Best Of

Labour

Warwick All Saints and Woodloes (Warwick) council by-election result:

GRN: 34.9% (+22.1)
REF: 21.8% (+21.8)
LAB: 19.4% (-24.7)
CON: 18.6% (-15.7)
LDEM: 5.3% (-3.5)

+/- 2023

Great result for my party

Who are the Putinists?

You

Care to explain your 'thinking' on that? Because your apparent hatred for Zelensky, and the joy you showed yesterday at Trump's betrayal of Ukraine, rather makes you appear like a Putinist shill.

And therefore a shill for imperialism and fascism,.

Wanting peace and an end to the million plus death on both sides is not consistent with supporting Putin it's about stopping the pointless killing.

If you think Putin wants to stop at just Ukraine, they you are a fool. Hos own words and rhetoric says exactly the opposite.

You are asking for more war, not less. You are an appeaser. And whilst most appeasers in the late 1930s did so for good, moral - even if mistaken - reasons; others had more malign motives.

You are in that latter category.

Jamie Dimon takes his employees, especially the younger ones, to the woodshed over their desire to keep “working” remotely.
https://x.com/Zigmanfreud/status/1890202488596492620

I am struggling to see why this is controversial.

It is controversial because commuting to work is expensive in both time and money. And because some companies have taken the opportunity to sell off (or end leases) on accommodation which means the office experience is even worse because hot desking is a PITA.

My team was WFH from 2012, long before the pandemic. Dimon is right that it does make it more difficult to bring new colleagues on board, both in terms of teamwork and the wider company culture (although on that latter point, many companies do not really try).

What is interesting is Dimon's complaints about people's lack of focus in Zoom meetings. Dimon is right that this is a problem. WFH attendees might say (not out loud, one hopes) that this is why their productivity is higher – that they get on with answering emails and routine paperwork while the Head of Paperclips is droning on about left-handed staples; that their lack of focus in meetings is a virtue.

The trick is to have your email in the middle of your zoom screen, so you're looking in the right direction.

Fuck you and your concern, Susan Collins.
You voted for this shit.

https://thehill.com/policy/international/5144026-trump-ukraine-peace-talks/
...Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who occasionally bucks Trump’s positions and is strongly aligned with Kyiv, said she is concerned about Ukraine’s fate.
“This was an unprovoked, unjustified invasion. I appreciate that the president is trying to achieve peace, but we have to make sure that Ukraine does not get the short end of a deal,” she said. ..

It's rather unedifying logging on and seeing lots of pb regulars dropping the f-bomb on anyone associated with Trump.

Are we going to have a full 4 years of this?

Fuck yeah!

Reform voters tend to be low information voters. They don't know much about the detail of how the world works and they don't care - they just want things to be good for them and their own.

That is so polite. They are racist thickos.

Characterisations like that are why Labour will continue to lose voters to Reform.
If you tell people they are racist for wanting lower immigration, they will not stop wanting lower immigration; they will just conclude that your definition of 'racist' is so infantile and meaningless that there is no bar to voting for the party you are characterising as 'racist'.

25% of the electorate are not racist thickos. Rochdale's characterisation is correct.

Most of the electorate are low information, in the sense that, even if some still pay attention to the news, they spend no significant amounts of time analysing politics and policy. PB readers are not normal. Most of the electorate, including most of the Reform electorate, are not racist thickos either.

Whilst I'd surmise that Reform has more than its fair share of hard right fans - it dominates the right of Tory space on the political spectrum currently - its real source of strength is amongst the great many people who have been struggling economically for a long time, who see no realistic prospect of their lot improving, and therefore feel that they have little left to lose by upending the political system.

If you view Labour and the Conservatives simply as two cheeks of the same rich fat arse that shits on you from a great height, then the choices you have left are to give up and not participate in the democratic process, or find a disruptor. It's possible (and personally I think it's almost certain) that a hypothetical Reform Government would be just as much for the already wealthy and powerful as the big two, but it's arguably logical to roll the dice.

