Interesting rises in the Lib Dem vote here, apparently at the expense of Labour and the Greens.
Labour need to keep more of an eye on their left, and particularly civil liberies flanks, I think, otherwise they may fall into the later New Labour's trap with the LD's from around 2005 onwards.Hate to say i told you so, but..
On the subject of Lib Dems the reception to this guardian article on Davey has been rather heartening to see. People being positive for a change, even on Twitter.
This tweet from someone who vaguely knew him at school is typical of the genre.
It's not comfortable but I suspect it's not meant to be - challenging those who wish to spread division and hate isn't easy because rational argument rarely works. They can be ignored - perhaps the first line of defence - and be left to shout into the darkness. That doesn't mean rational counter-argument can't and shouldn't be tried but in the expectation it won't have an impact.
Framing is important
Nick Griffin was invited on Question Time once, and was essentially laughed off the stage.
Nigel Fucking Farage was invited on time and again, and lauded for it, despite saying things that were at least as batshit crazy as Griffin.
Why wasn't he ridiculed everywhere he went? Why did anyone take him seriously, ever?
Because Nick Griffin looks like a fascist, whereas Farage looks like a banker.
Yes, it's superficial but it's true.
Perhaps because a lot of people agreed with farage on the eu...oh look it was put to a test with actual votes....more agreed with him on the EU than you scott....seems you thought they were laughing with you when they were laughing at you
The BNP had the same position on the EU: they were in favour of leaving. So that doesn't help.
So what? We should oppose leaving a shit institution just because some racist arsehole also didn't like the institution grow up please.
Interesting rises in the Lib Dem vote here, apparently at the expense of Labour and the Greens.
Labour need to keep more of an eye on their left, and particularly civil liberies flanks, I think, otherwise they may fall into the later New Labour's trap with the LD's from around 2005 onwards.Hate to say i told you so, but..
On the subject of Lib Dems the reception to this guardian article on Davey has been rather heartening to see. People being positive for a change, even on Twitter.
This tweet from someone who vaguely knew him at school is typical of the genre.
Personally I like Sir Ed, I know my local MP Dame Eleanor Laing is friendly with him and speaks highly of him despite their being from different parties. He seems like a decent man who has overcome a lot of tragedy in his past and family problems and is at least more on the Orange Book wing of the LDs than the social democrat wing
AIUI he doesn’t see himself that way. As an Orange Booker, I mean.
Interesting rises in the Lib Dem vote here, apparently at the expense of Labour and the Greens.
Labour need to keep more of an eye on their left, and particularly civil liberies flanks, I think, otherwise they may fall into the later New Labour's trap with the LD's from around 2005 onwards.Hate to say i told you so, but..
On the subject of Lib Dems the reception to this guardian article on Davey has been rather heartening to see. People being positive for a change, even on Twitter.
This tweet from someone who vaguely knew him at school is typical of the genre.
Personally I like Sir Ed, I know my local MP Dame Eleanor Laing is friendly with him and speaks highly of him despite their being from different parties. He seems like a decent man who has overcome a lot of tragedy in his past and family problems and is at least more on the Orange Book wing of the LDs than the social democrat wing
AIUI he doesn’t see himself that way. As an Orange Booker, I mean.
Not 100% no but he wrote an article in the Orange Book essays, was a member of Cameron and Clegg's government and after Clegg himself is the most rightwing and classically liberal Liberal leader since Thorpe
I'm looking forward to the launch of the breakaway National Conservative Party in 2025 - presumably once the One Nation supporters re-capture the party, the Natcons will break away and form their own group absorbing Reform and forming their distinct social conservative movement.
What makes you think the One Nation will capture the Party by 2025? I can't see it.
After the 1997 defeat, it took about a decade to get to Cameron. I suspect it will take longer this time. For starters, there simply isn't the body count for a One Nation counter-revolution.
Half of whom were purged by Boris, of course. As bad things got under Corbyn, at least the moderates in Labour continued to be a majority of the PLP. Not the case with the Tories.
One of the subsidiary great mysteries of 2015-20. Why was Momentum etc so bad at taking over the Labour Party when they had the chance?
Probably a mixture of Labour's vaguely Byzantine structure that meant Corbynites didn't have control over significant parts of the party for the whole period - and thus narrower windows of opportunity than leadership results made it look like. And the fact that a significant part of Corbyn's support weren't quite the organised far left of yore, but people who liked the idea of him as a left-wing leader but were either uninterested in or angered by some of the attempts to strong-arm the party towards Bennism. And of course the fact were two elections, a referendum and a leadership election over the period - meaning the party was often on an election footing. Corbyn only had brief control of Labour's NEC until 2017, and even after that could only get through stuff that had union support - meaning reforms that strengthened the left, but gave a route back for moderates should Corbyn lose his appeal after defeat. The only period really could have taken full control without things getting messy was 2017- mid 18 when controlled all the party levers, and Corbyn had the personal capital from 2017 before self-inflicted disasters meant internal resistance to him perked up and even spread outside the usual quarters.
Interesting rises in the Lib Dem vote here, apparently at the expense of Labour and the Greens.
Labour need to keep more of an eye on their left, and particularly civil liberies flanks, I think, otherwise they may fall into the later New Labour's trap with the LD's from around 2005 onwards.Hate to say i told you so, but..
On the subject of Lib Dems the reception to this guardian article on Davey has been rather heartening to see. People being positive for a change, even on Twitter.
This tweet from someone who vaguely knew him at school is typical of the genre.
Personally I like Sir Ed, I know my local MP Dame Eleanor Laing is friendly with him and speaks highly of him despite their being from different parties. He seems like a decent man who has overcome a lot of tragedy in his past and family problems and is at least more on the Orange Book wing of the LDs than the social democrat wing
That's a kind remark and he's grown on me as well.
Davey has served in Government, been an MP since 1997, lost his seat and then won it back (that doesn't happen too often). Again, his back story isn't well known but will be come the next GE, I'm certain.
Genuinely surprised Con-LD coalition is on 11% with LD voters. Davey may be on a mission to defeat the Tories, but he was a professional and able to work with the Conservatives, but I figured far fewer of his voters would suggest they wanted this option.
It's not comfortable but I suspect it's not meant to be - challenging those who wish to spread division and hate isn't easy because rational argument rarely works. They can be ignored - perhaps the first line of defence - and be left to shout into the darkness. That doesn't mean rational counter-argument can't and shouldn't be tried but in the expectation it won't have an impact.
Framing is important
Nick Griffin was invited on Question Time once, and was essentially laughed off the stage.
Nigel Fucking Farage was invited on time and again, and lauded for it, despite saying things that were at least as batshit crazy as Griffin.
Why wasn't he ridiculed everywhere he went? Why did anyone take him seriously, ever?
Farage was the Great Satan, for the far left (now, it’s Rowling). But Farage was mainstream. Griffin was not. That’s the difference.
Genuinely surprised Con-LD coalition is on 11% with LD voters. Davey may be on a mission to defeat the Tories, but he was a professional and able to work with the Conservatives, but I figured far fewer of his voters would suggest they wanted this option.
Remember this is people who would vote Lib Dem in a GE tomorrow, not party members or necessarily long term supporters. It will include quite a few pissed off ex Tories who hark back to the days of Cameron and Clegg.
Well to be fair, though, if one their main conclusions is that John Lennon is to blame for most of our problems, people can't be too surprised at the mockery.
However, I agree that Starmer and the Lib Dems are talking about virtually nothing at the moment, which I'm not happy about. Although Cruella and others are somewhat facile, and also tending to the slightly paranoid and Trumpite in style, and in the way they raise certain issues, not every issue they have raised is irrelevant, and at least, as you say, they're talking about something.
Very often, the issue is one that needs to be raised.
The problem is that they - like Extinction Rebellion - turn every issue into an existential crisis. And therefore end up being laughed at.
'Twas ever thus.
This rather ghastly poem from 1992 was set in an English Literature exam series during Covid.
God, that's awful. I once made the mistake of saying what I really thought of a poem in an English exam. The teacher agreed but did not give me much of a mark!
I once got 3/40 in an essay for discussing why Hamlet procrastinated over killing Claudius.
My teacher suggested that eight pages on 'Shakespeare wouldn't have had much of a plot without it, would he?' got a little tedious.
I was once sent out of class and made to sit in the hall (in the hope the headmaster would notice - fat chance as he was on the golf course) for knowing the *right* answer to a question.
Sitting out in the hall and hearing the teacher re-ask the question, another pupil giving the *wrong* answer then getting a patronising laugh from the teacher who then gave the same answer I had.
Kinda coloured my view of the school at that point.
Get the feeling Boris' mass expulsions (lauded by some as a masterstroke) will be looked back on as a most grievous error. There's simply no senior Tory figure left with views close to the median elector, for the Party to coalesce around.
Genuinely surprised Con-LD coalition is on 11% with LD voters. Davey may be on a mission to defeat the Tories, but he was a professional and able to work with the Conservatives, but I figured far fewer of his voters would suggest they wanted this option.
And its correct, the four pack of onions is £1.24 at Morrisons.
But Morrisons are also selling a whole kg of onions for £1 which is about 10p per onion compared to the 31p in the small bag the Guardian is babbling about:
Now there are people who buy the same thing time and time again irrespective of relative price.
But if so then so what - its from such people that retailers make the big profits thus allowing those of us who look for value to get things so much cheaper.
Get the feeling Boris' mass expulsions (lauded by some as a masterstroke) will be looked back on as a most grievous error. There's simply no senior Tory figure left with views close to the median elector, for the Party to coalesce around.
Kicking out Churchill's grandson was a genius move...
Interesting rises in the Lib Dem vote here, apparently at the expense of Labour and the Greens.
Labour need to keep more of an eye on their left, and particularly civil liberies flanks, I think, otherwise they may fall into the later New Labour's trap with the LD's from around 2005 onwards.Hate to say i told you so, but..
On the subject of Lib Dems the reception to this guardian article on Davey has been rather heartening to see. People being positive for a change, even on Twitter.
This tweet from someone who vaguely knew him at school is typical of the genre.
Personally I like Sir Ed, I know my local MP Dame Eleanor Laing is friendly with him and speaks highly of him despite their being from different parties. He seems like a decent man who has overcome a lot of tragedy in his past and family problems and is at least more on the Orange Book wing of the LDs than the social democrat wing
Get the feeling Boris' mass expulsions (lauded by some as a masterstroke) will be looked back on as a most grievous error. There's simply no senior Tory figure left with views close to the median elector, for the Party to coalesce around.
It was disgraceful and suicidal. Only someone like Johnson would have done it. Our FPTP system requires the main parties to be coalitions. He has fucked the Conservative Party by ensuring that it is now mainly full of lightweights and dimwits because these were the only people who genuinely believed in the pointless populist disaster called Brexit
Note the Tories are seeing almost as much leakage to RefUK as Labour and the LDs.
So Sunak needs to protect his right flank as well as win back centrist swing voters
Doing both at once will be tricky, though, especially now the other lot aren't scary.
As for the wider issue, NatCons seem to have recognised they are in a hole (good), but not how much the hole is of their own making. Hence the (sorry but they are) bonkers suggestions for ways forward. Take this vignette;
A case in point: after a long morning of paeans to natalism, Ed West pointed out that the most effective contraceptive in the world is the London housing market.
Well it is Mayor Khan who is largely responsible for the state of the London housing market
Really? Not the fact that London is a massively important financial, business and cultural centre, in a politically stable country with relatively modest taxes, the rule of law, and some fabulous restaurants?
None of which, if we're being honest, Mayor Kahn is responsible for.
Taxes in London and regulations are climbing under his regime and he also hasn't built enough new houses and flats in the capital or enabled the conditions for enterprise and development approvals
Are you in favour of building on the green belt in London then; or putting up blocks of flats in the middle of suburbs etc (of the kind that Theresa Villiers is concerned about?)
Plenty of brownbelt land to build on and as I said before I am a fan of well designed high rise blocks, especially in cities
If you want to be more persuasive about this, I would recommend reading the other side of the argument. Matthew Spry at Lichfields is the industry expert. The argument is that, in the 2000's (the last time we had a 'brownfield' first policy in national planning policy) housing completions went down to the lowest point in the post war history. That was at a time when there was a lot of brownfield land and brownfield development was in its infancy and developers could make good money out of it - much of the regeneration of London happened over this period. What you are left with is sites that were too difficult to build on, or have just not come forward because of ownership issues, or are just still in productive economic use and cannot be redeveloped.
"There is no evidence there is enough brownfield land, in any region, to deliver anything close to 300,000 extra homes per annum[25]. CPRE’s annual review of brownfield land[26] identifies capacity for 1.3m homes (1.1m of which was on brownfield registers, and 0.6m already consented). Registers can be a helpful indicator of brownfield potential, but crucially a) local authorities’ assessments of site deliverability are not independently tested; and b) they measure capacity looking ahead 15 years. At best it would equate to less than 87,000 homes per annum"
Ultimately I think that there will be a realisation that the 'brownfield' policy won't work and it is just a matter of time.
