For those wondering what other bits of history Putin has been rewriting in his head...I have just been reminded of this, from January 2020: Putin has been blaming Poland for the start of the Second World War https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1507314856676020225
Was that in the same Putin speech that @Leon was cheerleading for?
Tsk. Remember liking Putin for quoting Martin Luther King is exactly the same as liking Wagner's music.
This makes perfect sense because Wagner is chiefly known for his racism, but he did do some composing on the side. And Putin is famous for his "brilliant" thoughts on equality, but not lot of people know that he is also a murderous dictator and war criminal.
Putin is murderous thug but he does have some valid points about woke and the decadence of western society...
Hmmm, hard to tell if that is a joke or not, but in case it isn't:
No he doesn't, or do you think the Putin regime has good policies that the rest of the world should follow in terms of race or gender equality or "decadence" or anything much else? Any gangster can mention Martin Luther King in a speech full of lies, it doesn't make them suddenly genius moral philosophers.
Quoting that MLK line against the left is usually trolling. Anybody who habitually does it - you can pretty much write them off as having anything of value to say about racism.
Poor old Orwell's going the same way. Righties are so uncool they have to go on the thieve for style, excepting the ones who proudly bear/bare their Richard Nixon tattoos and have their copies of Atlas Shrugged peeping coquettishly out of their pockets.
Orwell's main hustle was anti-authoritarianism (and pretty lefty looking authoritarianism, certainly in AF). Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything. There's a peculiarly dreary essay about nationalism which gets quoted with breathless approval, which contains a slap at Scottish separatism so wankerish that if it appeared on PB you'd think Oh fuck, _____ ________'s stupider younger brother has joined the conversation.
"Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything."
LOL
I seem to recall that Dylan Thomas was pretty rude about Welsh nationalism. But, hey, he was a pretty two-bit poet. Almost as inconsequential as Orwell, come to that.
I was talking about the intelligence of Orwell's anti-nationalism, not the mere fact of it
What Dylan Thomas do you rate, incidentally, and why? I'd have said that Milk Wood was flattered by the Burton film, and if I never hear that DNGG thing again it'll be too soon
Or have you just looked him up on a spreadsheet of Really Important Poets?
At its best, UMW's portrayal of provincial attitudes is reminiscent of Flaubert's in Madame Bovary. And Thomas has a better turn of phrase.
Based on a uniform swing calculator? We know there won’t be uniform swing because Tories own the midlands battle ground whilst labour are stacking up valueless votes in metropolitan areas.
Save your fingers rather posting this after every poll.
On regional numbers Labour have a big 50% to 28% lead in London and also lead 44% to 34% in the North.
The Midlands is now tied with the Tories and Labour on 36% each and the Tories lead in the South still 40% to 31% with the LDs on 14%. The SNP lead on the Scottish subsample 39% to 20% for the SCons and 19% for SLab https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/6t7qu7kot7/TheTimes_VI_220323_W.pdf
That’s better way of explaining what is really happening. It’s lumpy and regional. Labour supporters take solace in the misleading and fools gold national poll leads, and people feeding them into the seat projections, by presenting it like this it shows even at this mid term nadir for the Tories Labour won’t get the seat numbers to force change of government.
You've gone very pro-Con lately, Moon, but as HYUFD and I keep pointing out from our very different positions, Labour is doing so well in the Red Wall that on current figures a change of government would indeed happen. Usual reservations about mid-terms apply.
LD's winning here while losing vote share. Yet another local result off message. It's a mystery..
A 90 vote drop in support is moe stuff really in local elections. They might even be new voters.
But the government is so hated how can we credit even the tiniest increase in Tory votes? Anywhere? Don't forget yesterday's gain in Blyth? Explaining everything away week in and week out simply does not cut it I'm afraid.
It was a hold, not a gained, with an increased majority percentage wise.
Sorry yes - in a seat which not so long ago was very safe Labour. Set against we're told, a national mood which is virulently anti -government. So many voters off message.
Yes, those two random tweets are definite proof that those of us on the left think that JK Rowling is just like Putin; both are evil.
Alternatively, the two tweeters could just be a pair of wankers.
Indeed so, but let's not kid ourselves - picking random idiots off Twitter and seeing them as representative of an entire political side is common as muck for left and right.
We couldn't possibly keep up the count of with examples of far right fools, scottish unionist, sindy backer, commies etc and a sarky comment about what it means for that side.
For those wondering what other bits of history Putin has been rewriting in his head...I have just been reminded of this, from January 2020: Putin has been blaming Poland for the start of the Second World War https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1507314856676020225
Was that in the same Putin speech that @Leon was cheerleading for?
Tsk. Remember liking Putin for quoting Martin Luther King is exactly the same as liking Wagner's music.
This makes perfect sense because Wagner is chiefly known for his racism, but he did do some composing on the side. And Putin is famous for his "brilliant" thoughts on equality, but not lot of people know that he is also a murderous dictator and war criminal.
Putin is murderous thug but he does have some valid points about woke and the decadence of western society...
Hmmm, hard to tell if that is a joke or not, but in case it isn't:
No he doesn't, or do you think the Putin regime has good policies that the rest of the world should follow in terms of race or gender equality or "decadence" or anything much else? Any gangster can mention Martin Luther King in a speech full of lies, it doesn't make them suddenly genius moral philosophers.
Hitler and his love of animals....
Mind you, Hitler did do *one thing* we can all agree was a good idea.
The only thing I can think of would be disapproved of by the Christians on the site.
I don't think he expressed an opinion on pineapple on pizza, and Radiohead hadn't been formed... What can you be thinking of?
Hitler had a little known fasciation with computing machinery (hence all the IBM machines and the Z3)
In his papers, the Soviets found the the outlines for a scripting language to be used for carrying out computations...... named after his fascination with South American snakes...... But he decided that it was a vile idea and should never be implemented.
Doing lots of Covid daze telly atm and caught a Hitler doc - there really is limitless stuff on him, isn't there? - the angle for this one being the grandiose architectural and population control plans he had for "Germania", the 3rd Reich, in the event of victory. Every conquered country throughout the world was going to get its brand new Nazi capital, complete with monumental amphitheatre in the centre where its Hitler rep - or the man himself if visiting - could preside over huge, stage-managed events for its freshly imported Aryan population, the 'legacy' people having been either eliminated or working as slaves off campus (as it were). Absolutely barking. We really dodged a bullet there.
I should use sarcasm tags more....
Some years ago, I noticed that in a series of sketches for the various buildings. Originally they were large - the triumphal arch was twice the size of the Arc de Triomphe etc. But after Speer came into the picture they exploded in scale to the truly insane stuff that we associate with Hitler...
Did Speer "release" Hitler's dreams of lunatic buildings? Or was Speer the one with the truly ludicrous visions?
No, don't worry, I wasn't nodding at your "Hitler the techie nerd" theory. It sounded satirical.
Speer, yep, that's the guy. He specialized in tickling the Fuhrer's fancy - so he'd be asked for something enormous and come back with something beyond that. Apparently he specifically considered how a building would look in 1000s of years when it crumbled and the idea was these relics of the Reich would have the gravitas of Ancient Greek or Roman ruins.
Lucky to have escaped the death penalty at Nuremberg if you ask me.
He was lucky, arguably a much better case against him than say Streicher who was a comic book antisemite, but virtually irrelevant to how the Nazi regime conducted itself.
