Monday, 6 March 2017

Political Euphemisms (in Quotes) 3


Dear attention-hungry journos: your Hot Take on #WomensMarch, translated, is 'I don't like ordinary people expressing an opinion in public'. (Jon Dryden Taylor ‏@jondrytay)



Why do tories have "safe pair of hands" and "grown up" narratives as default? (McDuff ‏@Mc_Heckin_Duff)
Every time I hear a Tory say we need a "grown-up" NHS debate I know they really mean "private health care". (@Rachael_Swindon)

@RealDonaldTrump needs to purge Leftists from executive branch before disloyal, illegal & treasonist acts sink us. (Steve King @SteveKingIA)
Some people have been waiting years for their big chance to speak fluent fascist. (@Dorianlynskey)

You just know when Brexiteers say "commonwealth" they are itching to say "empire". (Sathnam Sanghera‏ @Sathnam)

Creeping emasculation (Piers Morgan): He mens women have more rights, there are more women in public life, women organize marches, men feel their position at the top of the tree wobbling slightly.

Libertarians fight for freedom. Freedom to kick minorities out of your store, to not accommodate the disabled, to not pay living wages, etc. (Existential Comics ‏@existentialcoms)

I love how everything that isn't troglodytic dog whistle bigotry is automatically "rabidly left wing". (@AlexPaknadel 28 Jul 2016)

"Don't want to get into politics" = "The current system has worked really well for me so please don't ask me to examine it critically". (Greg Wilson @gvwilson)

Lisa Nandy says we should stop “picking sides” in strikes. She means “We shouldn’t side with the strikers”.

Trump’s “terror attacks go unreported” is morphing into “the reports weren’t alarmist enough”. (Feb 2017)

The government’s Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) are a smokescreen for a massive programme of hospital and community service closures, and are its latest instrument for privatisation. (Unite)

Shami Chakrabarti is one of the most self-righteous, least likeable political figures on the scene. Sums up Labour 2017. (@Michael_Heaver She’s a socialist, she’s a woman, and she’s black.)

From Ad Sinistram:
spiv: entrepreneur
talking bollocks: thinking outside the box
unemployed: scrounger
public sector worker: scrounger
European: foreign scrounger
bigotry: mainstream political thought
scientific consensus: anti-business scaremongering
endangered species: vermin
right wing: moderate
moderate: communist
left wing: communist traitor
local opposition: nimbyism
safety regulations, environmental protection, employment law: red tape
greedy bastard: wealth creator

From Paris Lees:
Style Guide for 2016
Neo Nazis: Alt Right
Propaganda: Fake News
Civil rights: Identity Politics
Decency: Political correctness
Abuse: Free speech

RACISM
These Hollywood elites wouldn’t know average, every day hard-working Americans if we bit them in the ass. @TomiLahren (I think this means “You just don’t understand that racism is necessary”.)

I only went into politics because politicians have made a mess of things. (Barbara Fielding, 78, Stoke independent candidate. She means: Politicians have failed to rid the country of brown people and Jews, who by the way run the world. And we were on the wrong side in the War. It's all on her website.)

Political dictionary: "outsider" = bigot; "elite" = any person opposed to bigotry who isn't so poor they live in an actual ditch. (‏@johnb78)

Dear @BBCr4today - Please, please start saying like it is! Bannon is a *white supremacist*. 'Right-wing firebrand' simply doesn't cut it. (Katy Cooper ‏@DecSop1)

West Virginia mayor resigns following controversial Facebook post referring to Michelle Obama as an "ape in heels". (@NBCNews) 
The word you are looking for is not "controversial". (John Whitehouse ‏@existentialfish)


Why do all minority groups have to be so tribal, blinkered, paranoid and devoid of common sense? UK would be better place if they calmed down. (Jon gaunt @jongaunt It's irony.)