I'd suggest that you would be better off accepting that some green fields are going to be built on but try and avoid areas of important agricultural/landscape/cultural value.
Genuinely surprised Con-LD coalition is on 11% with LD voters. Davey may be on a mission to defeat the Tories, but he was a professional and able to work with the Conservatives, but I figured far fewer of his voters would suggest they wanted this option.
What is more surprising is the 19% of Labour voters who prefer a Lab LD coalition to a Lab majority. That suggests a large number of possible tactical voters.
Get the feeling Boris' mass expulsions (lauded by some as a masterstroke) will be looked back on as a most grievous error. There's simply no senior Tory figure left with views close to the median elector, for the Party to coalesce around.
Kicking out Churchill's grandson was a genius move...
What an unexpected endorsement of the hereditary principle.
I’ve just had a brilliant evening discussing parenting (and sex) with the PR woman at the Four Seasons Alexandria. Turns out Egyptian kids are just like British kids. Weirdly sober and passive and much better behaved than we were at their age
So this is a global thing
Then I got a golf cart back to my villa and we picked up two Egyptian ladies in hijabs from the graduation party on the beach - the end of year celebrations of the Arab Academy. Turned out the woman in her 80s was the mother of the woman on her mid 50s - and the latter woman had just graduated with an MBA (hence the presence of her beaming mother)
She turned to me and said “I was a chemist but now I have this! My life has changed! I love this city!”
That’s why I love this job. Sometimes the world depresses but sometimes you realise the world continues and improves for lots and lots of people
Genuinely surprised Con-LD coalition is on 11% with LD voters. Davey may be on a mission to defeat the Tories, but he was a professional and able to work with the Conservatives, but I figured far fewer of his voters would suggest they wanted this option.
What is more surprising is the 19% of Labour voters who prefer a Lab LD coalition to a Lab majority. That suggests a large number of possible tactical voters.
Sensible folk. Labour would be mad not to go for PR the next chance they get. They won't get it through without the Lib Dems, though, because there are enough my-way-or-the-highway idiots in Labour to stop it.
They won't get it through because at a referendum people will say no
@HTScotPol Quite a statment from economy secretary Neil Gray. He has had a issue a very rare ministerial direction (for SG) authorising spending to finish the second CalMac ferry at Ferguson Marine, as it may well be better value for money to buy a new from another yard
Listening to some of the language at the National Conservative event, I'm reminded of the dilemma I face on the issue of Freedom of Speech.
As a "marxist liberal" or should that be "liberal marxist", I shouldn't have too many qualms but unfortunately I do. The notion of free speech, rather like EU membership, has only two credible positions - you're either for it or against it. As with our half-hearted rebate-obsessed membership of the EU, Freedom of Speech either means you're completely opposed and have no problem shutting down opinions with which you disagree or you're completely in favour which means accepting the right to offend and be offended.
The Right to Offend is one of those tricky ones - we can all promise to be nice to each other but in the real world as soon as you bring in legislation or control to restrict anyone's right to freedom of speech, you're compromising that freedom for everyone.
I don't like hate speech, I don't like speech which sets out deliberately to offend or provoke or incite or divide but I'm forced to accept these are aspects of the human condition and whether I like them or not, they exist and always will exist. I'm also reminded jaw-jaw is better than war-war and allowing the right to vent verbally is preferable to the wrong of acting physically.
It's not comfortable but I suspect it's not meant to be - challenging those who wish to spread division and hate isn't easy because rational argument rarely works. They can be ignored - perhaps the first line of defence - and be left to shout into the darkness. That doesn't mean rational counter-argument can't and shouldn't be tried but in the expectation it won't have an impact.
I think the Nat Con example is a very good one as to why we need to defend freedom of speech even when we don't like what is being said.
Some of the things they are saying are pretty awful and I have no time for them at all.
But some of the things they are saying are not awful. Even if I still disagree with them. Talking about the ills of globalisation is not, as the Guardian today would have us believe, code for anti-semitism. It is code for gloabalisation is, in their opinion, crap. And I am inclined on some levels to agree with that.
But if some of the critics had their way then their definition - that it is all about anti-semitism - is the one that would apply and there are plenty out there who would ban them on that basis.
That would be a very dangerous position for us to find ourselves in. We do see too many cases from both sides these days where people are wilfully misinterpreting their opponents a means of daemonising them and the only thing that stops this being a complete disaster is that the more sane voices on both sides are still willing to stand up and fight for freedom of speech.
My reading of the National Conservatism Conference is that they are hoping that the political battleground will move on to a fight to the death between cultural marxism and cultural fascism, with the latter winning via a knockout blow. The culture war to end all culture wars.
Meanwhile, most of us would just like competent and sane governance - in my case, from the left of course.
Ultimately both sides have something of value to add. The extreme stuff coming out of the right has a function in countering the extreme stuff coming out of the left. I'm not sure this 'national conservatism' is even particularly extreme, in the scheme of things.
Note the Tories are seeing almost as much leakage to RefUK as Labour and the LDs.
So Sunak needs to protect his right flank as well as win back centrist swing voters
Doing both at once will be tricky, though, especially now the other lot aren't scary.
As for the wider issue, NatCons seem to have recognised they are in a hole (good), but not how much the hole is of their own making. Hence the (sorry but they are) bonkers suggestions for ways forward. Take this vignette;
A case in point: after a long morning of paeans to natalism, Ed West pointed out that the most effective contraceptive in the world is the London housing market.
Well it is Mayor Khan who is largely responsible for the state of the London housing market
Really? Not the fact that London is a massively important financial, business and cultural centre, in a politically stable country with relatively modest taxes, the rule of law, and some fabulous restaurants?
None of which, if we're being honest, Mayor Kahn is responsible for.
Taxes in London and regulations are climbing under his regime and he also hasn't built enough new houses and flats in the capital or enabled the conditions for enterprise and development approvals
Are you in favour of building on the green belt in London then; or putting up blocks of flats in the middle of suburbs etc (of the kind that Theresa Villiers is concerned about?)
Plenty of brownbelt land to build on and as I said before I am a fan of well designed high rise blocks, especially in cities
If you want to be more persuasive about this, I would recommend reading the other side of the argument. Matthew Spry at Lichfields is the industry expert. The argument is that, in the 2000's (the last time we had a 'brownfield' first policy in national planning policy) housing completions went down to the lowest point in the post war history. That was at a time when there was a lot of brownfield land and brownfield development was in its infancy and developers could make good money out of it - much of the regeneration of London happened over this period. What you are left with is sites that were too difficult to build on, or have just not come forward because of ownership issues, or are just still in productive economic use and cannot be redeveloped.
"There is no evidence there is enough brownfield land, in any region, to deliver anything close to 300,000 extra homes per annum[25]. CPRE’s annual review of brownfield land[26] identifies capacity for 1.3m homes (1.1m of which was on brownfield registers, and 0.6m already consented). Registers can be a helpful indicator of brownfield potential, but crucially a) local authorities’ assessments of site deliverability are not independently tested; and b) they measure capacity looking ahead 15 years. At best it would equate to less than 87,000 homes per annum"
Ultimately I think that there will be a realisation that the 'brownfield' policy won't work and it is just a matter of time.
I'd suggest that you would be better off accepting that some green fields are going to be built on but try and avoid areas of important agricultural/landscape/cultural value.
You could accept that but given a majority of Home Counties councils are now controlled by LD and/or Independent/Residents or Green NIMBY coalitions fiercely anti any building on greenbelt the idea such a policy will get anywhere without being imposed by central government is now 0
Note the Tories are seeing almost as much leakage to RefUK as Labour and the LDs.
So Sunak needs to protect his right flank as well as win back centrist swing voters
Doing both at once will be tricky, though, especially now the other lot aren't scary.
As for the wider issue, NatCons seem to have recognised they are in a hole (good), but not how much the hole is of their own making. Hence the (sorry but they are) bonkers suggestions for ways forward. Take this vignette;
A case in point: after a long morning of paeans to natalism, Ed West pointed out that the most effective contraceptive in the world is the London housing market.
Well it is Mayor Khan who is largely responsible for the state of the London housing market
Really? Not the fact that London is a massively important financial, business and cultural centre, in a politically stable country with relatively modest taxes, the rule of law, and some fabulous restaurants?
None of which, if we're being honest, Mayor Kahn is responsible for.
Taxes in London and regulations are climbing under his regime and he also hasn't built enough new houses and flats in the capital or enabled the conditions for enterprise and development approvals
Are you in favour of building on the green belt in London then; or putting up blocks of flats in the middle of suburbs etc (of the kind that Theresa Villiers is concerned about?)
Plenty of brownbelt land to build on and as I said before I am a fan of well designed high rise blocks, especially in cities
If you want to be more persuasive about this, I would recommend reading the other side of the argument. Matthew Spry at Lichfields is the industry expert. The argument is that, in the 2000's (the last time we had a 'brownfield' first policy in national planning policy) housing completions went down to the lowest point in the post war history. That was at a time when there was a lot of brownfield land and brownfield development was in its infancy and developers could make good money out of it - much of the regeneration of London happened over this period. What you are left with is sites that were too difficult to build on, or have just not come forward because of ownership issues, or are just still in productive economic use and cannot be redeveloped.
"There is no evidence there is enough brownfield land, in any region, to deliver anything close to 300,000 extra homes per annum[25]. CPRE’s annual review of brownfield land[26] identifies capacity for 1.3m homes (1.1m of which was on brownfield registers, and 0.6m already consented). Registers can be a helpful indicator of brownfield potential, but crucially a) local authorities’ assessments of site deliverability are not independently tested; and b) they measure capacity looking ahead 15 years. At best it would equate to less than 87,000 homes per annum"
Ultimately I think that there will be a realisation that the 'brownfield' policy won't work and it is just a matter of time.
I'd suggest that you would be better off accepting that some green fields are going to be built on but try and avoid areas of important agricultural/landscape/cultural value.
You could accept that but given a majority of Home Counties councils are now controlled by LD and/or Independent/Residents or Green NIMBY coalitions fiercely anti any building on greenbelt the idea such a policy will get anywhere without being imposed by central government is now 0
Sounds like an argument to elect a labour government!
And its correct, the four pack of onions is £1.24 at Morrisons.
But Morrisons are also selling a whole kg of onions for £1 which is about 10p per onion compared to the 31p in the small bag the Guardian is babbling about:
Now there are people who buy the same thing time and time again irrespective of relative price.
But if so then so what - its from such people that retailers make the big profits thus allowing those of us who look for value to get things so much cheaper.
Those two packs probably represent about the same quantity of usable onion (unless you know of something to do with the peelings; I don't). The big onions tend to have a far higher proportion of usable material. So something that used to be 65p is now £1 (with a bit more waste). It's still high price inflation, whichever way you slice it. It brings a tear to the eye.
The kg bags will give you more weight than the packs with a specified number in.
Your point about peelings is a fair one but a larger number of smaller onions gives you more flexibility and so reduces wastage.
And to minimise wastage even more its best to bag only the number you want at the kg price which you can do with many vegetables.
Estimate of voters turned away from Yorks & Humber, but could serve as a ball park nationally. Around 1% turned away initially, 0.6% turned away and returned, 0.4% turned away and failed to return.
Doesn't include anyone turned away by greeters and those who didn't turn out for reason of lack of ID.
Note the Tories are seeing almost as much leakage to RefUK as Labour and the LDs.
So Sunak needs to protect his right flank as well as win back centrist swing voters
Doing both at once will be tricky, though, especially now the other lot aren't scary.
As for the wider issue, NatCons seem to have recognised they are in a hole (good), but not how much the hole is of their own making. Hence the (sorry but they are) bonkers suggestions for ways forward. Take this vignette;
A case in point: after a long morning of paeans to natalism, Ed West pointed out that the most effective contraceptive in the world is the London housing market.
Well it is Mayor Khan who is largely responsible for the state of the London housing market
Really? Not the fact that London is a massively important financial, business and cultural centre, in a politically stable country with relatively modest taxes, the rule of law, and some fabulous restaurants?
None of which, if we're being honest, Mayor Kahn is responsible for.
Taxes in London and regulations are climbing under his regime and he also hasn't built enough new houses and flats in the capital or enabled the conditions for enterprise and development approvals
Are you in favour of building on the green belt in London then; or putting up blocks of flats in the middle of suburbs etc (of the kind that Theresa Villiers is concerned about?)
Plenty of brownbelt land to build on and as I said before I am a fan of well designed high rise blocks, especially in cities
If you want to be more persuasive about this, I would recommend reading the other side of the argument. Matthew Spry at Lichfields is the industry expert. The argument is that, in the 2000's (the last time we had a 'brownfield' first policy in national planning policy) housing completions went down to the lowest point in the post war history. That was at a time when there was a lot of brownfield land and brownfield development was in its infancy and developers could make good money out of it - much of the regeneration of London happened over this period. What you are left with is sites that were too difficult to build on, or have just not come forward because of ownership issues, or are just still in productive economic use and cannot be redeveloped.