Streicher fanned the flames very effectively. Just because it looks like comic book stupid racism to us... there are plenty of examples of soldiers in Russia asking (in letters home) for copies of Der Sturmer and saying how true it all was...
Speer orchestrated the slave labour system - death penalty for that, easily.
66% of even 18 to 34s still being religious and just 9% atheist and 91% of 76 to 93s still being religious is still astonishingly high for a Western, developed nation
LD's winning here while losing vote share. Yet another local result off message. It's a mystery..
?. Green candidate standing seems to explain it, otherwise looks like a pretty static result. Absolutely nothing to see here for anyone.
The Tory vote share rose, as it did in the Blyth seat and in Test valley. Week after week the Tories are often, not always, outperforming the polls and the doomsters on here. Something simply does not compute.
Just responding to your specific post. There was literally nothing to see in that result. A 0.3% in a local election is possibly 1 person. The result was almost as unspectacular as it is possible to get for everyone.
Ben Wallace now clearly the most popular senior politician ahead of the PM and other senior Cabinet Ministers and Starmer, having overtaken Sunak
That is interesting, because this is obviously a war boost which shows that such a thing is available, just Johnson is not getting it. And truss getting a deboost.
When it kicked off, Tories had that abysmal afternoon in commons when they slapped the Putin regime on wrist when house was expecting oligarch heads. What followed was slow and condemned across board refugee response. And underlying everything their links to Putin’s money right up to the evening the missiles were fired. I’m sure they have things in the positive column too and if you accentuated the positives the government are having a fantastic war, but overall has their response to the crisis been good?
It doesn’t need a Captain hindsight to sum up the facts anymore does it, this government seems slow and stumbling into everything?
LD's winning here while losing vote share. Yet another local result off message. It's a mystery..
?. Green candidate standing seems to explain it, otherwise looks like a pretty static result. Absolutely nothing to see here for anyone.
The Tory vote share rose, as it did in the Blyth seat and in Test valley. Week after week the Tories are often, not always, outperforming the polls and the doomsters on here. Something simply does not compute.
Labour could be piling up votes in areas where they are already strong ?
For those wondering what other bits of history Putin has been rewriting in his head...I have just been reminded of this, from January 2020: Putin has been blaming Poland for the start of the Second World War https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1507314856676020225
Was that in the same Putin speech that @Leon was cheerleading for?
Tsk. Remember liking Putin for quoting Martin Luther King is exactly the same as liking Wagner's music.
This makes perfect sense because Wagner is chiefly known for his racism, but he did do some composing on the side. And Putin is famous for his "brilliant" thoughts on equality, but not lot of people know that he is also a murderous dictator and war criminal.
Putin is murderous thug but he does have some valid points about woke and the decadence of western society...
Hmmm, hard to tell if that is a joke or not, but in case it isn't:
No he doesn't, or do you think the Putin regime has good policies that the rest of the world should follow in terms of race or gender equality or "decadence" or anything much else? Any gangster can mention Martin Luther King in a speech full of lies, it doesn't make them suddenly genius moral philosophers.
Quoting that MLK line against the left is usually trolling. Anybody who habitually does it - you can pretty much write them off as having anything of value to say about racism.
Poor old Orwell's going the same way. Righties are so uncool they have to go on the thieve for style, excepting the ones who proudly bear/bare their Richard Nixon tattoos and have their copies of Atlas Shrugged peeping coquettishly out of their pockets.
Orwell's main hustle was anti-authoritarianism (and pretty lefty looking authoritarianism, certainly in AF). Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything. There's a peculiarly dreary essay about nationalism which gets quoted with breathless approval, which contains a slap at Scottish separatism so wankerish that if it appeared on PB you'd think Oh fuck, _____ ________'s stupider younger brother has joined the conversation.
Well, we agree on O's Notes on Nationalism which contains buckets of his worst failing, a sentimentalisation of the English working class and their patriotism. That fecker spawned a load of 'I'm a lovely patriot and you're a ghastly nationalist' lads who are even more prevalent today.
I'm gathering from almost all the coverage that Ukraine is awash with patriotism and has thankfully managed to escape nationalism almost entirely.
The Ukrainians aren't being nationalist, only for a strange definition of nationalism that would for example, say that the SNP aren't Scottish Nationalists.
There are potentially an infinite number of forms of nationalism, from the toxic to the laudable; after all, at root it denotes only the desire to form or maintain a nation state.
Indeed - and Orwells writings on the subject aren't ant-nationalism in the general sense. But pointing at various idiosyncrasies and blind spots in various types of nationalism.
66% of even 18 to 34s still being religious and just 9% atheist and 91% of 76 to 93s still being religious is still astonishingly high for a Western, developed nation
Good to see it's not just the Ukrainians who can muster a dark sense of humour in these awful times. Apparently this is the latest issue of a local Moscow newspaper.
For those wondering what other bits of history Putin has been rewriting in his head...I have just been reminded of this, from January 2020: Putin has been blaming Poland for the start of the Second World War https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1507314856676020225
Was that in the same Putin speech that @Leon was cheerleading for?
Tsk. Remember liking Putin for quoting Martin Luther King is exactly the same as liking Wagner's music.
This makes perfect sense because Wagner is chiefly known for his racism, but he did do some composing on the side. And Putin is famous for his "brilliant" thoughts on equality, but not lot of people know that he is also a murderous dictator and war criminal.
Putin is murderous thug but he does have some valid points about woke and the decadence of western society...
Hmmm, hard to tell if that is a joke or not, but in case it isn't:
No he doesn't, or do you think the Putin regime has good policies that the rest of the world should follow in terms of race or gender equality or "decadence" or anything much else? Any gangster can mention Martin Luther King in a speech full of lies, it doesn't make them suddenly genius moral philosophers.
Hitler and his love of animals....
Mind you, Hitler did do *one thing* we can all agree was a good idea.
The only thing I can think of would be disapproved of by the Christians on the site.
I don't think he expressed an opinion on pineapple on pizza, and Radiohead hadn't been formed... What can you be thinking of?
Hitler had a little known fasciation with computing machinery (hence all the IBM machines and the Z3)
In his papers, the Soviets found the the outlines for a scripting language to be used for carrying out computations...... named after his fascination with South American snakes...... But he decided that it was a vile idea and should never be implemented.
Doing lots of Covid daze telly atm and caught a Hitler doc - there really is limitless stuff on him, isn't there? - the angle for this one being the grandiose architectural and population control plans he had for "Germania", the 3rd Reich, in the event of victory. Every conquered country throughout the world was going to get its brand new Nazi capital, complete with monumental amphitheatre in the centre where its Hitler rep - or the man himself if visiting - could preside over huge, stage-managed events for its freshly imported Aryan population, the 'legacy' people having been either eliminated or working as slaves off campus (as it were). Absolutely barking. We really dodged a bullet there.
I should use sarcasm tags more....
Some years ago, I noticed that in a series of sketches for the various buildings. Originally they were large - the triumphal arch was twice the size of the Arc de Triomphe etc. But after Speer came into the picture they exploded in scale to the truly insane stuff that we associate with Hitler...
Did Speer "release" Hitler's dreams of lunatic buildings? Or was Speer the one with the truly ludicrous visions?
No, don't worry, I wasn't nodding at your "Hitler the techie nerd" theory. It sounded satirical.
