A Labour government would freeze council tax, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say on Thursday as he tries to cast himself as the candidate of low tax for workers.
As he launches Labour’s local elections campaign in Swindon, Starmer will say that if he were prime minister, council tax bills would stay at the same level rather than rising as they will do this weekend. Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Starmer argues that voters have a clear “choice” on tax, contrasting his wish to freeze council tax with the scrapping of the tax-free lifetime allowance limit for wealthy pensioners announced by Jeremy Hunt in the budget a fortnight ago.
In a speech to party supporters, Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice — taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1 per cent — or a Labour choice, where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.
“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year — that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1 per cent. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people.”
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
You may gather I am not a fan.
" Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women"
Really?
Yes, quite obviously!
It may be today but look at recent history from Danny La Rue to Stanley Baxter. There were a few misguided attempts yesterday to “trans away the gay” of Paul O’Grady - who was VERY clear he was a gay man who used to do drag. He retired Lily as he judged (probably correctly) that Lily would no longer be acceptable to modern (younger) audiences.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
Maybe it would be simpler if all books were vetted by the government, prior to publication, so that offensive material does not get published.
Maybe you're reduced to making up examples of 'wokery' to get offended by ?
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
I actually think the Roald Dahl bowdlerization will be dropped (when the owners think no one is looking) sooner rather than later. What I found telling was how few people on the Left even bothered to defend it. For once this really was a case of Wokeism/political correctness gone made.
The problem was more the naff way that the Dahl rewrite was done rather than the principle of it.
Works have long been altered to suit contemporary mores. The term "bowdlerisation" originates from the early 19th century editing of a version of Shakespeare to edit out the naughty bits. The schools edition of The Canterbury Tales I did for O level in the 1980s too. Agatha Christies "Ten little redacteds" has long been renamed as ""Then there were None" etc. Dahl himself changed the origin story of the Oompa Loompas.
Updating these works to modern tastes isn't itself a problem, but it does need to be done in tune with the authors style. There may be some right wing culture warriors gleefully reading to their children "Tintin in the Congo" *, but I don't thinknthat the worst thing that they will do to their children.
*as a TinTin fan, I do have a copy, and my boys have read it. We had an interesting discussion about colonialism and racist stereotypes as a result, but they were teenagers by then, and up to that sort of analysis while retaining their love of Tintin.
Oh, we were mightily pissed off at school by moral guardians who wanted to expurgate the Miller’s Tale, the Three Musketeers, the Count of Monte Cristo, and the Porter scene from Macbeth.
That what they're doing in Florida. Or rather, they're just banning books
Anecdata: Talking to a bunch of mums tonight. (They are so much more revealing of personal details than dads. To be honest, I preferred it when we were talking about Janet's upcoming trip to Scarborough. You'd like Janet. She's a hairdresser. Lancashire accent. Her stories have the meandering non-sequiturs of a Peter Kay sketch. Anyway.) The subject moved onto kids with special educational needs, a subject all five of us in the conversation had some experience of. All corroborated my localised experience that SEN are suddenly much, much more common, especially in years 1/2/3. It's not just a case of more diagnoses; the number of damaged kids coming through post-lockdown is off the scale compared to what they've seen previously. A school on Rochdale was cited at which the majority of year 1 kids are non-verbal; some are still not toilet trained. As well as a hugely damaged cohort - which is poor news when they grow to adulthood - we are going to see a lot of teachers leaving the profession. The pressures they are under are huge.
Yeah but Year 1 children would not have been "at school" during lockdown, and won't have been vaccinated, so there must be something else going on. Might this be a new form of long covid in infants?
The consensus in the conversation is that it is due to the damage done by locking down infants. That cohort were never socialised in the normal way. Many were just left to get on with it while parents worked.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
I actually think the Roald Dahl bowdlerization will be dropped (when the owners think no one is looking) sooner rather than later. What I found telling was how few people on the Left even bothered to defend it. For once this really was a case of Wokeism/political correctness gone made.
The problem was more the naff way that the Dahl rewrite was done rather than the principle of it.
Works have long been altered to suit contemporary mores. The term "bowdlerisation" originates from the early 19th century editing of a version of Shakespeare to edit out the naughty bits. The schools edition of The Canterbury Tales I did for O level in the 1980s too. Agatha Christies "Ten little redacteds" has long been renamed as ""Then there were None" etc. Dahl himself changed the origin story of the Oompa Loompas.
Updating these works to modern tastes isn't itself a problem, but it does need to be done in tune with the authors style. There may be some right wing culture warriors gleefully reading to their children "Tintin in the Congo" *, but I don't thinknthat the worst thing that they will do to their children.
*as a TinTin fan, I do have a copy, and my boys have read it. We had an interesting discussion about colonialism and racist stereotypes as a result, but they were teenagers by then, and up to that sort of analysis while retaining their love of Tintin.
Really good post.
Not often I agree with you but this is well reasoned and well put.
I recently watched the Germans episode of Fawlty Towers again and it made me cringe. It's not the parts with the Germans, which can be covered by the 'fact' that Basil was concussed, and which remain very funny.
It's the Major's remarks about w*gs and ni*gers which really aren't on in this day and age.
I had a similar thing when I decided to watch some of Ronnie Corbett's soliloquy sketches and discovered that they are really homophobic. Not in a funny way. Just vile.
I know the Daily Malicious loves to wind everyone up about such things but sometimes we really do need to move things along.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
You may gather I am not a fan.
" Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women"
Really?
Yes, quite obviously!
Define 'hyper-sexualised', please.
Exaggerated breasts, figure hugging scanty outfits, over the top wigs and make-up.
After having an affair Yousef blamed his wife for not being a good enough Muslim. When there was no place at a nursery for his daughter, he arranged a sting operation that attempted to prove that the nursery was racist. "What sort of person does this?"
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
You may gather I am not a fan.
" Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women"
Really?
Yes, quite obviously!
Define 'hyper-sexualised', please.
Exaggerated breasts, figure hugging scanty outfits, over the top wigs and make-up.
I am surprised that you haven't noticed.
You’re conflating “Ru Paul’s Drag Race” with the British tradition of drag - which is comedic rather than sexualised:
Have to say that Fife is looking fairly spectacular this morning with the last traces of mist burning off the fields and everything glistening with dew. Humza weather, perhaps.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
You may gather I am not a fan.
" Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women"
Really?
Yes, quite obviously!
Define 'hyper-sexualised', please.
Exaggerated breasts, figure hugging scanty outfits, over the top wigs and make-up.
I am surprised that you haven't noticed.
You’re conflating “Ru Paul’s Drag Race” with the British tradition of drag - which is comedic rather than sexualised:
“Credit Suisse got a discount on the penalty it faced in 2014 for enabling tax evasion because bank executives swore up and down they’d get out of the business of defrauding the United States,” he added. “This investigation shows Credit Suisse did not make good on that promise, and the bank’s pending acquisition does not wipe the slate clean.”
...Based on information requests from the committee, the bank identified 23 undeclared accounts belonging to ultra-wealthy U.S. citizens with more than $20 million at the bank. The Senate report noted that more concealed accounts could be uncovered as the bank’s review continues.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
You may gather I am not a fan.
" Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women"
Really?
Yes, quite obviously!
Define 'hyper-sexualised', please.
Exaggerated breasts, figure hugging scanty outfits, over the top wigs and make-up.
I am surprised that you haven't noticed.
You’re conflating “Ru Paul’s Drag Race” with the British tradition of drag - which is comedic rather than sexualised:
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
But we already have 'woke bookshops' being condemned on PB.
“Credit Suisse got a discount on the penalty it faced in 2014 for enabling tax evasion because bank executives swore up and down they’d get out of the business of defrauding the United States,” he added. “This investigation shows Credit Suisse did not make good on that promise, and the bank’s pending acquisition does not wipe the slate clean.”
...Based on information requests from the committee, the bank identified 23 undeclared accounts belonging to ultra-wealthy U.S. citizens with more than $20 million at the bank. The Senate report noted that more concealed accounts could be uncovered as the bank’s review continues.
Its good to see someone (anyone) taking bank regulation seriously, for once. I would like to see equally rigorous investigation here.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
I actually think the Roald Dahl bowdlerization will be dropped (when the owners think no one is looking) sooner rather than later. What I found telling was how few people on the Left even bothered to defend it. For once this really was a case of Wokeism/political correctness gone made.
The problem was more the naff way that the Dahl rewrite was done rather than the principle of it.
Works have long been altered to suit contemporary mores. The term "bowdlerisation" originates from the early 19th century editing of a version of Shakespeare to edit out the naughty bits. The schools edition of The Canterbury Tales I did for O level in the 1980s too. Agatha Christies "Ten little redacteds" has long been renamed as ""Then there were None" etc. Dahl himself changed the origin story of the Oompa Loompas.
Updating these works to modern tastes isn't itself a problem, but it does need to be done in tune with the authors style. There may be some right wing culture warriors gleefully reading to their children "Tintin in the Congo" *, but I don't thinknthat the worst thing that they will do to their children.
*as a TinTin fan, I do have a copy, and my boys have read it. We had an interesting discussion about colonialism and racist stereotypes as a result, but they were teenagers by then, and up to that sort of analysis while retaining their love of Tintin.
Really good post.
Not often I agree with you but this is well reasoned and well put.
I recently watched the Germans episode of Fawlty Towers again and it made me cringe. It's not the parts with the Germans, which can be covered by the 'fact' that Basil was concussed, and which remain very funny.
It's the Major's remarks about w*gs and ni*gers which really aren't on in this day and age.
I had a similar thing when I decided to watch some of Ronnie Corbett's soliloquy sketches and discovered that they are really homophobic. Not in a funny way. Just vile.
I know the Daily Malicious loves to wind everyone up about such things but sometimes we really do need to move things along.
And crucially, it's not about saying the original writers and performers were bad people. Just that they didn't notice stuff at the time, because hardly anyone did.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
You may gather I am not a fan.
" Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women"
Really?
Yes, quite obviously!
Define 'hyper-sexualised', please.
Exaggerated breasts, figure hugging scanty outfits, over the top wigs and make-up.
I am surprised that you haven't noticed.
You’re conflating “Ru Paul’s Drag Race” with the British tradition of drag - which is comedic rather than sexualised:
Part of its strength - Dame Edna and Lily could get away with saying things Barry and Paul never could…..we were all “in on the joke”. We knew they weren’t women, they knew we knew they weren’t women……now we have “woman face”. The aim is to be “better than women”.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
You may gather I am not a fan.
" Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women"
Really?
Yes, quite obviously!
Define 'hyper-sexualised', please.
Exaggerated breasts, figure hugging scanty outfits, over the top wigs and make-up.
I am surprised that you haven't noticed.
You’re conflating “Ru Paul’s Drag Race” with the British tradition of drag - which is comedic rather than sexualised:
There is a clear strain of mockery and misogyny in drag.
Absolutely. Men in drag are almost universally mocking "female" characteristics such as being stupid, narrow minded, over emotional, irrational and lots of things all the women I know just aren't. Mrs Brown's boys inevitably comes to mind.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
You may gather I am not a fan.
" Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women"
Really?
Yes, quite obviously!
Define 'hyper-sexualised', please.
Exaggerated breasts, figure hugging scanty outfits, over the top wigs and make-up.