"There is no evidence there is enough brownfield land, in any region, to deliver anything close to 300,000 extra homes per annum[25]. CPRE’s annual review of brownfield land[26] identifies capacity for 1.3m homes (1.1m of which was on brownfield registers, and 0.6m already consented). Registers can be a helpful indicator of brownfield potential, but crucially a) local authorities’ assessments of site deliverability are not independently tested; and b) they measure capacity looking ahead 15 years. At best it would equate to less than 87,000 homes per annum"
Ultimately I think that there will be a realisation that the 'brownfield' policy won't work and it is just a matter of time.
I'd suggest that you would be better off accepting that some green fields are going to be built on but try and avoid areas of important agricultural/landscape/cultural value.
Sorry but I don't buy that at all. The CPRE figure is brownfield that is available now for redevelopment, not land that might come into use in the next 15 years. The fact that the registers are used to look ahead for the next 15 years does not mean that the land they identify is not there now, just that they have a statutory requirement to look 15 years ahead overall for housing needs. This is a thoroughly disingenuous interpretation by Spry.
It is worth noting that Lichfield's whole purpose is to act as consultants to help building developers. It comes as no surprise that they would take their side in this debate when it comes to contentious issues like land banking and brownfield development.
Get the feeling Boris' mass expulsions (lauded by some as a masterstroke) will be looked back on as a most grievous error. There's simply no senior Tory figure left with views close to the median elector, for the Party to coalesce around.
It was disgraceful and suicidal. Only someone like Johnson would have done it. Our FPTP system requires the main parties to be coalitions. He has fucked the Conservative Party by ensuring that it is now mainly full of lightweights and dimwits because these were the only people who genuinely believed in the pointless populist disaster called Brexit
It's certainly going to make the trudge back to the centre longer, slower and more uncertain than it ought to be. (Go on- if Rishi had a Damascene conversion to Cameroonism tonight, let alone anything wetter, could he convincingly staff a government on that basis?) But there would have been a chronic problem anyway- BoJo just made it acute.
Since about 2017, voting Conservative has been a deeply weird thing for young people, especially educated young people, to do. After all, culturally and economically, the Conservative Party has been a racket aimed at making life comfortable for comfortable retirees for a while now. Young Conservatives have always been a bit odd, but that oddness has gone off the scale in the last decade. With the sort of consequences we saw today and yesterday.
The trouble is, that's your pipeline of policy thinkers, campaigners and frontline politicians, and it's leaking like a privatised water main so the supply at the end is reduced to a dribble.
Note the Tories are seeing almost as much leakage to RefUK as Labour and the LDs.
So Sunak needs to protect his right flank as well as win back centrist swing voters
Doing both at once will be tricky, though, especially now the other lot aren't scary.
As for the wider issue, NatCons seem to have recognised they are in a hole (good), but not how much the hole is of their own making. Hence the (sorry but they are) bonkers suggestions for ways forward. Take this vignette;
A case in point: after a long morning of paeans to natalism, Ed West pointed out that the most effective contraceptive in the world is the London housing market.
Well it is Mayor Khan who is largely responsible for the state of the London housing market
Really? Not the fact that London is a massively important financial, business and cultural centre, in a politically stable country with relatively modest taxes, the rule of law, and some fabulous restaurants?
None of which, if we're being honest, Mayor Kahn is responsible for.
Taxes in London and regulations are climbing under his regime and he also hasn't built enough new houses and flats in the capital or enabled the conditions for enterprise and development approvals
Are you in favour of building on the green belt in London then; or putting up blocks of flats in the middle of suburbs etc (of the kind that Theresa Villiers is concerned about?)
Plenty of brownbelt land to build on and as I said before I am a fan of well designed high rise blocks, especially in cities
If you want to be more persuasive about this, I would recommend reading the other side of the argument. Matthew Spry at Lichfields is the industry expert. The argument is that, in the 2000's (the last time we had a 'brownfield' first policy in national planning policy) housing completions went down to the lowest point in the post war history. That was at a time when there was a lot of brownfield land and brownfield development was in its infancy and developers could make good money out of it - much of the regeneration of London happened over this period. What you are left with is sites that were too difficult to build on, or have just not come forward because of ownership issues, or are just still in productive economic use and cannot be redeveloped.
"There is no evidence there is enough brownfield land, in any region, to deliver anything close to 300,000 extra homes per annum[25]. CPRE’s annual review of brownfield land[26] identifies capacity for 1.3m homes (1.1m of which was on brownfield registers, and 0.6m already consented). Registers can be a helpful indicator of brownfield potential, but crucially a) local authorities’ assessments of site deliverability are not independently tested; and b) they measure capacity looking ahead 15 years. At best it would equate to less than 87,000 homes per annum"
Ultimately I think that there will be a realisation that the 'brownfield' policy won't work and it is just a matter of time.
I'd suggest that you would be better off accepting that some green fields are going to be built on but try and avoid areas of important agricultural/landscape/cultural value.
You could accept that but given a majority of Home Counties councils are now controlled by LD and/or Independent/Residents or Green NIMBY coalitions fiercely anti any building on greenbelt the idea such a policy will get anywhere without being imposed by central government is now 0
Sounds like an argument to elect a labour government!
At least Tory council candidates could then run on a protest ticket, against the Labour government imposing housing targets on greenbelt land and the LD/Independent councils that were unable to stop them.
2025/26/27 may be good years to be Tory local election candidates, even if 2024 will still be a very bad year for both Tory local council and national Westminster candidates
I'm looking forward to the launch of the breakaway National Conservative Party in 2025 - presumably once the One Nation supporters re-capture the party, the Natcons will break away and form their own group absorbing Reform and forming their distinct social conservative movement.
What makes you think the One Nation will capture the Party by 2025? I can't see it.
After the 1997 defeat, it took about a decade to get to Cameron. I suspect it will take longer this time. For starters, there simply isn't the body count for a One Nation counter-revolution.
Half of whom were purged by Boris, of course. As bad things got under Corbyn, at least the moderates in Labour continued to be a majority of the PLP. Not the case with the Tories.
One of the subsidiary great mysteries of 2015-20. Why was Momentum etc so bad at taking over the Labour Party when they had the chance?
In my admittedly unfashionable opinion, it was mainly because they deferred to Corbyn, who was personally opposed to deselections and purges - he genuinely believed you should try to talk opponents round, not purge them or even criticise them (he was notorious for his reluctance to attack failing Tory Ministers - "politics shouldn't be about personalities, it's the policies that are wrong"). It was more or less an accident that he was the left-wing candidate for leadership - I doubt if many of the others would have been that democratic/naive (take your pick).
It's not comfortable but I suspect it's not meant to be - challenging those who wish to spread division and hate isn't easy because rational argument rarely works. They can be ignored - perhaps the first line of defence - and be left to shout into the darkness. That doesn't mean rational counter-argument can't and shouldn't be tried but in the expectation it won't have an impact.
Framing is important
Nick Griffin was invited on Question Time once, and was essentially laughed off the stage.
Nigel Fucking Farage was invited on time and again, and lauded for it, despite saying things that were at least as batshit crazy as Griffin.
Why wasn't he ridiculed everywhere he went? Why did anyone take him seriously, ever?
Because Nick Griffin looks like a fascist, whereas Farage looks like a banker.
Yes, it's superficial but it's true.
Perhaps because a lot of people agreed with farage on the eu...oh look it was put to a test with actual votes....more agreed with him on the EU than you scott....seems you thought they were laughing with you when they were laughing at you
The BNP had the same position on the EU: they were in favour of leaving. So that doesn't help.
So what? We should oppose leaving a shit institution just because some racist arsehole also didn't like the institution grow up please.
Listening to some of the language at the National Conservative event, I'm reminded of the dilemma I face on the issue of Freedom of Speech.
As a "marxist liberal" or should that be "liberal marxist", I shouldn't have too many qualms but unfortunately I do. The notion of free speech, rather like EU membership, has only two credible positions - you're either for it or against it. As with our half-hearted rebate-obsessed membership of the EU, Freedom of Speech either means you're completely opposed and have no problem shutting down opinions with which you disagree or you're completely in favour which means accepting the right to offend and be offended.
The Right to Offend is one of those tricky ones - we can all promise to be nice to each other but in the real world as soon as you bring in legislation or control to restrict anyone's right to freedom of speech, you're compromising that freedom for everyone.
I don't like hate speech, I don't like speech which sets out deliberately to offend or provoke or incite or divide but I'm forced to accept these are aspects of the human condition and whether I like them or not, they exist and always will exist. I'm also reminded jaw-jaw is better than war-war and allowing the right to vent verbally is preferable to the wrong of acting physically.
It's not comfortable but I suspect it's not meant to be - challenging those who wish to spread division and hate isn't easy because rational argument rarely works. They can be ignored - perhaps the first line of defence - and be left to shout into the darkness. That doesn't mean rational counter-argument can't and shouldn't be tried but in the expectation it won't have an impact.
I think the Nat Con example is a very good one as to why we need to defend freedom of speech even when we don't like what is being said.
Some of the things they are saying are pretty awful and I have no time for them at all.
But some of the things they are saying are not awful. Even if I still disagree with them. Talking about the ills of globalisation is not, as the Guardian today would have us believe, code for anti-semitism. It is code for gloabalisation is, in their opinion, crap. And I am inclined on some levels to agree with that.
But if some of the critics had their way then their definition - that it is all about anti-semitism - is the one that would apply and there are plenty out there who would ban them on that basis.
That would be a very dangerous position for us to find ourselves in. We do see too many cases from both sides these days where people are wilfully misinterpreting their opponents a means of daemonising them and the only thing that stops this being a complete disaster is that the more sane voices on both sides are still willing to stand up and fight for freedom of speech.
Note the distinction between "globalisation", and "globalist". "Globalisation" is something you often hear about from the left, and it's primarily a criticism of capitalism operating above the reach of national governments. "Globalist" is often used in a different context, and often nothing to do with criticising capitalism. Indeed, it's often used to attack the left. And, I'm afraid to say, it is also often used in conjunction with anti-Semitic tropes.
Using the term "globalist" doesn't make someone an anti-Semite, but it merits watching out for other things they say in the same context. It's usually clear within a few sentences whether they dog-whistling racists or leftists. Or both.
Sorry but that is dancing on the head of a pin. It is taking a small subsection of a spectrum of views and using them to tar the whole lot. It is lazy and pernicious.
Nor is it only racists or lefties who are anti-globalisation and anti-globalists. I pretty much detest the left but I believe globalisation has been very bad on the whole for a large part of the world's population (just as it has been good for some of them). You are trying to pigeon hole people to suit your own ideology.
Interesting rises in the Lib Dem vote here, apparently at the expense of Labour and the Greens.
Labour need to keep more of an eye on their left, and particularly civil liberies flanks, I think, otherwise they may fall into the later New Labour's trap with the LD's from around 2005 onwards.Hate to say i told you so, but..
On the subject of Lib Dems the reception to this guardian article on Davey has been rather heartening to see. People being positive for a change, even on Twitter.
This tweet from someone who vaguely knew him at school is typical of the genre.
Get the feeling Boris' mass expulsions (lauded by some as a masterstroke) will be looked back on as a most grievous error. There's simply no senior Tory figure left with views close to the median elector, for the Party to coalesce around.
Kicking out Churchill's grandson was a genius move...
What an unexpected endorsement of the hereditary principle.
Soames was an MP at the time, elected by the people.
Yes, and Scott P's point was that he deserved to remain one due to who his grandpa was.
I’ve just had a brilliant evening discussing parenting (and sex) with the PR woman at the Four Seasons Alexandria. Turns out Egyptian kids are just like British kids. Weirdly sober and passive and much better behaved than we were at their age
So this is a global thing
Then I got a golf cart back to my villa and we picked up two Egyptian ladies in hijabs from the graduation party on the beach - the end of year celebrations of the Arab Academy. Turned out the woman in her 80s was the mother of the woman on her mid 50s - and the latter woman had just graduated with an MBA (hence the presence of her beaming mother)
She turned to me and said “I was a chemist but now I have this! My life has changed! I love this city!”
That’s why I love this job. Sometimes the world depresses but sometimes you realise the world continues and improves for lots and lots of people
I'm not the "better behaved" is true of kids in LA.
My daughter is 15, and one of the kids in her class steals and imbibes percocet. Drug (mostly cannabis) and alcohol use is rampant.
Listening to some of the language at the National Conservative event, I'm reminded of the dilemma I face on the issue of Freedom of Speech.