Speer, yep, that's the guy. He specialized in tickling the Fuhrer's fancy - so he'd be asked for something enormous and come back with something beyond that. Apparently he specifically considered how a building would look in 1000s of years when it crumbled and the idea was these relics of the Reich would have the gravitas of Ancient Greek or Roman ruins.
Lucky to have escaped the death penalty at Nuremberg if you ask me.
He was lucky, arguably a much better case against him than say Streicher who was a comic book antisemite, but virtually irrelevant to how the Nazi regime conducted itself.
Streicher fanned the flames very effectively. Just because it looks like comic book stupid racism to us... there are plenty of examples of soldiers in Russia asking (in letters home) for copies of Der Sturmer and saying how true it all was...
Speer orchestrated the slave labour system - death penalty for that, easily.
Good to see it's not just the Ukrainians who can muster a dark sense of humour in these awful times. Apparently this is the latest issue of a local Moscow newspaper.
On P&O, it's really complicated, isn't it? Far too hard to solve.
You have a CEO who has a salary of £325,000. He admits to knowingly breaking the law. Why? Because the company can't afford to pay a decent wage, and wants to pay its employees £5.50 an hour. By my calculations, the CEO earns £156 an hour (based on a 40-hour week). My heart bleeds.
But hey, that's just how the system works, and there's nothing we can do. Makes me wonder what the point of having a government is.
It's not a surprise they lost money in 2020 because the flipping pandemic meant everyone stayed at home. It says nothing about whether they need to cut staff costs to make a profit in 2023.
They did make an operating profit in 2019 though, so looks like the argument the company had to cut staff costs to survive as a going concern is cobblers. Never waste a good crisis, though.
Net result is that the British economy has fewer well-paid jobs and higher profits being remitted to foreign owners. Is that the direction of travel we are aiming for?
They also took well over £100m from Rishi in pandemic money.
Its parent company paid a dividend? How does that answer anything?
DP World isn't required to bail out its loss making subsidiaries. It was distributing profits from its other enterprises.
It's not irrelevant though. If the owner has money coming out of their ears and at the same time is pulling this trick it might say something about their business ethics.
I'd have thought cross-channel ferries being essential to everybody, and impossible to profit from, were crying out to be nationalised
British Railways took over the ferries from the railway companies in 1947 ...
"Rishi Sunak refuses to answer questions about his millionaire wife's stake in Indian firm with Russian connections amid western sanctions after being asked if his family 'could be benefitting from Putin's regime'."
For those wondering what other bits of history Putin has been rewriting in his head...I have just been reminded of this, from January 2020: Putin has been blaming Poland for the start of the Second World War https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1507314856676020225
Was that in the same Putin speech that @Leon was cheerleading for?
Tsk. Remember liking Putin for quoting Martin Luther King is exactly the same as liking Wagner's music.
This makes perfect sense because Wagner is chiefly known for his racism, but he did do some composing on the side. And Putin is famous for his "brilliant" thoughts on equality, but not lot of people know that he is also a murderous dictator and war criminal.
Putin is murderous thug but he does have some valid points about woke and the decadence of western society...
Hmmm, hard to tell if that is a joke or not, but in case it isn't:
No he doesn't, or do you think the Putin regime has good policies that the rest of the world should follow in terms of race or gender equality or "decadence" or anything much else? Any gangster can mention Martin Luther King in a speech full of lies, it doesn't make them suddenly genius moral philosophers.
Quoting that MLK line against the left is usually trolling. Anybody who habitually does it - you can pretty much write them off as having anything of value to say about racism.
Poor old Orwell's going the same way. Righties are so uncool they have to go on the thieve for style, excepting the ones who proudly bear/bare their Richard Nixon tattoos and have their copies of Atlas Shrugged peeping coquettishly out of their pockets.
Orwell's main hustle was anti-authoritarianism (and pretty lefty looking authoritarianism, certainly in AF). Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything. There's a peculiarly dreary essay about nationalism which gets quoted with breathless approval, which contains a slap at Scottish separatism so wankerish that if it appeared on PB you'd think Oh fuck, _____ ________'s stupider younger brother has joined the conversation.
"Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything."
LOL
I seem to recall that Dylan Thomas was pretty rude about Welsh nationalism. But, hey, he was a pretty two-bit poet. Almost as inconsequential as Orwell, come to that.
I was talking about the intelligence of Orwell's anti-nationalism, not the mere fact of it
What Dylan Thomas do you rate, incidentally, and why? I'd have said that Milk Wood was flattered by the Burton film, and if I never hear that DNGG thing again it'll be too soon
Or have you just looked him up on a spreadsheet of Really Important Poets?
You're being pleasant aren't you?
Try "Fern Hill" or "Over Sir John's Hill" if you're not familiar with him. I'm not a 100% fan but he did write some striking stuff.
Yes, those two random tweets are definite proof that those of us on the left think that JK Rowling is just like Putin; both are evil.
Alternatively, the two tweeters could just be a pair of wankers.
Indeed so, but let's not kid ourselves - picking random idiots off Twitter and seeing them as representative of an entire political side is common as muck for left and right.
We couldn't possibly keep up the count of with examples of far right fools, scottish unionist, sindy backer, commies etc and a sarky comment about what it means for that side.
I was just commenting on the technique Putin is using. By inserting himself into the culture war, he encourages people to frame his real war as an extension of it. People making this kind of comment are his useful idiots:
@juliacarriew With Vladimir Putin weighing in to support JK Rowling today, it's worth revisiting Judith Butler on the rightwing authoritarian movement against "gender ideology" and their alliance with the reactionary "gender critical" movement in the UK
For those wondering what other bits of history Putin has been rewriting in his head...I have just been reminded of this, from January 2020: Putin has been blaming Poland for the start of the Second World War https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1507314856676020225
Was that in the same Putin speech that @Leon was cheerleading for?
Tsk. Remember liking Putin for quoting Martin Luther King is exactly the same as liking Wagner's music.
This makes perfect sense because Wagner is chiefly known for his racism, but he did do some composing on the side. And Putin is famous for his "brilliant" thoughts on equality, but not lot of people know that he is also a murderous dictator and war criminal.
Putin is murderous thug but he does have some valid points about woke and the decadence of western society...
Hmmm, hard to tell if that is a joke or not, but in case it isn't:
No he doesn't, or do you think the Putin regime has good policies that the rest of the world should follow in terms of race or gender equality or "decadence" or anything much else? Any gangster can mention Martin Luther King in a speech full of lies, it doesn't make them suddenly genius moral philosophers.
Hitler and his love of animals....
Mind you, Hitler did do *one thing* we can all agree was a good idea.
The only thing I can think of would be disapproved of by the Christians on the site.
I don't think he expressed an opinion on pineapple on pizza, and Radiohead hadn't been formed... What can you be thinking of?
Hitler had a little known fasciation with computing machinery (hence all the IBM machines and the Z3)
In his papers, the Soviets found the the outlines for a scripting language to be used for carrying out computations...... named after his fascination with South American snakes...... But he decided that it was a vile idea and should never be implemented.
Doing lots of Covid daze telly atm and caught a Hitler doc - there really is limitless stuff on him, isn't there? - the angle for this one being the grandiose architectural and population control plans he had for "Germania", the 3rd Reich, in the event of victory. Every conquered country throughout the world was going to get its brand new Nazi capital, complete with monumental amphitheatre in the centre where its Hitler rep - or the man himself if visiting - could preside over huge, stage-managed events for its freshly imported Aryan population, the 'legacy' people having been either eliminated or working as slaves off campus (as it were). Absolutely barking. We really dodged a bullet there.