I am surprised that you haven't noticed.
Yes... but if that's 'hyper-sexualised' in your view, then you need to get out into your local city centre on a Friday night. Except for the wigs, perhaps: that's how many women like to dress. (*)
I guess drag artists who go out in trouser suits and who talk about their next business meeting about breaking the glass ceiling would be more your sort of thing?
(*) Though I've never understood why anyone would want high heels: they just seem like torture devices to me.
A Labour government would freeze council tax, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say on Thursday as he tries to cast himself as the candidate of low tax for workers.
As he launches Labour’s local elections campaign in Swindon, Starmer will say that if he were prime minister, council tax bills would stay at the same level rather than rising as they will do this weekend. Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Starmer argues that voters have a clear “choice” on tax, contrasting his wish to freeze council tax with the scrapping of the tax-free lifetime allowance limit for wealthy pensioners announced by Jeremy Hunt in the budget a fortnight ago.
In a speech to party supporters, Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice — taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1 per cent — or a Labour choice, where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.
“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year — that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1 per cent. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people.”
Clever, possibly too clever if you keep using a windfall tax. But Council Tax is visible in a way that PAYE and VAT aren't. Originally that was part of the design, to make it clear which councils were frugal and which ones weren't. That's got lost on the way, because now virtually every council has to charge as much as it's allowed to underfund the bare minimum of services.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
I actually think the Roald Dahl bowdlerization will be dropped (when the owners think no one is looking) sooner rather than later. What I found telling was how few people on the Left even bothered to defend it. For once this really was a case of Wokeism/political correctness gone made.
The problem was more the naff way that the Dahl rewrite was done rather than the principle of it.
Works have long been altered to suit contemporary mores. The term "bowdlerisation" originates from the early 19th century editing of a version of Shakespeare to edit out the naughty bits. The schools edition of The Canterbury Tales I did for O level in the 1980s too. Agatha Christies "Ten little redacteds" has long been renamed as ""Then there were None" etc. Dahl himself changed the origin story of the Oompa Loompas.
Updating these works to modern tastes isn't itself a problem, but it does need to be done in tune with the authors style. There may be some right wing culture warriors gleefully reading to their children "Tintin in the Congo" *, but I don't thinknthat the worst thing that they will do to their children.
*as a TinTin fan, I do have a copy, and my boys have read it. We had an interesting discussion about colonialism and racist stereotypes as a result, but they were teenagers by then, and up to that sort of analysis while retaining their love of Tintin.
Really good post.
Not often I agree with you but this is well reasoned and well put.
I recently watched the Germans episode of Fawlty Towers again and it made me cringe. It's not the parts with the Germans, which can be covered by the 'fact' that Basil was concussed, and which remain very funny.
It's the Major's remarks about w*gs and ni*gers which really aren't on in this day and age.
I had a similar thing when I decided to watch some of Ronnie Corbett's soliloquy sketches and discovered that they are really homophobic. Not in a funny way. Just vile.
I know the Daily Malicious loves to wind everyone up about such things but sometimes we really do need to move things along.
What really shocked me about the remake of the Dambusters was the way in which it was [edit] fericiously attacked by those woke-hunters who were only worried about the name of one dog. Yet the original dog's name would be a total wtf to anyone of the younger generation who would have been wondering what those people were like to call dogs that name. So, just for a little bit of woke-baiting, the attempt to bring the heroism and, it should be remembered, self-sacrifice of the crews to a modern audience was completely derailed.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
You may gather I am not a fan.
" Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women"
Really?
Yes, quite obviously!
Define 'hyper-sexualised', please.
Exaggerated breasts, figure hugging scanty outfits, over the top wigs and make-up.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
You may gather I am not a fan.
" Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women"
Really?
Yes, quite obviously!
Define 'hyper-sexualised', please.
Exaggerated breasts, figure hugging scanty outfits, over the top wigs and make-up.
I am surprised that you haven't noticed.
You’re conflating “Ru Paul’s Drag Race” with the British tradition of drag - which is comedic rather than sexualised:
There is a clear strain of mockery and misogyny in drag.
There *can* be a clear strain of mockery and misogyny in drag. In many cases, there is not. In this, it can be like virtually every other form of human endeavour. What amuses me is Foxy's fervent comment : "Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory."
And I'd argue the certainty of this is b/s. Which is why drag shows are often popular with women; increasingly so, apparently.
Have to say that Fife is looking fairly spectacular this morning with the last traces of mist burning off the fields and everything glistening with dew. Humza weather, perhaps.
I've always said that the view of Fife is the best thing about Dundee...
After having an affair Yousef blamed his wife for not being a good enough Muslim. When there was no place at a nursery for his daughter, he arranged a sting operation that attempted to prove that the nursery was racist. "What sort of person does this?"
Agent Yousaf will be great for the pro-Union cause.
But not so great for a Scotland already groaning from years of mismanagement, procrastination and gimmicks instead of solutions.
Yep. As the UK has also been groaning from years of mismanagement, procrastination and gimmicks instead of solutions, we get the double dose, don't we?
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
I actually think the Roald Dahl bowdlerization will be dropped (when the owners think no one is looking) sooner rather than later. What I found telling was how few people on the Left even bothered to defend it. For once this really was a case of Wokeism/political correctness gone made.
The problem was more the naff way that the Dahl rewrite was done rather than the principle of it.
Works have long been altered to suit contemporary mores. The term "bowdlerisation" originates from the early 19th century editing of a version of Shakespeare to edit out the naughty bits. The schools edition of The Canterbury Tales I did for O level in the 1980s too. Agatha Christies "Ten little redacteds" has long been renamed as ""Then there were None" etc. Dahl himself changed the origin story of the Oompa Loompas.
Updating these works to modern tastes isn't itself a problem, but it does need to be done in tune with the authors style. There may be some right wing culture warriors gleefully reading to their children "Tintin in the Congo" *, but I don't thinknthat the worst thing that they will do to their children.
*as a TinTin fan, I do have a copy, and my boys have read it. We had an interesting discussion about colonialism and racist stereotypes as a result, but they were teenagers by then, and up to that sort of analysis while retaining their love of Tintin.
Really good post.
Not often I agree with you but this is well reasoned and well put.
I recently watched the Germans episode of Fawlty Towers again and it made me cringe. It's not the parts with the Germans, which can be covered by the 'fact' that Basil was concussed, and which remain very funny.
It's the Major's remarks about w*gs and ni*gers which really aren't on in this day and age.
I had a similar thing when I decided to watch some of Ronnie Corbett's soliloquy sketches and discovered that they are really homophobic. Not in a funny way. Just vile.
I know the Daily Malicious loves to wind everyone up about such things but sometimes we really do need to move things along.
And crucially, it's not about saying the original writers and performers were bad people. Just that they didn't notice stuff at the time, because hardly anyone did.
I have recently been re-reading Neville Shute's book "In the Wet", fascinating in many ways, but fabulously racist with the main character nicknamed "N*****r" and referred too throughout by that name. The character is a quarter Australian Aboriginee. It would be impossible to rewrite as his ethnicity is a key plot element.
Fascinating read though for its depiction of the 1980's imagined by an Anglo-Australian in the early 1950's. Shute got almost everything wrong, but in a way that tells a great deal about British culture of the time. He was a good writer too, and a best seller in his day.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
I actually think the Roald Dahl bowdlerization will be dropped (when the owners think no one is looking) sooner rather than later. What I found telling was how few people on the Left even bothered to defend it. For once this really was a case of Wokeism/political correctness gone made.
The problem was more the naff way that the Dahl rewrite was done rather than the principle of it.
Works have long been altered to suit contemporary mores. The term "bowdlerisation" originates from the early 19th century editing of a version of Shakespeare to edit out the naughty bits. The schools edition of The Canterbury Tales I did for O level in the 1980s too. Agatha Christies "Ten little redacteds" has long been renamed as ""Then there were None" etc. Dahl himself changed the origin story of the Oompa Loompas.
Updating these works to modern tastes isn't itself a problem, but it does need to be done in tune with the authors style. There may be some right wing culture warriors gleefully reading to their children "Tintin in the Congo" *, but I don't thinknthat the worst thing that they will do to their children.
*as a TinTin fan, I do have a copy, and my boys have read it. We had an interesting discussion about colonialism and racist stereotypes as a result, but they were teenagers by then, and up to that sort of analysis while retaining their love of Tintin.
Really good post.
Not often I agree with you but this is well reasoned and well put.
I recently watched the Germans episode of Fawlty Towers again and it made me cringe. It's not the parts with the Germans, which can be covered by the 'fact' that Basil was concussed, and which remain very funny.
It's the Major's remarks about w*gs and ni*gers which really aren't on in this day and age.
I had a similar thing when I decided to watch some of Ronnie Corbett's soliloquy sketches and discovered that they are really homophobic. Not in a funny way. Just vile.
I know the Daily Malicious loves to wind everyone up about such things but sometimes we really do need to move things along.
What really shocked me about the remake of the Dambusters was the way in which it was [edit] fericiously attacked by those woke-hunters who were only worried about the name of one dog. Yet the original dog's name would be a total wtf to anyone of the younger generation who would have been wondering what those people were like to call dogs that name. So, just for a little bit of woke-baiting, the attempt to bring the heroism and, it should be remembered, self-sacrifice of the crews to a modern audience was completely derailed.
The worst bowdlerisation is when they remove the scene showing the drowning foreign slave workers.
Any honest portrayal of war should show that innocents do suffer, even when the cause is just.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
You may gather I am not a fan.
" Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women"
Really?
Yes, quite obviously!
Define 'hyper-sexualised', please.
Exaggerated breasts, figure hugging scanty outfits, over the top wigs and make-up.
Oh, hypersexuality is certainly not the entirety of drag, but it is quite a definite element. It is part of its transgressive nature that appeals to many. Britons are still quite buttoned up about sexuality of women or gay men.
The Black and White Minstrels could sing and dance quite well too, but tastes have moved on.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
I actually think the Roald Dahl bowdlerization will be dropped (when the owners think no one is looking) sooner rather than later. What I found telling was how few people on the Left even bothered to defend it. For once this really was a case of Wokeism/political correctness gone made.
The problem was more the naff way that the Dahl rewrite was done rather than the principle of it.
Works have long been altered to suit contemporary mores. The term "bowdlerisation" originates from the early 19th century editing of a version of Shakespeare to edit out the naughty bits. The schools edition of The Canterbury Tales I did for O level in the 1980s too. Agatha Christies "Ten little redacteds" has long been renamed as ""Then there were None" etc. Dahl himself changed the origin story of the Oompa Loompas.
Updating these works to modern tastes isn't itself a problem, but it does need to be done in tune with the authors style. There may be some right wing culture warriors gleefully reading to their children "Tintin in the Congo" *, but I don't thinknthat the worst thing that they will do to their children.
*as a TinTin fan, I do have a copy, and my boys have read it. We had an interesting discussion about colonialism and racist stereotypes as a result, but they were teenagers by then, and up to that sort of analysis while retaining their love of Tintin.
Oh, we were mightily pissed off at school by moral guardians who wanted to expurgate the Miller’s Tale, the Three Musketeers, the Count of Monte Cristo, and the Porter scene from Macbeth.
That what they're doing in Florida. Or rather, they're just banning books
That is indeed, quite stupid, along with the promotion of RDS’ stupid book, which claims that the Founding Fathers opposed slavery.
