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[smjjames]

That the Dutch version of The Onion, Martinuzz? heh.

Also, I wonder what you guys in Britian think of this: http://www.politico.eu/article/may-to-replace-downing-street-paintings-with-her-quotes/

It'd be equivalent to the President (10 Downing Street being the equivalent of the White House here) replacing all of the paintings in the White House with quotations from their own speech. I think anyway. Which sort of sounds like something Trump might go and do actually, if only out of self-narcissisicsm rather than Theresa May's intentions.

No, it's a satyr. Half-goat follower of the god of alcohol, with prominantly and permanently visible erection.

lol....

[martinuzz]

That the Dutch version of The Onion, Martinuzz? heh.

Reasonably good comparison. "De Speld (The Pin)" is a weekly recurring satirical column in my newspaper.

[Loud Whispers]

Delays because of increased French security checks (and not enough manpower), slowing things down.  Looks like a deliberate 'go slow'.  As if "you've been lucky to have had relatively free movement, here's a taste of what you'll get".

Yeah I still don't see what this has to do with Brexit, jihadis in France is their concern for Frexit

It was clearly 'unofficial policy' to hyper-enforce the borders to obvious UK Nationals.

Rofl, actually carrying out border checks is hyper-enforcement
No wonder yuros are in such a poor state :\

¹ I'm rather waiting for Le Pen and Clinton joining May and Merkel and Ang Sang Syu Kui and the several other (potential) female leaders I might half remember in a world-matriarchy. But Marine aint yet there.

Myanmar isn't really relevant yet

Fingers crossed for ebin Le Pen

Are... they joking? Like... this is satire right?

Neo they're all fake quotes

They're saying Boris Johnson is irrational, basing his actions off of emotion, they're saying that Cameron didn't know what to do to beat Miliband and in panic promised a referendum which he didn't plan what would happen if he lost (resigning), they're saying that Farage made a mess of politics by quitting in the eve of Brexit to return to family life, and that Blair committed catastrophic mistakes which cost the lives of British soldiers. It is a double joke, because it ascribes all of these qualities of irrationality, impulsive, sentimental and irresponsible qualities to women (when they were expressed by the men speaking the joke), suggesting them to be misogynists with no self-awareness.

If you want to suck all the fun out of it and examine it straight, Boris called for a measured approach and detailed exactly why he supported Brexit, the gut feeling seems to be misattributed from Theo Paphitis. Understandably, a Greek may have certain gut instincts in regards to how the EU "enlightens" people's nations.
Cameron promised the EU referendum, but you can find amusing instances if you scrounge on youtube for question time moments where Tory members tried to backpedal and say there was no promise in their manifesto, a lie which UKIP had fun exposing on live tele, and gradually the Tory backbenchers forced Cameron to put the referendum in motion. The rest is now great history. The volkskrant fault David Cameron for not standing to defend the EU upon the defeat of Remain, there's not much he could've done afterwards, politically he was spent and there would've been a parliamentary coup if he tried to keep the UK within the EU on such a defeat. I suspect he actually did plan for the eventuality of his defeat given how quickly the Bank of England, Osborne and Hammond were to act, he just never made his plans public, as part of his campaign strategy was to make voters believe that Brexit was a step in the dark, and to say he had done his job and planned for his own defeat, would be self-defeating.
Thus is the issue for a Prime Minister who takes sides, conflict of interest :P
Also it goes without saying that Dave didn't hate May, Dave is the reason May is our Prime Minster in the first place, David having appointed her and made everything possible for her accession to leadership in 2020 - It's hilarious seeing the response of May's leadership campaigners seeing victory 4 years early.
With Farage they're saying that his decision to quit was spontaneous, but speaking as one who's followed his bants for a while, he's been campaigning for a Brexit referendum for 17 years, didn't let things like plane crashes stop him, he got the referendum and still kept campaigning - he's now age 52, and as he's not an MP, there's nothing more he can actually do. Being no stranger to death threats, he did however decide he was done when the threats extended to his family. He didn't support May because she was in the Remain camp, saying instead that Andrea Leadsom, one he knows was pro-Brexit even when all polls indicated Remain victory.
Then there's Tony Blair. The only two things volkskrant got wrong were the notion of embarrassing press conferences, for an hour and a half he was composed and confident as usual, whilst normal people remained livid. Essentially he took full responsibility and apologized for all the grief caused (he doesn't take the blame) and says he did nothing wrong, he made the right choice by removing Saddam.
[Urge to prosecute intensifies]
It's also worth noting that this man has full control over his accents, inflections and emotions, it's how he got into power in the first place. I suspect he was advised on what to do in order to gain the most sympathy for the public. The other thing they got wrong was the idea that Blair hates women, which is not true, Blair pretends to like everyone.