I should use sarcasm tags more....
Some years ago, I noticed that in a series of sketches for the various buildings. Originally they were large - the triumphal arch was twice the size of the Arc de Triomphe etc. But after Speer came into the picture they exploded in scale to the truly insane stuff that we associate with Hitler...
Did Speer "release" Hitler's dreams of lunatic buildings? Or was Speer the one with the truly ludicrous visions?
No, don't worry, I wasn't nodding at your "Hitler the techie nerd" theory. It sounded satirical.
Speer, yep, that's the guy. He specialized in tickling the Fuhrer's fancy - so he'd be asked for something enormous and come back with something beyond that. Apparently he specifically considered how a building would look in 1000s of years when it crumbled and the idea was these relics of the Reich would have the gravitas of Ancient Greek or Roman ruins.
Lucky to have escaped the death penalty at Nuremberg if you ask me.
He was lucky, arguably a much better case against him than say Streicher who was a comic book antisemite, but virtually irrelevant to how the Nazi regime conducted itself.
Streicher fanned the flames very effectively. Just because it looks like comic book stupid racism to us... there are plenty of examples of soldiers in Russia asking (in letters home) for copies of Der Sturmer and saying how true it all was...
Speer orchestrated the slave labour system - death penalty for that, easily.
Especially when Sauckel got the death penalty.
I've heard it suggested that Speer put the boot in to Saukel with various statements in his interrogations, as a continuation of their wartime feud.
Yes, those two random tweets are definite proof that those of us on the left think that JK Rowling is just like Putin; both are evil.
Alternatively, the two tweeters could just be a pair of wankers.
Indeed so, but let's not kid ourselves - picking random idiots off Twitter and seeing them as representative of an entire political side is common as muck for left and right.
We couldn't possibly keep up the count of with examples of far right fools, scottish unionist, sindy backer, commies etc and a sarky comment about what it means for that side.
I was just commenting on the technique Putin is using. By inserting himself into the culture war, he encourages people to frame his real war as an extension of it. People making this kind of comment are his useful idiots:
@juliacarriew With Vladimir Putin weighing in to support JK Rowling today, it's worth revisiting Judith Butler on the rightwing authoritarian movement against "gender ideology" and their alliance with the reactionary "gender critical" movement in the UK
Who can forget Chairman Mao's authoritative pronouncements on the orientation of cat litter trays? It calls into to question the entire concept of household pets....
For those wondering what other bits of history Putin has been rewriting in his head...I have just been reminded of this, from January 2020: Putin has been blaming Poland for the start of the Second World War https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1507314856676020225
Was that in the same Putin speech that @Leon was cheerleading for?
Tsk. Remember liking Putin for quoting Martin Luther King is exactly the same as liking Wagner's music.
This makes perfect sense because Wagner is chiefly known for his racism, but he did do some composing on the side. And Putin is famous for his "brilliant" thoughts on equality, but not lot of people know that he is also a murderous dictator and war criminal.
Putin is murderous thug but he does have some valid points about woke and the decadence of western society...
Hmmm, hard to tell if that is a joke or not, but in case it isn't:
No he doesn't, or do you think the Putin regime has good policies that the rest of the world should follow in terms of race or gender equality or "decadence" or anything much else? Any gangster can mention Martin Luther King in a speech full of lies, it doesn't make them suddenly genius moral philosophers.
Quoting that MLK line against the left is usually trolling. Anybody who habitually does it - you can pretty much write them off as having anything of value to say about racism.
Poor old Orwell's going the same way. Righties are so uncool they have to go on the thieve for style, excepting the ones who proudly bear/bare their Richard Nixon tattoos and have their copies of Atlas Shrugged peeping coquettishly out of their pockets.
Orwell's main hustle was anti-authoritarianism (and pretty lefty looking authoritarianism, certainly in AF). Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything. There's a peculiarly dreary essay about nationalism which gets quoted with breathless approval, which contains a slap at Scottish separatism so wankerish that if it appeared on PB you'd think Oh fuck, _____ ________'s stupider younger brother has joined the conversation.
Well, we agree on O's Notes on Nationalism which contains buckets of his worst failing, a sentimentalisation of the English working class and their patriotism. That fecker spawned a load of 'I'm a lovely patriot and you're a ghastly nationalist' lads who are even more prevalent today.
I'm gathering from almost all the coverage that Ukraine is awash with patriotism and has thankfully managed to escape nationalism almost entirely.
The Ukrainians aren't being nationalist, only for a strange definition of nationalism that would for example, say that the SNP aren't Scottish Nationalists.
There are potentially an infinite number of forms of nationalism, from the toxic to the laudable; after all, at root it denotes only the desire to form or maintain a nation state.
Indeed - and Orwells writings on the subject aren't ant-nationalism in the general sense. But pointing at various idiosyncrasies and blind spots in various types of nationalism.
I've recommended it before, but I'll again mention Snyder's the Reconstruction of Nations. It's a great conceptual look at the emerging nationalisms in eastern europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, which refrains from Manichaean judgments. He makes the point that democracy is about imagining what any given future for a nation state will be, while autocracy tries to fix it in perpetual stasis.
Based on a uniform swing calculator? We know there won’t be uniform swing because Tories own the midlands battle ground whilst labour are stacking up valueless votes in metropolitan areas.
Save your fingers rather posting this after every poll.
On regional numbers Labour have a big 50% to 28% lead in London and also lead 44% to 34% in the North.
The Midlands is now tied with the Tories and Labour on 36% each and the Tories lead in the South still 40% to 31% with the LDs on 14%. The SNP lead on the Scottish subsample 39% to 20% for the SCons and 19% for SLab https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/6t7qu7kot7/TheTimes_VI_220323_W.pdf
Further to HUYD's defence here - it is not as simple as @MoonRabbit's suggestion.
For example, 8 of the top 50 Con marginals are in the Midlands. 5 are in London (with #51 also being in London, 5 in the SE, and 3 in the East of England.
On the other hand, 12 are in the North (of which 10 are in the NW).
So even if the Conservatives massively over-perform in the Midlands, their majority disappears just in those top 50 defences.
For those wondering what other bits of history Putin has been rewriting in his head...I have just been reminded of this, from January 2020: Putin has been blaming Poland for the start of the Second World War https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1507314856676020225
Was that in the same Putin speech that @Leon was cheerleading for?
Tsk. Remember liking Putin for quoting Martin Luther King is exactly the same as liking Wagner's music.
This makes perfect sense because Wagner is chiefly known for his racism, but he did do some composing on the side. And Putin is famous for his "brilliant" thoughts on equality, but not lot of people know that he is also a murderous dictator and war criminal.
Putin is murderous thug but he does have some valid points about woke and the decadence of western society...
Hmmm, hard to tell if that is a joke or not, but in case it isn't:
No he doesn't, or do you think the Putin regime has good policies that the rest of the world should follow in terms of race or gender equality or "decadence" or anything much else? Any gangster can mention Martin Luther King in a speech full of lies, it doesn't make them suddenly genius moral philosophers.
Quoting that MLK line against the left is usually trolling. Anybody who habitually does it - you can pretty much write them off as having anything of value to say about racism.