Labour can only get these voters back through delivery, and that primarily means rising living standards for the bottom half of the income distribution. It's not going to happen, is it?

A cold night in Tallinn.

I think that Trump and Vance just seriously damaged American leadership of the West, and certainly the European part of it. I had a few beers with a friend who is a senior Estonian politician. The commentary from the MAGA crew was, to a degree predicted. What was not predicted was the naked contempt for all of the EU members and indeed also the UK. However, the economy of the Nordic Baltic 7 is basically the same size as that of Russia and the view he put forward is that in many ways the MAGA mob have just done Europe a massive favour. "We have no choice, we have to work together", There are already significant discussions as to what now needs to be done. The coordination of the JEF states: Nordic/Baltic, the Netherlands and the UK is being discussed and it seems that Poland too will probably join quite quickly. So, with large scale defence expenditure on the way, the view is that the Nordic/Baltic region will be more than capable of seeing off any Russian attack without calling on the US. The US leverage could fall surprisingly quickly.

As for wider EU-US relations, there are already significant discussions about what to do if the US is going to stab Ukraine in the back. Again the view is that if the US is attacking the EU, then the EU no longer needs to accommodate US wishes in a variety of spheres, including tech regulation and finance. The contempt that Vance expressed is not a one way street. The EU will hit back very hard if Trump attempts to hurt global trade in ways that Brussels deems unacceptable.

So, "it begins". The EU economy is larger and more integrated into global trade than the US economy. Vance´s astonishingly ill judged speech is going to blow back to Washington in ways that the MAGA people do not even begin to expect. "Its sad, but is a matter of survival, we can not allow the US to compromise our hard fought freedom on a mere whim, and we wont"

So, I think Putin and Trump are going to get a few nasty surprises in the coming weeks.

Just watched Vance's speech to the Munich security conference today.

It is well worth a listen, whatever your politics. He makes an excellent challenge to Europe. I believe strongly that we should listen to his arguments, even if he has little credibility as a messenger.

For those who haven't listened, essentially he argues that Europe's biggest threat to security is our own desire to censor certain voices and not to listen to voters who want to vote for e.g. AfD. His strongest argument is that we cannot win by pretending far right parties are not popular.

My problem with his speech, though, is the blatant hypocrisy. To have Musk at the centre of your government and to lecture others on free speech is, to put it mildly, shameless.

My other problem is that he does not make any attempt to address the other side of the argument i.e. that the reason we need to fight against misinformation is that those such as Musk are in the business of spreading it, because it is profitable.

In my view the only way that we achieve the good parts of what Vance argues for (more robust free speech) is if we ensure that the megaphones that amplify speech in our democracy (media of all sorts) are working for us not against us.

The interesting feature of the free speech argument is (whatever side of the fence we sit) our free speech is good and should be celebrated, but other people's free speech is dangerous and should be banned.

The basic problem with Vance's claptrap is that it's a massive overselling of the idea Europe "censors" certain voices based on a very American ignorance of how different norms, laws, and practices developed in Europe, and the extent to which they are in practice restrictive and not the will of the people.

The one example he cited - a British man being arrested for 'praying' outside an abortion clinic - was carried out under laws introduced by those well known Marxists Priti Patel and Suella Braverman. It exists because Brits broadly don't mind banning behaviour we don't like, are fairly solidly pro the right to abortion, our religion isn't generally evangelical, and we judge the potential distress to women worth blocking. So introduced exclusion zones because clinics were being targeted.

Proudly secular France of course has its ban on religious symbols, while Germany, for understandable reasons, has strict bans on Nazi symbolism. Each country has their own norms that broadly allow free speech and protest but place certain restrictions on it when deem the nuissance or dangers are too much.

