On hearing the news of the Labour landslide when he woke up, Keiki ran downstairs to tell his sister.

"It's the first day of our lives when there isn't a Conservative government, Humuhumu!" he cried joyfully.

The Conservatives are trying to spin this as a rejection of their party rather than a win for Labour. It can be both, you knobheads. I also hope Boris is really grumpy that Sir Keir's majority is more than double what he managed. We can all see whose is bigger now. #petty
It’s that time again! Yes, the time when [my USian state] sends out its election materials and paper ballots to postal voters, for the primary elections taking place in August. I love the voter pamphlet and read it avidly from cover to cover, even for the districts I'm not eligible to vote in, because every chancer under the sun has popped their head up to run for office. Since “state candidate statements are printed exactly as submitted to the [redacted] State Secretary of State’s Office,” without censorship, correction, verification or editing, some of their statements are A M A Z I N G. Not the established politicians’ ones, of course, those are formulaic and boring. But the chancers are great. And bonkers.

Here is a selection of my favourite offerings.

The "Setting the bar low" award

Community Service: I've never been to jail.
The "I wanted to laugh at the rest of this but it turned out to be fucking tragic" award

Community Service: Despite personal problems, I have managed to avoid going to Court, except for driving without insurance. To be fair, I was living in the car at the time…
The "Hard pass based on the fewest words" award

Statement: Stop [City] / King Fascism with idiotic face!
This was repeated for several paragraphs, with an exhortation to “vote Trump” at the end. NOPE.

The "Really has it in for the rodents, wtf" award

Statement: De-list the pocket gopher, it’s not endangered. End this pocket gopher nonsense.
There’s pocket gopher nonsense going on? Do tell. Sadly, they don’t elaborate.

The "5G conspiracy" award

Statement: If elected, I will direct an independent, state-funded study of the effects of 5G cell-phone towers upon living things. My research indicates that this radiation is killing trees, birds, honey bees, human life.
This person is also against a load of stuff: chemtrails, bio-mass use for electricity, wind power, solar power, coal trains, eugenics, Satan, off-shore drilling...and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It’s unclear what they’d do about any of it other than vigorously opposing it, though. I’d particularly like to know what they plan to do to fight Satan whilst in office. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The "This started out OK if a little extreme, AND THEN" award

Statement [no other information was submitted]: I am running as a spokesperson for the anti-apartheid / reparations-now movement. My issues and solutions: 1) Raise awareness that [redacted] State is Native American land, and should be returned. Colonialism is no longer acceptable. 2) The current Governor’s biggest mistake is turning [City’s] building over to proven historial Negro vampire criminals.
I don’t expect to see any of these candidate statements in the November election, but if they do appear on the ballot then things have got even worse than I imagined. USian readers, do you have any choice tidbits from your state voter pamphlets? Please share them in the comments if you do!
🤮

More seriously, I am Not Happy about the probable damage that is going to be done to the disadvantaged, the vulnerable, the foreign (hi!), the fabric of the social safety net, to name but a few things, if this is correct.
Are the newspapers not getting bored with repeatedly predicting the imminent demise of Theresa May?

She's been supposedly on the verge of leaving for months, if not the entire term of her leadership. And yet there she stays, seemingly immune to all attempts to unseat her, like a lich queen glued to her throne, whilst the allegedly human ministers gurn uselessly in her toils, unable to deliver the fatal headshot or destroy the final horcrux or whatever the hell it would actually take to get rid of her.

Meanwhile, we continue to lurch toward zombie Brexit, every single one of us sick to the back teeth of the whole omnishambles.

Possibly related: I voted in the European elections today.
+5 )

20190323_132709
On Saturday, I went to London to march with rather a lot of people who are a bit cross about Brexit.

More photos from the march )

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I hereby declare this to be the Best Sign of the People's Vote March: "Please, can we just not?" The umbrella handle, y'all.
Poll #21257 Choices
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 61

A couple of years ago, you made a poorly-informed decision. It becomes clear that your choice is going to have dire consequences for you and everyone around you. However, you've been handed a golden opportunity to roll back the clock and reverse the decision unilaterally, effectively resetting to the point you were at before you made that decision. All you have to do is admit your mistake. What do you do?

Own up to the mistake and avert the dire consequences.
58 (95.1%)

Adamantly refuse to acknowledge you have any option other than to carry on and subject yourself and everyone else to the dire consequences.
3 (4.9%)

tags:
Have made it to the bosom of the out-law family.

Greatly enjoying being ensconced by a roaring fire.

But.

Have just learnt Paddy Ashdown has died. And even my Tory out-laws are mourning that. R.I.P.,*raised glass*
I was going to muster up the energy to post some photos from the weekend, but then the pamphlet for local elections in Hometown USA popped through my door. And it is a thing of beauty. Honestly, I haven't been this entertained by printed material since...well, since The Secret Barrister, which I read fairly recently, so never mind.

Anyway, I present you with some samplings of candidate statements for US Senator, which just in case you didn't know this already, is a six-year term. I'm not sure if some of these people would last six minutes in office.

All credit for misspellings, random capitalisation, and incoherence goes to the original authors.

From Alex Tsimerman, I give you an excerpt, because six paragraphs of Alex Tsimerman might break the internet:

Are we better now than a few years ago?* Stop Seattle fascism with idiotic face!

I, Alex Tsimerman, speak to all Washingtonians stop Seattle emerald degenerate super smart freaking idiot, who bring Seattle to number One Fascist City in America with Nazi Social Democrat Mafia with progressive Gestapo principle. That always choose dirty garbage rats that drink from fat cat toilet and who make your life miserable and brought us to total collapse. Enough is Enough.


* No. But this is literally the only coherent sentence in your statement.