As a "marxist liberal" or should that be "liberal marxist", I shouldn't have too many qualms but unfortunately I do. The notion of free speech, rather like EU membership, has only two credible positions - you're either for it or against it. As with our half-hearted rebate-obsessed membership of the EU, Freedom of Speech either means you're completely opposed and have no problem shutting down opinions with which you disagree or you're completely in favour which means accepting the right to offend and be offended.
The Right to Offend is one of those tricky ones - we can all promise to be nice to each other but in the real world as soon as you bring in legislation or control to restrict anyone's right to freedom of speech, you're compromising that freedom for everyone.
I don't like hate speech, I don't like speech which sets out deliberately to offend or provoke or incite or divide but I'm forced to accept these are aspects of the human condition and whether I like them or not, they exist and always will exist. I'm also reminded jaw-jaw is better than war-war and allowing the right to vent verbally is preferable to the wrong of acting physically.
It's not comfortable but I suspect it's not meant to be - challenging those who wish to spread division and hate isn't easy because rational argument rarely works. They can be ignored - perhaps the first line of defence - and be left to shout into the darkness. That doesn't mean rational counter-argument can't and shouldn't be tried but in the expectation it won't have an impact.
I think the Nat Con example is a very good one as to why we need to defend freedom of speech even when we don't like what is being said.
Some of the things they are saying are pretty awful and I have no time for them at all.
But some of the things they are saying are not awful. Even if I still disagree with them. Talking about the ills of globalisation is not, as the Guardian today would have us believe, code for anti-semitism. It is code for gloabalisation is, in their opinion, crap. And I am inclined on some levels to agree with that.
But if some of the critics had their way then their definition - that it is all about anti-semitism - is the one that would apply and there are plenty out there who would ban them on that basis.
That would be a very dangerous position for us to find ourselves in. We do see too many cases from both sides these days where people are wilfully misinterpreting their opponents a means of daemonising them and the only thing that stops this being a complete disaster is that the more sane voices on both sides are still willing to stand up and fight for freedom of speech.
Note the distinction between "globalisation", and "globalist". "Globalisation" is something you often hear about from the left, and it's primarily a criticism of capitalism operating above the reach of national governments. "Globalist" is often used in a different context, and often nothing to do with criticising capitalism. Indeed, it's often used to attack the left. And, I'm afraid to say, it is also often used in conjunction with anti-Semitic tropes.
Using the term "globalist" doesn't make someone an anti-Semite, but it merits watching out for other things they say in the same context. It's usually clear within a few sentences whether they dog-whistling racists or leftists. Or both.
Sorry but that is dancing on the head of a pin. It is taking a small subsection of a spectrum of views and using them to tar the whole lot. It is lazy and pernicious.
Nor is it only racists or lefties who are anti-globalisation and anti-globalists. I pretty much detest the left but I believe globalisation has been very bad on the whole for a large part of the world's population (just as it has been good for some of them). You are trying to pigeon hole people to suit your own ideology.
I whole heartedly agree with you on free speech but I completely disagree with you on globalisation. For the vast majority of humanity the last 30 years have been brilliant. 2 billion people have been lifted out of poverty into a reasonable lifestyle. Maybe more
It’s been RELATIVELY shit for less educated people in the West who were used to coasting along on the accrued advantage of 300 years of western supremacy. Now they have to compete with that newly ambitious Egyptian lady I met tonight
I sympathise with working class westerners and they are entitled to vote for Trump or Le Pen but they don’t get to create their own reality. Globalisation has generally been good for Homo sapiens
Note the Tories are seeing almost as much leakage to RefUK as Labour and the LDs.
So Sunak needs to protect his right flank as well as win back centrist swing voters
Doing both at once will be tricky, though, especially now the other lot aren't scary.
As for the wider issue, NatCons seem to have recognised they are in a hole (good), but not how much the hole is of their own making. Hence the (sorry but they are) bonkers suggestions for ways forward. Take this vignette;
A case in point: after a long morning of paeans to natalism, Ed West pointed out that the most effective contraceptive in the world is the London housing market.
Well it is Mayor Khan who is largely responsible for the state of the London housing market
Really? Not the fact that London is a massively important financial, business and cultural centre, in a politically stable country with relatively modest taxes, the rule of law, and some fabulous restaurants?
None of which, if we're being honest, Mayor Kahn is responsible for.
Taxes in London and regulations are climbing under his regime and he also hasn't built enough new houses and flats in the capital or enabled the conditions for enterprise and development approvals
Are you in favour of building on the green belt in London then; or putting up blocks of flats in the middle of suburbs etc (of the kind that Theresa Villiers is concerned about?)
Plenty of brownbelt land to build on and as I said before I am a fan of well designed high rise blocks, especially in cities
If you want to be more persuasive about this, I would recommend reading the other side of the argument. Matthew Spry at Lichfields is the industry expert. The argument is that, in the 2000's (the last time we had a 'brownfield' first policy in national planning policy) housing completions went down to the lowest point in the post war history. That was at a time when there was a lot of brownfield land and brownfield development was in its infancy and developers could make good money out of it - much of the regeneration of London happened over this period. What you are left with is sites that were too difficult to build on, or have just not come forward because of ownership issues, or are just still in productive economic use and cannot be redeveloped.
"There is no evidence there is enough brownfield land, in any region, to deliver anything close to 300,000 extra homes per annum[25]. CPRE’s annual review of brownfield land[26] identifies capacity for 1.3m homes (1.1m of which was on brownfield registers, and 0.6m already consented). Registers can be a helpful indicator of brownfield potential, but crucially a) local authorities’ assessments of site deliverability are not independently tested; and b) they measure capacity looking ahead 15 years. At best it would equate to less than 87,000 homes per annum"
Ultimately I think that there will be a realisation that the 'brownfield' policy won't work and it is just a matter of time.
I'd suggest that you would be better off accepting that some green fields are going to be built on but try and avoid areas of important agricultural/landscape/cultural value.
You could accept that but given a majority of Home Counties councils are now controlled by LD and/or Independent/Residents or Green NIMBY coalitions fiercely anti any building on greenbelt the idea such a policy will get anywhere without being imposed by central government is now 0
Sounds like an argument to elect a labour government!
At least Tory council candidates could then run on a protest ticket, against the Labour government imposing housing targets on greenbelt land and the LD/Independent councils that were unable to stop them.
2025/26/27 may be good years to be Tory local election candidates, even if 2024 will still be a very bad year for both Tory local council and national Westminster candidates
Yep. What goes around comes around. I don't know when Epping has elections (all up or 1/3rd) but after 2024 your hard work will probably get you elected @HYUFD.
I’ve just had a brilliant evening discussing parenting (and sex) with the PR woman at the Four Seasons Alexandria. Turns out Egyptian kids are just like British kids. Weirdly sober and passive and much better behaved than we were at their age
So this is a global thing
Then I got a golf cart back to my villa and we picked up two Egyptian ladies in hijabs from the graduation party on the beach - the end of year celebrations of the Arab Academy. Turned out the woman in her 80s was the mother of the woman on her mid 50s - and the latter woman had just graduated with an MBA (hence the presence of her beaming mother)
She turned to me and said “I was a chemist but now I have this! My life has changed! I love this city!”
That’s why I love this job. Sometimes the world depresses but sometimes you realise the world continues and improves for lots and lots of people
I'm not the "better behaved" is true of kids in LA.
My daughter is 15, and one of the kids in her class steals and imbibes percocet. Drug (mostly cannabis) and alcohol use is rampant.
Returning to my hypothesis of this morning that on immigration what we're seeing is:
1) Reduced European immigration to Leave voting areas. 2) Increased non-European immigration to Remain voting areas
Isn't that what both sides wanted ?
If so then why isn't everyone happy ?
Significant, and I mean genuinely significant, increase in the number of black people you see out and about in Knottingley, in Yvette Cooper’s ward, 68% leave IIRC. We’re where the A1 and M62 cross. Lots of warehousing and industry, 24 hour shift patterns.
When I lived in the Midlands 20 years ago and did similar work we had lots of Kurds, Iraqis, etc, but up here there were very, very few non-whites. Plenty of Eastern Europeans mind but unless you spoke to them you assumed they were native.
Very different now. Doesn’t bother me, but I do wonder what some of our more enthusiastic Brexiters think about it deep down. I suspect it isn’t quite what they expected.
Rub their racist noses in diversity as far as I’m concerned. But I bet they didn’t think when they voted to kick all the Europeans out they’d find themselves with black people moving here instead.
I’ve been, unfortunately, spending a lot of time at Pinderfields hospital in Wakefield recently. Lots and lots of African staff, again noticeably more than pre-Brexit. Backs up what my sister, a nurse, told me, that they’re recruiting from Africa to fill vacancies. She has no problem with black staff per se but she did say that their English generally isn’t as good as the EU workers we used to have, which causes problems.
My mum, sadly shifting ever rightward as she ages, mutters about ‘them’ not speaking English properly when I’ve been taking her to visit her poorly husband.
So, yeah, in this bit of the leave-voting Red Wall there’s definitely reduced European immigration. But it’s been replaced to a certain extent by non-white, African immigration. Make of that what you will.
Yes, and Scott P's point was that he deserved to remain one due to who his grandpa was.
Nope
My point was that a Conservative and Unionist Party with no room for Churchill's grandson is fucked
Why many children have diametrically opposed political views to their parents let alone grand parents. Why should there be a place in a party for anyone due to who their parent or grandparent was.....should there be a place in the labour party for me because my grandfather was a totally committed socialist? I would suggest it would be an uncomfortable fit at best
Listening to some of the language at the National Conservative event, I'm reminded of the dilemma I face on the issue of Freedom of Speech.
As a "marxist liberal" or should that be "liberal marxist", I shouldn't have too many qualms but unfortunately I do. The notion of free speech, rather like EU membership, has only two credible positions - you're either for it or against it. As with our half-hearted rebate-obsessed membership of the EU, Freedom of Speech either means you're completely opposed and have no problem shutting down opinions with which you disagree or you're completely in favour which means accepting the right to offend and be offended.
The Right to Offend is one of those tricky ones - we can all promise to be nice to each other but in the real world as soon as you bring in legislation or control to restrict anyone's right to freedom of speech, you're compromising that freedom for everyone.
I don't like hate speech, I don't like speech which sets out deliberately to offend or provoke or incite or divide but I'm forced to accept these are aspects of the human condition and whether I like them or not, they exist and always will exist. I'm also reminded jaw-jaw is better than war-war and allowing the right to vent verbally is preferable to the wrong of acting physically.
It's not comfortable but I suspect it's not meant to be - challenging those who wish to spread division and hate isn't easy because rational argument rarely works. They can be ignored - perhaps the first line of defence - and be left to shout into the darkness. That doesn't mean rational counter-argument can't and shouldn't be tried but in the expectation it won't have an impact.
I think the Nat Con example is a very good one as to why we need to defend freedom of speech even when we don't like what is being said.
Some of the things they are saying are pretty awful and I have no time for them at all.
But some of the things they are saying are not awful. Even if I still disagree with them. Talking about the ills of globalisation is not, as the Guardian today would have us believe, code for anti-semitism. It is code for gloabalisation is, in their opinion, crap. And I am inclined on some levels to agree with that.
But if some of the critics had their way then their definition - that it is all about anti-semitism - is the one that would apply and there are plenty out there who would ban them on that basis.
That would be a very dangerous position for us to find ourselves in. We do see too many cases from both sides these days where people are wilfully misinterpreting their opponents a means of daemonising them and the only thing that stops this being a complete disaster is that the more sane voices on both sides are still willing to stand up and fight for freedom of speech.
Note the distinction between "globalisation", and "globalist". "Globalisation" is something you often hear about from the left, and it's primarily a criticism of capitalism operating above the reach of national governments. "Globalist" is often used in a different context, and often nothing to do with criticising capitalism. Indeed, it's often used to attack the left. And, I'm afraid to say, it is also often used in conjunction with anti-Semitic tropes.
Using the term "globalist" doesn't make someone an anti-Semite, but it merits watching out for other things they say in the same context. It's usually clear within a few sentences whether they dog-whistling racists or leftists. Or both.
Sorry but that is dancing on the head of a pin. It is taking a small subsection of a spectrum of views and using them to tar the whole lot. It is lazy and pernicious.
Nor is it only racists or lefties who are anti-globalisation and anti-globalists. I pretty much detest the left but I believe globalisation has been very bad on the whole for a large part of the world's population (just as it has been good for some of them). You are trying to pigeon hole people to suit your own ideology.
I whole heartedly agree with you on free speech but I completely disagree with you on globalisation. For the vast majority of humanity the last 30 years have been brilliant. 2 billion people have been lifted out of poverty into a reasonable lifestyle. Maybe more
It’s been RELATIVELY shit for less educated people in the West who were used to coasting along on the accrued advantage of 300 years of western supremacy. Now they have to compete with that newly ambitious Egyptian lady I met tonight
I sympathise with working class westerners and they are entitled to vote for Trump or Le Pen but they don’t get to create their own reality. Globalisation has generally been good for Homo sapiens
I fucking hate saying this, but this is absolutely spot on.
