@christopherhope 🔥 Senior Tory source tells me: “There is now an open witch hunt against right wingers in the Conservative Party. “The leadership of the party must shut this down immediately. “Active conversations are underway among MPs about how to respond to this and nothing is off the table.”
So Sunak's not all bad news and rubbish judgement?
Who’d have thought that organising a conference with an agenda that directly undermined the government to which they ostensibly owed loyalty would provoke a counter-reaction?
Um, really? Public espousal of Conservatism is undermining the Conservative Government?
Come off it. It was a clear attack on Sunak’s authority. He had to fight back.
It has been reported in The Times that 160,000 proposed new homes have now been banned, because the quango 'Natural England' has insisted that they would add phosphates to Rivers. Their ban is an enforcement of a 2018 ECJ ruling (yes, from when we'd supposedly already left).
But the House Building Federation have a previous story (from March, when it was only 120,000 homes they were blocking) on their website, with more detail. Including the fact that all existing housing stock (25 million or so) accounts for only 5% of the issue, so these new properties would have a negligible impact. https://www.hbf.co.uk/news/nutrient-neutrality-lichfields-report-unblocking-homebuilding/
This is the kind of shit we left the EU to sort it - their burdensome, wrong-headed regulation is real, it is pertinent to important issues, and it does hold us back.
"shit" is precisely the issue here. If the infrastructure for sewerage is not there, then no point in building houses. Schools, roads, too ... and promises from developers are worthless.
It has been reported in The Times that 160,000 proposed new homes have now been banned, because the quango 'Natural England' has insisted that they would add phosphates to Rivers. Their ban is an enforcement of a 2018 ECJ ruling (yes, from when we'd supposedly already left).
But the House Building Federation have a previous story (from March, when it was only 120,000 homes they were blocking) on their website, with more detail. Including the fact that all existing housing stock (25 million or so) accounts for only 5% of the issue, so these new properties would have a negligible impact. https://www.hbf.co.uk/news/nutrient-neutrality-lichfields-report-unblocking-homebuilding/
This is the kind of shit we left the EU to sort it - their burdensome, wrong-headed regulation is real, it is pertinent to important issues, and it does hold us back.
"shit" is precisely the issue here. If the infrastructure for sewerage is not there, then no point in building houses. Schools, roads, too ... and promises from developers are worthless.
Shit doesn't come from houses, it comes from bottoms. The bottoms are already here - giving them houses to live in will not result in higher levels of it. As stated in the article, the issue that has lead to the Natural England ban is one where the entire housing stock contributes but 5%.
Er, that 5%'s overall. Not in specific areas. Which is the question here.
No its not the question. There are no areas where there is no need for infrastructure work.
The excuses about infrastructure to excuse NIMBYism are just that, an excuse.
If a young couple and their two children all live in one crowded room in one of the adults own parents home because that is all the can find to live in, then does their shit magically not stick or need to be flushed? Do the kids magically not need to go to school?
If that young family suddenly have a house of their own near to their parents home, then the demands at the local school, or for sewerage etc, are not significantly altered at all. But their quality of life is.
If you want to start deporting people to get rid of effluence and children from schools etc, then make that case. But if you want people to live in this country, they need a home first, and we need to deal with any externalities after - not use externalities as an excuse to have people live in squalor without a home of their own.
Hi Barty. Nice to see you back. Or have we just not been on at the same time for a while?
Hi thanks for that. I've not been on much at all for the last few months. Real life has just been too busy.
Don't you just hate in when real life gets in the way?
@christopherhope 🔥 Senior Tory source tells me: “There is now an open witch hunt against right wingers in the Conservative Party. “The leadership of the party must shut this down immediately. “Active conversations are underway among MPs about how to respond to this and nothing is off the table.”
So Sunak's not all bad news and rubbish judgement?
Who’d have thought that organising a conference with an agenda that directly undermined the government to which they ostensibly owed loyalty would provoke a counter-reaction?
EXCL: Suella Braverman's Home Office civil servants have been forced to “fact-check” the home secretary’s statements to cabinet on up to six occasions - @breeallegretti & co reveal
Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?
Can't we mature the debate a bit?
Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.
How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.
Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.
If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
It's not really, though, is it?
Women don't have penises.
Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
@christopherhope 🔥 Senior Tory source tells me: “There is now an open witch hunt against right wingers in the Conservative Party. “The leadership of the party must shut this down immediately. “Active conversations are underway among MPs about how to respond to this and nothing is off the table.”
So Sunak's not all bad news and rubbish judgement?
Who’d have thought that organising a conference with an agenda that directly undermined the government to which they ostensibly owed loyalty would provoke a counter-reaction?
Um, really? Public espousal of Conservatism is undermining the Conservative Government?
Come off it. It was a clear attack on Sunak’s authority. He had to fight back.
You come off it. Boris didn’t even attend the conference. The attempting maiming of Suella is a massive 12 bore into his own Government's foot. And apparently he's briefing denials of this latest Boris stabbing and blaming the out of control civil service.
**Statement on behalf of Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP** **for immediate use, attributable to his office**
The assertion by the Cabinet Office that there have been further Covid rule breaches is totally untrue.
Lawyers have examined the events in question and advised that they were lawful.
No contact was made with Mr Johnson before these incorrect allegations were made both to the police and to the Privileges Committee. This is both bizarre and unacceptable.
For whatever political purpose, it is plain that a last ditch attempt is being made to lengthen the Privileges Committee investigation as it was coming to a conclusion and to undermine Mr Johnson.
Mr Johnson’s lawyers have tonight written to the police forces involved to explain in detail why the Cabinet Office is entirely wrong in its assertions.
The events in question were all within the rules either because they were held outdoors or came within another lawful exception. They include regular meetings with civil servants and advisers.
It appears some within government have decided to make unfounded suggestions both to the police and to the Privileges Committee.
Many will conclude that this has all the hallmarks of yet another politically motivated stitch up.
-- So Bozo won't admit to be wrong even when lawyers know things are as dodgy as f***
"Mr Johnson's lawyers"? Oh please, They're our lawyers. We are paying for them. They are a gift from the nation to Mr Johnson.
@christopherhope 🔥 Senior Tory source tells me: “There is now an open witch hunt against right wingers in the Conservative Party. “The leadership of the party must shut this down immediately. “Active conversations are underway among MPs about how to respond to this and nothing is off the table.”
Witch-hunt? That sounds very positive. They need less of the vacuous, empty-headed nutters birthed by the Johnsonian Loyalty Cult.
It has been reported in The Times that 160,000 proposed new homes have now been banned, because the quango 'Natural England' has insisted that they would add phosphates to Rivers. Their ban is an enforcement of a 2018 ECJ ruling (yes, from when we'd supposedly already left).
But the House Building Federation have a previous story (from March, when it was only 120,000 homes they were blocking) on their website, with more detail. Including the fact that all existing housing stock (25 million or so) accounts for only 5% of the issue, so these new properties would have a negligible impact. https://www.hbf.co.uk/news/nutrient-neutrality-lichfields-report-unblocking-homebuilding/
This is the kind of shit we left the EU to sort it - their burdensome, wrong-headed regulation is real, it is pertinent to important issues, and it does hold us back.
"shit" is precisely the issue here. If the infrastructure for sewerage is not there, then no point in building houses. Schools, roads, too ... and promises from developers are worthless.
Shit doesn't come from houses, it comes from bottoms. The bottoms are already here - giving them houses to live in will not result in higher levels of it. As stated in the article, the issue that has lead to the Natural England ban is one where the entire housing stock contributes but 5%.
Er, that 5%'s overall. Not in specific areas. Which is the question here.
No its not the question. There are no areas where there is no need for infrastructure work.
