantageous one.

59:50 Does Zacharias think only religious people find meaning in their children? 1:01:00 Or that religious people don't try and find happiness in fame and wealth?

His final argument about being in error about the Christian religion as opposed to being in error about atheism overlooks all the evil things people are capable of only through justification by religion.

I'm a collector as well - right now I still have 5-600 (may be an over-exaggeration) star wars figs still in package and tons more out of package. Everyone who knows me always asks about value, what are they worth? I can't even put a price on them because I don't care - I like'em and I'm not selling. I collect because I like the stuff. Not so I can walk around and say, "my stuff is worth a lot, that's why I collect it".

I have comics & trading cards. I have the full complete set of the Dark Crystal trading cards - I don't care what they are worth - I like em! Star Wars, Marvel, Boris, Olivia, fantasy, baseball trading cards 1000s of them...


On that same note, stuff I have sold.
My full complete collections of Star Trek figures (plus DS9 figs) - gone
My full collection of X-men/X-force figures - gone
My full and complete set of Bat Man- animated series figs - gone
Full and complete set of vintage star wars figures (half still in packages)
My full and complete set of Tod McFarland Spawn/Wet Works/YoungBlood action figures (plus rare and limited release figs)
Robocop
TMNT
Robotec
Black Hole
Battlestar Galactica
Buck Rogers (from the TV series)
D&D lead figures
so much more...

I regret ever having to sell the stuff - there was a time with my first child when I had to choose between toys or formula & diapers. I made the right choice but I wish I had found a different way to come up with the cash. Especially now that I have two kids who would have loved to have that stuff.

I've replaced some of the vintage star wars stuff and I have tone of the new star wars figs from the past 15 years. I also have an almost complete set of Aliens vs. predator figs (minus the loader - I sold that off as well)

he'll never win against boris the blade.

Given the lime green tee shirt and orange neckerchief, I am gonna take a shot and say Boris is colorblind. Dunno if this has anything to do with what happened here but it certainly can't help.

Well this is bori..what the...holy shi...