Get the feeling Boris' mass expulsions (lauded by some as a masterstroke) will be looked back on as a most grievous error. There's simply no senior Tory figure left with views close to the median elector, for the Party to coalesce around.
It was disgraceful and suicidal. Only someone like Johnson would have done it. Our FPTP system requires the main parties to be coalitions. He has fucked the Conservative Party by ensuring that it is now mainly full of lightweights and dimwits because these were the only people who genuinely believed in the pointless populist disaster called Brexit
It's certainly going to make the trudge back to the centre longer, slower and more uncertain than it ought to be.
It's interesting how you (and some other posters over the last few days) are so utterly convinced that 'centrism' is the electoral gold at the end of the rainbow. Clearly that wasn't the case at the last GE. And in today's UK politics we have two extremely 'centrist' parties, coalescing as they have around big state, high tax, low growth models, both socially liberal and utterly wedded to bonkers greenery regardless of the economical cost. And neither of them is able to seal the deal with the electorate, which shows every sign of heartily disliking both of them. Electoral success lies in an ambitious and convincing political platform that inspires voters that their prospects can improve. That has nothing to do with centrism - in-fact the two are fairly diametrically opposed.
Note the Tories are seeing almost as much leakage to RefUK as Labour and the LDs.
So Sunak needs to protect his right flank as well as win back centrist swing voters
Doing both at once will be tricky, though, especially now the other lot aren't scary.
As for the wider issue, NatCons seem to have recognised they are in a hole (good), but not how much the hole is of their own making. Hence the (sorry but they are) bonkers suggestions for ways forward. Take this vignette;
A case in point: after a long morning of paeans to natalism, Ed West pointed out that the most effective contraceptive in the world is the London housing market.
Well it is Mayor Khan who is largely responsible for the state of the London housing market
Really? Not the fact that London is a massively important financial, business and cultural centre, in a politically stable country with relatively modest taxes, the rule of law, and some fabulous restaurants?
None of which, if we're being honest, Mayor Kahn is responsible for.
Taxes in London and regulations are climbing under his regime and he also hasn't built enough new houses and flats in the capital or enabled the conditions for enterprise and development approvals
Are you in favour of building on the green belt in London then; or putting up blocks of flats in the middle of suburbs etc (of the kind that Theresa Villiers is concerned about?)
Plenty of brownbelt land to build on and as I said before I am a fan of well designed high rise blocks, especially in cities
If you want to be more persuasive about this, I would recommend reading the other side of the argument. Matthew Spry at Lichfields is the industry expert. The argument is that, in the 2000's (the last time we had a 'brownfield' first policy in national planning policy) housing completions went down to the lowest point in the post war history. That was at a time when there was a lot of brownfield land and brownfield development was in its infancy and developers could make good money out of it - much of the regeneration of London happened over this period. What you are left with is sites that were too difficult to build on, or have just not come forward because of ownership issues, or are just still in productive economic use and cannot be redeveloped.
"There is no evidence there is enough brownfield land, in any region, to deliver anything close to 300,000 extra homes per annum[25]. CPRE’s annual review of brownfield land[26] identifies capacity for 1.3m homes (1.1m of which was on brownfield registers, and 0.6m already consented). Registers can be a helpful indicator of brownfield potential, but crucially a) local authorities’ assessments of site deliverability are not independently tested; and b) they measure capacity looking ahead 15 years. At best it would equate to less than 87,000 homes per annum"
Ultimately I think that there will be a realisation that the 'brownfield' policy won't work and it is just a matter of time.
I'd suggest that you would be better off accepting that some green fields are going to be built on but try and avoid areas of important agricultural/landscape/cultural value.
Sorry but I don't buy that at all. The CPRE figure is brownfield that is available now for redevelopment, not land that might come into use in the next 15 years. The fact that the registers are used to look ahead for the next 15 years does not mean that the land they identify is not there now, just that they have a statutory requirement to look 15 years ahead overall for housing needs. This is a thoroughly disingenuous interpretation by Spry.
It is worth noting that Lichfield's whole purpose is to act as consultants to help building developers. It comes as no surprise that they would take their side in this debate when it comes to contentious issues like land banking and brownfield development.
I realise that - that is why I said it was the 'other side of the argument' and not something I thought was the 'truth'. I would not discredit this work on the basis of the interests behind it though - it is not just propoganda of the kind that comes out of certain organisations that claim to know about planning.
My instinct though is that it is largely right. Brownfield development is being made very difficult by a lack of supply of decent sites and high build costs, and the amount of environmental regulation in general.
Listening to some of the language at the National Conservative event, I'm reminded of the dilemma I face on the issue of Freedom of Speech.
As a "marxist liberal" or should that be "liberal marxist", I shouldn't have too many qualms but unfortunately I do. The notion of free speech, rather like EU membership, has only two credible positions - you're either for it or against it. As with our half-hearted rebate-obsessed membership of the EU, Freedom of Speech either means you're completely opposed and have no problem shutting down opinions with which you disagree or you're completely in favour which means accepting the right to offend and be offended.
The Right to Offend is one of those tricky ones - we can all promise to be nice to each other but in the real world as soon as you bring in legislation or control to restrict anyone's right to freedom of speech, you're compromising that freedom for everyone.
I don't like hate speech, I don't like speech which sets out deliberately to offend or provoke or incite or divide but I'm forced to accept these are aspects of the human condition and whether I like them or not, they exist and always will exist. I'm also reminded jaw-jaw is better than war-war and allowing the right to vent verbally is preferable to the wrong of acting physically.
It's not comfortable but I suspect it's not meant to be - challenging those who wish to spread division and hate isn't easy because rational argument rarely works. They can be ignored - perhaps the first line of defence - and be left to shout into the darkness. That doesn't mean rational counter-argument can't and shouldn't be tried but in the expectation it won't have an impact.
I think the Nat Con example is a very good one as to why we need to defend freedom of speech even when we don't like what is being said.
Some of the things they are saying are pretty awful and I have no time for them at all.
But some of the things they are saying are not awful. Even if I still disagree with them. Talking about the ills of globalisation is not, as the Guardian today would have us believe, code for anti-semitism. It is code for gloabalisation is, in their opinion, crap. And I am inclined on some levels to agree with that.
But if some of the critics had their way then their definition - that it is all about anti-semitism - is the one that would apply and there are plenty out there who would ban them on that basis.
That would be a very dangerous position for us to find ourselves in. We do see too many cases from both sides these days where people are wilfully misinterpreting their opponents a means of daemonising them and the only thing that stops this being a complete disaster is that the more sane voices on both sides are still willing to stand up and fight for freedom of speech.
Note the distinction between "globalisation", and "globalist". "Globalisation" is something you often hear about from the left, and it's primarily a criticism of capitalism operating above the reach of national governments. "Globalist" is often used in a different context, and often nothing to do with criticising capitalism. Indeed, it's often used to attack the left. And, I'm afraid to say, it is also often used in conjunction with anti-Semitic tropes.
Using the term "globalist" doesn't make someone an anti-Semite, but it merits watching out for other things they say in the same context. It's usually clear within a few sentences whether they dog-whistling racists or leftists. Or both.
Sorry but that is dancing on the head of a pin. It is taking a small subsection of a spectrum of views and using them to tar the whole lot. It is lazy and pernicious.
Nor is it only racists or lefties who are anti-globalisation and anti-globalists. I pretty much detest the left but I believe globalisation has been very bad on the whole for a large part of the world's population (just as it has been good for some of them). You are trying to pigeon hole people to suit your own ideology.
I whole heartedly agree with you on free speech but I completely disagree with you on globalisation. For the vast majority of humanity the last 30 years have been brilliant. 2 billion people have been lifted out of poverty into a reasonable lifestyle. Maybe more
It’s been RELATIVELY shit for less educated people in the West who were used to coasting along on the accrued advantage of 300 years of western supremacy. Now they have to compete with that newly ambitious Egyptian lady I met tonight
I sympathise with working class westerners and they are entitled to vote for Trump or Le Pen but they don’t get to create their own reality. Globalisation has generally been good for Homo sapiens
I fucking hate saying this, but this is absolutely spot on.
While it is true and don't disagree on the thrust of it, there is a point neglected in this. Western governements all embraced globalisation but they were elected not to look after the world but to look after the country that elected them. Globalisation helped the poor of the world but often harmed the bottom half of their countries....the people that voted for them and expected to be considered in their decisions.
Returning to my hypothesis of this morning that on immigration what we're seeing is:
1) Reduced European immigration to Leave voting areas. 2) Increased non-European immigration to Remain voting areas
Isn't that what both sides wanted ?
If so then why isn't everyone happy ?
Significant, and I mean genuinely significant, increase in the number of black people you see out and about in Knottingley, in Yvette Cooper’s ward, 68% leave IIRC. We’re where the A1 and M62 cross. Lots of warehousing and industry, 24 hour shift patterns.
When I lived in the Midlands 20 years ago and did similar work we had lots of Kurds, Iraqis, etc, but up here there were very, very few non-whites. Plenty of Eastern Europeans mind but unless you spoke to them you assumed they were native.
Very different now. Doesn’t bother me, but I do wonder what some of our more enthusiastic Brexiters think about it deep down. I suspect it isn’t quite what they expected.
Rub their racist noses in diversity as far as I’m concerned. But I bet they didn’t think when they voted to kick all the Europeans out they’d find themselves with black people moving here instead.
I’ve been, unfortunately, spending a lot of time at Pinderfields hospital in Wakefield recently. Lots and lots of African staff, again noticeably more than pre-Brexit. Backs up what my sister, a nurse, told me, that they’re recruiting from Africa to fill vacancies. She has no problem with black staff per se but she did say that their English generally isn’t as good as the EU workers we used to have, which causes problems.
My mum, sadly shifting ever rightward as she ages, mutters about ‘them’ not speaking English properly when I’ve been taking her to visit her poorly husband.
So, yeah, in this bit of the leave-voting Red Wall there’s definitely reduced European immigration. But it’s been replaced to a certain extent by non-white, African immigration. Make of that what you will.
There's certainly more third world origin health and social care workers.
But that was always going to happen in this country bar a big increase in wages in those jobs.
And something which is happening I suspect in every western country.
It's not comfortable but I suspect it's not meant to be - challenging those who wish to spread division and hate isn't easy because rational argument rarely works. They can be ignored - perhaps the first line of defence - and be left to shout into the darkness. That doesn't mean rational counter-argument can't and shouldn't be tried but in the expectation it won't have an impact.
Framing is important
Nick Griffin was invited on Question Time once, and was essentially laughed off the stage.
Nigel Fucking Farage was invited on time and again, and lauded for it, despite saying things that were at least as batshit crazy as Griffin.
Why wasn't he ridiculed everywhere he went? Why did anyone take him seriously, ever?
Because Nick Griffin looks like a fascist, whereas Farage looks like a banker..
I sympathise with working class westerners and they are entitled to vote for Trump or Le Pen but they don’t get to create their own reality.
*cough*BREXIT*cough*
The piquant reality is that Brexit is, probably, for the first time, about to deliver serious potential benefits. The EU is desperate to prove its relevance and potency and the only way it can do this is by regulation. “We are a regulatory superpower” blah blah
So the EU is now wheeling out laws regulating crypto and AI and all kinds of tech which might easily extinguish innovation in these areas in the EU. That will leave the UK very nicely placed as a large English speaking economy next to Europe unencumbered by these laws
Of course it’s quite possible kir fuxking royale starmer will screw this up as our future dull witted Remoaner prime minister nonetheless the opportunity is now there
Get the feeling Boris' mass expulsions (lauded by some as a masterstroke) will be looked back on as a most grievous error. There's simply no senior Tory figure left with views close to the median elector, for the Party to coalesce around.
Kicking out Churchill's grandson was a genius move...
What an unexpected endorsement of the hereditary principle.
Soames was an MP at the time, elected by the people.
Yes, but the framing of the post was specifically about kicking out Churchill's grandson, as though that was particularly wrong as compared to kicking out others. That is, for some reason his being Churchill's grandson was relevant.
What's the point in being teenager if you can't have a quick fag behind the bike side, sneak your first pint with fake ID, and indelicately fondle Ceilia's breasts for the first time in a skate park late on Friday night?
Listening to some of the language at the National Conservative event, I'm reminded of the dilemma I face on the issue of Freedom of Speech.
As a "marxist liberal" or should that be "liberal marxist", I shouldn't have too many qualms but unfortunately I do. The notion of free speech, rather like EU membership, has only two credible positions - you're either for it or against it. As with our half-hearted rebate-obsessed membership of the EU, Freedom of Speech either means you're completely opposed and have no problem shutting down opinions with which you disagree or you're completely in favour which means accepting the right to offend and be offended.
The Right to Offend is one of those tricky ones - we can all promise to be nice to each other but in the real world as soon as you bring in legislation or control to restrict anyone's right to freedom of speech, you're compromising that freedom for everyone.