You know when the media report on someone (Clarkson, Trump, JTerry etc) making sexist or racist comments the phrase is always 'caught out'. (Mister Neil Kulkarni ‏@KaptainKulk)

Nuttall says unlike Islington Lab, UKIP will speak about matters that affect "real working class people and real working class communities". (@MrHarryCole)
That's "real" spelt with a w, h, i, t and e. (Stephen Bush ‏@stephenkb)
When Bannon and Trump's Breitbart say "Soros" they mean "Jews." (Dan Murphy @bungdan)

Would like it if press stopped referring to bigots as "provocateurs," like they're Madonna in a cone bra in 1990 instead of fans of the KKK. (@summerbrennan)

Brendan Cox’s initiatives to get communities together is a “Disgusting attempt to politicize communities. Might work in trendy London Labour enclaves, nowhere else.” (@UKIPCANDA Where “politicize” means “indoctrinate with left-wing politics”. Because everywhere apart from London, different communities hate each other, as is right and proper.)

More here, and links to the rest.

Sunday, 5 March 2017

Neologisms 16



What a polyp. (Ian Martin on Trump)
Bill, you absolute pudding. (BD Sixsmith)
You irredeemable prunes! (James O’Brien on Leavers who think Remoaners want to abandon Brits abroad)

Donald Trump is "factose intolerant". (William Francis on FB)

Their insanity is starting to glow in the dark.
(RK on the White House)

Your train of thought has been cancelled.
A replacement bus of thought is available. Your thoughts may arrive five hours later than planned. (@jeffnoon)

Shall I go to London and blow around like a feather in a pillow factory? (Gruntfuttock ‏@peasmoldia)

It's hard to think of another PM who created such ruinous, lifechanging chaos before practically evaporating into mist, than David Cameron. (@AliCatterall)

artwashing: using artists to make an organisation appear more friendly, and provide good PR for practices that may otherwise appear negative.

"Where's Corbyn?" Smashing PMQs every week, but dust bowls and cobwebs from our media. (@Peter_Nicholls)

It's no good when crisps aren't. (HB)

There's a veneer of culture and second homes, but it's essentially a mill-town graveyard. (Don Morrison on his hometown)

Is somebody going to get a chance to get in front of the microphone and put over our point of view in accents slightly less reminiscent of well-bred motor salesmen down on their luck? (Columnist Cassandra [1909-67] complaining about BBC announcers “mincing” through the news)

Shame they replaced it with a Tupperware greenhouse. (‏@JamesNonchalant on Stoke Newington Station)

Angela Rayner any moment she's going to go full red head everyone run. (Fat ‏@Bloke_On_A_Bike)
wounded rhino time (Someone has screwed up and landed you in it – time to charge like a wounded rhino and demand an apology, compensation and a free holiday.)

Morris dancers are one of the most riotously risible and despised groups in Britain. Yet they caper on regardless... (A A Gill)

The idea of a theremin ensemble is both intriguing and just slightly scary maybe one day I too will own a vintage theremin.... but until then I shall keep on soldering on till my mini one is built! (Amazon reviewer of Theremin by Albert Glinsky)


It's always a bit odd being back in Oxford, a perfectly normal Midlands city that got married to Gormenghast. (@WillWiles)

Failure of western democracy is what aviation safety calls the Swiss Cheese process. No one single big failure, lots of holes aligning. Usually followed by process called  "gravestone regulation", which I won't dwell on. (Rupert Goodwins ‏@rupertg)

Amazon are the Satan du jour for some people. (GFC)

You don’t have to sit him down for a full come-to-Jesus moment. (Dear Prudence commenter)

They are as valid as serving chocolate risotto on a cutting board followed by prawn and peas ice cream. (End Of Daze ‏@EndRoadwork)

rusted-on cronies ‏(@EndRoadwork)
We’re on spongy ground here. (JP)
at a speed of one angstrom per eon (AJB)

He is too lacquered in anecdote to communicate properly. (@byzantinepower)

the private language of academia (HP)

It’s mediocre in a weak way. (imdb comment on 50s Dors vehicle Man Bait)

If anyone becomes a therapist for money they need their bumps feeling. (Rhiannon Georgina Daniel)

May’s patina is already beginning to peel. (FL)

A lot of men in suits with their fingers in their ears. (Steph McGovern on BBC Breakfast on security guards)

Can I just press pause for a moment? (Sally Nugent on BBC Breakfast)

More here, and links to the rest.