A Labour government would freeze council tax, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say on Thursday as he tries to cast himself as the candidate of low tax for workers.
As he launches Labour’s local elections campaign in Swindon, Starmer will say that if he were prime minister, council tax bills would stay at the same level rather than rising as they will do this weekend. Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Starmer argues that voters have a clear “choice” on tax, contrasting his wish to freeze council tax with the scrapping of the tax-free lifetime allowance limit for wealthy pensioners announced by Jeremy Hunt in the budget a fortnight ago.
In a speech to party supporters, Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice — taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1 per cent — or a Labour choice, where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.
“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year — that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1 per cent. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people.”
"Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies."
Thereby buggering up your pensions. Not so clever.
Labour really do still think the profits of BP and Shell go to four or five massively rich people. Instead of being paid out in dividends to pension funds. They are still not to be trusted when it comes to money.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
You may gather I am not a fan.
" Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women"
Really?
Yes, quite obviously!
Define 'hyper-sexualised', please.
Exaggerated breasts, figure hugging scanty outfits, over the top wigs and make-up.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
You may gather I am not a fan.
" Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women"
Really?
Yes, quite obviously!
Define 'hyper-sexualised', please.
Exaggerated breasts, figure hugging scanty outfits, over the top wigs and make-up.
I am surprised that you haven't noticed.
Often a sexual component for sure but not always and not always derogatory. For me, I disliked the Lily Savage character, but this was I think because I never found him funny. Seems a performance to me rather than comedy.
Thinking back, I enjoyed the characters of Emery, Everitt, Walliams and others very much. They used drag to produce situations and gags which were funny.
So perhaps there are two categories of drag: 1) means-to-an-end and 2) performative. (With me liking the former but not the latter.)
Just the sight of Les Dawson makes me laugh. Performative drag is just naff.
A Labour government would freeze council tax, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say on Thursday as he tries to cast himself as the candidate of low tax for workers.
As he launches Labour’s local elections campaign in Swindon, Starmer will say that if he were prime minister, council tax bills would stay at the same level rather than rising as they will do this weekend. Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Starmer argues that voters have a clear “choice” on tax, contrasting his wish to freeze council tax with the scrapping of the tax-free lifetime allowance limit for wealthy pensioners announced by Jeremy Hunt in the budget a fortnight ago.
In a speech to party supporters, Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice — taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1 per cent — or a Labour choice, where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.
“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year — that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1 per cent. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people.”
"Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies."
Thereby buggering up your pensions. Not so clever.
Labour really do still think the profits of BP and Shell go to four or five massively rich people. Instead of being paid out in dividends to pension funds. They are still not to be trusted when it comes to money.
Tory excess profit levies good; Labour windfall taxes bad. Is that it?
A Labour government would freeze council tax, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say on Thursday as he tries to cast himself as the candidate of low tax for workers.
As he launches Labour’s local elections campaign in Swindon, Starmer will say that if he were prime minister, council tax bills would stay at the same level rather than rising as they will do this weekend. Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Starmer argues that voters have a clear “choice” on tax, contrasting his wish to freeze council tax with the scrapping of the tax-free lifetime allowance limit for wealthy pensioners announced by Jeremy Hunt in the budget a fortnight ago.
In a speech to party supporters, Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice — taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1 per cent — or a Labour choice, where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.
“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year — that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1 per cent. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people.”
"Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies."
Thereby buggering up your pensions. Not so clever.
Labour really do still think the profits of BP and Shell go to four or five massively rich people. Instead of being paid out in dividends to pension funds. They are still not to be trusted when it comes to money.
They also think that the worldwide profits come entirely at the expense of UK citizens, and that the companies wouldn’t simply relocate if faced with punitive taxes in their current country of registration.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
I actually think the Roald Dahl bowdlerization will be dropped (when the owners think no one is looking) sooner rather than later. What I found telling was how few people on the Left even bothered to defend it. For once this really was a case of Wokeism/political correctness gone made.
The problem was more the naff way that the Dahl rewrite was done rather than the principle of it.
Works have long been altered to suit contemporary mores. The term "bowdlerisation" originates from the early 19th century editing of a version of Shakespeare to edit out the naughty bits. The schools edition of The Canterbury Tales I did for O level in the 1980s too. Agatha Christies "Ten little redacteds" has long been renamed as ""Then there were None" etc. Dahl himself changed the origin story of the Oompa Loompas.
Updating these works to modern tastes isn't itself a problem, but it does need to be done in tune with the authors style. There may be some right wing culture warriors gleefully reading to their children "Tintin in the Congo" *, but I don't thinknthat the worst thing that they will do to their children.
*as a TinTin fan, I do have a copy, and my boys have read it. We had an interesting discussion about colonialism and racist stereotypes as a result, but they were teenagers by then, and up to that sort of analysis while retaining their love of Tintin.
Really good post.
Not often I agree with you but this is well reasoned and well put.
I recently watched the Germans episode of Fawlty Towers again and it made me cringe. It's not the parts with the Germans, which can be covered by the 'fact' that Basil was concussed, and which remain very funny.
It's the Major's remarks about w*gs and ni*gers which really aren't on in this day and age.
I had a similar thing when I decided to watch some of Ronnie Corbett's soliloquy sketches and discovered that they are really homophobic. Not in a funny way. Just vile.
I know the Daily Malicious loves to wind everyone up about such things but sometimes we really do need to move things along.
And crucially, it's not about saying the original writers and performers were bad people. Just that they didn't notice stuff at the time, because hardly anyone did.
I have recently been re-reading Neville Shute's book "In the Wet", fascinating in many ways, but fabulously racist with the main character nicknamed "N*****r" and referred too throughout by that name. The character is a quarter Australian Aboriginee. It would be impossible to rewrite as his ethnicity is a key plot element.
Fascinating read though for its depiction of the 1980's imagined by an Anglo-Australian in the early 1950's. Shute got almost everything wrong, but in a way that tells a great deal about British culture of the time. He was a good writer too, and a best seller in his day.
I doubt if it would be possible to rewrite anything written by Evelyn Waug.
“Credit Suisse got a discount on the penalty it faced in 2014 for enabling tax evasion because bank executives swore up and down they’d get out of the business of defrauding the United States,” he added. “This investigation shows Credit Suisse did not make good on that promise, and the bank’s pending acquisition does not wipe the slate clean.”
...Based on information requests from the committee, the bank identified 23 undeclared accounts belonging to ultra-wealthy U.S. citizens with more than $20 million at the bank. The Senate report noted that more concealed accounts could be uncovered as the bank’s review continues.
After having an affair Yousef blamed his wife for not being a good enough Muslim. When there was no place at a nursery for his daughter, he arranged a sting operation that attempted to prove that the nursery was racist. "What sort of person does this?"
Agent Yousaf will be great for the pro-Union cause.
But not so great for a Scotland already groaning from years of mismanagement, procrastination and gimmicks instead of solutions.
Yep. As the UK has also been groaning from years of mismanagement, procrastination and gimmicks instead of solutions, we get the double dose, don't we?
We do indeed. Sunak has been a clear improvement in this area although I freely acknowledge that this Rwanda nonsense is a classic gimmick. I am disappointed that Forbes did not get a go at trying to run Scotland properly with a view to making it fit for independence (or even a more equal place in the Union). But her chance may come again soon enough.
A Labour government would freeze council tax, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say on Thursday as he tries to cast himself as the candidate of low tax for workers.
As he launches Labour’s local elections campaign in Swindon, Starmer will say that if he were prime minister, council tax bills would stay at the same level rather than rising as they will do this weekend. Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Starmer argues that voters have a clear “choice” on tax, contrasting his wish to freeze council tax with the scrapping of the tax-free lifetime allowance limit for wealthy pensioners announced by Jeremy Hunt in the budget a fortnight ago.
In a speech to party supporters, Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice — taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1 per cent — or a Labour choice, where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.
“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year — that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1 per cent. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people.”
"Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies."
Thereby buggering up your pensions. Not so clever.
Labour really do still think the profits of BP and Shell go to four or five massively rich people. Instead of being paid out in dividends to pension funds. They are still not to be trusted when it comes to money.
Tory excess profit levies good; Labour windfall taxes bad. Is that it?
She laid out how the prices of “value” product ranges in supermarkets had soared over the last decade – rice in her local supermarket had increased in price from 45p for a kilogram bag last year, to £1 for 500g, a 344% increase – and how the number of value products has shrunk.
Mmmmmm, floor sweepings grade. Lets assume Tesco are down to 20% gross profit on that line and the factory are giving it away at 15% production margin. So we're at 32.61p for a kilo. Take other non-food overheads out and you're eating "rice" which costs about 25p a kilo. Mmmmmmm.
This is the problem with cheap food. That you can buy this product does not mean that there isn't a real problem with commodity prices shooting up on food. This has absolutely cut the number of value items for sale and the quality of those items.
I don't put the blame for this on the supermarkets though. Sourcing floor sweepings grade ingredients in sufficient quantity becomes harder as prices get squeezed and consumers are forced by price to buy more and more of the cheaper product. You can't give the good stuff away at that price, you simply reduce supply.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
You may gather I am not a fan.
" Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women"
Really?
Yes, quite obviously!
Define 'hyper-sexualised', please.
Exaggerated breasts, figure hugging scanty outfits, over the top wigs and make-up.
I am surprised that you haven't noticed.
Yes... but if that's 'hyper-sexualised' in your view, then you need to get out into your local city centre on a Friday night. Except for the wigs, perhaps: that's how many women like to dress. (*)
I guess drag artists who go out in trouser suits and who talk about their next business meeting about breaking the glass ceiling would be more your sort of thing?
(*) Though I've never understood why anyone would want high heels: they just seem like torture devices to me.
I am shortly going to have to log off, but my attitude to these things is more akin to second generation feminism, than third generation, which has tried to reclaim glamour as female empowerment. Showing my age, I suppose, but I think the bra-burners were right. Sure, women should be able to dress as they please unmolested, whether in high heels and mini-dress or burka. The question is why they have internalised such a view of themselves.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
But we already have 'woke bookshops' being condemned on PB.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
But we already have 'woke bookshops' being condemned on PB.
After having an affair Yousef blamed his wife for not being a good enough Muslim. When there was no place at a nursery for his daughter, he arranged a sting operation that attempted to prove that the nursery was racist. "What sort of person does this?"
Agent Yousaf will be great for the pro-Union cause.
But not so great for a Scotland already groaning from years of mismanagement, procrastination and gimmicks instead of solutions.
Yep. As the UK has also been groaning from years of mismanagement, procrastination and gimmicks instead of solutions, we get the double dose, don't we?
At least we voted for one of them while the other was imposed upon us. Of course those who favour retaining the imposition see that as a feature rather than a bug.
After having an affair Yousef blamed his wife for not being a good enough Muslim. When there was no place at a nursery for his daughter, he arranged a sting operation that attempted to prove that the nursery was racist. "What sort of person does this?"
Agent Yousaf will be great for the pro-Union cause.
But not so great for a Scotland already groaning from years of mismanagement, procrastination and gimmicks instead of solutions.
Having lived most of my life in England it is no different down there. Different mismanagement and gimmicks. Our problem isn't that the SNP have won the last 4 elections. Our problem is much wider than that.