From RC Smith, whose six paragraphs are almost entirely dedicated to the dangers of wireless communication, we have:

We're allowing industry controlled FCC to microwave poison our children, families, homes, workplaces...(google: microwave sickness webster's**). We must stop deployment of these deadly 5G cell tower transceivers (google: press democrat Verizon antennas***). Enough's Enough!****


** "a condition of impaired health reported especially in the Russian medical literature that is characterized by headaches, anxiety, sleep disturbances, fatigue, and difficulty in concentrating and by changes in the cardiovascular and central nervous systems and that is held to be caused by prolonged exposure to low-intensity microwave radiation." Not terribly illuminating, as the distance from, intensity of, and length of time of the exposure are not defined here.
*** I did this so you don't have to. Funnily enough, the article is about how the residents hated the large size and ugly appearance of the antennas, not the radio waves coming from them.
**** Hey, I know someone else who thinks that. You two should meet! OR MAYBE NOT. O.O


From the "Oh dear, there is way too much to unpack in here, and also, which state do you live in and what office do you think you're running for" files, I bring you Mohammad Said:

...As an immigrant myself Spanish speaking, I advocate to institute a guest worker program, so Latinos come to work in the US leaving their families behind given enough time to go back to visit. Amended Constitution to reform War Powers Act, National Guard under State control and Second Amendment as privilege and not right, foreign born American citizens able to run for president. Cut foreign aid, former President Obama gave Israel 38 billion dollars from tax payers in the next 10 years. No politician protested. Reign on military not treat them as sacred cow, need to finance our infrastructure.


From the "Someone needs a lesson in the definition of the word hubris" files, I bring you a very small excerpt of Roque "Rocky" De La Fuente:

I don't have to pretend to understand the minority issues because I am one. I don't have to pretend how to create jobs because I have created thousands...I don't have to pretend to understand international relations because I've traveled extensively and both lived and worked abroad.


And finally, the jewel in the crown comes from George H. Kalberer, who cannot see the tragic element of his ability to believe simultaneously that innocent civilians in America should not be unjustly slaughtered and that innocent civilians in Asia should be:

...Compel Body Cams on each and every Cop in America with strict Federal supervision - all Body Cam information stored on Federal Computers and available to FOIA requests - All Police Unions abolished by law - Each and every Cop involved in the death of an unarmed person must be immediately fired and banned from Police work for Life both going forward and retroactively*****.

...North Korea - Kick Jung's Ass with 30,000 Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. China - Kick Xi Jinping's Ass, by Blockading, then Conquering China by firing the necessary number****** of Tomahawk Cruise Missiles to destroy all Nuclear Targets, all Air Defense Targets, all Military Targets including each and every Chinese ship, submarine and airplane launched from a safe distance with a goal of no loss of American Life and with no US ground troops used until after China's Unconditional Surrender.*******


***** How do you fire someone retroactively?
****** This suggests he actually did the calculation for the necessary number for North Korea! Well done Mr Kalberer! Although he may want to check what the actual US stockpile of Tomahawk missiles is, considering that less than 300 were used during the entirety of the 1991 Gulf war.
******* Will they be required to Surrender in ALL CAPS?



Key statement at the end of the pamphlet: "Statements are the opinions of the authors and haven't been checked for factual or grammatical accuracy by the Auditor's Office." NO SHIT, SHERLOCK.
I’ll never understand the pride people take in saying, “I was born and bred here” or the use of the same phrase to defend one’s perceived superiority or deservingness of housing, health care or other basic human rights.

I mean, what did you, yourself, actually do to influence where you were born or bred? Unless you were a particularly ambitious embryo, the answer is “nothing”. Sure, your parents might have made some kind of effort to select your place of birth. Maybe they strove to move to better housing in a neighbourhood with better services and schools. Maybe they’re even immigrants, like my dad, and they struggled long and hard to learn their fourth language in order to integrate into their adopted country. But you? You didn’t do anything. Why are you so proud of that? Think of the things you've accomplished in your life. Isn't it far more fitting and fulfilling to be proud of those?

And why the obsession with asserting the superiority of a single identity over the others? “I’m English first and then British.” Pro-tip: Most of the rest of the world considers both of those to be synonymous with “ex-colonialist imperialist arsehole” so it doesn’t really matter which one you choose. ^.^

Here is a list of the geographically-linked identities that I consider myself able to lay claim to. I’m proud of some and not others.

  • American
  • British
  • European
  • Hawai’ian
  • Filipino
  • Olympian
  • Seattleite
  • Angeleno
  • San Diegan
  • Londoner
  • Brummie (this is a new one; still feels a little odd)


Today, I think I’m proudest of being European. I earned that identity and that passport, and I’m still very pissed off that some people want to take it away.

Today is also, weirdly, simultaneously:

  • the anniversary of Brexit, aka the Colossal Waste of Time and Money Foisted Upon Us by a Generation That Tore Down Decades of Painstakingly Won Goodwill with Our Neighbours and Won’t Live to Experience the Disastrous Consequences, Thanks a Lot, Dickheads.

    And

  • International Women in Engineering Day


So, to close this post, here is a peaceful photo of a woman doing some engineering.

Scientist at work
nanila: YAY (me: abby)
( Jun. 9th, 2017 09:02 am)
Dear 18-25 year old voters,
It's an omnishambles of a result and it's going to take months to sort out. But OMG well done all of you for turning up - an estimated 72% of you - and confounding the initial expectations for this general election. Keep it up. You swung it. I'm so pleased for you.
Love,
Nanila

Dear people in power,
See that letter up above? Start paying attention, start thinking long-term and start putting in place policies that aren't going to screw over their futures.
Kiss kiss bye bye,
Nanila
tags:
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