Best Of

Evening all. It's easy to be concerned by all the fascist shit Trump is trying to pull in the US, but the good news is they are so laughably, horribly bad at it.

Not content with uploading the entire unedited 60 minutes they wanted to censor, it turns out all the 'redacted' Epstein files can be read by copying and pasting the 'redacted' text into any other document...

I recall the Ministry of Defence did the same thing once (probably more than once). That's pretty incompetent given the ease of proper redaction now.

@mjsdc.bsky.social‬

NEW: By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court blocks Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Chicago to assist immigration agents. A majority holds that he likely lacks authority to do so. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissent.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25a443_ba7d.pdf

It is interesting that some of Trump nominees are actually less servile and slavishly 'loyal' than the likes of the laughably corrupt Thomas.

On the redactions - “export to PDF”, kids.

That seems to be the problem. They redacted the documents using Adobe Acrobat apparently

Government by technobros.

We need a squillion dollars for AI and space and shit. Also we don't know how Adobe Acrobat works...

The only real redaction is rasterize, redact, convert back to PDF. Having said that, if your country demands accessible PDF/UA by legislation, you can't do that. You would at the very least have to OCR it. And possibly even that might be inadequate for the legislative standards.

I sometimes wonder if the fact I have zero chance of inheriting any assets affects my ability to get very worked up about the principle of inheritance taxation.

I think it is more a "feels" thing. I'll probably inherit a significant amount (to a normal person (and myself...), perhaps crumbs to some of the pb elite)), and think it weird that it would be taxed less strictly than me working hard.

Maybe if it was from a family business rather than well paid professional jobs I might think differently as that would create more attachment between the money, bequestors and the future so I can see where the farmers are coming from, but ultimately we are skint, and someone has to be taxed more and very few of the candidates for that will like it either.

I think that many of our freehold family farms only came into existence due to death duties on large aristocratic estates, with land sold to tenant farmers to pay the tax. At the end of enclosures there were a lot of tenant farmers, a lot of very large landholdings and a relatively small number of small freeholders.

The history of landholding in this country is not one of freehold family farms, it is mostly of turning peasants with traditional rights into a landless working class, and consolidating land ownership amongst the aristocracy. It was only Death Duties (and more recently IHT) that had reversed things..

Conversely, I would say that life as a peasant was (for the majority), always pretty rough, and when people got the opportunity to obtain better-paid work in cities, and the new industrial towns, they availed themselves of it.

A typical village had a Big Man, and several better off peasants, but the large majority were always dependent on the former, whether or not they owned their small holdings.

I am not particularly agitating for reparations from the landholders in compensation for the loss of traditional lands in the Highland Clearances and the equivalent English Enclosures, but it would be nice if they acknowledged how they came by their lands. It was theft, albeit historic theft.

There is something massively appealing to the very idea of running a farm, supporting a family from your own produce, and turning a profit from it.

But, I don’t think that was ever available to more than 20-25% of the village population (the hoplite class in classical Greece, the yeomen of late medieval England). The rest depended on the wages they got as labourers and servants, to the better off peasants and the Big Man, in addition to produce from their small plots.

Frontier societies came closest to this ideal, but usually at the expense of defeated peoples, being pushed off the land.

The powerful were always trying to grab more land. It was fortunate that in late 18th century England, this coincided with the demand for labour in new industries. For the rural poor, leaving the land was a blessing.

So similar to the slaves exported from Guinea to Virginia, it was worth it for the long term benefit?

And should be grateful to those Liverpool ship owners?

No. Being a chattel slave rarely represented an improvement in one’s life. Working in new industries often did.

Interesting that someone is trying to sell the “being a factory worker = slavery” thing.

Only the most extreme Southern Fireaters tried that pitch, back in the day.

No, its simply asking if the ends justifies the means.

Clearly African-Americans are better off now than Guineans, clearly I am better off than my Scottish crofting ancestors and English copyholder ancestors, but does that justify the monumental wrongs done?

The reason that we have so many rich landowners is that they are descended from thieves who pushed their kinfolk off the land with no posessions to rural or urban poverty wages or emigration to the colonies.