Labour will win the General Election having rightly identified what is wrong with the country and rightly pinned the blame on the Tories. But they won't be able to fix any of those issues because they are structural and modern politics only allows for gimmicks. Same with whomever eventually replaces the SNP in Holyrood.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
I actually think the Roald Dahl bowdlerization will be dropped (when the owners think no one is looking) sooner rather than later. What I found telling was how few people on the Left even bothered to defend it. For once this really was a case of Wokeism/political correctness gone made.
The problem was more the naff way that the Dahl rewrite was done rather than the principle of it.
Works have long been altered to suit contemporary mores. The term "bowdlerisation" originates from the early 19th century editing of a version of Shakespeare to edit out the naughty bits. The schools edition of The Canterbury Tales I did for O level in the 1980s too. Agatha Christies "Ten little redacteds" has long been renamed as ""Then there were None" etc. Dahl himself changed the origin story of the Oompa Loompas.
Updating these works to modern tastes isn't itself a problem, but it does need to be done in tune with the authors style. There may be some right wing culture warriors gleefully reading to their children "Tintin in the Congo" *, but I don't thinknthat the worst thing that they will do to their children.
*as a TinTin fan, I do have a copy, and my boys have read it. We had an interesting discussion about colonialism and racist stereotypes as a result, but they were teenagers by then, and up to that sort of analysis while retaining their love of Tintin.
Really good post.
Not often I agree with you but this is well reasoned and well put.
I recently watched the Germans episode of Fawlty Towers again and it made me cringe. It's not the parts with the Germans, which can be covered by the 'fact' that Basil was concussed, and which remain very funny.
It's the Major's remarks about w*gs and ni*gers which really aren't on in this day and age.
I had a similar thing when I decided to watch some of Ronnie Corbett's soliloquy sketches and discovered that they are really homophobic. Not in a funny way. Just vile.
I know the Daily Malicious loves to wind everyone up about such things but sometimes we really do need to move things along.
And crucially, it's not about saying the original writers and performers were bad people. Just that they didn't notice stuff at the time, because hardly anyone did.
I have recently been re-reading Neville Shute's book "In the Wet", fascinating in many ways, but fabulously racist with the main character nicknamed "N*****r" and referred too throughout by that name. The character is a quarter Australian Aboriginee. It would be impossible to rewrite as his ethnicity is a key plot element.
Fascinating read though for its depiction of the 1980's imagined by an Anglo-Australian in the early 1950's. Shute got almost everything wrong, but in a way that tells a great deal about British culture of the time. He was a good writer too, and a best seller in his day.
I doubt if it would be possible to rewrite anything written by Evelyn Waug.
Pronouncing your spelling of Waugh may offend a few sensibilities.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
Maybe it would be simpler if all books were vetted by the government, prior to publication, so that offensive material does not get published.
She laid out how the prices of “value” product ranges in supermarkets had soared over the last decade – rice in her local supermarket had increased in price from 45p for a kilogram bag last year, to £1 for 500g, a 344% increase – and how the number of value products has shrunk.
Mmmmmm, floor sweepings grade. Lets assume Tesco are down to 20% gross profit on that line and the factory are giving it away at 15% production margin. So we're at 32.61p for a kilo. Take other non-food overheads out and you're eating "rice" which costs about 25p a kilo. Mmmmmmm.
This is the problem with cheap food. That you can buy this product does not mean that there isn't a real problem with commodity prices shooting up on food. This has absolutely cut the number of value items for sale and the quality of those items.
I don't put the blame for this on the supermarkets though. Sourcing floor sweepings grade ingredients in sufficient quantity becomes harder as prices get squeezed and consumers are forced by price to buy more and more of the cheaper product. You can't give the good stuff away at that price, you simply reduce supply.
So rice doesn't just come in boxes with Uncle Ben's on the outside? Every day a learning day on PB.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
Just seen Raab said Paul O'Grady would have had no time for wokery. No words.
That Paul O'Grady is seen as a national treasure shows how far we have come as a society since the 1980s. I don't think Maggie would have liked him.
I do find drag as a subculture rather odd, with more than a whiff of misogyny about it. I preferred POG as himself rather than as his creation.
There has long been a showbiz tradition of cross-dressing. The pantomime dame is a bloke in drag and the principal boy is played by a woman. Music hall had its own male impersonators, like Vesta Tilley (whose husband was a Conservative MP). All that has changed is the name, so we now have drag queens and kings.
There is more to drag than cross dressing in theatre, though perhaps it originates there. Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women, and generally sexually explicit, even predatory.
The male Gay community is not homogenous, and has its own misogynism, and drag is a part of that.
You may gather I am not a fan.
" Drag is a hyper-sexualised parody of women"
Really?
Yes, quite obviously!
Define 'hyper-sexualised', please.
Exaggerated breasts, figure hugging scanty outfits, over the top wigs and make-up.
Oh, hypersexuality is certainly not the entirety of drag, but it is quite a definite element. It is part of its transgressive nature that appeals to many. Britons are still quite buttoned up about sexuality of women or gay men.
The Black and White Minstrels could sing and dance quite well too, but tastes have moved on.
Drag - or performative cross dressing - is much, much older than such examples, though - and will outlive them. The different instances if it are as diverse as society at large. I don't think you can reduce it to one thing.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
I actually think the Roald Dahl bowdlerization will be dropped (when the owners think no one is looking) sooner rather than later. What I found telling was how few people on the Left even bothered to defend it. For once this really was a case of Wokeism/political correctness gone made.
The problem was more the naff way that the Dahl rewrite was done rather than the principle of it.
Works have long been altered to suit contemporary mores. The term "bowdlerisation" originates from the early 19th century editing of a version of Shakespeare to edit out the naughty bits. The schools edition of The Canterbury Tales I did for O level in the 1980s too. Agatha Christies "Ten little redacteds" has long been renamed as ""Then there were None" etc. Dahl himself changed the origin story of the Oompa Loompas.
Updating these works to modern tastes isn't itself a problem, but it does need to be done in tune with the authors style. There may be some right wing culture warriors gleefully reading to their children "Tintin in the Congo" *, but I don't thinknthat the worst thing that they will do to their children.
*as a TinTin fan, I do have a copy, and my boys have read it. We had an interesting discussion about colonialism and racist stereotypes as a result, but they were teenagers by then, and up to that sort of analysis while retaining their love of Tintin.
Really good post.
Not often I agree with you but this is well reasoned and well put.
I recently watched the Germans episode of Fawlty Towers again and it made me cringe. It's not the parts with the Germans, which can be covered by the 'fact' that Basil was concussed, and which remain very funny.
It's the Major's remarks about w*gs and ni*gers which really aren't on in this day and age.
I had a similar thing when I decided to watch some of Ronnie Corbett's soliloquy sketches and discovered that they are really homophobic. Not in a funny way. Just vile.
I know the Daily Malicious loves to wind everyone up about such things but sometimes we really do need to move things along.
What really shocked me about the remake of the Dambusters was the way in which it was [edit] fericiously attacked by those woke-hunters who were only worried about the name of one dog. Yet the original dog's name would be a total wtf to anyone of the younger generation who would have been wondering what those people were like to call dogs that name. So, just for a little bit of woke-baiting, the attempt to bring the heroism and, it should be remembered, self-sacrifice of the crews to a modern audience was completely derailed.
The worst bowdlerisation is when they remove the scene showing the drowning foreign slave workers.
Any honest portrayal of war should show that innocents do suffer, even when the cause is just.
And also showing why we fought in the first place. On the dogs name, I am conflicted. It’s a historical fact, and the film is based on history. It’s not, however, a documentary, any more than the Longest Day was, or Saving Private Ryan, or Band of Brothers. So actually, calling him Bob or whatever doesn’t amount to much, but avoids unnecessary questions. There is an issue with what happens to older TV programmes. If you recoil from Fawlty Towers ‘The Germans’ because of the Major, you are somewhat falling into the Alf Garnett trap. We are mocking the Major for his antiquated views. Yet the scene with the doctor is arguably far far worse. I get that Fawlty is concussed but his reaction is incredible.
We should cut people slack for creating art in the accepted norms of the time. Otherwise we will have no art left at all.
She laid out how the prices of “value” product ranges in supermarkets had soared over the last decade – rice in her local supermarket had increased in price from 45p for a kilogram bag last year, to £1 for 500g, a 344% increase – and how the number of value products has shrunk.
Mmmmmm, floor sweepings grade. Lets assume Tesco are down to 20% gross profit on that line and the factory are giving it away at 15% production margin. So we're at 32.61p for a kilo. Take other non-food overheads out and you're eating "rice" which costs about 25p a kilo. Mmmmmmm.
This is the problem with cheap food. That you can buy this product does not mean that there isn't a real problem with commodity prices shooting up on food. This has absolutely cut the number of value items for sale and the quality of those items.
I don't put the blame for this on the supermarkets though. Sourcing floor sweepings grade ingredients in sufficient quantity becomes harder as prices get squeezed and consumers are forced by price to buy more and more of the cheaper product. You can't give the good stuff away at that price, you simply reduce supply.
So rice doesn't just come in boxes with Uncle Ben's on the outside? Every day a learning day on PB.
"Uncle Bens" now a banned brand. You mean Ben's Original...
I am sure that I should know the answer to this but is murdering the person opposite who has been loudly sniffing every minute for the last hour merely provocation or self defence? Maybe one for the office today.
She laid out how the prices of “value” product ranges in supermarkets had soared over the last decade – rice in her local supermarket had increased in price from 45p for a kilogram bag last year, to £1 for 500g, a 344% increase – and how the number of value products has shrunk.
Mmmmmm, floor sweepings grade. Lets assume Tesco are down to 20% gross profit on that line and the factory are giving it away at 15% production margin. So we're at 32.61p for a kilo. Take other non-food overheads out and you're eating "rice" which costs about 25p a kilo. Mmmmmmm.
This is the problem with cheap food. That you can buy this product does not mean that there isn't a real problem with commodity prices shooting up on food. This has absolutely cut the number of value items for sale and the quality of those items.
I don't put the blame for this on the supermarkets though. Sourcing floor sweepings grade ingredients in sufficient quantity becomes harder as prices get squeezed and consumers are forced by price to buy more and more of the cheaper product. You can't give the good stuff away at that price, you simply reduce supply.
So rice doesn't just come in boxes with Uncle Ben's on the outside? Every day a learning day on PB.
"Uncle Bens" now a banned brand. You mean Ben's Original...
Have to say that Fife is looking fairly spectacular this morning with the last traces of mist burning off the fields and everything glistening with dew. Humza weather, perhaps.
I've always said that the view of Fife is the best thing about Dundee...
A Labour government would freeze council tax, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say on Thursday as he tries to cast himself as the candidate of low tax for workers.
As he launches Labour’s local elections campaign in Swindon, Starmer will say that if he were prime minister, council tax bills would stay at the same level rather than rising as they will do this weekend. Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Starmer argues that voters have a clear “choice” on tax, contrasting his wish to freeze council tax with the scrapping of the tax-free lifetime allowance limit for wealthy pensioners announced by Jeremy Hunt in the budget a fortnight ago.
In a speech to party supporters, Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice — taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1 per cent — or a Labour choice, where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.
“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year — that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1 per cent. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people.”
"Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies."
Thereby buggering up your pensions. Not so clever.
Labour really do still think the profits of BP and Shell go to four or five massively rich people. Instead of being paid out in dividends to pension funds. They are still not to be trusted when it comes to money.
Tory excess profit levies good; Labour windfall taxes bad. Is that it?
Different names for the same thing, surely?
Good morning
Just how many promises is Reeves making to use windfall taxes
It has been promised to reduce energy bills, fund nurses pay award, and now council tax which Reeves suggested has risen by 5%
Our council tax has risen by 9.9% this year so is Reeves suggesting she would freeze the high increases in Wales as well
Biggest council tax increase for Wales confirmed for Conwy county
A Labour government would freeze council tax, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say on Thursday as he tries to cast himself as the candidate of low tax for workers.
As he launches Labour’s local elections campaign in Swindon, Starmer will say that if he were prime minister, council tax bills would stay at the same level rather than rising as they will do this weekend. Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Starmer argues that voters have a clear “choice” on tax, contrasting his wish to freeze council tax with the scrapping of the tax-free lifetime allowance limit for wealthy pensioners announced by Jeremy Hunt in the budget a fortnight ago.
In a speech to party supporters, Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice — taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1 per cent — or a Labour choice, where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.
“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year — that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1 per cent. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people.”
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
Maybe it would be simpler if all books were vetted by the government, prior to publication, so that offensive material does not get published.
Fahrenheit 451...
Yet another dystopia which is becoming a handbook. Maybe we should stop publishing how to books for authoritarians...
After having an affair Yousef blamed his wife for not being a good enough Muslim. When there was no place at a nursery for his daughter, he arranged a sting operation that attempted to prove that the nursery was racist. "What sort of person does this?"
Agent Yousaf will be great for the pro-Union cause.
But not so great for a Scotland already groaning from years of mismanagement, procrastination and gimmicks instead of solutions.
Having lived most of my life in England it is no different down there. Different mismanagement and gimmicks. Our problem isn't that the SNP have won the last 4 elections. Our problem is much wider than that.
Labour will win the General Election having rightly identified what is wrong with the country and rightly pinned the blame on the Tories. But they won't be able to fix any of those issues because they are structural and modern politics only allows for gimmicks. Same with whomever eventually replaces the SNP in Holyrood.
People say that governments are poor because they are only looking to the next election. However, governments that are in power for a long time are even worse.
A Labour government would freeze council tax, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say on Thursday as he tries to cast himself as the candidate of low tax for workers.
As he launches Labour’s local elections campaign in Swindon, Starmer will say that if he were prime minister, council tax bills would stay at the same level rather than rising as they will do this weekend. Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Starmer argues that voters have a clear “choice” on tax, contrasting his wish to freeze council tax with the scrapping of the tax-free lifetime allowance limit for wealthy pensioners announced by Jeremy Hunt in the budget a fortnight ago.
In a speech to party supporters, Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice — taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1 per cent — or a Labour choice, where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.
“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year — that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1 per cent. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people.”
"Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies."
Thereby buggering up your pensions. Not so clever.
Labour really do still think the profits of BP and Shell go to four or five massively rich people. Instead of being paid out in dividends to pension funds. They are still not to be trusted when it comes to money.
Tory excess profit levies good; Labour windfall taxes bad. Is that it?
A Labour government would freeze council tax, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say on Thursday as he tries to cast himself as the candidate of low tax for workers.
As he launches Labour’s local elections campaign in Swindon, Starmer will say that if he were prime minister, council tax bills would stay at the same level rather than rising as they will do this weekend. Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Starmer argues that voters have a clear “choice” on tax, contrasting his wish to freeze council tax with the scrapping of the tax-free lifetime allowance limit for wealthy pensioners announced by Jeremy Hunt in the budget a fortnight ago.
In a speech to party supporters, Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice — taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1 per cent — or a Labour choice, where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.
“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year — that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1 per cent. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people.”
"Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies."
Thereby buggering up your pensions. Not so clever.
Labour really do still think the profits of BP and Shell go to four or five massively rich people. Instead of being paid out in dividends to pension funds. They are still not to be trusted when it comes to money.
Sure, but as a political move it's gold.
Starmer knows Council Tax is at or near the top of the public's most hated taxes list and he knows that people have bought his oil excess profits narrative.
I am sure that I should know the answer to this but is murdering the person opposite who has been loudly sniffing every minute for the last hour merely provocation or self defence? Maybe one for the office today.
After having an affair Yousef blamed his wife for not being a good enough Muslim. When there was no place at a nursery for his daughter, he arranged a sting operation that attempted to prove that the nursery was racist. "What sort of person does this?"
Agent Yousaf will be great for the pro-Union cause.
But not so great for a Scotland already groaning from years of mismanagement, procrastination and gimmicks instead of solutions.
Having lived most of my life in England it is no different down there. Different mismanagement and gimmicks. Our problem isn't that the SNP have won the last 4 elections. Our problem is much wider than that.
Labour will win the General Election having rightly identified what is wrong with the country and rightly pinned the blame on the Tories. But they won't be able to fix any of those issues because they are structural and modern politics only allows for gimmicks. Same with whomever eventually replaces the SNP in Holyrood.
People say that governments are poor because they are only looking to the next election. However, governments that are in power for a long time are even worse.
The critique is rather than government plan only for when they are, or think they'll be in power. Looking beyond the next election shouldn't be an assumption that you're still in office. That's perhaps one reason we fail on infrastructure.
A Labour government would freeze council tax, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say on Thursday as he tries to cast himself as the candidate of low tax for workers.
As he launches Labour’s local elections campaign in Swindon, Starmer will say that if he were prime minister, council tax bills would stay at the same level rather than rising as they will do this weekend. Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Starmer argues that voters have a clear “choice” on tax, contrasting his wish to freeze council tax with the scrapping of the tax-free lifetime allowance limit for wealthy pensioners announced by Jeremy Hunt in the budget a fortnight ago.
In a speech to party supporters, Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice — taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1 per cent — or a Labour choice, where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.
“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year — that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1 per cent. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people.”
"Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies."
Thereby buggering up your pensions. Not so clever.
Labour really do still think the profits of BP and Shell go to four or five massively rich people. Instead of being paid out in dividends to pension funds. They are still not to be trusted when it comes to money.
Also it will discourage investment and raise the price of energy.
The question is whether Starmer is aware of this, and is completely cynical, or is just stupid and economically illiterate. Or both of course.
He's a socialist, which points to stupidity, but also a lawyer, which means dishonesty and cynicism, so my guess is both.
After having an affair Yousef blamed his wife for not being a good enough Muslim. When there was no place at a nursery for his daughter, he arranged a sting operation that attempted to prove that the nursery was racist. "What sort of person does this?"
Agent Yousaf will be great for the pro-Union cause.
But not so great for a Scotland already groaning from years of mismanagement, procrastination and gimmicks instead of solutions.
Having lived most of my life in England it is no different down there. Different mismanagement and gimmicks. Our problem isn't that the SNP have won the last 4 elections. Our problem is much wider than that.
Labour will win the General Election having rightly identified what is wrong with the country and rightly pinned the blame on the Tories. But they won't be able to fix any of those issues because they are structural and modern politics only allows for gimmicks. Same with whomever eventually replaces the SNP in Holyrood.
Is it being so cheerful that keeps you going?
I actually agree. Modern governments have remarkably small windows for action and otherwise get dragged along by international bureaucracies and unaccountable administrations. They therefore shout loud about the few things that they can actually change trying to make themselves sound relevant and significant.
After having an affair Yousef blamed his wife for not being a good enough Muslim. When there was no place at a nursery for his daughter, he arranged a sting operation that attempted to prove that the nursery was racist. "What sort of person does this?"
Agent Yousaf will be great for the pro-Union cause.
But not so great for a Scotland already groaning from years of mismanagement, procrastination and gimmicks instead of solutions.
Having lived most of my life in England it is no different down there. Different mismanagement and gimmicks. Our problem isn't that the SNP have won the last 4 elections. Our problem is much wider than that.
Labour will win the General Election having rightly identified what is wrong with the country and rightly pinned the blame on the Tories. But they won't be able to fix any of those issues because they are structural and modern politics only allows for gimmicks. Same with whomever eventually replaces the SNP in Holyrood.
Agreed. The latest windfall tax proposal is exactly that - a gimmick, rather than a serious look at tax structures.
A Labour government would freeze council tax, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say on Thursday as he tries to cast himself as the candidate of low tax for workers.
As he launches Labour’s local elections campaign in Swindon, Starmer will say that if he were prime minister, council tax bills would stay at the same level rather than rising as they will do this weekend. Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Starmer argues that voters have a clear “choice” on tax, contrasting his wish to freeze council tax with the scrapping of the tax-free lifetime allowance limit for wealthy pensioners announced by Jeremy Hunt in the budget a fortnight ago.
In a speech to party supporters, Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice — taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1 per cent — or a Labour choice, where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.
“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year — that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1 per cent. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people.”
"Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies."
Thereby buggering up your pensions. Not so clever.
Labour really do still think the profits of BP and Shell go to four or five massively rich people. Instead of being paid out in dividends to pension funds. They are still not to be trusted when it comes to money.
Tory excess profit levies good; Labour windfall taxes bad. Is that it?
Different names for the same thing, surely?
We raise a levy on excess profits; you impose windfall taxes; he's an embezzler.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
I actually think the Roald Dahl bowdlerization will be dropped (when the owners think no one is looking) sooner rather than later. What I found telling was how few people on the Left even bothered to defend it. For once this really was a case of Wokeism/political correctness gone made.
The problem was more the naff way that the Dahl rewrite was done rather than the principle of it.
Works have long been altered to suit contemporary mores. The term "bowdlerisation" originates from the early 19th century editing of a version of Shakespeare to edit out the naughty bits. The schools edition of The Canterbury Tales I did for O level in the 1980s too. Agatha Christies "Ten little redacteds" has long been renamed as ""Then there were None" etc. Dahl himself changed the origin story of the Oompa Loompas.
Updating these works to modern tastes isn't itself a problem, but it does need to be done in tune with the authors style. There may be some right wing culture warriors gleefully reading to their children "Tintin in the Congo" *, but I don't thinknthat the worst thing that they will do to their children.
*as a TinTin fan, I do have a copy, and my boys have read it. We had an interesting discussion about colonialism and racist stereotypes as a result, but they were teenagers by then, and up to that sort of analysis while retaining their love of Tintin.
Really good post.
Not often I agree with you but this is well reasoned and well put.
I recently watched the Germans episode of Fawlty Towers again and it made me cringe. It's not the parts with the Germans, which can be covered by the 'fact' that Basil was concussed, and which remain very funny.
It's the Major's remarks about w*gs and ni*gers which really aren't on in this day and age.
I had a similar thing when I decided to watch some of Ronnie Corbett's soliloquy sketches and discovered that they are really homophobic. Not in a funny way. Just vile.
I know the Daily Malicious loves to wind everyone up about such things but sometimes we really do need to move things along.
What really shocked me about the remake of the Dambusters was the way in which it was [edit] fericiously attacked by those woke-hunters who were only worried about the name of one dog. Yet the original dog's name would be a total wtf to anyone of the younger generation who would have been wondering what those people were like to call dogs that name. So, just for a little bit of woke-baiting, the attempt to bring the heroism and, it should be remembered, self-sacrifice of the crews to a modern audience was completely derailed.