Americans fetishise their 1st ammendment rights rhetorically, but we all know in practice it's somewhat different and are no better. There's no bigger reminder of that than the current administration trying to fire anyone who isn't a Trumpian wingnut, or Elon's banning of views he doesn't like from Twitter while claiming to be a free speech warrior. The only difference is that they are massive, hectoring, ignorant, hypocrites about it.

Despite Vance's claims the views he wants to whinge as being victimised aren't banned from the public sphere - as evidenced by the success of certain parties holding them. They might be socially unacceptable in some circles or looked down upon by liberal politicians but that's not the same thing as being unfairly restricted. Liberals have as much right to hate the far right as the far right do liberals.

What Vance is doing is rather inversion by trying to be a crybully - ironically, rather like the worst kind of 'wokeness' - saying it's so unfair you don't accept my views and reasoning as right, despite its obvious ignorance. Then I'll scream like a baby and demand as my right to 'free speech' that you have to not just allow me to say what I say, but go along with it too.

Truly a pathetic specimen, and yes, a Big Mac Eating Surrender Monkey to boot.

I think he chose a poor example but there are better ones. Take trans. I think the prevailing ‘right opinion’ is that you can change your gender, so a biological man, with xy chromosomes throughout, a prostate, a penis, a preponderance of testosterone etc can simply say ‘I am a woman’ and everyone has to say, yes, you are a woman. Don’t agree? You can end up suspended at work and accused of harassment.
So yes there is a culture of there being the ‘correct’ opinion and dissent is not welcome.
There are other subjects - race and immigration where people fear to say what they really think.
So I think he is right to an extent, just not using the right examples.

But...our courts have generally upheld, admittedly after much wrangling, Gender Critical women's right to their views - and right not to be dismissed for them. In practice of course certain organisations went beyond this - many got terrible advice as to their obligations - but the law there has worked to, in the end, protect their speech. And guess what, the argument has shifted despite certain people trying to shut down certain views.

It's arguably a sign of the system working, albeit eventually, and I'd say the UK has had a far more sophisticated debate on gender issues than the US. Obviously there's been some vile stuff some have experienced, but that's down to the perpetrators not the law.

As for immigration, it's a good example of my point. Might certain views get you disinvited from a party in certain social circles? Sure. So some people are reticent to say what they really think sometimes. We're social animals and like to be liked. But you can't force people who think your views are obnoxious to be nice to you, or that would be more of a violation of personal conscience.

And the state and institutions hardly stop people discussing it. Most of our largest newspapers are profoundly anti-immigration, as are GB News, and Talk TV, while many of LBC's hosts are too. Farage is probably the most regular guest on BBCQT. This week it had two of the most right-wing people in politics and media on the panel (Kruger and Goodwin).

That's not evidence of suppressing views on immigration. In fact one reason we might be quite so crap at dealing with it is the fact that we endlessly bang on about it all the time in a way that's profoundly unproductive.

I'd honestly love to know what a country looked like in which free speech was being suppressed on the issue of immigration, because it's certainly not this one.

Today, I learned that I can leave my house in Hampshire at 7.30am and arrive in Thurso by 11pm the same day by train. 5 trains to be precise. That's over 500 miles north. At a cost of less than £130.

That really is quite incredible.

Next, I want to see if I can fathom a route that gets me to the Orkney Islands (where I have never been, and i want to survey Scapa Flow) inside 24 hours sans car.

I once travelled back from Durness (very northwest tip of Scotland) to Cambridge in a day by public transport (aside from a taxi from the station). From memory, it was a postbus to Lairg at 08.30, then a bus to Inverness, and a train down to Edinburgh. Once there, I realised I could just catch services back to Cambridge - I'd planned to spend the night in Edinburgh, preferring that city to Stevenage...

I arrived back at the front door of our home at about eleven. I held a piece of stag's antler I'd picked up on my walk in the hand as my then-GF opened the door. As she saw me, I asked: "Feeling horny?"

As I said, she's my ex...