The excuses about infrastructure to excuse NIMBYism are just that, an excuse.
If a young couple and their two children all live in one crowded room in one of the adults own parents home because that is all the can find to live in, then does their shit magically not stick or need to be flushed? Do the kids magically not need to go to school?
If that young family suddenly have a house of their own near to their parents home, then the demands at the local school, or for sewerage etc, are not significantly altered at all. But their quality of life is.
If you want to start deporting people to get rid of effluence and children from schools etc, then make that case. But if you want people to live in this country, they need a home first, and we need to deal with any externalities after - not use externalities as an excuse to have people live in squalor without a home of their own.
Hi Barty. Nice to see you back. Or have we just not been on at the same time for a while?
Hi thanks for that. I've not been on much at all for the last few months. Real life has just been too busy.
Don't you just hate in when real life gets in the way?
"They come here to be woken up! The dream PB has become their reality! Who are you to say otherwise, sir?"
@christopherhope 🔥 Senior Tory source tells me: “There is now an open witch hunt against right wingers in the Conservative Party. “The leadership of the party must shut this down immediately. “Active conversations are underway among MPs about how to respond to this and nothing is off the table.”
So Sunak's not all bad news and rubbish judgement?
Who’d have thought that organising a conference with an agenda that directly undermined the government to which they ostensibly owed loyalty would provoke a counter-reaction?
Um, really? Public espousal of Conservatism is undermining the Conservative Government?
Come off it. It was a clear attack on Sunak’s authority. He had to fight back.
You come off it. Boris didn’t even attend the conference. The attempting maiming of Suella is a massive 12 bore into his own Government's foot. And apparently he's briefing denials of this latest Boris stabbing and blaming the out of control civil service.
It’s the kind of event that you can have when you’re in opposition, but just NOT helpful when you’re the government.
EXCL: Suella Braverman's Home Office civil servants have been forced to “fact-check” the home secretary’s statements to cabinet on up to six occasions - @breeallegretti & co reveal
@GuidoFawkes One Rishi source echoing Boris allies blaming out of control civil service "chucking shit" at anyone they can. Tories seem enfeebled by blob insurrection.
Wow. Publicly blame your employees for your own incompetence and failings and they push back. Whatever next?
There are no shops on my estate, but there are shops I can drive to, so problem solved. New or old housing, I've never lived on an estate with a supermarket within the estate come to think of it.
Not exactly a well planned estate then. Ideally you should have a shop within walking distance as otherwise you are restricting those houses to multiple car households.
@christopherhope NEW💥 One former Tory Cabinet minister texts me tonight: "I didn't really believe in the 'blob' till now. "But the events of the last few days - the repeated briefing against Suella and now tonight's action against Boris - are beginning to make me think again. 1/2
@christopherhope Former Cabinet minister [continued]: "If the PM's team is somehow encouraging all this they need to back off fast, and if they are not they need to take some some tough action for once against civil servants who are leaking against ministers." 2/2
Oh, Rishi needs to take some tough action right enough...
It has been reported in The Times that 160,000 proposed new homes have now been banned, because the quango 'Natural England' has insisted that they would add phosphates to Rivers. Their ban is an enforcement of a 2018 ECJ ruling (yes, from when we'd supposedly already left).
But the House Building Federation have a previous story (from March, when it was only 120,000 homes they were blocking) on their website, with more detail. Including the fact that all existing housing stock (25 million or so) accounts for only 5% of the issue, so these new properties would have a negligible impact. https://www.hbf.co.uk/news/nutrient-neutrality-lichfields-report-unblocking-homebuilding/
This is the kind of shit we left the EU to sort it - their burdensome, wrong-headed regulation is real, it is pertinent to important issues, and it does hold us back.
"shit" is precisely the issue here. If the infrastructure for sewerage is not there, then no point in building houses. Schools, roads, too ... and promises from developers are worthless.
What a crock of shit.
If you only want houses built in places where there's a surplus of empty schools, roads and other infrastructure then that's absolutely nowhere so not building anything near anyone. Totally bananas.
Infrastructure might not exist where houses are built. Oh well, get the infrastructure dealt with then, wherever it ends up being needed.
The problem is that it's the surrounding infrastructure that needs to be built. Case in point for the last set of houses in the new estate to be built the power lines to the estate need to be improved - cue major project as the roads across town (fully built up) are dug up to allow the new cables to be laid.
So if infrastructure is needed, then get it done.
If the roads need to be worked on, get it done.
Deal with it and life goes on, not the end of the world.
Its not possible to have a growing population and new houses built only where it won't inconvenience anyone, that's impossible.
There are at least 10 substantial new developments around Loughborough and surrounding villages that are in the construction phase now. No expansion of schools, doctors, dentist. No shops being included, no cafes, no pub. Just houses. I'm not sure this is sustainable.
The problem is the No Development Agenda is useful to a number of groups
1) Government. Blair found cancelling road projects, for example, very useful. So that money could be spent on schools and hospitals. 2) Businesses. See the water companies. 3) NIMBYs 4) Greens
So you get a massive coalition against…. Everything.
You get housing built because of the huge pressure, but not the infrastructure.
When the infrastructure for dealing with sewage discharges comes up for planning review, those loudest about it, will fight the hardest to stop the problem being fixed.
Can a biological woman have a penis? No. Can a trans woman have a penis? Yes.
Can we move on now please?
Biology is diverse and there are always “edge cases”. So you can have someone who is a biological (cis)woman and has a penis, depending on what you mean by “biological woman” and “penis”. So, for example, aromatase deficiency can occur in an XX-woman with normal internal female genitalia but overvirilisation of the external genitalia, including clitoromegaly.
"But Boris was so obviously unacceptable!" "Yes, but Corbyn was so obviously unacceptable!" "Yes, but Boris was so obviously unacceptable!" "Yes, but Corbyn was so obviously unacceptable!" "Yes, but Boris was so obviously unacceptable!" "Yes, but Corbyn was so obviously unacceptable!"
[continues until the heat death of the universe]
I get that lefties and Remainers hate Boris but, really, Corbyn is in a different and higher league of unacceptability
Corbyn is an unashamed traitor. An IRA supporting, Hamas-hugging, anti semitic commie traitor
Boris is a charismatic reprobate and a selfish libertine. Boris has personal flaws. Corbyn’s flaws are way more dangerous and ideological even if he is probably the “nicer” gent in some ways
Cummings v Milne is an interesting parallel debate
Not really. Cummings is super intelligent and wins elections and referendums. I’ve seen no evidence for Milne being even smart and he certainly never won any elections
Milne is a classic posho public school Marxist. The Winchester version of bouji grammar school Corbyn
And a lot of people who lost a referendum think that Cummings is super evil, while not having much at all to say about the man who wrote Corbyn's Salisbury response
There you go again.
Both Seumas Milne and Dom Cummings are absolute shits of the highest order.
The taxpayers have paid out substantial money because of the latter's bullying.
Yes but Milne is a Marxist traitor. This stuff isn’t hard
Milne supports Islamists and cheered on 9/11. He got jihadists in to write for the guardian. He thinks Stalin is cool
Cummings might be an arrogant dick and even a bully but if you can’t see the crucial political difference between the two of them then there’s no hope for you
There's a genuinely important question here.
How fash does the far right have to get before Marxism is preferable? Not objectively good, but the lesser of two evils.
Hitler obviously. ("If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.")
Franco? Probably, though it needs a pause for thought.
The fringier bits of US National Conservatism?
None of which stops Corbyn being a fool at best and probably a lot worse than that.
I’ll bite. Franco was preferable to the Stalinist communism which was, eventually, the only apparent alternative during the Spanish civil war. As Orwell discovered
I would agree.