The worst bowdlerisation is when they remove the scene showing the drowning foreign slave workers.
Any honest portrayal of war should show that innocents do suffer, even when the cause is just.
Oh, was that the remake or when they show the original 1950s film?
We had a really disconcerting experience last night. About 8pm, the internet went off. Not just landlines but cell signal and 5G and mobile data, on all networks. We don't have terrestrial TV or Sky, so I had to sit in the van and listen to radio to make sure it wasn't an alien invasion or Putin going buckwild! I'm off to town imminently to get a battery powered radio to put in my apocalypse survival bag for next time!
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
But we already have 'woke bookshops' being condemned on PB.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
I actually think the Roald Dahl bowdlerization will be dropped (when the owners think no one is looking) sooner rather than later. What I found telling was how few people on the Left even bothered to defend it. For once this really was a case of Wokeism/political correctness gone made.
The problem was more the naff way that the Dahl rewrite was done rather than the principle of it.
Works have long been altered to suit contemporary mores. The term "bowdlerisation" originates from the early 19th century editing of a version of Shakespeare to edit out the naughty bits. The schools edition of The Canterbury Tales I did for O level in the 1980s too. Agatha Christies "Ten little redacteds" has long been renamed as ""Then there were None" etc. Dahl himself changed the origin story of the Oompa Loompas.
Updating these works to modern tastes isn't itself a problem, but it does need to be done in tune with the authors style. There may be some right wing culture warriors gleefully reading to their children "Tintin in the Congo" *, but I don't thinknthat the worst thing that they will do to their children.
*as a TinTin fan, I do have a copy, and my boys have read it. We had an interesting discussion about colonialism and racist stereotypes as a result, but they were teenagers by then, and up to that sort of analysis while retaining their love of Tintin.
Really good post.
Not often I agree with you but this is well reasoned and well put.
I recently watched the Germans episode of Fawlty Towers again and it made me cringe. It's not the parts with the Germans, which can be covered by the 'fact' that Basil was concussed, and which remain very funny.
It's the Major's remarks about w*gs and ni*gers which really aren't on in this day and age.
I had a similar thing when I decided to watch some of Ronnie Corbett's soliloquy sketches and discovered that they are really homophobic. Not in a funny way. Just vile.
I know the Daily Malicious loves to wind everyone up about such things but sometimes we really do need to move things along.
What really shocked me about the remake of the Dambusters was the way in which it was [edit] fericiously attacked by those woke-hunters who were only worried about the name of one dog. Yet the original dog's name would be a total wtf to anyone of the younger generation who would have been wondering what those people were like to call dogs that name. So, just for a little bit of woke-baiting, the attempt to bring the heroism and, it should be remembered, self-sacrifice of the crews to a modern audience was completely derailed.
The worst bowdlerisation is when they remove the scene showing the drowning foreign slave workers.
Any honest portrayal of war should show that innocents do suffer, even when the cause is just.
Oh, was that the remake or when they show the original 1950s film?
The remake was pointless as so.often is the case and is almost always never as good.
After having an affair Yousef blamed his wife for not being a good enough Muslim. When there was no place at a nursery for his daughter, he arranged a sting operation that attempted to prove that the nursery was racist. "What sort of person does this?"
Agent Yousaf will be great for the pro-Union cause.
But not so great for a Scotland already groaning from years of mismanagement, procrastination and gimmicks instead of solutions.
Having lived most of my life in England it is no different down there. Different mismanagement and gimmicks. Our problem isn't that the SNP have won the last 4 elections. Our problem is much wider than that.
Labour will win the General Election having rightly identified what is wrong with the country and rightly pinned the blame on the Tories. But they won't be able to fix any of those issues because they are structural and modern politics only allows for gimmicks. Same with whomever eventually replaces the SNP in Holyrood.
Is it being so cheerful that keeps you going?
I actually agree. Modern governments have remarkably small windows for action and otherwise get dragged along by international bureaucracies and unaccountable administrations. They therefore shout loud about the few things that they can actually change trying to make themselves sound relevant and significant.
I think that's nonsense, though.
At various times in the last two decades it would have been possible to make decisions much earlier on (for example) nuclear; tidal energy; HS2; house building; etc, which would likely have continued well beyond the lifetime of any particular government.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
I actually think the Roald Dahl bowdlerization will be dropped (when the owners think no one is looking) sooner rather than later. What I found telling was how few people on the Left even bothered to defend it. For once this really was a case of Wokeism/political correctness gone made.
The problem was more the naff way that the Dahl rewrite was done rather than the principle of it.
Works have long been altered to suit contemporary mores. The term "bowdlerisation" originates from the early 19th century editing of a version of Shakespeare to edit out the naughty bits. The schools edition of The Canterbury Tales I did for O level in the 1980s too. Agatha Christies "Ten little redacteds" has long been renamed as ""Then there were None" etc. Dahl himself changed the origin story of the Oompa Loompas.
Updating these works to modern tastes isn't itself a problem, but it does need to be done in tune with the authors style. There may be some right wing culture warriors gleefully reading to their children "Tintin in the Congo" *, but I don't thinknthat the worst thing that they will do to their children.
*as a TinTin fan, I do have a copy, and my boys have read it. We had an interesting discussion about colonialism and racist stereotypes as a result, but they were teenagers by then, and up to that sort of analysis while retaining their love of Tintin.
Really good post.
Not often I agree with you but this is well reasoned and well put.
I recently watched the Germans episode of Fawlty Towers again and it made me cringe. It's not the parts with the Germans, which can be covered by the 'fact' that Basil was concussed, and which remain very funny.
It's the Major's remarks about w*gs and ni*gers which really aren't on in this day and age.
I had a similar thing when I decided to watch some of Ronnie Corbett's soliloquy sketches and discovered that they are really homophobic. Not in a funny way. Just vile.
I know the Daily Malicious loves to wind everyone up about such things but sometimes we really do need to move things along.
What really shocked me about the remake of the Dambusters was the way in which it was [edit] fericiously attacked by those woke-hunters who were only worried about the name of one dog. Yet the original dog's name would be a total wtf to anyone of the younger generation who would have been wondering what those people were like to call dogs that name. So, just for a little bit of woke-baiting, the attempt to bring the heroism and, it should be remembered, self-sacrifice of the crews to a modern audience was completely derailed.
The worst bowdlerisation is when they remove the scene showing the drowning foreign slave workers.
Any honest portrayal of war should show that innocents do suffer, even when the cause is just.
And also showing why we fought in the first place. On the dogs name, I am conflicted. It’s a historical fact, and the film is based on history. It’s not, however, a documentary, any more than the Longest Day was, or Saving Private Ryan, or Band of Brothers. So actually, calling him Bob or whatever doesn’t amount to much, but avoids unnecessary questions. There is an issue with what happens to older TV programmes. If you recoil from Fawlty Towers ‘The Germans’ because of the Major, you are somewhat falling into the Alf Garnett trap. We are mocking the Major for his antiquated views. Yet the scene with the doctor is arguably far far worse. I get that Fawlty is concussed but his reaction is incredible.
We should cut people slack for creating art in the accepted norms of the time. Otherwise we will have no art left at all.
Agreed. One wouldn't delete the hound's name from, say, a biography of Gibson where one has the space and time to discuss the mores of the time.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
You'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh, wouldn't you?
I'm off to town imminently to get a battery powered radio to put in my apocalypse survival bag for next time!
What you really want it one of those wind up ones
I was thinking of that, but realistically, how long will we have radio if it all really does go tits up? One we're on The Road, scavenging for food and fighting off the neighbours, do I really want to be carrying a wind up thing? I'll just carry a small radio and guard the batteries like they're the future of mankind.
I'm off to town imminently to get a battery powered radio to put in my apocalypse survival bag for next time!
What you really want it one of those wind up ones
I was thinking of that, but realistically, how long will we have radio if it all really does go tits up? One we're on The Road, scavenging for food and fighting off the neighbours, do I really want to be carrying a wind up thing? I'll just carry a small radio and guard the batteries like they're the future of mankind.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
Maybe it would be simpler if all books were vetted by the government, prior to publication, so that offensive material does not get published.
Fahrenheit 451...
It should be renamed 233 centigrade.(or whatever the right number is). All previous editions should of course be burned.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
I actually think the Roald Dahl bowdlerization will be dropped (when the owners think no one is looking) sooner rather than later. What I found telling was how few people on the Left even bothered to defend it. For once this really was a case of Wokeism/political correctness gone made.
The problem was more the naff way that the Dahl rewrite was done rather than the principle of it.
Works have long been altered to suit contemporary mores. The term "bowdlerisation" originates from the early 19th century editing of a version of Shakespeare to edit out the naughty bits. The schools edition of The Canterbury Tales I did for O level in the 1980s too. Agatha Christies "Ten little redacteds" has long been renamed as ""Then there were None" etc. Dahl himself changed the origin story of the Oompa Loompas.
Updating these works to modern tastes isn't itself a problem, but it does need to be done in tune with the authors style. There may be some right wing culture warriors gleefully reading to their children "Tintin in the Congo" *, but I don't thinknthat the worst thing that they will do to their children.
*as a TinTin fan, I do have a copy, and my boys have read it. We had an interesting discussion about colonialism and racist stereotypes as a result, but they were teenagers by then, and up to that sort of analysis while retaining their love of Tintin.
Really good post.
Not often I agree with you but this is well reasoned and well put.
I recently watched the Germans episode of Fawlty Towers again and it made me cringe. It's not the parts with the Germans, which can be covered by the 'fact' that Basil was concussed, and which remain very funny.
It's the Major's remarks about w*gs and ni*gers which really aren't on in this day and age.
I had a similar thing when I decided to watch some of Ronnie Corbett's soliloquy sketches and discovered that they are really homophobic. Not in a funny way. Just vile.
I know the Daily Malicious loves to wind everyone up about such things but sometimes we really do need to move things along.
What really shocked me about the remake of the Dambusters was the way in which it was [edit] fericiously attacked by those woke-hunters who were only worried about the name of one dog. Yet the original dog's name would be a total wtf to anyone of the younger generation who would have been wondering what those people were like to call dogs that name. So, just for a little bit of woke-baiting, the attempt to bring the heroism and, it should be remembered, self-sacrifice of the crews to a modern audience was completely derailed.
The worst bowdlerisation is when they remove the scene showing the drowning foreign slave workers.
Any honest portrayal of war should show that innocents do suffer, even when the cause is just.
And also showing why we fought in the first place. On the dogs name, I am conflicted. It’s a historical fact, and the film is based on history. It’s not, however, a documentary, any more than the Longest Day was, or Saving Private Ryan, or Band of Brothers. So actually, calling him Bob or whatever doesn’t amount to much, but avoids unnecessary questions. There is an issue with what happens to older TV programmes. If you recoil from Fawlty Towers ‘The Germans’ because of the Major, you are somewhat falling into the Alf Garnett trap. We are mocking the Major for his antiquated views. Yet the scene with the doctor is arguably far far worse. I get that Fawlty is concussed but his reaction is incredible.
We should cut people slack for creating art in the accepted norms of the time. Otherwise we will have no art left at all.