I don't like hate speech, I don't like speech which sets out deliberately to offend or provoke or incite or divide but I'm forced to accept these are aspects of the human condition and whether I like them or not, they exist and always will exist. I'm also reminded jaw-jaw is better than war-war and allowing the right to vent verbally is preferable to the wrong of acting physically.
It's not comfortable but I suspect it's not meant to be - challenging those who wish to spread division and hate isn't easy because rational argument rarely works. They can be ignored - perhaps the first line of defence - and be left to shout into the darkness. That doesn't mean rational counter-argument can't and shouldn't be tried but in the expectation it won't have an impact.
I think the Nat Con example is a very good one as to why we need to defend freedom of speech even when we don't like what is being said.
Some of the things they are saying are pretty awful and I have no time for them at all.
But some of the things they are saying are not awful. Even if I still disagree with them. Talking about the ills of globalisation is not, as the Guardian today would have us believe, code for anti-semitism. It is code for gloabalisation is, in their opinion, crap. And I am inclined on some levels to agree with that.
But if some of the critics had their way then their definition - that it is all about anti-semitism - is the one that would apply and there are plenty out there who would ban them on that basis.
That would be a very dangerous position for us to find ourselves in. We do see too many cases from both sides these days where people are wilfully misinterpreting their opponents a means of daemonising them and the only thing that stops this being a complete disaster is that the more sane voices on both sides are still willing to stand up and fight for freedom of speech.
Note the distinction between "globalisation", and "globalist". "Globalisation" is something you often hear about from the left, and it's primarily a criticism of capitalism operating above the reach of national governments. "Globalist" is often used in a different context, and often nothing to do with criticising capitalism. Indeed, it's often used to attack the left. And, I'm afraid to say, it is also often used in conjunction with anti-Semitic tropes.
Using the term "globalist" doesn't make someone an anti-Semite, but it merits watching out for other things they say in the same context. It's usually clear within a few sentences whether they dog-whistling racists or leftists. Or both.
Sorry but that is dancing on the head of a pin. It is taking a small subsection of a spectrum of views and using them to tar the whole lot. It is lazy and pernicious.
Nor is it only racists or lefties who are anti-globalisation and anti-globalists. I pretty much detest the left but I believe globalisation has been very bad on the whole for a large part of the world's population (just as it has been good for some of them). You are trying to pigeon hole people to suit your own ideology.
I whole heartedly agree with you on free speech but I completely disagree with you on globalisation. For the vast majority of humanity the last 30 years have been brilliant. 2 billion people have been lifted out of poverty into a reasonable lifestyle. Maybe more
It’s been RELATIVELY shit for less educated people in the West who were used to coasting along on the accrued advantage of 300 years of western supremacy. Now they have to compete with that newly ambitious Egyptian lady I met tonight
I sympathise with working class westerners and they are entitled to vote for Trump or Le Pen but they don’t get to create their own reality. Globalisation has generally been good for Homo sapiens
It's been a great time to be alive, for the average person. Not that we are likely to feel grateful when something shitty happens, when asked to compare ourselves to a 12th century Sundanese farmer or something.
Listening to some of the language at the National Conservative event, I'm reminded of the dilemma I face on the issue of Freedom of Speech.
As a "marxist liberal" or should that be "liberal marxist", I shouldn't have too many qualms but unfortunately I do. The notion of free speech, rather like EU membership, has only two credible positions - you're either for it or against it. As with our half-hearted rebate-obsessed membership of the EU, Freedom of Speech either means you're completely opposed and have no problem shutting down opinions with which you disagree or you're completely in favour which means accepting the right to offend and be offended.
The Right to Offend is one of those tricky ones - we can all promise to be nice to each other but in the real world as soon as you bring in legislation or control to restrict anyone's right to freedom of speech, you're compromising that freedom for everyone.
I don't like hate speech, I don't like speech which sets out deliberately to offend or provoke or incite or divide but I'm forced to accept these are aspects of the human condition and whether I like them or not, they exist and always will exist. I'm also reminded jaw-jaw is better than war-war and allowing the right to vent verbally is preferable to the wrong of acting physically.
It's not comfortable but I suspect it's not meant to be - challenging those who wish to spread division and hate isn't easy because rational argument rarely works. They can be ignored - perhaps the first line of defence - and be left to shout into the darkness. That doesn't mean rational counter-argument can't and shouldn't be tried but in the expectation it won't have an impact.
I think the Nat Con example is a very good one as to why we need to defend freedom of speech even when we don't like what is being said.
Some of the things they are saying are pretty awful and I have no time for them at all.
But some of the things they are saying are not awful. Even if I still disagree with them. Talking about the ills of globalisation is not, as the Guardian today would have us believe, code for anti-semitism. It is code for gloabalisation is, in their opinion, crap. And I am inclined on some levels to agree with that.
But if some of the critics had their way then their definition - that it is all about anti-semitism - is the one that would apply and there are plenty out there who would ban them on that basis.
That would be a very dangerous position for us to find ourselves in. We do see too many cases from both sides these days where people are wilfully misinterpreting their opponents a means of daemonising them and the only thing that stops this being a complete disaster is that the more sane voices on both sides are still willing to stand up and fight for freedom of speech.
Note the distinction between "globalisation", and "globalist". "Globalisation" is something you often hear about from the left, and it's primarily a criticism of capitalism operating above the reach of national governments. "Globalist" is often used in a different context, and often nothing to do with criticising capitalism. Indeed, it's often used to attack the left. And, I'm afraid to say, it is also often used in conjunction with anti-Semitic tropes.
Using the term "globalist" doesn't make someone an anti-Semite, but it merits watching out for other things they say in the same context. It's usually clear within a few sentences whether they dog-whistling racists or leftists. Or both.
Sorry but that is dancing on the head of a pin. It is taking a small subsection of a spectrum of views and using them to tar the whole lot. It is lazy and pernicious.
Nor is it only racists or lefties who are anti-globalisation and anti-globalists. I pretty much detest the left but I believe globalisation has been very bad on the whole for a large part of the world's population (just as it has been good for some of them). You are trying to pigeon hole people to suit your own ideology.
I whole heartedly agree with you on free speech but I completely disagree with you on globalisation. For the vast majority of humanity the last 30 years have been brilliant. 2 billion people have been lifted out of poverty into a reasonable lifestyle. Maybe more
It’s been RELATIVELY shit for less educated people in the West who were used to coasting along on the accrued advantage of 300 years of western supremacy. Now they have to compete with that newly ambitious Egyptian lady I met tonight
I sympathise with working class westerners and they are entitled to vote for Trump or Le Pen but they don’t get to create their own reality. Globalisation has generally been good for Homo sapiens
I fucking hate saying this, but this is absolutely spot on.
Why would you hate agreeing with Leon ? He's a long way from being a complete fool. Sometimes.
Listening to some of the language at the National Conservative event, I'm reminded of the dilemma I face on the issue of Freedom of Speech.
As a "marxist liberal" or should that be "liberal marxist", I shouldn't have too many qualms but unfortunately I do. The notion of free speech, rather like EU membership, has only two credible positions - you're either for it or against it. As with our half-hearted rebate-obsessed membership of the EU, Freedom of Speech either means you're completely opposed and have no problem shutting down opinions with which you disagree or you're completely in favour which means accepting the right to offend and be offended.
The Right to Offend is one of those tricky ones - we can all promise to be nice to each other but in the real world as soon as you bring in legislation or control to restrict anyone's right to freedom of speech, you're compromising that freedom for everyone.
I don't like hate speech, I don't like speech which sets out deliberately to offend or provoke or incite or divide but I'm forced to accept these are aspects of the human condition and whether I like them or not, they exist and always will exist. I'm also reminded jaw-jaw is better than war-war and allowing the right to vent verbally is preferable to the wrong of acting physically.
It's not comfortable but I suspect it's not meant to be - challenging those who wish to spread division and hate isn't easy because rational argument rarely works. They can be ignored - perhaps the first line of defence - and be left to shout into the darkness. That doesn't mean rational counter-argument can't and shouldn't be tried but in the expectation it won't have an impact.
I think the Nat Con example is a very good one as to why we need to defend freedom of speech even when we don't like what is being said.
Some of the things they are saying are pretty awful and I have no time for them at all.
But some of the things they are saying are not awful. Even if I still disagree with them. Talking about the ills of globalisation is not, as the Guardian today would have us believe, code for anti-semitism. It is code for gloabalisation is, in their opinion, crap. And I am inclined on some levels to agree with that.
But if some of the critics had their way then their definition - that it is all about anti-semitism - is the one that would apply and there are plenty out there who would ban them on that basis.
That would be a very dangerous position for us to find ourselves in. We do see too many cases from both sides these days where people are wilfully misinterpreting their opponents a means of daemonising them and the only thing that stops this being a complete disaster is that the more sane voices on both sides are still willing to stand up and fight for freedom of speech.
Note the distinction between "globalisation", and "globalist". "Globalisation" is something you often hear about from the left, and it's primarily a criticism of capitalism operating above the reach of national governments. "Globalist" is often used in a different context, and often nothing to do with criticising capitalism. Indeed, it's often used to attack the left. And, I'm afraid to say, it is also often used in conjunction with anti-Semitic tropes.
Using the term "globalist" doesn't make someone an anti-Semite, but it merits watching out for other things they say in the same context. It's usually clear within a few sentences whether they dog-whistling racists or leftists. Or both.
Sorry but that is dancing on the head of a pin. It is taking a small subsection of a spectrum of views and using them to tar the whole lot. It is lazy and pernicious.
Nor is it only racists or lefties who are anti-globalisation and anti-globalists. I pretty much detest the left but I believe globalisation has been very bad on the whole for a large part of the world's population (just as it has been good for some of them). You are trying to pigeon hole people to suit your own ideology.
I whole heartedly agree with you on free speech but I completely disagree with you on globalisation. For the vast majority of humanity the last 30 years have been brilliant. 2 billion people have been lifted out of poverty into a reasonable lifestyle. Maybe more
It’s been RELATIVELY shit for less educated people in the West who were used to coasting along on the accrued advantage of 300 years of western supremacy. Now they have to compete with that newly ambitious Egyptian lady I met tonight
I sympathise with working class westerners and they are entitled to vote for Trump or Le Pen but they don’t get to create their own reality. Globalisation has generally been good for Homo sapiens
I fucking hate saying this, but this is absolutely spot on.
Why would you hate agreeing with Leon ? He's a long way from being a complete fool. Sometimes.
What's the point in being teenager if you can't have a quick fag behind the bike side, sneak your first pint with fake ID, and indelicately fondle Ceilia's breasts for the first time in a skate park late on Friday night?
What's the point in being teenager if you can't have a quick fag behind the bike side, sneak your first pint with fake ID, and indelicately fondle Ceilia's breasts for the first time in a skate park late on Friday night?
Not everything is about phones.
U ok hun?
If I posted that the user in question would be calling me a saddo with a poor sense of humour.
Listening to some of the language at the National Conservative event, I'm reminded of the dilemma I face on the issue of Freedom of Speech.
As a "marxist liberal" or should that be "liberal marxist", I shouldn't have too many qualms but unfortunately I do. The notion of free speech, rather like EU membership, has only two credible positions - you're either for it or against it. As with our half-hearted rebate-obsessed membership of the EU, Freedom of Speech either means you're completely opposed and have no problem shutting down opinions with which you disagree or you're completely in favour which means accepting the right to offend and be offended.
The Right to Offend is one of those tricky ones - we can all promise to be nice to each other but in the real world as soon as you bring in legislation or control to restrict anyone's right to freedom of speech, you're compromising that freedom for everyone.
I don't like hate speech, I don't like speech which sets out deliberately to offend or provoke or incite or divide but I'm forced to accept these are aspects of the human condition and whether I like them or not, they exist and always will exist. I'm also reminded jaw-jaw is better than war-war and allowing the right to vent verbally is preferable to the wrong of acting physically.
It's not comfortable but I suspect it's not meant to be - challenging those who wish to spread division and hate isn't easy because rational argument rarely works. They can be ignored - perhaps the first line of defence - and be left to shout into the darkness. That doesn't mean rational counter-argument can't and shouldn't be tried but in the expectation it won't have an impact.
I think the Nat Con example is a very good one as to why we need to defend freedom of speech even when we don't like what is being said.
Some of the things they are saying are pretty awful and I have no time for them at all.
But some of the things they are saying are not awful. Even if I still disagree with them. Talking about the ills of globalisation is not, as the Guardian today would have us believe, code for anti-semitism. It is code for gloabalisation is, in their opinion, crap. And I am inclined on some levels to agree with that.
But if some of the critics had their way then their definition - that it is all about anti-semitism - is the one that would apply and there are plenty out there who would ban them on that basis.
