caze

The first season of Legion was the only really consistently good one, there were some good bits in the subsequent seasons, but it was completely uneven. The last season was definitely better than the previous one though, the first couple of episodes were actually pretty cool. It's good to see that kind of risk taking and invention though, even if it's a failure half the time.

Umbrella thing was ok, mostly pretty dull but a few good bits. The other two seem like shows aimed at teenagers. The Boys was great though, pisses over Preacher (which has gotten even worse in the latest season).

Corbyn was still giving speeches saying the opposite of what everyone else in the party is saying, who then had to come out and correct him afterwards. They seem to have got him muzzled now, though their stance on when they want an election still isn't fully nailed down. I was surprised they managed to get the anti no deal bill passed, the only odd thing about it was that the government managed to get a weird amendment tacked on to it (because they sent no tellers to count the Nos for the vote, the amendment passed by default, maybe they thought it would prevent the bill from passing at all, but MPs didn't seem bothered with it). That amendment means if Boris doesn't manage to come up with a deal with the EU, or it's not voted in by parliament, and if then a no-deal is voted against, an article 50 extension is granted, but only to resubmit a slightly amended version of May's withdrawal agreement to the EU (as agreed by the cross party talks after it was last voted down). Not sure if I'm reading it correctly, but it seems to rule out other forms of extension, e.g. to hold a new referendum. Though I suppose if that failed (either the EU or parliament rejected the amended May deal), then there could be a vote on a new bill for another extension. It does seem like what was increasingly looking like a no deal exit is a lot less likely now, but the bill still needs to be brought into law, and Johnson has to be prevented from calling an election before it can be implemented.

Rees-Mogg is effectively shorting Sterling via his investment firm, so this meme must be quite pleasing for him too:

the autistic son story line definitely goes somewhere in season 2

It's also about being stylishly directed and shot, being well written, and having good acting.

congrats

Sorry BCM, but this shitshow has legs for years. Brexit cancelled? Brexiters will be crying treason and marching in the streets. No deal? The exact same backstop, money and other withdrawal negotiations with the EU will still have to happen if there's going to be a trade deal with the EU. The only thing that would put us all out of our misery would be an agreed withdrawal, but that seems like the least likely outcome by far.

Bullshit, the standard prorogation is a handful of days, usually less than a week. This is nearly a month.

we just need this on loop now basically

...with some patatas bravas

you don't seem to be getting what I'm saying at all either. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

you seem to be conflating no-deal with the magical agreement that the brexiteers were looking for, that's what 'utter fantasy' refers to, not do-deal. there's nothing fantastical about the remain position, it's just the status quo.

I don't know how you came to the conclusion that I'm downplaying the reality. I'm not at all, just pointing out how ridiculous it is that such a poorly thought out process which has been triggered by the internal wranglings of the conservative party can have such a disastrous effect on the country. I also think you have it backwards when it comes to remainers not taking no-deal seriously, it was the brexiteers who pretended it was never going to happen, they constantly talked about how easy the negotiations were going to be and only the other day Boris said it was a 'million to one' chance. From the very start of the debate the remain side has been clear on the actual possibilities, either we end up with a very close relationship with the EU (the withdrawal agreement or something similar) - which is a waste of time really, dilutes the benefits of the being in the EU, with none of the benefits of being outside of it, might as well just remain; or some form of hard or no deal brexit, with some benefits to free trade (though unlikely to make up the loss in trade with the EU and other EU-negotiated trade deals) but at a massive cost to the economy and political stability. The middle ground between this, what the brexiteers were promising from the beginning, with all the benefits of the being in the EU with none of the downsides was always a complete non-starter, utter fantasy, and this has been clear to most remainers from the start. The reality may be finally dawning on the brexiteers now that the EU isn't going to blink, though I think they're still mostly in denial, and even if it is it's probably too late to do anything about it.

What I mean is that the referendum didn't set out what people were actually voting for, even after the referendum bill was passed it wasn't debated or campaigned for in any meaningful manner. It was amazingly content free, and had no legal weight behind it. All it did was provide a very vague political mandate to the government to try and do something or other vaguely brexity. The problem is that Britain isn't set up for referendums, it has no written constitution, has no formal procedures involved in designing or running them, every one is designed on an ad-hoc basis with it's own unique piece of legislation, and ultimately parliament is sovereign, not the people. So unless the vote in a referendum is aligned with parliament's view on things (which it wasn't in this case), or tied to a very specific set of outcomes with a thorough piece of legislation (again, not in this case), it was never going to work. It would be possible to fix the second of those two issues in a second referendum though, so it's not an impossible problem to overcome. Britain is in dire need of political reform, from the ground up. It's not going to happen any time soon though, so this nonsense is bound to continue for the foreseeable future. All attempts at doing so in recent years have been half-arsed at best, house of lords reform, devolution, alternative-vote, what's needed is a written constitution of some form, proper devolution (including for England), get rid of the house of lords, and removing the queen (definitely not going to happen). Failure to reform will just lead to the continuing disintegration of the UK, which might actually be preferable in the long-term. An independent Scotland, and re-unified Ireland would perform quite nicely on the world stage, leaving an isolated Southern Britain to degenerate further on it's own for a few decades until it finally came to it's senses and threw off the various anachronisms that keep it mired in mediocrity.