Pretty weak satire tbh, seems to be based off of news that was made this week, fails to understand what it is satirizing or who it is satirizing. It's most likely satirizing British politicians involved in Brexit, but then I don't know why Blair is involved. If it's satirizing British politicians in general, why doesn't the writer do their research beforehand? I'm not even talking about researching the decades they worked in in which there was rich tapestries of satire spun around them, even a brief look into the recent month would have found more than Larry the cat. Take for example the hilarity in Cameron delivering a speech in which he says Britons don't quit - week later, he quits. There are so many angles to take there, with Cameron not being British by his own standards, with Cameron retreating to the bacon factory in tears, to Cameron having for years been known as the jellyfish - never looking happier in his life than when he announced he was resigning. To that end, it is weak. Then there is the angle itself, they've taken the angle that May is being criticized for being a woman by Boris, Cameron, Farage and Blair. Evidently that's not true, May was by Cameron's design his successor, Blair has not weighed in on May (being busy with everyone trying to convict him for being a war criminal), and both Boris and Farage backed Andrea Leadsom because she was doubtless pro-Brexit (with Leadsom actually getting criticized for being a family woman since to her critics it implied the other female candidate was less qualified for not being one), which is not very feminist tbh. So maybe it's a dig at misogynists who idolize Johnson, Cameron, Farage and Blair, but fear May because she's a woman? I've not seen these arguments anywhere. I've seen people who argue you should fear May, but those are people who say you should fear her for her ruthlessness, in that she's going to destroy the politicians you like - which is not a concern for those who favour those four, May is working with the three groups of them. It's also a particularly odd choice in regards to the UK, wherein the leaderships of Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria and Margaret Thatcher were ones in which our enemies were destroyed, May has been described by her peers as tougher than Thatcher and she has until recently been in charge of the MI5, so I don't particularly get the intended implication here. Heck, May's already off to a good start, having gotten Hollande to cooperate. French newspapers are even saying that Hollande was scared of May, because he was shorter than her and he was looking down on him the whole time xD
So maybe it's referring to attitudes in Europe? After all, it is a valuable tool in satire to make fun of your own country, ironically, by making fun of another country. But last I checked Europeans are the planet's most socially liberal people (at least, they are the loudest at signalling their morals), so it's not saying anything about volkskrant's readership. In all likelihood, it was just an opinion piece from someone who isn't interested in the United Kingdom, but who wanted to generate clicks with pandering

Very haram

[Starver]

Delays because of increased French security checks (and not enough manpower), slowing things down.  Looks like a deliberate 'go slow'.  As if "you've been lucky to have had relatively free movement, here's a taste of what you'll get".

Yeah I still don't see what this has to do with Brexit, jihadis in France is their concern for Frexit

Seems to me more to do with Brexit than concern over British jihadis going over to France.  Thus I invoke Occam, at least by my interpretation.  But I know you're not even reading my reasoning, as I've given my measured conclusions already, so I'll just leave it there.

(I have read the rest of what you said, both to me and Neo, but am making no comment.)

[Loud Whispers]

Seems to me more to do with Brexit than concern over British jihadis going over to France.  Thus I invoke Occam, at least by my interpretation.  But I know you're not even reading my reasoning, as I've given my measured conclusions already, so I'll just leave it there.

I read your conclusion and I found the evidence to be insufficient for persuasion. There wasn't any. The French say they are imposing security checks because jihadis have been killing French people and they don't want suspects to escape. I can see the evidence myself, that what they are saying is true. You're providing a personal account which I can't verify that this is not a result of French security, but is actually the result of the French being vindictive and singling out Britons to cause a massive traffic jam in their own country over politics, and not because there are jihadis on the loose. I can't verify this as true, and it does not seem logical to boot. Your reasoning was read, I found it unconvincing and not worth more than I already commented - how are the French punishing the UK by making sure jihadis don't slip through the tunnel?
An account "without evidence, just historic experience, perhaps tinted with mild paranoia and a heavy dose of Schadenfreude" is not one I'm trusting to be reality over ocular proof