Stalin was preferable to Hitler, or Ante Pavelic, or Ferenc Salazy.
I always enjoyed A Very British Coup, because in Harry Perkins, you actually have a PM who is a traitor (even if Chris Mullin does not see him as such). He’s not a Kinnock, or Foot, or Papandreou, but a man who is trying to turn the UK into a satellite of the USSR.
I think a military coup would be justified against such a leader.
Um, I remember it fondly, although not seen it in yonks. My takeaway was the exact opposite, although to be fair the narrative was framed to make him the hero.
@christopherhope 🔥 Senior Tory source tells me: “There is now an open witch hunt against right wingers in the Conservative Party. “The leadership of the party must shut this down immediately. “Active conversations are underway among MPs about how to respond to this and nothing is off the table.”
Could it be that there’s not a witch hunt, but that right wingers are just shit and keep breaking the rules?
There are no shops on my estate, but there are shops I can drive to, so problem solved. New or old housing, I've never lived on an estate with a supermarket within the estate come to think of it.
Not exactly a well planned estate then. Ideally you should have a shop within walking distance as otherwise you are restricting those houses to multiple car households.
You’re thinking like a toff who has a bloke to put toothpaste on his toothbrush.
A properly designed estate should look like this -
EXCL: Suella Braverman's Home Office civil servants have been forced to “fact-check” the home secretary’s statements to cabinet on up to six occasions - @breeallegretti & co reveal
It has been reported in The Times that 160,000 proposed new homes have now been banned, because the quango 'Natural England' has insisted that they would add phosphates to Rivers. Their ban is an enforcement of a 2018 ECJ ruling (yes, from when we'd supposedly already left).
But the House Building Federation have a previous story (from March, when it was only 120,000 homes they were blocking) on their website, with more detail. Including the fact that all existing housing stock (25 million or so) accounts for only 5% of the issue, so these new properties would have a negligible impact. https://www.hbf.co.uk/news/nutrient-neutrality-lichfields-report-unblocking-homebuilding/
This is the kind of shit we left the EU to sort it - their burdensome, wrong-headed regulation is real, it is pertinent to important issues, and it does hold us back.
"shit" is precisely the issue here. If the infrastructure for sewerage is not there, then no point in building houses. Schools, roads, too ... and promises from developers are worthless.
Actually they are less than worthless.
Make it a condition of granting planning permission for more than 100 houses that the infrastructure is built first, with a five year limit, after which the land passes to the local authority if the infrastructure has not been built. After the infrastructure has been completed, the developer can start building houses. In fact, there should be a maximum time of five years for unused land bank holdings, after which the land passes to the local authority, who can keep it or resell it.
**Statement on behalf of Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP** **for immediate use, attributable to his office**
The assertion by the Cabinet Office that there have been further Covid rule breaches is totally untrue.
Lawyers have examined the events in question and advised that they were lawful.
No contact was made with Mr Johnson before these incorrect allegations were made both to the police and to the Privileges Committee. This is both bizarre and unacceptable.
For whatever political purpose, it is plain that a last ditch attempt is being made to lengthen the Privileges Committee investigation as it was coming to a conclusion and to undermine Mr Johnson.
Mr Johnson’s lawyers have tonight written to the police forces involved to explain in detail why the Cabinet Office is entirely wrong in its assertions.
The events in question were all within the rules either because they were held outdoors or came within another lawful exception. They include regular meetings with civil servants and advisers.
It appears some within government have decided to make unfounded suggestions both to the police and to the Privileges Committee.
Many will conclude that this has all the hallmarks of yet another politically motivated stitch up.
-- So Bozo won't admit to be wrong even when lawyers know things are as dodgy as f***
The events didn't happen. And even if they did happen they were legal. 😀
It has been reported in The Times that 160,000 proposed new homes have now been banned, because the quango 'Natural England' has insisted that they would add phosphates to Rivers. Their ban is an enforcement of a 2018 ECJ ruling (yes, from when we'd supposedly already left).
But the House Building Federation have a previous story (from March, when it was only 120,000 homes they were blocking) on their website, with more detail. Including the fact that all existing housing stock (25 million or so) accounts for only 5% of the issue, so these new properties would have a negligible impact. https://www.hbf.co.uk/news/nutrient-neutrality-lichfields-report-unblocking-homebuilding/
This is the kind of shit we left the EU to sort it - their burdensome, wrong-headed regulation is real, it is pertinent to important issues, and it does hold us back.
"shit" is precisely the issue here. If the infrastructure for sewerage is not there, then no point in building houses. Schools, roads, too ... and promises from developers are worthless.
Actually they are less than worthless.
Make it a condition of granting planning permission for more than 100 houses that the infrastructure is built first, with a five year limit, after which the land passes to the local authority if the infrastructure has not been built. After the infrastructure has been completed, the developer can start building houses. In fact, there should be a maximum time of five years for unused land bank holdings, after which the land passes to the local authority, who can keep it or resell it.
Build the infrastructure, then sell the plots to the developers at a price that covers the infrastructure.
It has been reported in The Times that 160,000 proposed new homes have now been banned, because the quango 'Natural England' has insisted that they would add phosphates to Rivers. Their ban is an enforcement of a 2018 ECJ ruling (yes, from when we'd supposedly already left).
But the House Building Federation have a previous story (from March, when it was only 120,000 homes they were blocking) on their website, with more detail. Including the fact that all existing housing stock (25 million or so) accounts for only 5% of the issue, so these new properties would have a negligible impact. https://www.hbf.co.uk/news/nutrient-neutrality-lichfields-report-unblocking-homebuilding/
This is the kind of shit we left the EU to sort it - their burdensome, wrong-headed regulation is real, it is pertinent to important issues, and it does hold us back.
"shit" is precisely the issue here. If the infrastructure for sewerage is not there, then no point in building houses. Schools, roads, too ... and promises from developers are worthless.
Actually they are less than worthless.
Make it a condition of granting planning permission for more than 100 houses that the infrastructure is built first, with a five year limit, after which the land passes to the local authority if the infrastructure has not been built. After the infrastructure has been completed, the developer can start building houses. In fact, there should be a maximum time of five years for unused land bank holdings, after which the land passes to the local authority, who can keep it or resell it.
You could call such an obligation a Section 106 agreement:
There are no shops on my estate, but there are shops I can drive to, so problem solved. New or old housing, I've never lived on an estate with a supermarket within the estate come to think of it.
Not exactly a well planned estate then. Ideally you should have a shop within walking distance as otherwise you are restricting those houses to multiple car households.
You’re thinking like a toff who has a bloke to put toothpaste on his toothbrush.
A properly designed estate should look like this -
I'm actually thinking about the local estate which because it was built by a clueful local firm has a shopping parade in the middle with the houses around the edge (think all houses are max 10 minutes walk from the shops and pub). Mind you they wanted it to be a Garden Village so they needed to include the village bits.
It has been reported in The Times that 160,000 proposed new homes have now been banned, because the quango 'Natural England' has insisted that they would add phosphates to Rivers. Their ban is an enforcement of a 2018 ECJ ruling (yes, from when we'd supposedly already left).
But the House Building Federation have a previous story (from March, when it was only 120,000 homes they were blocking) on their website, with more detail. Including the fact that all existing housing stock (25 million or so) accounts for only 5% of the issue, so these new properties would have a negligible impact. https://www.hbf.co.uk/news/nutrient-neutrality-lichfields-report-unblocking-homebuilding/
This is the kind of shit we left the EU to sort it - their burdensome, wrong-headed regulation is real, it is pertinent to important issues, and it does hold us back.
"shit" is precisely the issue here. If the infrastructure for sewerage is not there, then no point in building houses. Schools, roads, too ... and promises from developers are worthless.