Poor old Orwell's going the same way. Righties are so uncool they have to go on the thieve for style, excepting the ones who proudly bear/bare their Richard Nixon tattoos and have their copies of Atlas Shrugged peeping coquettishly out of their pockets.
Orwell's main hustle was anti-authoritarianism (and pretty lefty looking authoritarianism, certainly in AF). Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything. There's a peculiarly dreary essay about nationalism which gets quoted with breathless approval, which contains a slap at Scottish separatism so wankerish that if it appeared on PB you'd think Oh fuck, _____ ________'s stupider younger brother has joined the conversation.
"Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything."
LOL
I seem to recall that Dylan Thomas was pretty rude about Welsh nationalism. But, hey, he was a pretty two-bit poet. Almost as inconsequential as Orwell, come to that.
I was talking about the intelligence of Orwell's anti-nationalism, not the mere fact of it
What Dylan Thomas do you rate, incidentally, and why? I'd have said that Milk Wood was flattered by the Burton film, and if I never hear that DNGG thing again it'll be too soon
Or have you just looked him up on a spreadsheet of Really Important Poets?
You're being pleasant aren't you?
Try "Fern Hill" or "Over Sir John's Hill" if you're not familiar with him. I'm not a 100% fan but he did write some striking stuff.
Well, you started it, with the suggestion that the way to assess orwell's quality of a writer is something other than, assessing the (very varying) quality of his writing. Again, other than reportage and satire, what of interest did he write?
For those wondering what other bits of history Putin has been rewriting in his head...I have just been reminded of this, from January 2020: Putin has been blaming Poland for the start of the Second World War https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1507314856676020225
Was that in the same Putin speech that @Leon was cheerleading for?
Tsk. Remember liking Putin for quoting Martin Luther King is exactly the same as liking Wagner's music.
This makes perfect sense because Wagner is chiefly known for his racism, but he did do some composing on the side. And Putin is famous for his "brilliant" thoughts on equality, but not lot of people know that he is also a murderous dictator and war criminal.
Putin is murderous thug but he does have some valid points about woke and the decadence of western society...
Hmmm, hard to tell if that is a joke or not, but in case it isn't:
No he doesn't, or do you think the Putin regime has good policies that the rest of the world should follow in terms of race or gender equality or "decadence" or anything much else? Any gangster can mention Martin Luther King in a speech full of lies, it doesn't make them suddenly genius moral philosophers.
Quoting that MLK line against the left is usually trolling. Anybody who habitually does it - you can pretty much write them off as having anything of value to say about racism.
Poor old Orwell's going the same way. Righties are so uncool they have to go on the thieve for style, excepting the ones who proudly bear/bare their Richard Nixon tattoos and have their copies of Atlas Shrugged peeping coquettishly out of their pockets.
Orwell's main hustle was anti-authoritarianism (and pretty lefty looking authoritarianism, certainly in AF). Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything. There's a peculiarly dreary essay about nationalism which gets quoted with breathless approval, which contains a slap at Scottish separatism so wankerish that if it appeared on PB you'd think Oh fuck, _____ ________'s stupider younger brother has joined the conversation.
Well, we agree on O's Notes on Nationalism which contains buckets of his worst failing, a sentimentalisation of the English working class and their patriotism. That fecker spawned a load of 'I'm a lovely patriot and you're a ghastly nationalist' lads who are even more prevalent today.
I'm gathering from almost all the coverage that Ukraine is awash with patriotism and has thankfully managed to escape nationalism almost entirely.
The Ukrainians aren't being nationalist, only for a strange definition of nationalism that would for example, say that the SNP aren't Scottish Nationalists.
There are potentially an infinite number of forms of nationalism, from the toxic to the laudable; after all, at root it denotes only the desire to form or maintain a nation state.
Indeed - and Orwells writings on the subject aren't ant-nationalism in the general sense. But pointing at various idiosyncrasies and blind spots in various types of nationalism.
For all the partisan ramping on both sides, it seems to me. The government is unpopular. People aren't convinced by the Labour alternative. Hence the LD's and Greens win when they are anywhere close enough to do so. It's all to play for. Cost of living hasn't kicked in properly yet. I can see anything from re-elected comfortably to Labour minority without even needing the SNP. The variables (war. How long? Weeks? Years? And cost of living. Just how bad. And the PM's character), are greater than any time I can remember. Anyone projecting with certainty is doing exactly that. Projecting.
Agree. There is nothing at all in the way of data or circumstances to choose between the likelihood of a Tory or Labour led government next time.
On P&O, it's really complicated, isn't it? Far too hard to solve.
You have a CEO who has a salary of £325,000. He admits to knowingly breaking the law. Why? Because the company can't afford to pay a decent wage, and wants to pay its employees £5.50 an hour. By my calculations, the CEO earns £156 an hour (based on a 40-hour week). My heart bleeds.
But hey, that's just how the system works, and there's nothing we can do. Makes me wonder what the point of having a government is.
It's not a surprise they lost money in 2020 because the flipping pandemic meant everyone stayed at home. It says nothing about whether they need to cut staff costs to make a profit in 2023.
They did make an operating profit in 2019 though, so looks like the argument the company had to cut staff costs to survive as a going concern is cobblers. Never waste a good crisis, though.
Net result is that the British economy has fewer well-paid jobs and higher profits being remitted to foreign owners. Is that the direction of travel we are aiming for?
They also took well over £100m from Rishi in pandemic money.
Its parent company paid a dividend? How does that answer anything?
DP World isn't required to bail out its loss making subsidiaries. It was distributing profits from its other enterprises.
It's not irrelevant though. If the owner has money coming out of their ears and at the same time is pulling this trick it might say something about their business ethics.
I'd have thought cross-channel ferries being essential to everybody, and impossible to profit from, were crying out to be nationalised
British Railways took over the ferries from the railway companies in 1947 ...
Class 99 locomotives? No. Class 99 ferries!
Ah, so they were - hadn't known that, thanks. Wiki: "The British Rail Class 99 was a fleet of ferries or train ferries, most of which were owned by Sealink, that carried rail vehicles between Britain and mainland Europe. When British Rail implemented the TOPS system for managing their operating stock, these ships were incorporated into the system in order to circumvent some of the restrictions of the application software. This allowed them to be counted as locomotives while carrying railway vehicles in the same way as a normal locomotive would haul a train."
For those wondering what other bits of history Putin has been rewriting in his head...I have just been reminded of this, from January 2020: Putin has been blaming Poland for the start of the Second World War https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1507314856676020225
Was that in the same Putin speech that @Leon was cheerleading for?
Tsk. Remember liking Putin for quoting Martin Luther King is exactly the same as liking Wagner's music.
This makes perfect sense because Wagner is chiefly known for his racism, but he did do some composing on the side. And Putin is famous for his "brilliant" thoughts on equality, but not lot of people know that he is also a murderous dictator and war criminal.
Putin is murderous thug but he does have some valid points about woke and the decadence of western society...
Hmmm, hard to tell if that is a joke or not, but in case it isn't:
No he doesn't, or do you think the Putin regime has good policies that the rest of the world should follow in terms of race or gender equality or "decadence" or anything much else? Any gangster can mention Martin Luther King in a speech full of lies, it doesn't make them suddenly genius moral philosophers.
Quoting that MLK line against the left is usually trolling. Anybody who habitually does it - you can pretty much write them off as having anything of value to say about racism.
