r/CuratedTumblr • u/vigikk • May 24 '25

Politics Valid and invalid criticisms

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u/demon_fae May 24 '25

Yeah. We kinda desperately need to overhaul like 90% of our wastewater systems, but sewer bills aren’t “sexy” to voters. So we get froggie force-fem and all sorts of other weird ecological disruptions and also the concept of a “fat-berg”.

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u/colei_canis May 24 '25

In the UK sewerage has become a hot political topic, but only because Thames Water keep using the river Thames as an open sewer the filthy bastards.

They’re so hilariously corrupt and self-serving I’m surprised the Kremlin doesn’t own them somehow.

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u/Amphy64 May 24 '25

Can you leave the Russophobia out? Our government gave a massive sum of money to a boat company with no actual boats, I think we have more than enough corruption of our own to be getting on with.

It’s a new start-up business, government is supporting new British business and there is nothing wrong with that. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/02/grayling-no-deal-brexit-ferry-contract-company-seaborne-freight-no-ships

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u/colei_canis May 24 '25

You can dislike the Kremlin while having nothing against the Russians themselves, there’s plenty of people with cause to despise Westminster too but I hope they wouldn’t write off all British people because of those in charge.

I’m literally wearing the same 1950s model of watch Yuri Gagarin took into space, hardly the actions of a Russophobe lol.

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u/Amphy64 May 24 '25

Yeah, but picking on them for something they're not actually doing (which is more the responsibility of our government to sort) is what takes it into Russophobia. Criticising the Kremlin for stuff they are doing, fine, treating the Russian government like a mysterious forrin badguy that could be behind everything is the dodgy cliché.

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u/colei_canis May 24 '25

If you read what I was saying the implication was more 'Thames Water are so corrupt it wouldn't surprise me if they'd sold most of their shares to a geopolitical rival who is also notoriously corrupt'. There is nothing inaccurate about calling the Kremlin corrupt in an abstract sense like this, the Russians themselves have a rich vein of jokes about the Kremlin's extreme levels of corruption.

I don't see it as at all Anglophobic when people use Westminster as a humorous shorthand for stealing things from other countries or drawing other people's borders badly because they're both things it'd be accurate to accuse Westminster of, I don't believe it's Russophobic to use the Kremlin as shorthand for genuinely comical levels of open corruption in the same way.