Actually they are less than worthless.
Make it a condition of granting planning permission for more than 100 houses that the infrastructure is built first, with a five year limit, after which the land passes to the local authority if the infrastructure has not been built. After the infrastructure has been completed, the developer can start building houses. In fact, there should be a maximum time of five years for unused land bank holdings, after which the land passes to the local authority, who can keep it or resell it.
Build the infrastructure, then sell the plots to the developers at a price that covers the infrastructure.
It has been reported in The Times that 160,000 proposed new homes have now been banned, because the quango 'Natural England' has insisted that they would add phosphates to Rivers. Their ban is an enforcement of a 2018 ECJ ruling (yes, from when we'd supposedly already left).
But the House Building Federation have a previous story (from March, when it was only 120,000 homes they were blocking) on their website, with more detail. Including the fact that all existing housing stock (25 million or so) accounts for only 5% of the issue, so these new properties would have a negligible impact. https://www.hbf.co.uk/news/nutrient-neutrality-lichfields-report-unblocking-homebuilding/
This is the kind of shit we left the EU to sort it - their burdensome, wrong-headed regulation is real, it is pertinent to important issues, and it does hold us back.
"shit" is precisely the issue here. If the infrastructure for sewerage is not there, then no point in building houses. Schools, roads, too ... and promises from developers are worthless.
Actually they are less than worthless.
Make it a condition of granting planning permission for more than 100 houses that the infrastructure is built first, with a five year limit, after which the land passes to the local authority if the infrastructure has not been built. After the infrastructure has been completed, the developer can start building houses. In fact, there should be a maximum time of five years for unused land bank holdings, after which the land passes to the local authority, who can keep it or resell it.
Build the infrastructure, then sell the plots to the developers at a price that covers the infrastructure.
That's a very dutch approach to housing.
It’s how Chiswick was done, for example.
A lot of Victorian public works were funded by such mechanisms. For examples, chunks of the Thames embankments were done by selling permission to a group of businessmen. Who would then build the river wall. The fill behind was rubble and earth from house building locally. Free dumping until full.
Then they had a chunk of new land to sell on… often the councils would get a chunk of the land as well.
EXCL: Suella Braverman's Home Office civil servants have been forced to “fact-check” the home secretary’s statements to cabinet on up to six occasions - @breeallegretti & co reveal
Is doing their job when the Minister is incompetent being “in open revolt”?
Doing their job would be a nice change - the current Civil Service is the most useless in history. The open revolt lies in the fact that they are flapping their gums about Ministers to anyone who will listen.
It has been reported in The Times that 160,000 proposed new homes have now been banned, because the quango 'Natural England' has insisted that they would add phosphates to Rivers. Their ban is an enforcement of a 2018 ECJ ruling (yes, from when we'd supposedly already left).
But the House Building Federation have a previous story (from March, when it was only 120,000 homes they were blocking) on their website, with more detail. Including the fact that all existing housing stock (25 million or so) accounts for only 5% of the issue, so these new properties would have a negligible impact. https://www.hbf.co.uk/news/nutrient-neutrality-lichfields-report-unblocking-homebuilding/
This is the kind of shit we left the EU to sort it - their burdensome, wrong-headed regulation is real, it is pertinent to important issues, and it does hold us back.
"shit" is precisely the issue here. If the infrastructure for sewerage is not there, then no point in building houses. Schools, roads, too ... and promises from developers are worthless.
Actually they are less than worthless.
Make it a condition of granting planning permission for more than 100 houses that the infrastructure is built first, with a five year limit, after which the land passes to the local authority if the infrastructure has not been built. After the infrastructure has been completed, the developer can start building houses. In fact, there should be a maximum time of five years for unused land bank holdings, after which the land passes to the local authority, who can keep it or resell it.
You could call such an obligation a Section 106 agreement:
Lovely to see all the people who said Johnson was a superb PM whilst he was ahead now saying he is a disgrace.
It was obvious before he was PM this would happen.
I think the tories were idiots to make him PM. And idiots to get rid of him.
I accept, I’m probably the only person in Britain with this view…
If the criteria is party prospects at the next election I agree they probably should have kept him. But if you go with that criteria why do you think they were idiots to make him PM? Because that's exactly why they did it. They picked him to win the next election and he duly delivered.
Any competent Tory leadership candidate, back in ‘19 could have beaten Corbyn and won back their majority. They just had to loosen up on austerity and follow the midlands and north electoral strategy that was obvious, post 2016. And use their media allies to go hard on corbyn.
It didn’t have to be Johnson.
There were better candidates. Johnson’s flaws were so damn obvious.
There are no shops on my estate, but there are shops I can drive to, so problem solved. New or old housing, I've never lived on an estate with a supermarket within the estate come to think of it.
Not exactly a well planned estate then. Ideally you should have a shop within walking distance as otherwise you are restricting those houses to multiple car households.
You’re thinking like a toff who has a bloke to put toothpaste on his toothbrush.
A properly designed estate should look like this -
EXCL: Suella Braverman's Home Office civil servants have been forced to “fact-check” the home secretary’s statements to cabinet on up to six occasions - @breeallegretti & co reveal
Is doing their job when the Minister is incompetent being “in open revolt”?
Doing their job would be a nice change - the current Civil Service is the most useless in history. The open revolt lies in the fact that they are flapping their gums about Ministers to anyone who will listen.
The Government is the most useless in history, but I think that represents the people at the top, the politicians, rather than the civil servants.
There are no shops on my estate, but there are shops I can drive to, so problem solved. New or old housing, I've never lived on an estate with a supermarket within the estate come to think of it.
Not exactly a well planned estate then. Ideally you should have a shop within walking distance as otherwise you are restricting those houses to multiple car households.
You’re thinking like a toff who has a bloke to put toothpaste on his toothbrush.
A properly designed estate should look like this -
Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?
Can't we mature the debate a bit?
Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.
How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.
Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.
If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
It's not really, though, is it?
Women don't have penises.
Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.
I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.
Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
Lovely to see all the people who said Johnson was a superb PM whilst he was ahead now saying he is a disgrace.
It was obvious before he was PM this would happen.
I think the tories were idiots to make him PM. And idiots to get rid of him.
I accept, I’m probably the only person in Britain with this view…
If the criteria is party prospects at the next election I agree they probably should have kept him. But if you go with that criteria why do you think they were idiots to make him PM? Because that's exactly why they did it. They picked him to win the next election and he duly delivered.
Any competent Tory leadership candidate, back in ‘19 could have beaten Corbyn and won back their majority. They just had to loosen up on austerity and follow the midlands and north electoral strategy that was obvious, post 2016. It didn’t have to be Johnson.
There were better candidates.
I mean, Theresa May beat him despite actively sabotaging herself.
I’m just reading Nick Timothy’s account of the 2017 election. It’s even more cringeworthy than I remember.
EXCL: Suella Braverman's Home Office civil servants have been forced to “fact-check” the home secretary’s statements to cabinet on up to six occasions - @breeallegretti & co reveal
Is doing their job when the Minister is incompetent being “in open revolt”?
Doing their job would be a nice change - the current Civil Service is the most useless in history. The open revolt lies in the fact that they are flapping their gums about Ministers to anyone who will listen.
The Government is the most useless in history, but I think that represents the people at the top, the politicians, rather than the civil servants.
The complete lack of productivity across civil service departments cannot all be blamed on Ministers; though they have certainly failed to take it in hand.
EXCL: Suella Braverman's Home Office civil servants have been forced to “fact-check” the home secretary’s statements to cabinet on up to six occasions - @breeallegretti & co reveal
Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?
Can't we mature the debate a bit?
Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.
How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.
Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.
If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
It's not really, though, is it?
Women don't have penises.
Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.
I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.
Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
There aren't really nuances though, are there?
Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident. But no women have penises. Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women. Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it. None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?
Can't we mature the debate a bit?
Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.
How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.
Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.
If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
It's not really, though, is it?
Women don't have penises.
Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.
I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.
Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
"Do you think women can have a penis?" is the most passive aggressive question ever. Saying "Yes" is the best way of dealing with this behaviour.
It's that once in a month instance when he's right. The British people are getting very tired of their senior politicians blaming everyone else for their own mistakes. High office brings responsibility. Not licence to constantly say “it wasn’t me guv”.
I did l ike Guido's disingenuous take on the Boris issue, which we see a lot, which was basically 'No one is above the law, but this looks like vindicticeness'. So...basically some peopel are above the law, since even if (and its only if) a law was breached, punishment is vindictive.
It's the plaintive cry of "It's not fair", when in fact it is fair to face consequences.
Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?
Can't we mature the debate a bit?
Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.
How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.
Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.
If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
It's not really, though, is it?
Women don't have penises.
Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.
I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.
Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
There aren't really nuances though, are there?
Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident. But no women have penises. Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women. Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it. None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
AIUI, there is a tiny proportion of people for whom there is genuine biological ambiguity.
We’re only talking about a few thousand people, though.
@PippaCrerar Friends of Boris Johnson say he is “seriously considering” legal action against Cabinet Office, adding it is “seriously defamatory” to suggest he had further breached lockdown laws @MailOnline
Expert banned from UK government event for tweets that criticised Tories Dan Kaszeta is one of at least eight speakers banned by opaque vetting scheme in ‘attack on free speech’ https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/23/dan-kaszeta-banned-from-uk-government-event-for-tweets-criticised-tories … Dan Kaszeta is one of at least eight speakers banned from government events by an opaque vetting scheme introduced by Jacob Rees-Mogg in 2022, a policy that the banned expert described as an attack on free speech.
Kaszeta said: “I’m not a revolutionary communist. I’m a Lib Dem.” He said he had no detailed explanation as to which posts had led to him being disinvited from addressing a specialist event that began on Tuesday...
Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/ … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.
Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…
Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/ … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.
Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…
Except most of the tweeters are still liberal left
Lovely to see all the people who said Johnson was a superb PM whilst he was ahead now saying he is a disgrace.
It was obvious before he was PM this would happen.
I think the tories were idiots to make him PM. And idiots to get rid of him.
I accept, I’m probably the only person in Britain with this view…
If the criteria is party prospects at the next election I agree they probably should have kept him. But if you go with that criteria why do you think they were idiots to make him PM? Because that's exactly why they did it. They picked him to win the next election and he duly delivered.
Any competent Tory leadership candidate, back in ‘19 could have beaten Corbyn and won back their majority. They just had to loosen up on austerity and follow the midlands and north electoral strategy that was obvious, post 2016. And use their media allies to go hard on corbyn.
It didn’t have to be Johnson.
There were better candidates. Johnson’s flaws were so damn obvious.
Ah ok so that makes logical sense of your statement then. I disagree though. I think another leader (Hunt say) could have won but not by as much. Quite a few people in key seats considered they were voting 'Boris' rather than Tory in 2019. Also the election itself was forced by Johnson, in the process creating the People v Parliament and Get Brexit Done dynamic which proved so potent. I hated it but at the same time recognize it as a truly brilliant political coup. And ok, Cummings was the brains but Johnson had to execute and front it. The Cons were in deep shit when he took over in July 2019. Hung parliament and behind in the polls. Five months later he delivers a landslide. An amazing achievement.
Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?
Can't we mature the debate a bit?
Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.
How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.
Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.
If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
It's not really, though, is it?
Women don't have penises.
Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.
I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.
Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
There aren't really nuances though, are there?
Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident. But no women have penises. Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women. Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it. None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
In terms of legally defined gender, there are women with penises and men with uteri. That's because you can change your legal gender without having surgery.
So yes, men can have uteri and women can have penises. Don't like that? Get the law changed. Til then, tough luck.
You could make a law declaring the sky to be green or abolishing the law of gravity. Wouldn't make it true though.
@PippaCrerar Friends of Boris Johnson say he is “seriously considering” legal action against Cabinet Office, adding it is “seriously defamatory” to suggest he had further breached lockdown laws @MailOnline
Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/ … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.
Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…
Except most of the tweeters are still liberal left
Everyone is liberal left from where you stand
In every recent UK general election a plurality of tweeters tweeted pro Labour statements and only a minority pro Tory but the Tories won.
Trump's Truth Social network is the real Far-Right Social Network
@PippaCrerar Friends of Boris Johnson say he is “seriously considering” legal action against Cabinet Office, adding it is “seriously defamatory” to suggest he had further breached lockdown laws @MailOnline
GO FOR IT !!!
I have an open mind here that Boris might have a point. This was looked at before by lawyers and cleared. Nor do I think this is United Tory Party versus a civil service Blob this week, the civil service, the cabinet office, would not act on this to this extent without knowledge or nod of their political masters.
It’s clearly blue on blue week. Those around Rishi panicking, I think needlessly about the weakness of his position. It’s Oliver Dowden who will go if this backfires, in order to shield Rishi Sunak. I think this particular sneak attack on Boris might backfire. They’ve over reached. I think Dowden is about to lose his job.
**Statement on behalf of Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP** **for immediate use, attributable to his office**
The assertion by the Cabinet Office that there have been further Covid rule breaches is totally untrue.
Lawyers have examined the events in question and advised that they were lawful.
No contact was made with Mr Johnson before these incorrect allegations were made both to the police and to the Privileges Committee. This is both bizarre and unacceptable.
For whatever political purpose, it is plain that a last ditch attempt is being made to lengthen the Privileges Committee investigation as it was coming to a conclusion and to undermine Mr Johnson.
Mr Johnson’s lawyers have tonight written to the police forces involved to explain in detail why the Cabinet Office is entirely wrong in its assertions.
The events in question were all within the rules either because they were held outdoors or came within another lawful exception. They include regular meetings with civil servants and advisers.
It appears some within government have decided to make unfounded suggestions both to the police and to the Privileges Committee.
Many will conclude that this has all the hallmarks of yet another politically motivated stitch up.
-- So Bozo won't admit to be wrong even when lawyers know things are as dodgy as f***
"Mr Johnson's lawyers"? Oh please, They're our lawyers. We are paying for them. They are a gift from the nation to Mr Johnson.
The irony seems to be that the Chequers shenanigans were discovered from Johnson's own diary, which was used as evidence for the defence against other Covid spreading jollies, but is in the hands of the Cabinet Office because it, or rather us the taxpayer, is the paying client for Johnson's legal case.
I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
Lovely to see all the people who said Johnson was a superb PM whilst he was ahead now saying he is a disgrace.
It was obvious before he was PM this would happen.
I think the tories were idiots to make him PM. And idiots to get rid of him.
I accept, I’m probably the only person in Britain with this view…
If the criteria is party prospects at the next election I agree they probably should have kept him. But if you go with that criteria why do you think they were idiots to make him PM? Because that's exactly why they did it. They picked him to win the next election and he duly delivered.
Any competent Tory leadership candidate, back in ‘19 could have beaten Corbyn and won back their majority. They just had to loosen up on austerity and follow the midlands and north electoral strategy that was obvious, post 2016. And use their media allies to go hard on corbyn.
It didn’t have to be Johnson.
There were better candidates. Johnson’s flaws were so damn obvious.
