Best Of

Spencer Hakimian
@SpencerHakimian

Leaving aside the politics of it all for just one moment.

33% of California’s labor force are immigrants.

It’s closer to 50% in Los Angeles. It’s estimated that 10-20% of LA’s workforce is illegal. And that’s a very conservative estimate.

That means that 5-10% of Los Angeles entire labor force is illegal and could be deported by ICE at any moment.

Could you imagine if 10% of the workforce of the 2nd largest economy in the country is deported over the next few weeks?

The sheer amount of economic chaos that it would cause.

https://x.com/SpencerHakimian/status/1932135106581319990

Perhaps California would not be facing that predicament, had its government not decided to be a magnet for illegal immigration,

Doesn't california host a lot of "sanctuary cities"

Very much so.

Almost every single person in LA is a migrant if you do two or three generations.

FFS.

America was built by wave after wave of migrants. Many or even mostly economic migrants.

Trump himself has a Scottish western isle mother and a German grandfather.

Drumpf, as his real name is. Farage, ofcourse, is a Huguenot immigrant.

I spoke not a word of English when I first arrived in the UK in 1976. But then again, I was only four months old.

Then you said your first word

"Train"

Interesting intro to the 75th year anniversary release of 1984.

Reads a bit like a trigger warning.

https://x.com/edwest/status/1932100076559884414?s=61

Sounds like we should cancel 1984:

Perkins-Valdez, a Black writer also noted the novel's lack of racial representation: "That sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity at all."

He literally says "for someone like me". He's not saying you can't read it; he's saying it doesn't connect with him. God forbid people should have opinions on books!

She’s (I think) pretty stupid if she can’t understand what 1984 is all about simply because there’s no black characters in it.

I know what she means - I cannot for the life of me understand any of Shakespeare because I am not an 17th century Elizabethan.

On topic, I was surprised how toxic the original WFA cut proved to be - it's a relatively small hit to pensioners' incomes, especially given how much the state pension has risen over the last two years, and the poorest were protected. Personally, I'd have ridden it out. However, electorally toxic it was, and the U-turn, although politically embarrassing, is politically astute. The backlash should be fairly short-lived, and I don't think it will now be an issue at the next GE.

I think its disastrous.

This was a sensible reform they did, one I repeatedly defended.

Now they've gone back on it, its the worst of all worlds.

They've taken the hit on the reform, yet not kept the economic advantages - and worse, politically, they've shown themselves to be spineless and willing to cave to any pressure even if they're doing the right thing.

Expect the moaning from anyone hit by any comparable reform now to be turned up to 11 as they've shown that's what gets results.

Utterly pathetic and no way to run a country. And weak, weak, weak from a government just elected by a landslide to u-turn on their first "difficult decision".

I see that Hamas chief Sinwar's body has been found, in a tunnel underneath a hospital. With journalists being taken to the tunnels underneath the hospital.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62veqrq3yzo

I seem to recall @bondegezou insisting a few days ago that Hamas were actually using a school, not the hospital, a few metres away as the human shields, so that makes it OK by Hamas and a war crime by Israel to strike at him at the hospital where his body has now been found.

Good on Israel for striking another Hamas leader. A shame for the poor, innocent Palestinians who are caught in the middle and being denied refuge from this war by neighbouring states until Hamas surrenders.

War crimes are being committed by both sides. Of the two, the greater are now those being committed by Israel, which appears to have a policy of, at the minimum, expelling the Palestinian population of Gaza and, perhaps, given the starvation blockade, simply killing off 2 million people or a substantial proportion of them.

For those who say 'but it's a war; nasty stuff happens', yes: that's why there are rules under international law. Sometimes innocent civilians get killed in wars, especially urban wars and even more so urban wars where one side is using civilian infrastructure as shields (and the other doesn't care that they are). That is to be expected and, while deaths should be minimised where possible, armed forces still have to be able to engage the enemy. However, the deliberate starvation of a nation is a war crime and occupying powers - which Israel now is - have duties to the civilians under their control.

Yet no-one gets worked up about the Russians doing much worse in Ukraine, most bizarre.

The excessive focus on Palestine compared with other wars is a bugbear of mine too. Still, human rights there matter as much as anywhere.

Yes, the Russians are doing and have done dreadful things in Ukraine. I have been consistent on the need for Russia to be defeated in that war in no small part because of those actions (which would be applied elsewhere in Russia's next war if they get away with it in Ukraine), and once Russia is kicked out, the need for a deRussification of the recovered country.

People should be very careful about what they wish for in respect of pits and mines: do we really want Wales to dominate world rugby again? https://genius.com/Max-boyce-the-outside-half-factory-lyrics

Max Boyce's best Welsh rugby joke was after they lost to Papua New Guinea in the WC.
'I was so depressed I called the Samaritans in Cardiff- they were closed!'

My favourite welsh rugby joke may well originate from Max Boyce. Two old boys, great rugby players in their youth, make a pact. Whoever dies first promises to come back and tell the other about heaven.
So when the first dies, the other waits expectantly. And sure enough his friend comes back in ghostly form.
His friend asks ‘Tell, me - is there rugby in heaven?’
The ghost say ‘There’s good and bad news. The rugby is glorious, you are young again and can play forever. All the greats are there too.’
That sounds amazing! What could possibly be the bad news?’
His ghostly friend pauses and then says ‘You’re playing outside centre next Saturday…’

Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.

Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round

This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.

She's worse than Liz Truss.

Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.

Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.

At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.

That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term

Far from it.

Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?

Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.

Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.

No reason to only tax people working for a living.

Income tax is a tax, as is inheritance tax (and people already have to sell their homes to pay for residential care).

NI should fund social care and be ringfenced for that though you could extend NI for social care to those retired but not yet in care homes

NI is a tax like any other, it is not hypothecated and hasn't been for almost 30 years.

Indeed, and it was always a tax even when it was hypothecated.

Nope, it was set up as an insurance to fund the state pension and contributory unemployment benefits and some healthcare only and should always have been ringfenced just for that

Don't be silly - had that been the case, it would have been a generation before anyone could get a full state pension. Whereas in reality the state pension started straight away, funded from the current contributions of those working, like a Ponzi scheme.