Politicians and Comedians

[Maclintick]

A comedian says "reach for the battery acid" in order to make an admittedly tasteless, & by her usual standards, fairly poor joke. A politician says he'll "don khaki, & grab a rifle" to spur the public to acts of violence -- we assume he's not joking. May protests about the former but not the latter, & Inspector Knacker may interview the comedian. We've reached a new nadir in public discourse in which the jokes of comedians are taken more seriously than the statements of politicians.
Anyone else feel as though they've been mysteriously teleported to some universe of inverted values...??

[MrGongGong]

What mr Byrne said

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gillray

[jayne lee wilson]

Gave up expecting better months ago.... the current leading contender for Tory leadership and office of PM should have been dismissed from "high office" long ago due to his role as foreign secretary in the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Anyone else feel as though they've been mysteriously teleported to some universe of inverted values...??

Years ago!

The actual comment here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8HpHM1bGkM

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Gave up expecting better months ago.... the current leading contender for Tory leadership and office of PM should have been dismissed from "high office" long ago due to his role as foreign secretary in the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe....

- that is exactly the reason I cannot believe that the Tories are taking him as a serious candidate for any kind of office. To dump him on the country as Prime Minister makes me [deleted] despair and make me want to reach out for the battery acid ... and drink the damn stuff myself.

[pastoralguy]

Gave up expecting better months ago.... the current leading contender for Tory leadership and office of PM should have been dismissed from "high office" long ago due to his role as foreign secretary in the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe....

Quite agree! It's as if incompetence and laziness are being given credence in the same way that trump, (sic!), is giving credibility to ignorance, misogyny and racism.

[Serial_Apologist]

Anyone else feel as though they've been mysteriously teleported to some universe of inverted values...??

This morning I certainly was, when this subject came up for discussion on Jeremy Vine (CH5) and caller after caller claimed that the "left-wing dominated BBC" never employed comedians prepared to have a go at Labour politicians on its comedy shows. Either these people were blatantly lying, or they don't listen to The Now Show of Dead Ringers, where, week in and week out, Corbyn is parodied as dithering and ill-kempt, and the Party as dominated by Stalinist cliques. The problem is that while there is some point to such caricatures, they are seldom funny - and I'm not one who is incapable of taking jokes directed at myself or people deserving of respect even if one disagrees with them - unlike the way leading Tory or Ukip figures are, rightly, hilariously portrayed.

And by the way, the fact that no challenge was made to the lines pedalled by these in-phoners and twits knocked another nail into the myth about the impartiality of the broadcasting media, while at the same time showing up the Right's hypocrisy on "freedom of speech" - the one thing they're always banging on about as being threatened by the ad nauseam repeated "PC brigade who want to stop us speaking our minds". So, in short, it's OK for us to make jokes about Muslims, LGBT people and so on, because that is expressing freedom of speech, but not OK to criticise Boris Johnson, Trump, Farage or whoever. There's no other way of interpreting it.

The one thing in the present state of affairs I do hold onto for some sense of hope is that there appears to be growing awareness about environmental issues, I have to say.

[Tony Halstead]

Gave up expecting better months ago.... the current leading contender for Tory leadership and office of PM should have been dismissed from "high office" long ago due to his role as foreign secretary in the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe....

[french frank]

And Change UK has applied to change its name: reassuring to know all this really is just a comic interlude.

[Richard Barrett]

Gave up expecting better months ago.... the current leading contender for Tory leadership and office of PM should have been dismissed from "high office" long ago due to his role as foreign secretary in the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe....

Indeed so, but there are so many other reasons why this individual should never have been in government in any supposedly responsible capacity, let alone in charge of it. I don't expect I need to enumerate them since they're well known to everyone - including the very Tories who are going to be responsible for handing the office of prime minister to someone who is surely going to be the least competent holder of it in our lifetimes, and god knows there's been some stiff competition for that accolade. As Johnny Rotten sagely put it, "we know - and we don't care".

[ahinton]

Indeed so, but there are so many other reasons why this individual should never have been in government in any supposedly responsible capacity, let alone in charge of it. I don't expect I need to enumerate them since they're well known to everyone - including the very Tories who are going to be responsible for handing the office of prime minister to someone who is surely going to be the least competent holder of it in our lifetimes, and god knows there's been some stiff competition for that accolade. As Johnny Rotten sagely put it, "we know - and we don't care".

Agreed - except that I don't quite share your suggestion that it won't get considerably worse post-Boris (assuming that Boris successfully buys the position)...

[DracoM]

<< That is exactly the reason I cannot believe that the Tories are taking him as a serious candidate for any kind of office. To dump him on the country as Prime Minister makes me [deleted] despair and make me want to reach out for the battery acid ... and drink the damn stuff myself. >>

What have we done to deserve this?

[Frances_iom]

What have we done to deserve this?

Basically destroy the social nexus outside of the M25 - remember Thatcher was willing to see Liverpool decline to nothing

[Dave2002]

- that is exactly the reason I cannot believe that the Tories are taking him as a serious candidate for any kind of office. To dump him on the country as Prime Minister makes me [deleted] despair and make me want to reach out for the battery acid ... and drink the damn stuff myself.

Of course the Tories (or a small subset of them - which have been "infiltrated" by new members with even more right leaning tendencies) will vote for lunacy - I have every faith in that. That's the way things are these days.

Re environmental issues - perhaps they're going to go down the tubes as well - if one or two of the leading contenders carry on.

Despite it all, I'm not going to resort to battery acid - rather drink myself silly with ..... http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...-Whisky/page65 or .... http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...928#post635928

[jayne lee wilson]

Basically destroy the social nexus outside of the M25 - remember Thatcher was willing to see Liverpool decline to nothing

God Yes......I lived through it all in the 80s.....

Still a wonderful multicultural, remainer-voting, football-mad city (with a South American feel sometimes....)...
(With much help from.... EU regen grants, of course...)