Ah ok so that makes logical sense of your statement then. I disagree though. I think another leader (Hunt say) could have won but not by as much. Quite a few people in key seats considered they were voting 'Boris' rather than Tory in 2019. Also the election itself was forced by Johnson, in the process creating the People v Parliament and Get Brexit Done dynamic which proved so potent. I hated it but at the same time recognize it as a truly brilliant political coup. And ok, Cummings was the brains but Johnson had to execute and front it. The Cons were in deep shit when he took over in July 2019. Hung parliament and behind in the polls. Five months later he delivers a landslide. An amazing achievement.
A not small part of the reason the Conservatives were deep in the shit was Johnson himself.
Is that true? I thought the Tories started to stage a revival pretty much as soon as May was replaced by Johnson. FWIW, I almost agree with kinabalu, except that I don't think Hunt would have even won a majority - he might, at best, have got back to 2017. I may be no fan of Johnson. But for me, he achieved one big thing of note, which was keeping Corbyn out of power. (Of course, this is only an achievement of note if you believe, as I do, though others don't, that Corbyn would have been terrible. I know some hold a different view.) Also vaccines, the details of which are, sadly for him, disappearing into the rear view mirror.
Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/ … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.
Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…
It may or may not be true but that is a weak argument based on those two paragraphs. He says he wants it to be a free speech platform. Is he censoring left wing views he doesn't like? Or does he just allow a free for all?
Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/ … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.
Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…
Except that's nonsense, isn't it? It used to be the case that Twitter suppressed far right voices (and also some perfectly unremarkable vaguely right of centre voices) in a way it clearly did not with the far left. Now it doesn't. But that doesn't make it far right.
"Bank of England officials hope the ratchet between higher prices and wages will soon moderate as official figures on Wednesday are set to show a large drop in the headline inflation rate.
The central bank is expecting the annual rate of consumer price inflation to drop almost 2 percentage points from 10.1 per cent in March to 8.4 per cent in April, and decline to its 2 per cent target in late 2024 or early 2025."
I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result
"American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"
I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
Come on @MoonRabbit, at least some of the slaves were - presumably - having fun at least some of the time.
Who's to say that the painter didn't just get lucky?
Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?
Can't we mature the debate a bit?
Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.
How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.
Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.
If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
It's not really, though, is it?
Women don't have penises.
Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.
I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.
Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
There aren't really nuances though, are there?
Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident. But no women have penises. Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women. Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it. None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
In terms of legally defined gender, there are women with penises and men with uteri. That's because you can change your legal gender without having surgery.
So yes, men can have uteri and women can have penises. Don't like that? Get the law changed. Til then, tough luck.
You could make a law declaring the sky to be green or abolishing the law of gravity. Wouldn't make it true though.
Not a good comparison because those are factual matters. There is no agreed truth governing the relationship of gender to biological sex.
Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/ … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.
Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…
Except that's nonsense, isn't it? It used to be the case that Twitter suppressed far right voices (and also some perfectly unremarkable vaguely right of centre voices) in a way it clearly did not with the far left. Now it doesn't. But that doesn't make it far right.
An article from the year 2000 about suella fernandes, president of the cambridge university conservative association, who was accused of vote rigging and responded with a reassuring “you can’t prove anything”
"Bank of England officials hope the ratchet between higher prices and wages will soon moderate as official figures on Wednesday are set to show a large drop in the headline inflation rate.
The central bank is expecting the annual rate of consumer price inflation to drop almost 2 percentage points from 10.1 per cent in March to 8.4 per cent in April, and decline to its 2 per cent target in late 2024 or early 2025."
Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/ … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.
Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…
Except that's nonsense, isn't it? It used to be the case that Twitter suppressed far right voices (and also some perfectly unremarkable vaguely right of centre voices) in a way it clearly did not with the far left. Now it doesn't. But that doesn't make it far right.
Quite
The Woke Left is so used to having Twitter as a nicely regulated safe space for itself, that when rightwing or simply non-approved voices are heard, it SEEMS like a babel of Nazis, because it is so unexpected and unusual
The irony is that Twitter is still fairly leftwing, it's just somewhay more diverse now. Diversity is strength
Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/ … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.
Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…
This is a dreadful article. It is just a rant by someone who seems to hate Elon Musk. Why does it get published in the Atlantic? it adds no value.
Perhaps it alternatively reveals despair on the part of the 'woke left', because they can no longer cancel right wing ideas by getting people banned on Twitter - a trick that worked very well for about 5 years. The cultural impact of this is massive - the 'woke' are now in retreat. People hear other perspectives and find themselves agreeing with them.
Yes. You can now lock into a return of inflation +1% over 20 years by just buying an inflation-linked government bond.
Some of the rise in yields takes its lead from the US, but the cost of UK borrowing is rising much quicker again.
There is a lot of gilt issuance this year, and there is some concern that UK DB pension funds don't need to buy much more, the Bank of England is selling rather than buying and other investors aren't of the same scale.
The period of cheap government borrowing may be at its end. That will make politics tricker.
I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result
"American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"
Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.
It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
The evidence of Reverse Flynn is plentiful, around the western world. It's not "one article", you gormless dork
"IQ rates are dropping in many developed countries and that doesn't bode well for humanity"
Lovely to see all the people who said Johnson was a superb PM whilst he was ahead now saying he is a disgrace.
It was obvious before he was PM this would happen.
I think the tories were idiots to make him PM. And idiots to get rid of him.
I accept, I’m probably the only person in Britain with this view…
If the criteria is party prospects at the next election I agree they probably should have kept him. But if you go with that criteria why do you think they were idiots to make him PM? Because that's exactly why they did it. They picked him to win the next election and he duly delivered.
Any competent Tory leadership candidate, back in ‘19 could have beaten Corbyn and won back their majority. They just had to loosen up on austerity and follow the midlands and north electoral strategy that was obvious, post 2016. And use their media allies to go hard on corbyn.
It didn’t have to be Johnson.
There were better candidates. Johnson’s flaws were so damn obvious.
Ah ok so that makes logical sense of your statement then. I disagree though. I think another leader (Hunt say) could have won but not by as much. Quite a few people in key seats considered they were voting 'Boris' rather than Tory in 2019. Also the election itself was forced by Johnson, in the process creating the People v Parliament and Get Brexit Done dynamic which proved so potent. I hated it but at the same time recognize it as a truly brilliant political coup. And ok, Cummings was the brains but Johnson had to execute and front it. The Cons were in deep shit when he took over in July 2019. Hung parliament and behind in the polls. Five months later he delivers a landslide. An amazing achievement.
A not small part of the reason the Conservatives were deep in the shit was Johnson himself.
Well yes. If he and the ERG had supported Mrs May and her Brexit deal the impasse might have been avoided and then who knows how things might have panned out. Instead, as always, he did what furthered his own interests. He didn't throw away the 2015 Con majority though. She did that. In that sense she put herself behind the 8 ball.
Yes I am - all indicators are pointing to it. 8.7 I think. 🙂
That’s still a high rate of continued increase in prices though. Strikes are not going away, but government not in any position to settle them, and that in turn hits NHS promises.
Inflation Down to 5 by eoy maybe, and then down to 2 before next years general election, no chance. And the longer it stays as a player, and I would call 4% in play, is bad news for UK debt not just cost of living crisis and income erosion, nest egg erosion, and personal borrowing and debt, it’s doing all that on macro level too.
Lady Thatcher used recession and money tightening to kill off the scourge of inflation, so unexpected growth and avoiding recession might not be such a good thing this year if it comes with sticky inflation, government debt problems, longer fiscal tightening, and I personally think but not reading it anywhere, threat of property price and stock price corrections.
Politically, Pre election tax cutting would look awful when there’s debt to be cleared first.
Fun fact - did you know Hunt had a say in the wording IMF said about us today? “Clear debt before cutting taxes” might even have been a line he put in.