That would be a very dangerous position for us to find ourselves in. We do see too many cases from both sides these days where people are wilfully misinterpreting their opponents a means of daemonising them and the only thing that stops this being a complete disaster is that the more sane voices on both sides are still willing to stand up and fight for freedom of speech.
Note the distinction between "globalisation", and "globalist". "Globalisation" is something you often hear about from the left, and it's primarily a criticism of capitalism operating above the reach of national governments. "Globalist" is often used in a different context, and often nothing to do with criticising capitalism. Indeed, it's often used to attack the left. And, I'm afraid to say, it is also often used in conjunction with anti-Semitic tropes.
Using the term "globalist" doesn't make someone an anti-Semite, but it merits watching out for other things they say in the same context. It's usually clear within a few sentences whether they dog-whistling racists or leftists. Or both.
Sorry but that is dancing on the head of a pin. It is taking a small subsection of a spectrum of views and using them to tar the whole lot. It is lazy and pernicious.
Nor is it only racists or lefties who are anti-globalisation and anti-globalists. I pretty much detest the left but I believe globalisation has been very bad on the whole for a large part of the world's population (just as it has been good for some of them). You are trying to pigeon hole people to suit your own ideology.
I whole heartedly agree with you on free speech but I completely disagree with you on globalisation. For the vast majority of humanity the last 30 years have been brilliant. 2 billion people have been lifted out of poverty into a reasonable lifestyle. Maybe more
It’s been RELATIVELY shit for less educated people in the West who were used to coasting along on the accrued advantage of 300 years of western supremacy. Now they have to compete with that newly ambitious Egyptian lady I met tonight
I sympathise with working class westerners and they are entitled to vote for Trump or Le Pen but they don’t get to create their own reality. Globalisation has generally been good for Homo sapiens
I agree the world has got better over the last 50 years or more but I would dispute that globalisation has necessarily been the cause. Trade has been good and has helped hugely along with technological and medical advances but globalisation has brought massive environmental degradation and a huge surge in what can only really be described as modern slavery. It has resulted in the concentration of wealth on a scale never seen before in human history and has created a supranational class who have done their best to circumvent national laws for their own ends.
The world has undoubtedly got better but globalisation in the unfettered form we have it now has not been responsible and has not, on balance, been a force for good.
Returning to my hypothesis of this morning that on immigration what we're seeing is:
1) Reduced European immigration to Leave voting areas. 2) Increased non-European immigration to Remain voting areas
Isn't that what both sides wanted ?
If so then why isn't everyone happy ?
Significant, and I mean genuinely significant, increase in the number of black people you see out and about in Knottingley, in Yvette Cooper’s ward, 68% leave IIRC. We’re where the A1 and M62 cross. Lots of warehousing and industry, 24 hour shift patterns.
When I lived in the Midlands 20 years ago and did similar work we had lots of Kurds, Iraqis, etc, but up here there were very, very few non-whites. Plenty of Eastern Europeans mind but unless you spoke to them you assumed they were native.
Very different now. Doesn’t bother me, but I do wonder what some of our more enthusiastic Brexiters think about it deep down. I suspect it isn’t quite what they expected.
Rub their racist noses in diversity as far as I’m concerned. But I bet they didn’t think when they voted to kick all the Europeans out they’d find themselves with black people moving here instead.
I’ve been, unfortunately, spending a lot of time at Pinderfields hospital in Wakefield recently. Lots and lots of African staff, again noticeably more than pre-Brexit. Backs up what my sister, a nurse, told me, that they’re recruiting from Africa to fill vacancies. She has no problem with black staff per se but she did say that their English generally isn’t as good as the EU workers we used to have, which causes problems.
My mum, sadly shifting ever rightward as she ages, mutters about ‘them’ not speaking English properly when I’ve been taking her to visit her poorly husband.
So, yeah, in this bit of the leave-voting Red Wall there’s definitely reduced European immigration. But it’s been replaced to a certain extent by non-white, African immigration. Make of that what you will.
Very noticeable in the northeast too. Over the past year the number of Africans being picked up in minibuses, and riding the regular buses in the very early mornings for work has risen exponentially*. From almost none in this town.
*Pedants may well note that it's relatively easy to rise exponentially from almost none... But you get my colloquial, anecdotal drift.
What's the point in being teenager if you can't have a quick fag behind the bike side, sneak your first pint with fake ID, and indelicately fondle Ceilia's breasts for the first time in a skate park late on Friday night?
Not everything is about phones.
U ok hun?
If I posted that the user in question would be calling me a saddo with a poor sense of humour.
Whereas I get told that I'm a saddo with a poor sense of humour on a regular basis anyway.
Listening to some of the language at the National Conservative event, I'm reminded of the dilemma I face on the issue of Freedom of Speech.
As a "marxist liberal" or should that be "liberal marxist", I shouldn't have too many qualms but unfortunately I do. The notion of free speech, rather like EU membership, has only two credible positions - you're either for it or against it. As with our half-hearted rebate-obsessed membership of the EU, Freedom of Speech either means you're completely opposed and have no problem shutting down opinions with which you disagree or you're completely in favour which means accepting the right to offend and be offended.
The Right to Offend is one of those tricky ones - we can all promise to be nice to each other but in the real world as soon as you bring in legislation or control to restrict anyone's right to freedom of speech, you're compromising that freedom for everyone.
I don't like hate speech, I don't like speech which sets out deliberately to offend or provoke or incite or divide but I'm forced to accept these are aspects of the human condition and whether I like them or not, they exist and always will exist. I'm also reminded jaw-jaw is better than war-war and allowing the right to vent verbally is preferable to the wrong of acting physically.
It's not comfortable but I suspect it's not meant to be - challenging those who wish to spread division and hate isn't easy because rational argument rarely works. They can be ignored - perhaps the first line of defence - and be left to shout into the darkness. That doesn't mean rational counter-argument can't and shouldn't be tried but in the expectation it won't have an impact.
I think the Nat Con example is a very good one as to why we need to defend freedom of speech even when we don't like what is being said.
Some of the things they are saying are pretty awful and I have no time for them at all.
But some of the things they are saying are not awful. Even if I still disagree with them. Talking about the ills of globalisation is not, as the Guardian today would have us believe, code for anti-semitism. It is code for gloabalisation is, in their opinion, crap. And I am inclined on some levels to agree with that.
But if some of the critics had their way then their definition - that it is all about anti-semitism - is the one that would apply and there are plenty out there who would ban them on that basis.
That would be a very dangerous position for us to find ourselves in. We do see too many cases from both sides these days where people are wilfully misinterpreting their opponents a means of daemonising them and the only thing that stops this being a complete disaster is that the more sane voices on both sides are still willing to stand up and fight for freedom of speech.
Note the distinction between "globalisation", and "globalist". "Globalisation" is something you often hear about from the left, and it's primarily a criticism of capitalism operating above the reach of national governments. "Globalist" is often used in a different context, and often nothing to do with criticising capitalism. Indeed, it's often used to attack the left. And, I'm afraid to say, it is also often used in conjunction with anti-Semitic tropes.
Using the term "globalist" doesn't make someone an anti-Semite, but it merits watching out for other things they say in the same context. It's usually clear within a few sentences whether they dog-whistling racists or leftists. Or both.
Sorry but that is dancing on the head of a pin. It is taking a small subsection of a spectrum of views and using them to tar the whole lot. It is lazy and pernicious.
Nor is it only racists or lefties who are anti-globalisation and anti-globalists. I pretty much detest the left but I believe globalisation has been very bad on the whole for a large part of the world's population (just as it has been good for some of them). You are trying to pigeon hole people to suit your own ideology.
I whole heartedly agree with you on free speech but I completely disagree with you on globalisation. For the vast majority of humanity the last 30 years have been brilliant. 2 billion people have been lifted out of poverty into a reasonable lifestyle. Maybe more
It’s been RELATIVELY shit for less educated people in the West who were used to coasting along on the accrued advantage of 300 years of western supremacy. Now they have to compete with that newly ambitious Egyptian lady I met tonight
I sympathise with working class westerners and they are entitled to vote for Trump or Le Pen but they don’t get to create their own reality. Globalisation has generally been good for Homo sapiens
I fucking hate saying this, but this is absolutely spot on.
While it is true and don't disagree on the thrust of it, there is a point neglected in this. Western governements all embraced globalisation but they were elected not to look after the world but to look after the country that elected them. Globalisation helped the poor of the world but often harmed the bottom half of their countries....the people that voted for them and expected to be considered in their decisions.
Well, the problem is that not embracing globalisation doesn't obviously work either.
Natural resources were cheap, for example, because it was only those in the Wealthy West who consumed them. The rise of China has meant it's not just us buying Nigerian oil. And that means that we're going to be relatively poorer, whether we embrace globalisation or fight it.
Listening to some of the language at the National Conservative event, I'm reminded of the dilemma I face on the issue of Freedom of Speech.
As a "marxist liberal" or should that be "liberal marxist", I shouldn't have too many qualms but unfortunately I do. The notion of free speech, rather like EU membership, has only two credible positions - you're either for it or against it. As with our half-hearted rebate-obsessed membership of the EU, Freedom of Speech either means you're completely opposed and have no problem shutting down opinions with which you disagree or you're completely in favour which means accepting the right to offend and be offended.
The Right to Offend is one of those tricky ones - we can all promise to be nice to each other but in the real world as soon as you bring in legislation or control to restrict anyone's right to freedom of speech, you're compromising that freedom for everyone.
I don't like hate speech, I don't like speech which sets out deliberately to offend or provoke or incite or divide but I'm forced to accept these are aspects of the human condition and whether I like them or not, they exist and always will exist. I'm also reminded jaw-jaw is better than war-war and allowing the right to vent verbally is preferable to the wrong of acting physically.
It's not comfortable but I suspect it's not meant to be - challenging those who wish to spread division and hate isn't easy because rational argument rarely works. They can be ignored - perhaps the first line of defence - and be left to shout into the darkness. That doesn't mean rational counter-argument can't and shouldn't be tried but in the expectation it won't have an impact.
I think the Nat Con example is a very good one as to why we need to defend freedom of speech even when we don't like what is being said.
Some of the things they are saying are pretty awful and I have no time for them at all.
But some of the things they are saying are not awful. Even if I still disagree with them. Talking about the ills of globalisation is not, as the Guardian today would have us believe, code for anti-semitism. It is code for gloabalisation is, in their opinion, crap. And I am inclined on some levels to agree with that.
But if some of the critics had their way then their definition - that it is all about anti-semitism - is the one that would apply and there are plenty out there who would ban them on that basis.
That would be a very dangerous position for us to find ourselves in. We do see too many cases from both sides these days where people are wilfully misinterpreting their opponents a means of daemonising them and the only thing that stops this being a complete disaster is that the more sane voices on both sides are still willing to stand up and fight for freedom of speech.
Note the distinction between "globalisation", and "globalist". "Globalisation" is something you often hear about from the left, and it's primarily a criticism of capitalism operating above the reach of national governments. "Globalist" is often used in a different context, and often nothing to do with criticising capitalism. Indeed, it's often used to attack the left. And, I'm afraid to say, it is also often used in conjunction with anti-Semitic tropes.
Using the term "globalist" doesn't make someone an anti-Semite, but it merits watching out for other things they say in the same context. It's usually clear within a few sentences whether they dog-whistling racists or leftists. Or both.
Sorry but that is dancing on the head of a pin. It is taking a small subsection of a spectrum of views and using them to tar the whole lot. It is lazy and pernicious.
Nor is it only racists or lefties who are anti-globalisation and anti-globalists. I pretty much detest the left but I believe globalisation has been very bad on the whole for a large part of the world's population (just as it has been good for some of them). You are trying to pigeon hole people to suit your own ideology.
I whole heartedly agree with you on free speech but I completely disagree with you on globalisation. For the vast majority of humanity the last 30 years have been brilliant. 2 billion people have been lifted out of poverty into a reasonable lifestyle. Maybe more
It’s been RELATIVELY shit for less educated people in the West who were used to coasting along on the accrued advantage of 300 years of western supremacy. Now they have to compete with that newly ambitious Egyptian lady I met tonight
I sympathise with working class westerners and they are entitled to vote for Trump or Le Pen but they don’t get to create their own reality. Globalisation has generally been good for Homo sapiens
It's been a great time to be alive, for the average person. Not that we are likely to feel grateful when something shitty happens, when asked to compare ourselves to a 12th century Sundanese farmer or something.
For many people in Chicago, Glasgow, and Lille the last 3 decades have been rubbish and show few signs of improving
In Shanghai, Bangkok and Jakarta they’ve been fairly amazing. And the latter 3 cities all have populations over 10m
Listening to some of the language at the National Conservative event, I'm reminded of the dilemma I face on the issue of Freedom of Speech.
As a "marxist liberal" or should that be "liberal marxist", I shouldn't have too many qualms but unfortunately I do. The notion of free speech, rather like EU membership, has only two credible positions - you're either for it or against it. As with our half-hearted rebate-obsessed membership of the EU, Freedom of Speech either means you're completely opposed and have no problem shutting down opinions with which you disagree or you're completely in favour which means accepting the right to offend and be offended.
