[throwup238]

Armando Iannucci's career has twice now been upstaged by the increasing ridiculousness of reality in politics.

One of the reasons he says he stopped making his first series, The Thick of It, was that UK politicians became parodies of themselves. There was nothing left to make fun of. Then the same thing happened to his American incarnation, Veep.

[gravescale]

He's not wrong. This is a real Police and Crimes Commissioner and is not a character from the Thick of It: https://youtube.com/watch?v=xlcWVXHv_As

[sweetheart]

I genuinely cannot tell if this is real still. Like, I want to believe you, but this person is basically doing the best Michael Scott impersonation I’ve ever seen.

[gertrunde]

It helps to bear in mind that Police & Crime Commissioners are people elected by the local population as a sort of overseer of the local police forces.

This generally ensures that they have absolutely no clue what they are doing, or qualifications for the job, and hence can be used as a scapegoat, while central government pretends it's not involved or to blame...

(And it also scuppered various plans to combine some police forces to improve efficiency, save costs etc)

[rstuart4133]

> It helps to bear in mind that ... people elected by the local population as a sort of overseer ... generally ensures that they have absolutely no clue what they are doing

A while ago I came to the conclusion this is true in general of almost all politicians. What triggered it was the conservative side of Australian politics have been fighting the good fight against climate change activism and renewables in particular for 15 years now. Currently they are pushing SMR's as the solution to climate change. As far any anyone can tell it's a delaying tactic because they know they won't work.

The conservatives have held the levers of power federally 8 of the last 24 years, so obviously Australia must be a basket case when it comes to shifting to renewables - right? As best they have slowed it down, slightly. Australia leads the world in roof top solar, and coal plants are being closed at record rates. Similar examples could be raised for the other side of politics, particularly in education.

Apparently leading the country isn't what politicians do if you look at outcomes, because evidently no one is actually doing what they command. Instead in Western Societies optimising our way around the laws they make. Which is probably just as well, because as far as I can tell the pollies don't anything notably well, and that includes playing politics. That's probably true for the very reason you give, they are elected in a way that doesn't select for qualifications, skill or competence.

That raises a question, as it appears countries who elect their politicians based on something other than competence nonetheless do well economically. Under the Westminster system decision making seems to be deferred to private enterprise and a government bureaucracy that overseas the rules private enterprise operates under. To me that says the politicians must doing something else that is useful. That would be to "take the blame", as you say. We elect them with high hopes, we blame and abuse them for everything that goes wrong for 10 years or so, then replace them with a new punching bag. Behind the scenes the people who actually capable of running the country get to keep their jobs for decades.

In the recent movie "Golda" (which I recommend), Golda Meir gives a piece of advice to an up and coming military commander Benjamin Netanyahu: "they will make you prime minister, but remember the career of every politician ends in failure".

[roenxi]

The editing could be described as "unsympathetic". I get the impression that the substance of her responses lives between the cuts. Although this is one of that unfortunate situations where the video is so funny it undermines any interest in what is really going on.

[donalhunt]

Seems to be real. "Ann Force 1" was given to a charity in 2015.

Source: https://www.kentonline.co.uk/medway/news/amp/ann-force-one-v...

[trimethylpurine]

Ha ha! Wow.

[tialaramex]

Iannucci's Death of Stalin has the advantage that it's all history - it can't become more ridiculous after he made the movie because it's in the past. But of course the reality is more or less as absurd as the movie, although different in important ways. (Lots of the timing is completely wrong, events are re-arranged, people are shuffled about so that fewer actors play more important roles) but it does have the advantage that yeah, Stalin can't have another even more ridiculous life which makes the movie seem tame, he's dead.

[robbiep]

Don’t forget they actually reduced the number of medals on Zhukov’s chest because they thought it was too over the top to replicate what he actually wore

[VelesDude]

I really appreciate works like Death of Stalin that are more than happy to move things around in the name of entertainment. It isn't a documentary so it has the freedom to get creative and hit the key notes rather than pure accuracy. They also just said "No need to have Russian accents, the audience is smart enough to just go with what you have."

[tialaramex]

Using an accent without also speaking the right language seems needless.

I do like that Hunt for Red October has the Russians all speak Russian until one of them says a crucial word that's the same in English, and from there it's all English. "Armageddon". This submarine is capable of ICBM launch, starting World War III, and in the resulting ashes English or Russian would not matter.

[paulryanrogers]

Hadn't noticed this before, seems very clever

[blululu]

Honestly the accents were a really well done part of that movie. A lot of the diversity and variety of Russian culture does not come through to Anglophone ears with fake Russian accents which are often a monotonous stern and gruff voice but. The movie did a good job illustrating the diversity of Russian society through homologous variety of English accents.