You’re seeing pre-industrial rural life in rose-tinted terms.

Pre-industrial societies (including Scottish clans and English villages), were only ever extractive. The agricultural and industrial revolutions created a hitherto unprecedented level of wealth. They proved Malthus wrong.

My children have just arrived home for Christmas (I have been told by my wife to stop calling them children at 30 and 25).

I have just been told by my son that they have a hedgehog on top of their tree. After numerous questions I am none the wiser as to why.

One branch of our offsprung is descending on us tomorrow with their now adult offsprogs, and I think I may have hit on a whizzo scheme to deal with all the Xmas gifts, which has usually been a headache catering for their various tastes and interests. –– I got Amazon to send me 7 books which *I* might be interested to read. I'll wrap them up and put them in a bag to be taken out as lucky dips with the requirement that each book when read or rejected gets swapped for one of someone else's, including self and wife, and that the process continues till all books have gone through each of us and the last person to get any particular book keeps it.

The government have spent it's first year and a half looking for trouble. If one of the Palestine Action people die of hunger strike it will be very serious for them. They seem to have gone out of their way to alienate people. Seeing Greta Thunburg arrested just makes them look ridiculous. People have been very patient with Starmer but I think it's now time to get themselves a LABOUR leader. I'd go with Streeting. As much to wash away the detritus that's attached to them as anything else

Leaving aside the merits of the PA proscription, is Greta Thunberg still flavour of the month? I don't seem to stumble upon news about her very much anymore, though I get the impression she has predominantly transitioned from environmental causes to the palestinian cause, so it feels like she needs to get arrested to get attention, which makes it less compelling than, say, reports than 100 grannies have been arrested for doign the same.

Greta has I think become addicted to the fact of being Greta, and become more of a self-caricature in the process. It’s a shame, but she was always too far down the sanctimonious spectrum.

Franchising yourself into multiple issues is a mistake too. The examplar of a clearly defined, focused environmental campaigner who has stuck neatly to an easily digestible script is Feargal Sharkey. That’s how to do it.

I hope we deport her and give her a lifetime ban from re-entering the UK as we would with other terrorist supporters. No need for her to sit in jail.

Evening all

What are we to make of Gail's opening ten of its London bakeries on Christmas Day?

Clearly, all the LD voters (the only ones who use Gail's according to some on here) need somewhere to avoid the family and the Christmas nonsense.

On an unrelated, the Alexandra in Wimbledon opens on Christmas Day providing a free Christmas lunch for those who are alone. It's a wonderful touch and I wish it happened more as it's all too easy to forget the many people for whom Christmas is a lonely purgatory.

https://www.alexandrawimbledon.com/christmas

Never been in a Gail’s, but noticed one has opened in Salisbury when we went there on Thursday. This part of the world is Reeve the Baker country, so will be interesting to see how they fair.

Based on this polling I wouldn’t be surprised the Tories ahead of Reform at some point in quarter one of 2026, if present trends hold, not consistently but on an outlier basis.

Word missing there?

On the substantive point, am I right in thinking as well that Farage is at the same time the oldest and the least experienced of the four major party leaders? He's not likely to be improving now as he ages and he's never been in cabinet.

No, Starmer is about 18 months older than Farage.

Blair and Cameron had never been in government before they became PM.

Fair enough on the first point.

Cameron and Blair had both been Leaders of the Opposition. Farage hasn't even done that.

Indeed he quite often skives off Parliament. I think he finds it boring because its not all about him.

This has recently set me wondering if Nigel Farage might bail soon. He is rarely in the Commons or in Clacton, and does not even seem to have much to say about Streeting or Lammy advocating customs unions with the EU, an issue you'd think would be mother's milk to him. Is he still interested in politics? (That said, maybe he is just under the weather as there are some nasty bugs doing the rounds.)

I wonder if the 'I can't really remember what happened 50 years ago but I definitely did not say those racist and antisemitic things' row has put his gas at a peep. The one time I saw Farage address the issue directly he seemed uncharacteristically shifty and evasive.

28 witnesses, including Jewish students, and written communications amongst teachers, is quite a lot to dismiss as "lies, all lies". Tice is that crass imo; Farage is not.