On the dog's name, the answer is simple. Remake the film without the sodding dog. Are there any other films where a character's pet takes up so much of the narrative, or any? There's Sid's horse-picking budgie in Carry On At Your Convenience, I suppose.
One we're on The Road, scavenging for food and fighting off the neighbours, do I really want to be carrying a wind up thing? I'll just carry a small radio and guard the batteries like they're the future of mankind.
Pah.
If you were a proper prepper you would already have caches of food and batteries stashed along your intended route
A Labour government would freeze council tax, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say on Thursday as he tries to cast himself as the candidate of low tax for workers.
As he launches Labour’s local elections campaign in Swindon, Starmer will say that if he were prime minister, council tax bills would stay at the same level rather than rising as they will do this weekend. Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Starmer argues that voters have a clear “choice” on tax, contrasting his wish to freeze council tax with the scrapping of the tax-free lifetime allowance limit for wealthy pensioners announced by Jeremy Hunt in the budget a fortnight ago.
In a speech to party supporters, Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice — taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1 per cent — or a Labour choice, where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.
“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year — that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1 per cent. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people.”
"Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies."
Thereby buggering up your pensions. Not so clever.
Labour really do still think the profits of BP and Shell go to four or five massively rich people. Instead of being paid out in dividends to pension funds. They are still not to be trusted when it comes to money.
Tory excess profit levies good; Labour windfall taxes bad. Is that it?
Different names for the same thing, surely?
We raise a levy on excess profits; you impose windfall taxes; he's an embezzler.
Interesting that its the same batch of posters who said a windfall tax would not raise any money last year, and it was a terrible socialist idea, who are equally loudly against the latest calls from Labour now. Not sure I have heard any of them, even quietly, complain about the Conservative party u-turning and introducing a windfall tax. It is almost as if it is the colour of the rosette that it is more important than the policy.
FWIW I think last years, proposed by the LDs, then copied by Labour and eventually by the Tories was appropriate and sensible but not at all convinced it would be the right time to extend it.
I'm off to town imminently to get a battery powered radio to put in my apocalypse survival bag for next time!
What you really want it one of those wind up ones
I was thinking of that, but realistically, how long will we have radio if it all really does go tits up? One we're on The Road, scavenging for food and fighting off the neighbours, do I really want to be carrying a wind up thing? I'll just carry a small radio and guard the batteries like they're the future of mankind.
A shortwave model with transmit as well as receive might be quite useful.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Obviously Mr Leigh doesn’t want refugees housed there because they might be offended by a memorial to a dead dug. Very thoughtful of him.
Edit: after a quick dig around, it appears that the memorial/gravestone has been removed?
After having an affair Yousef blamed his wife for not being a good enough Muslim. When there was no place at a nursery for his daughter, he arranged a sting operation that attempted to prove that the nursery was racist. "What sort of person does this?"
Agent Yousaf will be great for the pro-Union cause.
But not so great for a Scotland already groaning from years of mismanagement, procrastination and gimmicks instead of solutions.
Having lived most of my life in England it is no different down there. Different mismanagement and gimmicks. Our problem isn't that the SNP have won the last 4 elections. Our problem is much wider than that.
Labour will win the General Election having rightly identified what is wrong with the country and rightly pinned the blame on the Tories. But they won't be able to fix any of those issues because they are structural and modern politics only allows for gimmicks. Same with whomever eventually replaces the SNP in Holyrood.
Is it being so cheerful that keeps you going?
I actually agree. Modern governments have remarkably small windows for action and otherwise get dragged along by international bureaucracies and unaccountable administrations. They therefore shout loud about the few things that they can actually change trying to make themselves sound relevant and significant.
I think that's nonsense, though.
At various times in the last two decades it would have been possible to make decisions much earlier on (for example) nuclear; tidal energy; HS2; house building; etc, which would likely have continued well beyond the lifetime of any particular government.
Instead, procrastination and gimmicks.
Here is the problem - weaponised ignorance. Historically most voters don't know how stuff works. They trust that the government knows and vote for a choice of programme - whichever your political choice you knew that all of them had the interests of the country at heart.
In the 1970s we had the battle of shit. Communist unions trying to destroy the system, mendaciously incompetent industrial leaders trying to destroy their own companies. Now we had a battle of systems going on, where each side no longer trusted the other side to have the interests of the country at heart. After a few periods of relative truce we are back there, worse than ever.
We can't make any decisions that last longer than the current parliament because the other lot are traitors / crooks who can't be trusted. So we end up with crayon solutions and "keep changing it" infrastructure projects which largely don't get built or end up hugely over budget due to meddling.
Unless we reach a national consensus about our future direction, this is the best we can hope for. Voters who are as clueless as ever about how stuff works who have had their ignorance weaponised by the elite. You can't expect voters to make choices on things like migration because their understanding of the subject is both small and corrupted. Or on windfall taxes. Or on a host of other things - Yousless has fixed the Scottish transport mess by abolishing the cabinet post.
We're only one step away from wrapping their ignorance and our decline up into "aren't we the greatest country on earth" propaganda. And then we truly are lost, like the US.
I'm off to town imminently to get a battery powered radio to put in my apocalypse survival bag for next time!
What you really want it one of those wind up ones
I was thinking of that, but realistically, how long will we have radio if it all really does go tits up? One we're on The Road, scavenging for food and fighting off the neighbours, do I really want to be carrying a wind up thing? I'll just carry a small radio and guard the batteries like they're the future of mankind.
Can you get a radio that will work off one of those power blocks, be much better than batteries and you can recharge if you ever get power back.
After having an affair Yousef blamed his wife for not being a good enough Muslim. When there was no place at a nursery for his daughter, he arranged a sting operation that attempted to prove that the nursery was racist. "What sort of person does this?"
Agent Yousaf will be great for the pro-Union cause.
But not so great for a Scotland already groaning from years of mismanagement, procrastination and gimmicks instead of solutions.
Having lived most of my life in England it is no different down there. Different mismanagement and gimmicks. Our problem isn't that the SNP have won the last 4 elections. Our problem is much wider than that.
Labour will win the General Election having rightly identified what is wrong with the country and rightly pinned the blame on the Tories. But they won't be able to fix any of those issues because they are structural and modern politics only allows for gimmicks. Same with whomever eventually replaces the SNP in Holyrood.
Is it being so cheerful that keeps you going?
I actually agree. Modern governments have remarkably small windows for action and otherwise get dragged along by international bureaucracies and unaccountable administrations. They therefore shout loud about the few things that they can actually change trying to make themselves sound relevant and significant.
I think that's nonsense, though.
At various times in the last two decades it would have been possible to make decisions much earlier on (for example) nuclear; tidal energy; HS2; house building; etc, which would likely have continued well beyond the lifetime of any particular government.
Instead, procrastination and gimmicks.
For me, a classic was the rejection of building new nuclear power stations at the start of coalition. On the grounds that it would take until 2024 for them to start operation, even if built at unusual speed…
A Labour government would freeze council tax, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say on Thursday as he tries to cast himself as the candidate of low tax for workers.
As he launches Labour’s local elections campaign in Swindon, Starmer will say that if he were prime minister, council tax bills would stay at the same level rather than rising as they will do this weekend. Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Starmer argues that voters have a clear “choice” on tax, contrasting his wish to freeze council tax with the scrapping of the tax-free lifetime allowance limit for wealthy pensioners announced by Jeremy Hunt in the budget a fortnight ago.
In a speech to party supporters, Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice — taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1 per cent — or a Labour choice, where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.
“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year — that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1 per cent. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people.”
"Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies."
Thereby buggering up your pensions. Not so clever.
Labour really do still think the profits of BP and Shell go to four or five massively rich people. Instead of being paid out in dividends to pension funds. They are still not to be trusted when it comes to money.
Tory excess profit levies good; Labour windfall taxes bad. Is that it?
The pension fund thing is such a feeble response. Even if you haven't chosen to have an environmentally-focused pension fund (in which case the impact on you is zero), what's the typical share of oil and gas investments? 10% max? Say the windfall tax reduces their profit by 25% for one year. The impact on your pension fund in this extreme case is 2.5%, marginally affecting your pension N years in the future.
I'm off to town imminently to get a battery powered radio to put in my apocalypse survival bag for next time!
What you really want it one of those wind up ones
I was thinking of that, but realistically, how long will we have radio if it all really does go tits up? One we're on The Road, scavenging for food and fighting off the neighbours, do I really want to be carrying a wind up thing? I'll just carry a small radio and guard the batteries like they're the future of mankind.
I keep meaning to read that.
I was reading it years ago and left it on a train, it was bleak so never bothered replacing it.
We're only one step away from wrapping their ignorance and our decline up into "aren't we the greatest country on earth" propaganda. And then we truly are lost, like the US.
I'm off to town imminently to get a battery powered radio to put in my apocalypse survival bag for next time!
What you really want it one of those wind up ones
I was thinking of that, but realistically, how long will we have radio if it all really does go tits up? One we're on The Road, scavenging for food and fighting off the neighbours, do I really want to be carrying a wind up thing? I'll just carry a small radio and guard the batteries like they're the future of mankind.
I keep meaning to read that.
I was reading it years ago and left it on a train, it was bleak so never bothered replacing it.
It really is bleak. It made me think that if it ever does go completely apocalyptic, it might be best to check out on my own terms.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Obviously Mr Leigh doesn’t want refugees housed there because they might be offended by a memorial to a dead dug. Very thoughtful of him.
Edit: after a quick dig around, it appears that the memorial/gravestone has been removed?
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
I actually think the Roald Dahl bowdlerization will be dropped (when the owners think no one is looking) sooner rather than later. What I found telling was how few people on the Left even bothered to defend it. For once this really was a case of Wokeism/political correctness gone made.
The problem was more the naff way that the Dahl rewrite was done rather than the principle of it.
Works have long been altered to suit contemporary mores. The term "bowdlerisation" originates from the early 19th century editing of a version of Shakespeare to edit out the naughty bits. The schools edition of The Canterbury Tales I did for O level in the 1980s too. Agatha Christies "Ten little redacteds" has long been renamed as ""Then there were None" etc. Dahl himself changed the origin story of the Oompa Loompas.
Updating these works to modern tastes isn't itself a problem, but it does need to be done in tune with the authors style. There may be some right wing culture warriors gleefully reading to their children "Tintin in the Congo" *, but I don't thinknthat the worst thing that they will do to their children.
*as a TinTin fan, I do have a copy, and my boys have read it. We had an interesting discussion about colonialism and racist stereotypes as a result, but they were teenagers by then, and up to that sort of analysis while retaining their love of Tintin.
Really good post.
Not often I agree with you but this is well reasoned and well put.
I recently watched the Germans episode of Fawlty Towers again and it made me cringe. It's not the parts with the Germans, which can be covered by the 'fact' that Basil was concussed, and which remain very funny.
It's the Major's remarks about w*gs and ni*gers which really aren't on in this day and age.
I had a similar thing when I decided to watch some of Ronnie Corbett's soliloquy sketches and discovered that they are really homophobic. Not in a funny way. Just vile.
I know the Daily Malicious loves to wind everyone up about such things but sometimes we really do need to move things along.