There are no shops on my estate, but there are shops I can drive to, so problem solved. New or old housing, I've never lived on an estate with a supermarket within the estate come to think of it.
Not exactly a well planned estate then. Ideally you should have a shop within walking distance as otherwise you are restricting those houses to multiple car households.
Its a very well planned estate, every house has a driveway or a double driveway. And we even have an electric car charger built in as standard too. 👍
We have both a Co-op and a bus stop within walking distance. They don't need to be on the estate to be in walking distance. I drive to the supermarkets because - well why wouldn't I? But if my wife who doesn't drive wants to get something herself via walking, she's able to do so.
Shops will get built organically and expand or close depending upon customer demand. No need for "planning", we don't and shouldn't live in a communist planned economy.
I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
I read some of the Fleming Bond books as a child, and probably too young for them, and was quite disappointed they were not like the movies. But one thing I did take away was that Felix Letter was out-and-out racist: there's a passage in one of the books where he complains about politically correct speech, saying "you can't even order a jigger of rum any more, it has to be a jegro". It took my far-too-young brain some months to work out what he meant.
Yes. You can now lock into a return of inflation +1% over 20 years by just buying an inflation-linked government bond.
Some of the rise in yields takes its lead from the US, but the cost of UK borrowing is rising much quicker again.
There is a lot of gilt issuance this year, and there is some concern that UK DB pension funds don't need to buy much more, the Bank of England is selling rather than buying and other investors aren't of the same scale.
The period of cheap government borrowing may be at its end. That will make politics tricker.
No chance of interest rates falling below 4.5% until 2025+. We are entering into the era of reverse low rates ie possibly real interest rates 2025+.
I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result
"American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"
Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.
It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
An article from the year 2000 about suella fernandes, president of the cambridge university conservative association, who was accused of vote rigging and responded with a reassuring “you can’t prove anything”
Yes. You can now lock into a return of inflation +1% over 20 years by just buying an inflation-linked government bond.
Some of the rise in yields takes its lead from the US, but the cost of UK borrowing is rising much quicker again.
There is a lot of gilt issuance this year, and there is some concern that UK DB pension funds don't need to buy much more, the Bank of England is selling rather than buying and other investors aren't of the same scale.
The period of cheap government borrowing may be at its end. That will make politics tricker.
No chance of interest rates falling below 4.5% until 2025+. We are entering into the era of reverse low rates ie possibly real interest rates 2025+.
We've been through a strange period of commodity price shocks and currency devaluation. Inflation could come right down in the medium term.
Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?
Can't we mature the debate a bit?
Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.
How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.
Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.
If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
It's not really, though, is it?
Women don't have penises.
Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.
I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.
Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
There aren't really nuances though, are there?
Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident. But no women have penises. Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women. Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it. None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
In terms of legally defined gender, there are women with penises and men with uteri. That's because you can change your legal gender without having surgery.
So yes, men can have uteri and women can have penises. Don't like that? Get the law changed. Til then, tough luck.
You could make a law declaring the sky to be green or abolishing the law of gravity. Wouldn't make it true though.
Not a good comparison because those are factual matters. There is no agreed truth governing the relationship of gender to biological sex.
Yes, but there was complete consensus until about 15 years ago, and there only is any ambiguity at all, I strongly suspect, because of some weird academics trying to be awkward. Basically gender = sex. Gender was a word for people too squeamish or polite to use the word 'sex'. There was an agreed truth that your gender was your sex. You could behave how you wanted, but, if you had a penis, you were a man; if you didn't, barring accidents, you were a woman. And then - let's be charitable, and say that it was to make those few people on the path to changing sex but not actually there yet - some sort of ambiguity was introduced.* And somehow this concept was introduced that you have a gender separate from your sex which is somehow innate and only you can know what it is. But it's nonsense, isn't it? We all KNOW it's nonsense. Don't we? We've tiptoed around the issue so as not to cause offence, but there is no such thing as gender, apart from biological sex. And you can choose whichever way to behave you want; you can like fighting or sewing or football or crafts or musical theatre or crawling through mud and firing machine guns. But that isn't gender, that's personality.
*Why? Fuck knows. To increase book sales? Some Chinese plot to destabilise the west? Because sex-change clinics are very profitable? Because it will annoy people? Because some people like being victims? Because people need a tribe to belong to and no-one is interested in what sort of music you like any more?
Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/ … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.
Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…
Except that's nonsense, isn't it? It used to be the case that Twitter suppressed far right voices (and also some perfectly unremarkable vaguely right of centre voices) in a way it clearly did not with the far left. Now it doesn't. But that doesn't make it far right.
He does think that George Soros is an enemy of humanity
I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
Come on @MoonRabbit, at least some of the slaves were - presumably - having fun at least some of the time.
Who's to say that the painter didn't just get lucky?
Possible I suppose.
A lot of the art of the time was posing on the estate, in front the house, with the prize winning pig, or the trophy wife. Spin and lies of where and how the wealth was coming from, slots very neatly into the politics going on, in this world of art.
And that’s even before we come onto the brazen misogyny, in that world of art.
I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result
"American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"
Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.
It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
There is no question. IQs are falling and people are getting dumber. See the NBC article
The huge recent American study merely confirms that the USA is not immune to a phenomenon already observed in multiple advanced countries. I genuinely believe we are beginning to see the effects of this in our culture. An intellectual passivity, a dumb acceptance of norms, an inability to imagine and a reluctance to entertain new ideas
Wokeness - where you are instructed what to think about everything, and everyone eagerly agrees - is a potential symptom
Maybe AI has arrived bang on time, it can do all the thinking for us, from now on
I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result
"American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"
I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result
"American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"
Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.
It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
The evidence of Reverse Flynn is plentiful, around the western world. It's not "one article", you gormless dork
"IQ rates are dropping in many developed countries and that doesn't bode well for humanity"
"An intelligence crisis could undermine our problem-solving capacities and dim the prospects of the global economy."
"People are getting dumber. That's not a judgment; it's a global fact. In a host of leading nations, IQ scores have started to decline."
And that article contradicts the one about the Northwestern University study that claimed American IQs were going down. Your second article claims the problem has not been observed in the US. Notably, the period studied in the first ends (2018) before the second article was published (2019). So it sounds like not a lot of people are looking at this, or the "OMG IQs are dropping!" studies are cherry-picked from a range of studies saying different things.
Even if all these doubts can be made to go away and you really do think that IQ tests are getting lower scores, so what? We all know IQ tests are seriously limited.
And even if you want to say, "no, it still means something," then your inference that didacticism in art is the diabolical result of this stupidification is... well, stupid. Art has been didactic from the time that art crawled out of the cave. Art has always been a vehicle for expressing view not just of beauty but of right and wrong. When Wilde wrote that there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. he was leaving out an important truth: artists pour their moral views into the pages or canvases they work on. From Plato to Murdoch, from van Gogh to Beremboim, art communicates perspectives of right and wrong. It's nothing new.
The more recent article references a more recent study, in America: a study which now confirms the trends identified in the older article - which talks of these trends being observed outside America. This is not hard to work out
What is new in art is the passivity of the consumer, the gallery goer. Content to be spoon fed trite opinions they already know by heart, anyway. Absolute hallmark of intellectual mediocrity
I don't believe Tate Britain would have got away with this dreary box-ticking bullshit in a more creatively vigorous and philosophically combative era. Like, say, the 1990s
Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/ … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.
Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…
This is a dreadful article. It is just a rant by someone who seems to hate Elon Musk. Why does it get published in the Atlantic? it adds no value.
Perhaps it alternatively reveals despair on the part of the 'woke left', because they can no longer cancel right wing ideas by getting people banned on Twitter - a trick that worked very well for about 5 years. The cultural impact of this is massive - the 'woke' are now in retreat. People hear other perspectives and find themselves agreeing with them.
