Best Of

This is Farage outbursts against the BBC

https://news.sky.com/liveblog-webview/politics-latest-budget-taxes-reeves-starmer-labour-badenoch-farage-12593360

While Farage is expert at whataboutery, straw men, rephrasing, non apologies and so on, I just draw attention to what, it is alleged, comes from the actual time when he was at school, written in 1981 by a teacher to the head. It includes these words:


“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views; and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set, that he had to be removed from the lesson. This master stated his view that this behaviour was precisely why the boy should not be made a prefect. Yet another colleague described how, at a Combined Cadet Force (CCF) camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler-youth songs.”


As contemporaneous evidence from decades before people knew he might be PM it is, if authentic (and Michael Crick says it is) it is of greater evidential value than all the (I have no doubt generally reliable) accounts from memories years later.

How important it is is a separate question. But I think Reform and Farage are troubled by this.

The point is Farage was about 14 or 15 at the time, while the BBC, run by fully grown adults, was showing the Black and White Minstrel Show during the same period.

It's not much of a point, though, is it.

Isn't it?

That's what I said, didn't I?

Yes and you’re wrong. It’s perfectly valid point to make.

Societal cultural norms change over time. What’s acceptable now won’t be in a decade. The further you go back the more the change.

I'm NF's age. It wasn't any sort of cultural norm in the 70s to taunt and bully Jewish people about Nazi atrocities. He's flapping around desperately and dishonestly.

Indeed. I'd go further. I'm older, and this notion that racist, or sexist, 'banter' was socially acceptable in the 70s and 80s just isn't true. Of course such banter existed, but both had been challenged since the mid-1960s by anti-racist and feminist groups and, though there remained much to do, such banter wasn't the norm any more, and its proponents were on the back foot, certainly by the mid-to-late 1970s.

I rather suspect one of Farage's problems is that he perceived the banter of the posh-heads at Dulwich College (and subsequently in the City) as the norm.

This is Farage outbursts against the BBC

https://news.sky.com/liveblog-webview/politics-latest-budget-taxes-reeves-starmer-labour-badenoch-farage-12593360

Will likely play well to Reform base (analogue is Trump's attacks on MSM). But not so much beyond it - BBC remains respected . And, on the face of it, having an argument with national broadcaster about whether you are a racist seems sub-optimal.

I can see the theory- it was respectable in the seventies, and Reform's demographic is nostalgic for the seventies, because they were young then as well.

After all, Nigel can hardly deny what he said and did, and he can't really go down the "I said it and I regret it", because Reform Social Conservatism is that you shouldn't regret words, no matter how hurty.

The rest of it is standard schoolboy bluster- "you can't tell me off because you're such a hypocrite..."

I was brought up in a Jewish part of London in the 1960s and 1970s. 'Gas them all' and similar thoughts were never ever uttered either to Jewish people or, in my experience, in private 'banter'. It would have marked you out as abnormal. The great majority of us were brought up on stories from our father about serving in the war against fascism.

Sounds like a pretty efficient grift to me.

Why did President Trump pardon someone his own Justice Department indicted five months ago?
https://x.com/kaitlancollins/status/1996421828366266648

(1500 pardons and counting, this term.
Which is already 10x the total of his first term.)

They really need to change the Pardon system. Maybe give a president ten free hits per term so they really have to think about who they give to as they might need some at the end of term.

Alternatively continue the unlimited amount but make them subject to public scrutiny on reasoning and a vote of approval by one or both houses.

The purchasing of pardons (otherwise known as indulgences) was the first precipitating cause of the Reformation in, IIRC, 1517.

OMG, this site really has become the bitchy centrist left wing dads club! You really cannot admit it, Kemi Badenoch who you had all written off and ditched has grown into the role of a strong Leader of the Opposition and she is currently knocking it out of the park in the House of Commons and enjoying it while she rips Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves a new one every week!

Her own backbenchers were chanting more yesterday at PMQs. A few months ago she quietly reorgnanised her back room team and the results speak for themselves. TSE talks about his Conservative Westminster mole who clearly does not like her and who has continually briefed against her very negatively, but that does not mean they are going to recognise the very clear shift in opinion among both the lobby and the electorate as a result in the last few weeks.

Kemi took on the toughest gig in politics when she became the leader of the Conservative party after the last GE, no one wanted to give the party a hearing never mind a favourable nod over the last year, but here we are with her setting the political agenda and all over the media with Farage and Reform nowhere to be seen for the first time in a nearly a year. No wonder Farage has panicked and is now aiming his guns at Kemi Badenoch and the Conservative party right now instead of the incumbent and failing Labour party, but he and his party has stalled in the polls and are now going backwards. Hence the yeah, but no, but yeah but no briefings about a future pact with the Conservatives but only in a deal that subjugates them into the junior partners.

By the way, where has Farage been in recent weeks, and apart from his week day show on GB news...?

Great thread on AI and writing and being an editor in the 2020s.



"...The whole thing frigid as a robot's bare metal arsecheek."

https://bsky.app/profile/marrrtha.bsky.social/post/3m75qij6j7c26

'I feel pissed off that my years of editorial experience and genuine, lifelong enthusiasm for the work is being channelled into a new role as a professional fluffer for a large-language model.'

I've retired from translation as most of the work is now done by AI, leaving mainly translations that need a poorly-paid once-over. I'm not really complaining, as AI does a decent job of it, as good or better than most human efforts (my only criticism is that it doesn't flag up when it just skips a few words), but it's made me think hard before advising step-grandchildren on university courses - if I was 35 and suddenly 90% of my work disappeared, I'd be dismayed. It may be that trades involving manual work are actually a better career bet financially than borrowing £30K for most academic subjects at university?

New: Former Conservative donor Christopher Harborne has given Reform UK £9 million.

It's the largest ever donation by any individual to any British political party, excluding money left in wills

https://x.com/hzeffman/status/1996496294404309410

Blimey.

Even if one believes that people are free to do what they like with their money, one individual dropping that much cash warps the game on a way that matters because it's not a game.

(Incidentally, got a paid-for mailshot from Reform recently. They're going big on crime and Khan, even though neither of those is really a borough issue.

There was a survey asking what sort of crime I was most concerned about. Sadly "taking bribes from hostile states" wasn't an option.)