What really shocked me about the remake of the Dambusters was the way in which it was [edit] fericiously attacked by those woke-hunters who were only worried about the name of one dog. Yet the original dog's name would be a total wtf to anyone of the younger generation who would have been wondering what those people were like to call dogs that name. So, just for a little bit of woke-baiting, the attempt to bring the heroism and, it should be remembered, self-sacrifice of the crews to a modern audience was completely derailed.
The worst bowdlerisation is when they remove the scene showing the drowning foreign slave workers.
Any honest portrayal of war should show that innocents do suffer, even when the cause is just.
And also showing why we fought in the first place. On the dogs name, I am conflicted. It’s a historical fact, and the film is based on history. It’s not, however, a documentary, any more than the Longest Day was, or Saving Private Ryan, or Band of Brothers. So actually, calling him Bob or whatever doesn’t amount to much, but avoids unnecessary questions. There is an issue with what happens to older TV programmes. If you recoil from Fawlty Towers ‘The Germans’ because of the Major, you are somewhat falling into the Alf Garnett trap. We are mocking the Major for his antiquated views. Yet the scene with the doctor is arguably far far worse. I get that Fawlty is concussed but his reaction is incredible.
We should cut people slack for creating art in the accepted norms of the time. Otherwise we will have no art left at all.
I have liked but I would rather keep the dog's name in with just a comment before the film starts. Alf Garnett is an interesting one. People do seem to miss that he is being made fun of because of his views. We shouldn't edit out racism, sexism, etc as if it didn't exist or that acknowledging times were different.
A Labour government would freeze council tax, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say on Thursday as he tries to cast himself as the candidate of low tax for workers.
As he launches Labour’s local elections campaign in Swindon, Starmer will say that if he were prime minister, council tax bills would stay at the same level rather than rising as they will do this weekend. Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Starmer argues that voters have a clear “choice” on tax, contrasting his wish to freeze council tax with the scrapping of the tax-free lifetime allowance limit for wealthy pensioners announced by Jeremy Hunt in the budget a fortnight ago.
In a speech to party supporters, Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice — taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1 per cent — or a Labour choice, where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.
“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year — that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1 per cent. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people.”
"Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies."
Thereby buggering up your pensions. Not so clever.
Labour really do still think the profits of BP and Shell go to four or five massively rich people. Instead of being paid out in dividends to pension funds. They are still not to be trusted when it comes to money.
Tory excess profit levies good; Labour windfall taxes bad. Is that it?
The pension fund thing is such a feeble response. Even if you haven't chosen to have an environmentally-focused pension fund (in which case the impact on you is zero), what's the typical share of oil and gas investments? 10% max? Say the windfall tax reduces their profit by 25% for one year. The impact on your pension fund in this extreme case is 2.5%, marginally affecting your pension N years in the future.
The problem with the proposed windfall tax is that it is deliberately trying to confuse an already clueless public. BP are not making windfall taxes from the UK. Shell are not coining it in from North Sea exploration. Their profits - excess or otherwise - are made from non-UK operations.
Politically it is very clever - you are suffering high energy bills, they are profiteering, lets tax them. The only problem is that it isn't true. It is politics by crayon, as stupid as the illegal Illegal Migration bill.
We will have a Labour government and it will be less mendacious and corrupt than the Tories. Both good things. But we need government policy which is actually strategic and thought through. Not more crayons.
Comments
A Labour government would freeze council tax, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say on Thursday as he tries to cast himself as the candidate of low tax for workers.
As he launches Labour’s local elections campaign in Swindon, Starmer will say that if he were prime minister, council tax bills would stay at the same level rather than rising as they will do this weekend. Labour would fund this with a “proper” windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Starmer argues that voters have a clear “choice” on tax, contrasting his wish to freeze council tax with the scrapping of the tax-free lifetime allowance limit for wealthy pensioners announced by Jeremy Hunt in the budget a fortnight ago.
In a speech to party supporters, Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice — taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1 per cent — or a Labour choice, where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.
“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year — that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1 per cent. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/keir-starmer-speech-labour-to-freeze-council-tax-63h9rpvcq
correctly) that Lily would no longer be acceptable to modern (younger) audiences.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KKW-500XabE
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aLq1aTTZ-FY
Or rather, they're just banning books
Not often I agree with you but this is well reasoned and well put.
I recently watched the Germans episode of Fawlty Towers again and it made me cringe. It's not the parts with the Germans, which can be covered by the 'fact' that Basil was concussed, and which remain very funny.
It's the Major's remarks about w*gs and ni*gers which really aren't on in this day and age.
I had a similar thing when I decided to watch some of Ronnie Corbett's soliloquy sketches and discovered that they are really homophobic. Not in a funny way. Just vile.
I know the Daily Malicious loves to wind everyone up about such things but sometimes we really do need to move things along.
I am surprised that you haven't noticed.
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/gallery/2020/dec/19/oh-yes-she-is-panto-dames-through-the-decades-in-pictures
Did UBS get into this with its eyes open ?
Credit Suisse hid $700M from IRS, Senate investigators say
The alleged concealment would violate the terms of an agreement the bank had with the Justice Department to settle previous allegations.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/29/credit-suisse-violated-plea-agreement-hid-700m-irs-00089372
...The bank had paid $2.6 billion under the 2014 plea agreement with Justice.
“Credit Suisse got a discount on the penalty it faced in 2014 for enabling tax evasion because bank executives swore up and down they’d get out of the business of defrauding the United States,” he added. “This investigation shows Credit Suisse did not make good on that promise, and the bank’s pending acquisition does not wipe the slate clean.”
...Based on information requests from the committee, the bank identified 23 undeclared accounts belonging to ultra-wealthy U.S. citizens with more than $20 million at the bank. The Senate report noted that more concealed accounts could be uncovered as the bank’s review continues.
I guess drag artists who go out in trouser suits and who talk about their next business meeting about breaking the glass ceiling would be more your sort of thing?
(*) Though I've never understood why anyone would want high heels: they just seem like torture devices to me.
UK public now have more faith in the EU than in the British government or Westminster Parliament.
This, for example, is also an example of drag.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Scarlett
And I'd argue the certainty of this is b/s. Which is why drag shows are often popular with women; increasingly so, apparently.
Fascinating read though for its depiction of the 1980's imagined by an Anglo-Australian in the early 1950's. Shute got almost everything wrong, but in a way that tells a great deal about British culture of the time. He was a good writer too, and a best seller in his day.
Any honest portrayal of war should show that innocents do suffer, even when the cause is just.
The Black and White Minstrels could sing and dance quite well too, but tastes have moved on.
Thereby buggering up your pensions. Not so clever.
Labour really do still think the profits of BP and Shell go to four or five massively rich people. Instead of being paid out in dividends to pension funds. They are still not to be trusted when it comes to money.
Thinking back, I enjoyed the characters of Emery, Everitt, Walliams and others very much. They used drag to produce situations and gags which were funny.
So perhaps there are two categories of drag: 1) means-to-an-end and 2) performative. (With me liking the former but not the latter.)
Just the sight of Les Dawson makes me laugh. Performative drag is just naff.
This is the problem with cheap food. That you can buy this product does not mean that there isn't a real problem with commodity prices shooting up on food. This has absolutely cut the number of value items for sale and the quality of those items.
I don't put the blame for this on the supermarkets though. Sourcing floor sweepings grade ingredients in sufficient quantity becomes harder as prices get squeezed and consumers are forced by price to buy more and more of the cheaper product. You can't give the good stuff away at that price, you simply reduce supply.
Labour will win the General Election having rightly identified what is wrong with the country and rightly pinned the blame on the Tories. But they won't be able to fix any of those issues because they are structural and modern politics only allows for gimmicks. Same with whomever eventually replaces the SNP in Holyrood.
The different instances if it are as diverse as society at large. I don't think you can reduce it to one thing.
There is an issue with what happens to older TV programmes. If you recoil from Fawlty Towers ‘The Germans’ because of the Major, you are somewhat falling into the Alf Garnett trap. We are mocking the Major for his antiquated views. Yet the scene with the doctor is arguably far far worse. I get that Fawlty is concussed but his reaction is incredible.
We should cut people slack for creating art in the accepted norms of the time. Otherwise we will have no art left at all.
Just how many promises is Reeves making to use windfall taxes
It has been promised to reduce energy bills, fund nurses pay award, and now council tax which Reeves suggested has risen by 5%
Our council tax has risen by 9.9% this year so is Reeves suggesting she would freeze the high increases in Wales as well
Biggest council tax increase for Wales confirmed for Conwy county
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/conwy-approves-biggest-council-tax-26373400#ICID=Android_DailyPostNewsApp_AppShare
It will be interesting to see how large an effect this has on voting intention by age, once the first couple of Labour budgetsb have gone by.
Starmer knows Council Tax is at or near the top of the public's most hated taxes list and he knows that people have bought his oil excess profits narrative.
That's perhaps one reason we fail on infrastructure.
The question is whether Starmer is aware of this, and is completely cynical, or is just stupid and economically illiterate. Or both of course.
He's a socialist, which points to stupidity, but also a lawyer, which means dishonesty and cynicism, so my guess is both.
I actually agree. Modern governments have remarkably small windows for action and otherwise get dragged along by international bureaucracies and unaccountable administrations. They therefore shout loud about the few things that they can actually change trying to make themselves sound relevant and significant.
The latest windfall tax proposal is exactly that - a gimmick, rather than a serious look at tax structures.
good.
At various times in the last two decades it would have been possible to make decisions much earlier on (for example) nuclear; tidal energy; HS2; house building; etc, which would likely have continued well beyond the lifetime of any particular government.
Instead, procrastination and gimmicks.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/29/asylum-seekers-housed-portakabins-maybe-ships-robert-jenrick
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
If you were a proper prepper you would already have caches of food and batteries stashed along your intended route
FWIW I think last years, proposed by the LDs, then copied by Labour and eventually by the Tories was appropriate and sensible but not at all convinced it would be the right time to extend it.
Edit: after a quick dig around, it appears that the memorial/gravestone has been removed?
In the 1970s we had the battle of shit. Communist unions trying to destroy the system, mendaciously incompetent industrial leaders trying to destroy their own companies. Now we had a battle of systems going on, where each side no longer trusted the other side to have the interests of the country at heart. After a few periods of relative truce we are back there, worse than ever.
We can't make any decisions that last longer than the current parliament because the other lot are traitors / crooks who can't be trusted. So we end up with crayon solutions and "keep changing it" infrastructure projects which largely don't get built or end up hugely over budget due to meddling.
Unless we reach a national consensus about our future direction, this is the best we can hope for. Voters who are as clueless as ever about how stuff works who have had their ignorance weaponised by the elite. You can't expect voters to make choices on things like migration because their understanding of the subject is both small and corrupted. Or on windfall taxes. Or on a host of other things - Yousless has fixed the Scottish transport mess by abolishing the cabinet post.
We're only one step away from wrapping their ignorance and our decline up into "aren't we the greatest country on earth" propaganda. And then we truly are lost, like the US.
Mr. Above, windfall taxes are a stupid idea.
Politically it is very clever - you are suffering high energy bills, they are profiteering, lets tax them. The only problem is that it isn't true. It is politics by crayon, as stupid as the illegal Illegal Migration bill.
We will have a Labour government and it will be less mendacious and corrupt than the Tories. Both good things. But we need government policy which is actually strategic and thought through. Not more crayons.