Best Of

Good morning, everyone.

I'm astonished at so much optimism. Glad to hear it, I suppose, but where does it come from? In my experience the green shoots of improvement in any field need to be quite high before people generally recognise they are there. And so many people are struggling terribly with life. Is it perhaps a feeling that things can't possibly get any worse?

I had a good 2024 personally, professionally and financially, and I think that nationally the pessimism is way overdone. Ditching the failed Tories was a major plus.

I think 2025 will be pretty good too, both for me and for the country. Things are never as good as they seem or as bad as they seem.

2024 was a tough one for me and my family, made worse by the decisions made by the new government. I see no prospect of my things impoving in 2025 and am preparing for them to be much worse.

Sorry to hear that Richard. Hope you are wrong and 2025 turns out well for you.

Evening all

There are voices last evening arguing for drastic action to be taken against “radical Islam” but the usual lack of coherence over what form this would take.

Are we advocating banning burqas and nijabs or do we go further? Do we close mosques and madrassas? There was also a reference or two to “forced assimilation”.

Those who clearly see a lot of the current societal problems stemming from Islam need to explain what their version of resolving these problems looks like. Instead of constantly berating “liberals” and “centrist dads”, come out and tell us what you want or what you think Reform should be advocating.

Morning all, surely?

@stodge is in New Zealand, celebrating mid-summer's day.

Surely we can all agree to envy him?

She’s not wrong

“I had a look at Bluesky for the first time and it’s the most terrifying combination of mid-2000s twee smol bean rhetoric and fantasies of murdering people for wrongthink.

The aesthetics of sadism is kitsch. The humour is stale and self-righteous, and the desire to kill, absolute.”

https://substack.com/@ninapower/note/c-81259921?r=4a6bw9&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

There is something deeply creepy and sinister about Bluesky. What makes it worse is that they are entirely unself-aware

That's a good recommendation for Bluesky from Nina Power; she'll be nowhere near it. IMO she seems to be quite the narcissist.

She was declared bankrupt for inability to pay legal fees in July 2024 after she sued somebody for defamation who "labelled her a fascist" (her words I think). She ended up paying 80% the legal fees of the person she had gone for!

In 2019, Power and Daniel Miller (a writer and editor at dissident-right magazine IM-1776) sued artist Luke Turner for defamation over a series of tweets by Turner. Power and Miller argued the tweets suggested they were both antisemitic. Turner said he was "in terror of the volume and virulence of online abuse directed towards him" from the controversy. Almost £30,000 was raised through a crowdfunder to support Power and Miller's legal action, titled "Targeted, harassed and falsely labelled a fascist". Turner countersued for harassment. At trial, it emerged that Power had been writing anonymously for a far-right blog, Parallax Optics, and had shared far-right conspiracy theories with Miller including the idea that black people and white people are different alien races. The judge dismissed the claims of both parties in November 2023, and ordered Power and Miller to pay 80% of all Turner's court costs, with a first instalment of £250,000 due within a fortnight. Following this, Miller and Power were each declared bankrupt in February and July 2024 respectively.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Power

Not a bad interview with her by Freddie Sayers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=aI7p1UypGqA&t=850s

You’re on Bluesky aren’t you?

I'm on both Bluesky and Twitter, moving away from Twitter.

My preferred analogy is that Twitter has become like the Thames, with the proprietor injecting raw sewage.

FPT:
On peerages, it's been so long since Labour's been in power that the inbuilt Tory majority has grown, so it's hardly surprising that they've sought to rebalance a bit. As for Sue Gray, it's not difficult to justify her appointment on the basis of her long and distinguished career at, or near the top of, the CS, regardless of her career over the last couple of years.

Toby Young is a much more 'interesting' appointment, and tells us something about Badenoch's views, I think.
And Thérèse Coffey will no doubt set the House of Lords on fire with her soaring rhetoric.

To be honest I think we would probably get better governance if we abolished the commons and left it to the lords.

If not however....gray like many is getting a peerage merely for doing her job and that is wrong. Same with all the people appointed by any party. Doing your job 9 to 5 is rewarded by pay....honours should be reserved for those that go above and beyond merely doing a well remunerated job.

Experts in a field yes being the possible exception.

A CEO or a civil servant or an ex mp for just doing what they are paid for can fuck off back to a richly deserved obscurity when they retire