It's also quite awkward with respect to Farage's position on Israel, and the portrayal of Muslims as The Mortal Enemy of Western Civilisation.

Witnesses at the time (as in recording in diaries, letters etc) or witnesses ‘recalling’ events of 50 years ago. Very big difference, as all good historians know.

28 witnesses seems pretty corroborative to me.
The man’s a bully, and a spiv, and has been so since his earliest years.

I haven’t cared enough to look at what he did at school in detail, but isn’t prancing around with your arm in the air attention seeking rather than bullying?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/25/three-more-ex-pupils-at-school-with-nigel-farage-reject-banter-claims

Still don’t care enough to click that link.

Farage is deeply unpleasant man who is probably a racist. Spending 5 minutes reading a guardian article to confirm those views isn’t a good use of my time

So why did you venture in with your first comment about it being attention seeking not bullying then?

Because it was an interesting discussion.

Not all of the conversations on here are entirely fact based and it’s a better board for it

Ok but hang on.

Post 1: You counter the 'bully' allegations with "wasn't it just attention seeking?"

Post2: You say you don't care enough to read the details to see if it was indeed just attention seeking.

Post3: Whilst still not caring to check if it was just attention seeking you say it's nevertheless interesting.

Really rather odd. But, look, you're not in the dock, and it is Christmas, so that's probably enough on the matter. I note your overall 'deeply unpleasant and probably a racist' assessment of the bloke we're talking about. Big tick for that.

Not at all. Very easy to reconcile.

I’m aware he behaved badly at school but haven’t checked into details. The only thing that has stuck in my mind is him walking around making nazi salutes. Which to my mind is more childishly trying to shock people/seek attention. But it may be he did other stuff which was more targeted at specific individuals (which for me is the threshold of bullying).

But whether he’s a spiv and a bully or a spiv and an attention seeker won’t materially change how I view him in the round, so would rather do more uplifting things with my time

Ok, so just a snippet to give you a flavour.

He would torment a particular Jewish pupil by continually leaning in close and saying, "should have gassed you all".

With gas enunciated as "gassssssss" to mimic the sound of it hissing into the chambers at the death camps.

A pedant notes that the most common Nazi gas chambers used Prussia acid crystals that produce cyanide when moist, so no gas would have been hissing into the chamber. I don’t expect Farage would have known that. But then I’m probably being disingenuous.

No that's good knowledge. No dark inference taken from your supplying it.

Had I fallen victim to the Holocaust, I’d far rather have died in the mass shooting phase, than the gassing phase. Death by gas is prolonged and agonising.

No good options. Not sure off being made to strip off, then lie down on a pile of corpses in a ditch waiting for your bullet is better or worse.

The more I read, the more horrifying it is, especially now I have a toddler. The accounts of the deaths of children is particularly harrowing. And so many of the killers believed they were doing a tough but necessary job. That’s brainwashing and hatred for you.

Can we talk about reform in the same bracket?

Evening all. It's easy to be concerned by all the fascist shit Trump is trying to pull in the US, but the good news is they are so laughably, horribly bad at it.

Not content with uploading the entire unedited 60 minutes they wanted to censor, it turns out all the 'redacted' Epstein files can be read by copying and pasting the 'redacted' text into any other document...

I recall the Ministry of Defence did the same thing once (probably more than once). That's pretty incompetent given the ease of proper redaction now.

@mjsdc.bsky.social‬

NEW: By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court blocks Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Chicago to assist immigration agents. A majority holds that he likely lacks authority to do so. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissent.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25a443_ba7d.pdf

It is interesting that some of Trump nominees are actually less servile and slavishly 'loyal' than the likes of the laughably corrupt Thomas.

On the redactions - “export to PDF”, kids.

That seems to be the problem. They redacted the documents using Adobe Acrobat apparently

Government by technobros.

We need a squillion dollars for AI and space and shit. Also we don't know how Adobe Acrobat works...

I saw the other day that there is a world championships of Excell spreadheeting (is that a word?). The geeks shall inherit the earth.

Excel

That’s how I was knocked out in the first round, could’nt even spell the name of the competition I was entering.