The Right to Offend is one of those tricky ones - we can all promise to be nice to each other but in the real world as soon as you bring in legislation or control to restrict anyone's right to freedom of speech, you're compromising that freedom for everyone.
I don't like hate speech, I don't like speech which sets out deliberately to offend or provoke or incite or divide but I'm forced to accept these are aspects of the human condition and whether I like them or not, they exist and always will exist. I'm also reminded jaw-jaw is better than war-war and allowing the right to vent verbally is preferable to the wrong of acting physically.
It's not comfortable but I suspect it's not meant to be - challenging those who wish to spread division and hate isn't easy because rational argument rarely works. They can be ignored - perhaps the first line of defence - and be left to shout into the darkness. That doesn't mean rational counter-argument can't and shouldn't be tried but in the expectation it won't have an impact.
I think the Nat Con example is a very good one as to why we need to defend freedom of speech even when we don't like what is being said.
Some of the things they are saying are pretty awful and I have no time for them at all.
But some of the things they are saying are not awful. Even if I still disagree with them. Talking about the ills of globalisation is not, as the Guardian today would have us believe, code for anti-semitism. It is code for gloabalisation is, in their opinion, crap. And I am inclined on some levels to agree with that.
But if some of the critics had their way then their definition - that it is all about anti-semitism - is the one that would apply and there are plenty out there who would ban them on that basis.
That would be a very dangerous position for us to find ourselves in. We do see too many cases from both sides these days where people are wilfully misinterpreting their opponents a means of daemonising them and the only thing that stops this being a complete disaster is that the more sane voices on both sides are still willing to stand up and fight for freedom of speech.
Note the distinction between "globalisation", and "globalist". "Globalisation" is something you often hear about from the left, and it's primarily a criticism of capitalism operating above the reach of national governments. "Globalist" is often used in a different context, and often nothing to do with criticising capitalism. Indeed, it's often used to attack the left. And, I'm afraid to say, it is also often used in conjunction with anti-Semitic tropes.
Using the term "globalist" doesn't make someone an anti-Semite, but it merits watching out for other things they say in the same context. It's usually clear within a few sentences whether they dog-whistling racists or leftists. Or both.
Sorry but that is dancing on the head of a pin. It is taking a small subsection of a spectrum of views and using them to tar the whole lot. It is lazy and pernicious.
Nor is it only racists or lefties who are anti-globalisation and anti-globalists. I pretty much detest the left but I believe globalisation has been very bad on the whole for a large part of the world's population (just as it has been good for some of them). You are trying to pigeon hole people to suit your own ideology.
I whole heartedly agree with you on free speech but I completely disagree with you on globalisation. For the vast majority of humanity the last 30 years have been brilliant. 2 billion people have been lifted out of poverty into a reasonable lifestyle. Maybe more
It’s been RELATIVELY shit for less educated people in the West who were used to coasting along on the accrued advantage of 300 years of western supremacy. Now they have to compete with that newly ambitious Egyptian lady I met tonight
I sympathise with working class westerners and they are entitled to vote for Trump or Le Pen but they don’t get to create their own reality. Globalisation has generally been good for Homo sapiens
It took me a lot longer to type out what Leon hammered out in seconds here, but yeah, largely this.
I do not agree it's been in any way shit for less educated people in the West, though. Yes, there have been detriments alongside the benefits. But the amount of cheap stuff, and the jobs that have been made here by us being an open, trading economy have raised the livelihoods of even the worst off. I'd rather be at the bottom of the heap in 2023 than at the bottom of the heap in 1823.
We've got enough problems without kicking away the ladder we're standing on. Globalisation and capitalism are good.
Trade and globalisation are not the same things. Conflating the two is like conflating civilisation and Empire.
Comments
Davey has served in Government, been an MP since 1997, lost his seat and then won it back (that doesn't happen too often). Again, his back story isn't well known but will be come the next GE, I'm certain.
https://twitter.com/MattChorley/status/1658357306688512001/photo/1
Sitting out in the hall and hearing the teacher re-ask the question, another pupil giving the *wrong* answer then getting a patronising laugh from the teacher who then gave the same answer I had.
Kinda coloured my view of the school at that point.
There's simply no senior Tory figure left with views close to the median elector, for the Party to coalesce around.
a four-pack of brown onions at Morrisons went from 65p to £1.24 – a 91% rise.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/16/uk-government-meat-veg-prices-which-rishi-sunak
And its correct, the four pack of onions is £1.24 at Morrisons.
But Morrisons are also selling a whole kg of onions for £1 which is about 10p per onion compared to the 31p in the small bag the Guardian is babbling about:
https://groceries.morrisons.com/browse/fruit-veg-176738/vegetables-176756/onions-leeks-183855
Now there are people who buy the same thing time and time again irrespective of relative price.
But if so then so what - its from such people that retailers make the big profits thus allowing those of us who look for value to get things so much cheaper.
So you have a soft spot for us Orange Bookers then? I'll remember that and hold back (just a little) when I next berate you over something or other.
1) Reduced European immigration to Leave voting areas.
2) Increased non-European immigration to Remain voting areas
Isn't that what both sides wanted ?
If so then why isn't everyone happy ?
https://lichfields.uk/blog/2021/october/15/a-brownfield-based-planning-policy-the-lessons-of-ppg3/
The main problem is this:
"There is no evidence there is enough brownfield land, in any region, to deliver anything close to 300,000 extra homes per annum[25]. CPRE’s annual review of brownfield land[26] identifies capacity for 1.3m homes (1.1m of which was on brownfield registers, and 0.6m already consented). Registers can be a helpful indicator of brownfield potential, but crucially a) local authorities’ assessments of site deliverability are not independently tested; and b) they measure capacity looking ahead 15 years. At best it would equate to less than 87,000 homes per annum"
Ultimately I think that there will be a realisation that the 'brownfield' policy won't work and it is just a matter of time.
I'd suggest that you would be better off accepting that some green fields are going to be built on but try and avoid areas of important agricultural/landscape/cultural value.
I’ve just had a brilliant evening discussing parenting (and sex) with the PR woman at the Four Seasons Alexandria. Turns out Egyptian kids are just like British kids. Weirdly sober and passive and much better behaved than we were at their age
So this is a global thing
Then I got a golf cart back to my villa and we picked up two Egyptian ladies in hijabs from the graduation party on the beach - the end of year celebrations of the Arab Academy. Turned out the woman in her 80s was the mother of the woman on her mid 50s - and the latter woman had just graduated with an MBA (hence the presence of her beaming mother)
She turned to me and said “I was a chemist but now I have this! My life has changed! I love this
city!”
That’s why I love this job. Sometimes the world depresses but sometimes you realise the world continues and improves for lots and lots of people
Quite a statment from economy secretary Neil Gray. He has had a issue a very rare ministerial direction (for SG) authorising spending to finish the second CalMac ferry at Ferguson Marine, as it may well be better value for money to buy a new from another yard
Some of the things they are saying are pretty awful and I have no time for them at all.
But some of the things they are saying are not awful. Even if I still disagree with them. Talking about the ills of globalisation is not, as the Guardian today would have us believe, code for anti-semitism. It is code for gloabalisation is, in their opinion, crap. And I am inclined on some levels to agree with that.
But if some of the critics had their way then their definition - that it is all about anti-semitism - is the one that would apply and there are plenty out there who would ban them on that basis.
That would be a very dangerous position for us to find ourselves in. We do see too many cases from both sides these days where people are wilfully misinterpreting their opponents a means of daemonising them and the only thing that stops this being a complete disaster is that the more sane voices on both sides are still willing to stand up and fight for freedom of speech.
Your point about peelings is a fair one but a larger number of smaller onions gives you more flexibility and so reduces wastage.
And to minimise wastage even more its best to bag only the number you want at the kg price which you can do with many vegetables.
There are actually enough clues in the picture (and my location: Alexandria) - for a smart person to guess what I am looking at
https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1658444768102301696?cxt=HHwWgIC-pdqu_YMuAAAA
Estimate of voters turned away from Yorks & Humber, but could serve as a ball park nationally. Around 1% turned away initially, 0.6% turned away and returned, 0.4% turned away and failed to return.
Doesn't include anyone turned away by greeters and those who didn't turn out for reason of lack of ID.
BBC News - Local elections: More than 4,000 voters turned away over no ID
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-65611027
Clue: these are bones
It is worth noting that Lichfield's whole purpose is to act as consultants to help building developers. It comes as no surprise that they would take their side in this debate when it comes to contentious issues like land banking and brownfield development.
Since about 2017, voting Conservative has been a deeply weird thing for young people, especially educated young people, to do. After all, culturally and economically, the Conservative Party has been a racket aimed at making life comfortable for comfortable retirees for a while now. Young Conservatives have always been a bit odd, but that oddness has gone off the scale in the last decade. With the sort of consequences we saw today and yesterday.
The trouble is, that's your pipeline of policy thinkers, campaigners and frontline politicians, and it's leaking like a privatised water main so the supply at the end is reduced to a dribble.
2025/26/27 may be good years to be Tory local election candidates, even if 2024 will still be a very bad year for both Tory local council and national Westminster candidates
His piece last week about grace and favour homes was superb.
Nor is it only racists or lefties who are anti-globalisation and anti-globalists. I pretty much detest the left but I believe globalisation has been very bad on the whole for a large part of the world's population (just as it has been good for some of them). You are trying to pigeon hole people to suit your own ideology.
That man has been through a lot of tragedy.
My daughter is 15, and one of the kids in her class steals and imbibes percocet. Drug (mostly cannabis) and alcohol use is rampant.
It’s been RELATIVELY shit for less educated people in the West who were used to coasting along on the accrued advantage of 300 years of western supremacy. Now they have to compete with that newly ambitious Egyptian lady I met tonight
I sympathise with working class westerners and they are entitled to vote for Trump or Le Pen but they don’t get to create their own reality. Globalisation has generally been good for Homo sapiens
My point was that a Conservative and Unionist Party with no room for Churchill's grandson is fucked
When I lived in the Midlands 20 years ago and did similar work we had lots of Kurds, Iraqis, etc, but up here there were very, very few non-whites. Plenty of Eastern Europeans mind but unless you spoke to them you assumed they were native.
Very different now. Doesn’t bother me, but I do wonder what some of our more enthusiastic Brexiters think about it deep down. I suspect it isn’t quite what they expected.
Rub their racist noses in diversity as far as I’m concerned. But I bet they didn’t think when they voted to kick all the Europeans out they’d find themselves with black people moving here instead.
I’ve been, unfortunately, spending a lot of time at Pinderfields hospital in Wakefield recently. Lots and lots of African staff, again noticeably more than pre-Brexit. Backs up what my sister, a nurse, told me, that they’re recruiting from Africa to fill vacancies. She has no problem with black staff per se but she did say that their English generally isn’t as good as the EU workers we used to have, which causes problems.
My mum, sadly shifting ever rightward as she ages, mutters about ‘them’ not speaking English properly when I’ve been taking her to visit her poorly husband.
So, yeah, in this bit of the leave-voting Red Wall there’s definitely reduced European immigration. But it’s been replaced to a certain extent by non-white, African immigration. Make of that what you will.
I once sat next to him at a Tory dinner and he was very engaging to speak to (even if he did have about 3 helpings of shepherds pie!)
My instinct though is that it is largely right. Brownfield development is being made very difficult by a lack of supply of decent sites and high build costs, and the amount of environmental regulation in general.
Had it done so it might now be clocking 15% and they'd be staring at polling in the teens which, under FPTP, would spell total wipeout.
But that was always going to happen in this country bar a big increase in wages in those jobs.
And something which is happening I suspect in every western country.
So the EU is now wheeling out laws regulating crypto and AI and all kinds of tech which might easily extinguish innovation in these areas in the EU. That will leave the UK very nicely placed as a large English speaking economy next to Europe unencumbered by these laws
Of course it’s quite possible kir fuxking royale starmer will screw this up as our future dull witted Remoaner prime minister nonetheless the opportunity is now there
That was not uncommon at the time either.
Not everything is about phones.
The world has undoubtedly got better but globalisation in the unfettered form we have it now has not been responsible and has not, on balance, been a force for good.
Over the past year the number of Africans being picked up in minibuses, and riding the regular buses in the very early mornings for work has risen exponentially*. From almost none in this town.
*Pedants may well note that it's relatively easy to rise exponentially from almost none...
But you get my colloquial, anecdotal drift.
The joys of teaching...
Natural resources were cheap, for example, because it was only those in the Wealthy West who consumed them. The rise of China has meant it's not just us buying Nigerian oil. And that means that we're going to be relatively poorer, whether we embrace globalisation or fight it.
In Shanghai, Bangkok and Jakarta they’ve been fairly amazing. And the latter 3 cities all have populations over 10m