Poor old Orwell's going the same way. Righties are so uncool they have to go on the thieve for style, excepting the ones who proudly bear/bare their Richard Nixon tattoos and have their copies of Atlas Shrugged peeping coquettishly out of their pockets.
Orwell's main hustle was anti-authoritarianism (and pretty lefty looking authoritarianism, certainly in AF). Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything. There's a peculiarly dreary essay about nationalism which gets quoted with breathless approval, which contains a slap at Scottish separatism so wankerish that if it appeared on PB you'd think Oh fuck, _____ ________'s stupider younger brother has joined the conversation.
"Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything."
LOL
I seem to recall that Dylan Thomas was pretty rude about Welsh nationalism. But, hey, he was a pretty two-bit poet. Almost as inconsequential as Orwell, come to that.
I was talking about the intelligence of Orwell's anti-nationalism, not the mere fact of it
What Dylan Thomas do you rate, incidentally, and why? I'd have said that Milk Wood was flattered by the Burton film, and if I never hear that DNGG thing again it'll be too soon
Or have you just looked him up on a spreadsheet of Really Important Poets?
You're being pleasant aren't you?
Try "Fern Hill" or "Over Sir John's Hill" if you're not familiar with him. I'm not a 100% fan but he did write some striking stuff.
#
I can do without too much Dylan Thomas, but Fern Hill is about the most striking and lyrical poem of the 20th century that I know. As if written under a special inspiration. And there is no limit to the number of times you can read it and get more from it.
For those wondering what other bits of history Putin has been rewriting in his head...I have just been reminded of this, from January 2020: Putin has been blaming Poland for the start of the Second World War https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1507314856676020225
Was that in the same Putin speech that @Leon was cheerleading for?
Tsk. Remember liking Putin for quoting Martin Luther King is exactly the same as liking Wagner's music.
This makes perfect sense because Wagner is chiefly known for his racism, but he did do some composing on the side. And Putin is famous for his "brilliant" thoughts on equality, but not lot of people know that he is also a murderous dictator and war criminal.
Putin is murderous thug but he does have some valid points about woke and the decadence of western society...
Hmmm, hard to tell if that is a joke or not, but in case it isn't:
No he doesn't, or do you think the Putin regime has good policies that the rest of the world should follow in terms of race or gender equality or "decadence" or anything much else? Any gangster can mention Martin Luther King in a speech full of lies, it doesn't make them suddenly genius moral philosophers.
Quoting that MLK line against the left is usually trolling. Anybody who habitually does it - you can pretty much write them off as having anything of value to say about racism.
Poor old Orwell's going the same way. Righties are so uncool they have to go on the thieve for style, excepting the ones who proudly bear/bare their Richard Nixon tattoos and have their copies of Atlas Shrugged peeping coquettishly out of their pockets.
Orwell's main hustle was anti-authoritarianism (and pretty lefty looking authoritarianism, certainly in AF). Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything. There's a peculiarly dreary essay about nationalism which gets quoted with breathless approval, which contains a slap at Scottish separatism so wankerish that if it appeared on PB you'd think Oh fuck, _____ ________'s stupider younger brother has joined the conversation.
Well, we agree on O's Notes on Nationalism which contains buckets of his worst failing, a sentimentalisation of the English working class and their patriotism. That fecker spawned a load of 'I'm a lovely patriot and you're a ghastly nationalist' lads who are even more prevalent today.
I'm gathering from almost all the coverage that Ukraine is awash with patriotism and has thankfully managed to escape nationalism almost entirely.
I think the problem was the deference the English working class then showed to a toff. I haven't read Wigan Pier or Down & Out for decades, but my feeling is he thought he had de-Etonianised himself more than he actually had
For those wondering what other bits of history Putin has been rewriting in his head...I have just been reminded of this, from January 2020: Putin has been blaming Poland for the start of the Second World War https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1507314856676020225
Was that in the same Putin speech that @Leon was cheerleading for?
Tsk. Remember liking Putin for quoting Martin Luther King is exactly the same as liking Wagner's music.
This makes perfect sense because Wagner is chiefly known for his racism, but he did do some composing on the side. And Putin is famous for his "brilliant" thoughts on equality, but not lot of people know that he is also a murderous dictator and war criminal.
Putin is murderous thug but he does have some valid points about woke and the decadence of western society...
Hmmm, hard to tell if that is a joke or not, but in case it isn't:
No he doesn't, or do you think the Putin regime has good policies that the rest of the world should follow in terms of race or gender equality or "decadence" or anything much else? Any gangster can mention Martin Luther King in a speech full of lies, it doesn't make them suddenly genius moral philosophers.
Quoting that MLK line against the left is usually trolling. Anybody who habitually does it - you can pretty much write them off as having anything of value to say about racism.
Poor old Orwell's going the same way. Righties are so uncool they have to go on the thieve for style, excepting the ones who proudly bear/bare their Richard Nixon tattoos and have their copies of Atlas Shrugged peeping coquettishly out of their pockets.
Orwell's main hustle was anti-authoritarianism (and pretty lefty looking authoritarianism, certainly in AF). Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything. There's a peculiarly dreary essay about nationalism which gets quoted with breathless approval, which contains a slap at Scottish separatism so wankerish that if it appeared on PB you'd think Oh fuck, _____ ________'s stupider younger brother has joined the conversation.
"Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything."
LOL
I seem to recall that Dylan Thomas was pretty rude about Welsh nationalism. But, hey, he was a pretty two-bit poet. Almost as inconsequential as Orwell, come to that.
I was talking about the intelligence of Orwell's anti-nationalism, not the mere fact of it
What Dylan Thomas do you rate, incidentally, and why? I'd have said that Milk Wood was flattered by the Burton film, and if I never hear that DNGG thing again it'll be too soon
Or have you just looked him up on a spreadsheet of Really Important Poets?
You're being pleasant aren't you?
Try "Fern Hill" or "Over Sir John's Hill" if you're not familiar with him. I'm not a 100% fan but he did write some striking stuff.
Well, you started it, with the suggestion that the way to assess orwell's quality of a writer is something other than, assessing the (very varying) quality of his writing. Again, other than reportage and satire, what of interest did he write?
That's a bit like saying, 'other than the plays and sonnnets, what of interest did Shakespeare write?'
66% of even 18 to 34s still being religious and just 9% atheist and 91% of 76 to 93s still being religious is still astonishingly high for a Western, developed nation
It is just your OPINION that God exists.
Which is just as well as there cannot be any facts about either the existence or non existence of God. We are all agnostics, but come in various flavours. Some theists and atheists are in denial about this.
For those wondering what other bits of history Putin has been rewriting in his head...I have just been reminded of this, from January 2020: Putin has been blaming Poland for the start of the Second World War https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1507314856676020225
Was that in the same Putin speech that @Leon was cheerleading for?
Tsk. Remember liking Putin for quoting Martin Luther King is exactly the same as liking Wagner's music.
This makes perfect sense because Wagner is chiefly known for his racism, but he did do some composing on the side. And Putin is famous for his "brilliant" thoughts on equality, but not lot of people know that he is also a murderous dictator and war criminal.
Putin is murderous thug but he does have some valid points about woke and the decadence of western society...
Hmmm, hard to tell if that is a joke or not, but in case it isn't:
No he doesn't, or do you think the Putin regime has good policies that the rest of the world should follow in terms of race or gender equality or "decadence" or anything much else? Any gangster can mention Martin Luther King in a speech full of lies, it doesn't make them suddenly genius moral philosophers.