It's funny, they go on and on about how simple the technical solutions to the problem are, but if that were really the case they should have no problem with the backstop, as it would never need to be used.

Another referendum wouldn't have been silly, as long as it was tied to an actual concrete choice, rather than the nebulous and non-binding waste of time the last one was.

yeah, definitely. it would even prevent the UK from signing a trade deal with the US in a no-deal situation. the Irish lobby has bipartisan support in the US congress, and they're not going to pass any trade deal that fucks with the good friday agreement.

Boris has said there will be no extension, it's out on the 31st one way or another. Which is why I mentioned a 180. The EU can't unilaterally grant an extension, he has to ask for one. Having said that, even if the EU agreed to go back to the negotiating table and get rid of the backstop, and managed to thrash out a new deal, which then managed to pass a vote in parliament, there almost certainly wouldn't be time to pass the legislation to implement it before the deadline. So an extension would be required either way really. Maybe Boris would be able to sell a "technical" extension to implement an agreement, as long as there was legal certainty about leaving, but he's not going to be able to keep his hard-brexit crew onside with any other kind of extension. I think it's pretty unlikely he'll do a 180 though, because betraying the brexiteers will just bring the brexit party back into the equation which would split the conservative vote in a GE and leave him as an embarrassing side-note in British history (he may have no choice about that regardless). I only see it happening if he can somehow get an agreed exit sorted which would prevent a GE until 2022, but that would have to be done over the heads of the DUP and the hard core brexit nutters, and so would require Labour support, so not very likely either. The more scenarios I run through in my head, the more inevitable no-deal starts to look. huh?

There definitely is a decent chance that there'll be a confidence vote, and that he'll lose it. The problem is that parliament is now in recess until September, so the confidence vote can't happen until after then, and given the various time frames given to different processes (14 day period to try and seek a govt, 25 days minimum to campaign, time to form a govt and begin new parliament session after election, plus a few days here and there for other procedural reasons) there isn't enough time before the 31st October leave date. The earliest we could've had an election if a confidence vote was called on the last day of the current session was the 24th October, giving a week to get a new parliament up and running, but Corbyn refused to back Jo Swinson's call for one, so it'll be at least two days later than that now (if a vote is called on Sep 3rd, the vote won't be until the 4th), and even then the rules are that the outgoing PM gets to set the date for the election, so Boris could even pick a date after the 31st. This would be made even more complicated if the result of an election didn't lead to a majority, which is probably more likely than not. So with all that taken into account, the only way to prevent a no deal exit at this point is either for Boris to do a 180, or for another government to be formed in the 14 day window after a confidence vote loss. I think the idea that there could be unity government formed while Corbyn is still in power is fanciful though, he wants an election and has no problem with a no-deal scenario, which would give a Corbyn government even more room to implement his terrible policies.

From the start of the referendum campaign, after the referendum and during the negotiations, after the negotiations finished until May was turfed out, and then during the leadership campaign, and now that he's PM; it's been the same lies and bluster throughout, and it's not going to stop any time soon. I'm not calling you an idiot, but unless you've been following this closely (including the appearances on the radio and current affairs shows on the TV by these people) I guess you won't be fully aware just how much dissembling is going on. His current strategy of brinkmanship with the EU and no-deal blockers in parliament requires him to keep up the charade of a post-brexit fantasy of plentiful trade deals and economic success, honesty from him at this point would make no sense at all. It's not a strategy that's going to work though, the EU won't blink, so either at the last minute he does a 180 (which would probably mean getting another extension), or we're heading towards no-deal (because even if there's a no-confidence motion there's not enough time to do anything about it any more; barring an extremely unlikely 'unity government' being formed - basically impossible as long as Corbyn is in charge of Labour, if it goes to a General Election there's not enough time before 31st October).

It sounds like you've not been paying any attention at all to what's been going on here. The brexit side of this debate, Boris included and most of his cabinet as well (Rabb, Gove, Patel, and Barclay in particular) have done nothing but spread lies and bullshit about the consequences and realities of brexit from the very beginning, especially with regard to no deal brexit (which from before they referendum they were all saying had no chance of happening... it's now the most likely scenario). Not sure why you think they're all of a sudden going to change their tune now?