It would be hilarious if against all evidence you were right, in that the Calais was the result of Frenchmen wanting to punish other Frenchmen and holiday goers because the British voted for their own national democracy in a decision that had nothing to do with them - with something as petty as a traffic jam. Maybe they genuinely thought the image of children basting in their cars for miles and miles on as revenge for another country deciding they wanted to run their own affairs was a positive image for France. Perhaps, but I find it unlikely, the French are not that petty nor vindictive, France is more eurosceptic than the UK and more french supported Brexit than the British in the UK, so I wonder. Seems to be the result of a shortage of french border guards more than anything. To that end I hope the French sort out their affairs, because they seem decent

[Starver]

The French say they are imposing security checks because jihadis have been killing French people and they don't want suspects to escape. I can see the evidence myself, that what they are saying is true.

What part of 'slowing down British visitors onto French soil' does that even address, as an explanation?

It would be hilarious if against all evidence you were right, in that the Calais was the result of Frenchmen wanting to punish other Frenchmen and holiday goers because the British voted for their own national democracy in a decision that had nothing to do with them

Yep, you never read either my posts or listened to/saw the news. Confirmed.

And I don't say that 'the French' are being vindictive, merely that some subsection of French officials may have applied creative officialdom to make things things awkward. (They could also have 'accidentally' let migrants into the Chunnel's French-side compounds to cause chaos like seen before (intentionally or otherwise), but that is more obviously 'their fault' than mere go-slow, undermanning and 'more thoroughness than strictly necessary'.)

And my anecdotal evidence is there to demonstrate motive, opportunity and means exists, and has previously existed, even if it is not something they are actually guilty of, this time and/or 20-odd years ago.

[TempAcc]

Yeeeeeeeeeeea, Its a little hard (and pretty weird) to come to that conclusion in the face of whats actualy, really going on. Thats just kind of... Cartoonish?

[Starver]

From what I can tell you're arguing that the French aren't doing this because they don't want a chink in their armour, but because they want to annoy the British.

Again not 'the French', but someone in the (French) establishment might have easily Sir Humphreyed the situation that way as a kind of pointedly Eurosausage thing.  They won't be so much sealing the 'chinks' in their land-border armours, because of both being impractical and impolitic to do so, but if they're trying to prevent suspects from running from France (as LW seems to think I was saying), it's certainly not practical, and British-resident anti-West terror-inclined individuals are probably the best assets to keep in the UK (assuming they have no interest any more in transiting to the Middle East) to pounce here, rather than do anything like Paris/etc on the continent, outside of their personal comfort zones.

If there was an equivalent British 'movement' as militantly opposed to Europe the various subset IRAs were with Great Britain, then there'd be reason. Maybe there is that, just not known to the public. But, apart from that mysterious threat only the traditional summertime tourist-rush across to the continent can be blamed for overwhelming the facilities, and that is a known and predictable spike in demand such that the failure to deal with it is difficult to reconcile as anything other than deliberate mismanagement (alike to the similarly traditional air-traffic controller strikes, except they actually indicate their intent in advance... mind you, better than not doing, and those lot are not going to 'down tools' without any warning at all).

What I found most confusing was that LW had obviously not heard about the A20/etc having traffic jams of 15-20 hours delay, or so, when every news outlet seemed to have pictures of people playing football in the road, steel bands playing their unloaded instruments for those similarly stranded in their proximity, and countless first-hand interviews with people forced to sleep in their stationary vehicles (or snoozing on camp-beds, unpacked onto the shoulder) and who were delivered food and water by locals, emergency services and the more well-stocked neighbouring vehicles who decided to share...  You know, the traditional Blitz Spirit In Adversity things that we tend to get...

Afraid I'll have to steal this from LW.

Kek

Not actually ever sure what that meant. You obviously speak LW's lingo. I keep get that "lel" is probably a mutation of "LOL", from which a key-shift could produce "kek".  OTOH, "Keks" are (under)pants, colloquially, so maybe that's the link. But from context it more sounds somewhat like the ?Swedish? word "sef", that I can't find a handy definition of (between all the acronymical things like the Sankara Eye Foundation), but very loosely translates as a *shrug*, as I learnt it from a group of Scandiwegians I hung about with, back in the '90s...