Quoting that MLK line against the left is usually trolling. Anybody who habitually does it - you can pretty much write them off as having anything of value to say about racism.
Poor old Orwell's going the same way. Righties are so uncool they have to go on the thieve for style, excepting the ones who proudly bear/bare their Richard Nixon tattoos and have their copies of Atlas Shrugged peeping coquettishly out of their pockets.
Orwell's main hustle was anti-authoritarianism (and pretty lefty looking authoritarianism, certainly in AF). Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything. There's a peculiarly dreary essay about nationalism which gets quoted with breathless approval, which contains a slap at Scottish separatism so wankerish that if it appeared on PB you'd think Oh fuck, _____ ________'s stupider younger brother has joined the conversation.
"Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything."
LOL
I seem to recall that Dylan Thomas was pretty rude about Welsh nationalism. But, hey, he was a pretty two-bit poet. Almost as inconsequential as Orwell, come to that.
I was talking about the intelligence of Orwell's anti-nationalism, not the mere fact of it
What Dylan Thomas do you rate, incidentally, and why? I'd have said that Milk Wood was flattered by the Burton film, and if I never hear that DNGG thing again it'll be too soon
Or have you just looked him up on a spreadsheet of Really Important Poets?
You're being pleasant aren't you?
Try "Fern Hill" or "Over Sir John's Hill" if you're not familiar with him. I'm not a 100% fan but he did write some striking stuff.
Well, you started it, with the suggestion that the way to assess orwell's quality of a writer is something other than, assessing the (very varying) quality of his writing. Again, other than reportage and satire, what of interest did he write?
Yes, those two random tweets are definite proof that those of us on the left think that JK Rowling is just like Putin; both are evil.
Alternatively, the two tweeters could just be a pair of wankers.
Indeed so, but let's not kid ourselves - picking random idiots off Twitter and seeing them as representative of an entire political side is common as muck for left and right.
We couldn't possibly keep up the count of with examples of far right fools, scottish unionist, sindy backer, commies etc and a sarky comment about what it means for that side.
I was just commenting on the technique Putin is using. By inserting himself into the culture war, he encourages people to frame his real war as an extension of it. People making this kind of comment are his useful idiots:
@juliacarriew With Vladimir Putin weighing in to support JK Rowling today, it's worth revisiting Judith Butler on the rightwing authoritarian movement against "gender ideology" and their alliance with the reactionary "gender critical" movement in the UK
Who can forget Chairman Mao's authoritative pronouncements on the orientation of cat litter trays? It calls into to question the entire concept of household pets....
Yes, those two random tweets are definite proof that those of us on the left think that JK Rowling is just like Putin; both are evil.
Alternatively, the two tweeters could just be a pair of wankers.
Indeed so, but let's not kid ourselves - picking random idiots off Twitter and seeing them as representative of an entire political side is common as muck for left and right.
We couldn't possibly keep up the count of with examples of far right fools, scottish unionist, sindy backer, commies etc and a sarky comment about what it means for that side.
I was just commenting on the technique Putin is using. By inserting himself into the culture war, he encourages people to frame his real war as an extension of it. People making this kind of comment are his useful idiots:
@juliacarriew With Vladimir Putin weighing in to support JK Rowling today, it's worth revisiting Judith Butler on the rightwing authoritarian movement against "gender ideology" and their alliance with the reactionary "gender critical" movement in the UK
Who can forget Chairman Mao's authoritative pronouncements on the orientation of cat litter trays? It calls into to question the entire concept of household pets....
Cats have only just been reclassified as companion (rather than food producing) animals in China…
For those wondering what other bits of history Putin has been rewriting in his head...I have just been reminded of this, from January 2020: Putin has been blaming Poland for the start of the Second World War https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1507314856676020225
Was that in the same Putin speech that @Leon was cheerleading for?
Tsk. Remember liking Putin for quoting Martin Luther King is exactly the same as liking Wagner's music.
This makes perfect sense because Wagner is chiefly known for his racism, but he did do some composing on the side. And Putin is famous for his "brilliant" thoughts on equality, but not lot of people know that he is also a murderous dictator and war criminal.
Putin is murderous thug but he does have some valid points about woke and the decadence of western society...
Hmmm, hard to tell if that is a joke or not, but in case it isn't:
No he doesn't, or do you think the Putin regime has good policies that the rest of the world should follow in terms of race or gender equality or "decadence" or anything much else? Any gangster can mention Martin Luther King in a speech full of lies, it doesn't make them suddenly genius moral philosophers.
Quoting that MLK line against the left is usually trolling. Anybody who habitually does it - you can pretty much write them off as having anything of value to say about racism.
Poor old Orwell's going the same way. Righties are so uncool they have to go on the thieve for style, excepting the ones who proudly bear/bare their Richard Nixon tattoos and have their copies of Atlas Shrugged peeping coquettishly out of their pockets.
Orwell's main hustle was anti-authoritarianism (and pretty lefty looking authoritarianism, certainly in AF). Outwith that he hadn't much that was interesting to say about politics, or anything. There's a peculiarly dreary essay about nationalism which gets quoted with breathless approval, which contains a slap at Scottish separatism so wankerish that if it appeared on PB you'd think Oh fuck, _____ ________'s stupider younger brother has joined the conversation.
Well, we agree on O's Notes on Nationalism which contains buckets of his worst failing, a sentimentalisation of the English working class and their patriotism. That fecker spawned a load of 'I'm a lovely patriot and you're a ghastly nationalist' lads who are even more prevalent today.
I'm gathering from almost all the coverage that Ukraine is awash with patriotism and has thankfully managed to escape nationalism almost entirely.
The Ukrainians aren't being nationalist, only for a strange definition of nationalism that would for example, say that the SNP aren't Scottish Nationalists.
There are potentially an infinite number of forms of nationalism, from the toxic to the laudable; after all, at root it denotes only the desire to form or maintain a nation state.
Indeed - and Orwells writings on the subject aren't ant-nationalism in the general sense. But pointing at various idiosyncrasies and blind spots in various types of nationalism.
"Es gibt nur kranken Patriotismus. Gesunder Patriotismus klingt für mich ein bisschen wie – gutartiger Tumor -. Es ist vielleicht nicht direkt lebensgefährlich, aber es ist immer noch ein Tumor."
Based on a uniform swing calculator? We know there won’t be uniform swing because Tories own the midlands battle ground whilst labour are stacking up valueless votes in metropolitan areas.
Save your fingers rather posting this after every poll.
On regional numbers Labour have a big 50% to 28% lead in London and also lead 44% to 34% in the North.
The Midlands is now tied with the Tories and Labour on 36% each and the Tories lead in the South still 40% to 31% with the LDs on 14%. The SNP lead on the Scottish subsample 39% to 20% for the SCons and 19% for SLab https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/6t7qu7kot7/TheTimes_VI_220323_W.pdf
Further to HUYD's defence here - it is not as simple as @MoonRabbit's suggestion.
For example, 8 of the top 50 Con marginals are in the Midlands. 5 are in London (with #51 also being in London, 5 in the SE, and 3 in the East of England.
On the other hand, 12 are in the North (of which 10 are in the NW).
So even if the Conservatives massively over-perform in the Midlands, their majority disappears just in those top 50 defences.
But it is as simple as MoonRabbit is saying though, because a mere 312 Con 264 Labour isn’t good enough to change government. Of the numerous mistakes you have made, You have made the mistake of merely wiping out the majority. Now look at the next 50 Tory marginals. Secondly it’s not conservatives massively over perform, it’s merely perform as mid term polls suggest before swing back. And then analyse the reasoning why Labour are behind where they need to be midterm - the Brexit card the Tories can play as can you trust these arch remainers with Brexit, now the security of the country not safe in Labours hands the card the Tories can play at election Boris tried out last weekend, and the incumbency bonus Tories will get, in voters minds who else is going to run the country and the economy if not the tried and tested Tories, which is what incumbency boils down to.
You see what I mean now - Labours mid term midlands disaster is not a remaining patch to mop up, it’s the stain they can’t do anything about that spreads with swingback.
I think @Moonrabbit is right about the Midlands, but has failed to clock the Tory collapse in the North and Wales, and the potency of Lab-Lib tactical voting in the South.
Scotland remains critical, not because of numbers, but because a Labour recovery of sorts is important to rebut the narrative that any new government will be beholden to the SNP. And if you squint, it does seem like the unionist vote is shifting away from the STories and toward SLab/SLD.
For all the partisan ramping on both sides, it seems to me. The government is unpopular. People aren't convinced by the Labour alternative. Hence the LD's and Greens win when they are anywhere close enough to do so. It's all to play for. Cost of living hasn't kicked in properly yet. I can see anything from re-elected comfortably to Labour minority without even needing the SNP. The variables (war. How long? Weeks? Years? And cost of living. Just how bad. And the PM's character), are greater than any time I can remember. Anyone projecting with certainty is doing exactly that. Projecting.
Agree. There is nothing at all in the way of data or circumstances to choose between the likelihood of a Tory or Labour led government next time.
I think the only thing that can be said at the minute is a stupidly simple point that just draws from current polls and past election cycles. Neither side is dead and buried and Starmer may very well manage to become PM because he’s not scary.
BUT
It would be a hell of an achievement to unseat an 80 seat majority. I think there’s a lot hidden in the undecided data and a very high chance a lot of Boris’s voters will “come home”. I also think the media will seize on a “coke back” narrative soon to fit their soap opera view of politics.
LD's winning here while losing vote share. Yet another local result off message. It's a mystery..
?. Green candidate standing seems to explain it, otherwise looks like a pretty static result. Absolutely nothing to see here for anyone.
The Tory vote share rose, as it did in the Blyth seat and in Test valley. Week after week the Tories are often, not always, outperforming the polls and the doomsters on here. Something simply does not compute.
Labour could be piling up votes in areas where they are already strong ?
Yes.
It’s like herding cats getting the proper analysis to drop on this site. 🤦♀️
I think @Moonrabbit is right about the Midlands, but has failed to clock the Tory collapse in the North and Wales, and the potency of Lab-Lib tactical voting in the South.
Scotland remains critical, not because of numbers, but because a Labour recovery of sorts is important to rebut the narrative that any new government will be beholden to the SNP. And if you squint, it does seem like the unionist vote is shifting away from the STories and toward SLab/SLD.
I havn’t failed to clock anything. This is mid term. This is before the Tory fight back and the swing back, and the Election Day incumbency bonus, and any actual campaign. You only actually have a Tory collapse in the North (that’s not borne out in actual voting currently going on btw) when the Election Day votes are in proving it.
This is the only correct way to analyse this, Labour start on a way out 200 seats. if polling and council by elections votes as bad for Labour now as they are, what is the right thing to expect as the electoral cycle moves back to the heat of election time.
Comments
He doesn't have a heroine to destroy, though.
Seems like a waste of money to send these out.
Age 18-34: 34% have no religion now (and 15% were never religious)
Age 76-93: 9% have no religion now (and 0% were never religious)
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-broadly-want-the-senate-to-confirm-ketanji-brown-jackson-to-the-supreme-court/
We couldn't possibly keep up the count of with examples of far right fools, scottish unionist, sindy backer, commies etc and a sarky comment about what it means for that side.
Speer orchestrated the slave labour system - death penalty for that, easily.
It doesn’t need a Captain hindsight to sum up the facts anymore does it, this government seems slow and stumbling into everything?
YouGov 22/23 Mar: Lab +1
YouGov 23/24 Mar: Lab +2
So a significant fall in the Lab lead with YouGov over the past week, shown in two polls, albeit the later poll is marginally better for Lab.
Same trend as Kantar - but Techne has Lab lead marginally up.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FOsRIQMWYAIF_V4?format=jpg&name=large
Translation:
"NOTHING IS HAPPENING. Walk on by. A special operation is underway. No one is growing poor. The economy is growing."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10647291/Rishi-Sunak-refuses-answer-questions-wifes-stake-Indian-firm-Russian-connections.html
"Rishi Sunak refuses to answer questions about his millionaire wife's stake in Indian firm with Russian connections amid western sanctions after being asked if his family 'could be benefitting from Putin's regime'."
warspecial operation is going so well he can delegate it to theMajor-GeneralsColonels.Try "Fern Hill" or "Over Sir John's Hill" if you're not familiar with him. I'm not a 100% fan but he did write some striking stuff.
@juliacarriew
With Vladimir Putin weighing in to support JK Rowling today, it's worth revisiting Judith Butler on the rightwing authoritarian movement against "gender ideology" and their alliance with the reactionary "gender critical" movement in the UK
https://twitter.com/juliacarriew/status/1507355190327971840
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1507296439612891145
It's a great conceptual look at the emerging nationalisms in eastern europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, which refrains from Manichaean judgments.
He makes the point that democracy is about imagining what any given future for a nation state will be, while autocracy tries to fix it in perpetual stasis.
Just a wannabe.
For example, 8 of the top 50 Con marginals are in the Midlands. 5 are in London (with #51 also being in London, 5 in the SE, and 3 in the East of England.
On the other hand, 12 are in the North (of which 10 are in the NW).
So even if the Conservatives massively over-perform in the Midlands, their majority disappears just in those top 50 defences.
I can do without too much Dylan Thomas, but Fern Hill is about the most striking and lyrical poem of the 20th century that I know. As if written under a special inspiration. And there is no limit to the number of times you can read it and get more from it.
Thread Nouvelle
"Es gibt nur kranken Patriotismus. Gesunder Patriotismus klingt für mich ein bisschen wie – gutartiger Tumor -. Es ist vielleicht nicht direkt lebensgefährlich, aber es ist immer noch ein Tumor."
- Das Känguru
You see what I mean now - Labours mid term midlands disaster is not a remaining patch to mop up, it’s the stain they can’t do anything about that spreads with swingback.
Scotland remains critical, not because of numbers, but because a Labour recovery of sorts is important to rebut the narrative that any new government will be beholden to the SNP. And if you squint, it does seem like the unionist vote is shifting away from the STories and toward SLab/SLD.
BUT
It would be a hell of an achievement to unseat an 80 seat majority. I think there’s a lot hidden in the undecided data and a very high chance a lot of Boris’s voters will “come home”. I also think the media will seize on a “coke back” narrative soon to fit their soap opera view of politics.
It’s like herding cats getting the proper analysis to drop on this site. 🤦♀️
This is the only correct way to analyse this, Labour start on a way out 200 seats. if polling and council by elections votes as bad for Labour now as they are, what is the right thing to expect as the electoral cycle moves back to the heat of election time.