[Orange Wizard]

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/kek

[Starver]

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/kek

So I was close, in one of my theories. It's post-millenium, so I'll probably forget it again, though, as some newfangled fad. 

[Sergarr]

It also sounds similar to "kekeke", which was famously used by many South Korean Starcraft zerg players when they brought zerglings to the opponents base in first few minutes in a tactic commonly known as a "rush". Specifically, a "6 pool", IIRC.

[smjjames]

Afraid I'll have to steal this from LW.

Kek

Not actually ever sure what that meant. You obviously speak LW's lingo. I keep get that "lel" is probably a mutation of "LOL", from which a key-shift could produce "kek".  OTOH, "Keks" are (under)pants, colloquially, so maybe that's the link. But from context it more sounds somewhat like the ?Swedish? word "sef", that I can't find a handy definition of (between all the acronymical things like the Sankara Eye Foundation), but very loosely translates as a *shrug*, as I learnt it from a group of Scandiwegians I hung about with, back in the '90s...
[/quote]

Kek is actually 'lol' in World Of Warcraft Hordespeak, from the perspective of the Alliance side.

Also, personally, I use lel as a sarcastic lol.

[MarcAFK]

Yeah kek existed as a typo of lol for years before WoW, probably why they made that the translation Ingame.

[Loud Whispers]

What part of 'slowing down British visitors onto French soil' does that even address, as an explanation?

The part where there are jihadis killing French people who cannot be allowed onto British soil?

It would be hilarious if against all evidence you were right, in that the Calais was the result of Frenchmen wanting to punish other Frenchmen and holiday goers because the British voted for their own national democracy in a decision that had nothing to do with them

Yep, you never read either my posts or listened to/saw the news. Confirmed.

Don't ignore my post and the news in it, then accuse me of it :P Calling LW as one who reads not the news, is calling an alcoholic one who does not drink :]

And I don't say that 'the French' are being vindictive, merely that some subsection of French officials may have applied creative officialdom to make things things awkward.

Which is called being vindictive and petty. I know you didn't say it, you only said a few French officials were deliberately basting children because a foreign country voted to control its own affairs, which is vindictive and petty, and flies in the face of all evidence which suggests it was due to jihadis and manpower shortages.

(They could also have 'accidentally' let migrants into the Chunnel's French-side compounds to cause chaos like seen before (intentionally or otherwise), but that is more obviously 'their fault' than mere go-slow, undermanning and 'more thoroughness than strictly necessary'.)

Starver please, just post sources. If you have any actual evidence just post it and we can all be "oh huh neat" and move on. Evidence suggests the French sincerely are overstretched.

And my anecdotal evidence is there to demonstrate motive, opportunity and means exists, and has previously existed, even if it is not something they are actually guilty of, this time and/or 20-odd years ago.

Your anecdotal evidence is "without evidence, just historic experience, perhaps tinted with mild paranoia and a heavy dose of Schadenfreude", the notion of something possibly existing does not mean it exists, just as it is possible the French guards were acting because they were sleeper cells for Saddam Hussein. This is hardly guesswork on the motivations and machinations of politicians, this is a traffic jam

Again not 'the French', but someone in the (French) establishment might have easily Sir Humphreyed the situation that way as a kind of pointedly Eurosausage thing.  They won't be so much sealing the 'chinks' in their land-border armours, because of both being impractical and impolitic to do so, but if they're trying to prevent suspects from running from France (as LW seems to think I was saying), it's certainly not practical, and British-resident anti-West terror-inclined individuals are probably the best assets to keep in the UK (assuming they have no interest any more in transiting to the Middle East) to pounce here, rather than do anything like Paris/etc on the continent, outside of their personal comfort zones.

If only you could hear my facepalm now

They're not British jihadis, they've already conducted their attacks in France. Already done it, people died, the French police are looking for those who worked with them and those who are planning attacks, 19 months of high security under repeated assaults and attacks has left French security forces searching for vipers across their entire country, and altogether tired of it. I'm not saying you said they were under lockdown, I'm saying that, because that is what is happening, if you just looked at the news.

[scriver]

But from context it more sounds somewhat like the ?Swedish? word "sef", that I can't find a handy definition of (between all the acronymical things like the Sankara Eye Foundation), but very loosely translates as a *shrug*, as I learnt it from a group of Scandiwegians I hung about with, back in the '90s...

Sef? Never heard of it. Was it an acronym?