"Now" in retreat? What was the "woke" take on that mass house arrest thingy of 2020-22? Y'know, where you weren't allowed to go within 2 metres of anyone and had to stay in your home except on trips to Tesco's etc.? Stupid question? Sure. But if there's no answer to it then "woke" doesn't exist - at least not on the major historical questions of the day.
Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?
Can't we mature the debate a bit?
Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.
How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.
Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.
If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
It's not really, though, is it?
Women don't have penises.
Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.
I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.
Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
There aren't really nuances though, are there?
Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident. But no women have penises. Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women. Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it. None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
In terms of legally defined gender, there are women with penises and men with uteri. That's because you can change your legal gender without having surgery.
So yes, men can have uteri and women can have penises. Don't like that? Get the law changed. Til then, tough luck.
You could make a law declaring the sky to be green or abolishing the law of gravity. Wouldn't make it true though.
Not a good comparison because those are factual matters. There is no agreed truth governing the relationship of gender to biological sex.
Yes, but there was complete consensus until about 15 years ago, and there only is any ambiguity at all, I strongly suspect, because of some weird academics trying to be awkward. Basically gender = sex. Gender was a word for people too squeamish or polite to use the word 'sex'. There was an agreed truth that your gender was your sex. You could behave how you wanted, but, if you had a penis, you were a man; if you didn't, barring accidents, you were a woman. And then - let's be charitable, and say that it was to make those few people on the path to changing sex but not actually there yet - some sort of ambiguity was introduced.* And somehow this concept was introduced that you have a gender separate from your sex which is somehow innate and only you can know what it is. But it's nonsense, isn't it? We all KNOW it's nonsense. Don't we? We've tiptoed around the issue so as not to cause offence, but there is no such thing as gender, apart from biological sex. And you can choose whichever way to behave you want; you can like fighting or sewing or football or crafts or musical theatre or crawling through mud and firing machine guns. But that isn't gender, that's personality.
*Why? Fuck knows. To increase book sales? Some Chinese plot to destabilise the west? Because sex-change clinics are very profitable? Because it will annoy people? Because some people like being victims? Because people need a tribe to belong to and no-one is interested in what sort of music you like any more?
Not so. 'Gender' was a term (borrowed from grammar) introduced by anthropologists in the 1970s to distinguish those (and they were observed throughout the world and throughout cultures) whose psychological assessment of themselves as a man or a woman within that culture differed from what the culture itself dictated on purely biological terms. So sex/gender is quite a useful distinction, and there's nothing remotely new here.
Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/ … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.
Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…
This is a dreadful article. It is just a rant by someone who seems to hate Elon Musk. Why does it get published in the Atlantic? it adds no value.
Perhaps it alternatively reveals despair on the part of the 'woke left', because they can no longer cancel right wing ideas by getting people banned on Twitter - a trick that worked very well for about 5 years. The cultural impact of this is massive - the 'woke' are now in retreat. People hear other perspectives and find themselves agreeing with them.
"Now"? What was the "woke" take on that mass house arrest thingy of 2020-22? Y'know, where you weren't allowed to go within 2 metres of anyone and had to stay in your home except on trips to Tesco's etc.? Stupid question? Sure. But if there's no answer to it then "woke" doesn't exist - at least not on the major historical questions of the day.
Woke seemed pretty keen on that, as I recall. Twitter and facebook certainly seemed pretty keen on censoring any alternative views.
Comments
EXCL: Suella Braverman's Home Office civil servants have been forced to “fact-check” the home secretary’s statements to cabinet on up to six occasions - @breeallegretti & co reveal
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1661112097587994649
Publicly blame your employees for your own incompetence and failings and they push back.
Whatever next?
NEW💥
One former Tory Cabinet minister texts me tonight: "I didn't really believe in the 'blob' till now.
"But the events of the last few days - the repeated briefing against Suella and now tonight's action against Boris - are beginning to make me think again. 1/2
@christopherhope
Former Cabinet minister [continued]: "If the PM's team is somehow encouraging all this they need to back off fast, and if they are not they need to take some some tough action for once against civil servants who are leaking against ministers." 2/2
Oh, Rishi needs to take some tough action right enough...
1) Government. Blair found cancelling road projects, for example, very useful. So that money could be spent on schools and hospitals.
2) Businesses. See the water companies.
3) NIMBYs
4) Greens
So you get a massive coalition against…. Everything.
You get housing built because of the huge pressure, but not the infrastructure.
When the infrastructure for dealing with sewage discharges comes up for planning review, those loudest about it, will fight the hardest to stop the problem being fixed.
A properly designed estate should look like this -
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/judgedredd/images/b/bc/640px-Dredd-Film-City-View.png
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/planning-obligations
A lot of Victorian public works were funded by such mechanisms. For examples, chunks of the Thames embankments were done by selling permission to a group of businessmen. Who would then build the river wall. The fill behind was rubble and earth from house building locally. Free dumping until full.
Then they had a chunk of new land to sell on… often the councils would get a chunk of the land as well.
(That's one happy @rcs1000 )
It didn’t have to be Johnson.
There were better candidates. Johnson’s flaws were so damn obvious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWfVfwz7rTM
I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.
Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
Admittedly that must become pretty frustrating for those working under Braverman. And most of the rest of the cabinet.
Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident.
But no women have penises.
Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women.
Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it.
None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
Tory source: “Sunak is letting Tories get decimated on his watch by the blob.
“Raab, Suella, now Boris again - when is this crap going to stop? It's time for Sunak to grow some balls”
Cancel BoZo legal aid.
Tell the others he will call an election if they don't shut up.
That would be the ballsy thing to do...
The British people are getting very tired of their senior politicians blaming everyone else for their own mistakes. High office brings responsibility. Not licence to constantly say “it wasn’t me guv”.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1661070231496687616?cxt=HHwWgICw9eSkp40uAAAA
I did l ike Guido's disingenuous take on the Boris issue, which we see a lot, which was basically 'No one is above the law, but this looks like vindicticeness'. So...basically some peopel are above the law, since even if (and its only if) a law was breached, punishment is vindictive.
It's the plaintive cry of "It's not fair", when in fact it is fair to face consequences.
We’re only talking about a few thousand people, though.
Friends of Boris Johnson say he is “seriously considering” legal action against Cabinet Office, adding it is “seriously defamatory” to suggest he had further breached lockdown laws @MailOnline
Expert banned from UK government event for tweets that criticised Tories
Dan Kaszeta is one of at least eight speakers banned by opaque vetting scheme in ‘attack on free speech’
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/23/dan-kaszeta-banned-from-uk-government-event-for-tweets-criticised-tories
… Dan Kaszeta is one of at least eight speakers banned from government events by an opaque vetting scheme introduced by Jacob Rees-Mogg in 2022, a policy that the banned expert described as an attack on free speech.
Kaszeta said: “I’m not a revolutionary communist. I’m a Lib Dem.” He said he had no detailed explanation as to which posts had led to him being disinvited from addressing a specialist event that began on Tuesday...
https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1661102736740597760?s=20
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/
… In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.
Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…
Barman says "Not Yew Tree again"
Goodnight
No10 reject the suggestion the PM is “dithering” over Braverman.
@MrHarryCole
13 hours till PMQs..
1)Higher growth than expected
2)More borrowing than expected
Is the government spending more than expected? Is it failing to raise the expected revenue?
https://twitter.com/michael_hoerger/status/1660731088761761795
Friends of Boris Johnson say he is “seriously considering” legal action against Cabinet Office, adding it is “seriously defamatory” to suggest he had further breached lockdown laws @MailOnline
GO FOR IT !!!
Trump's Truth Social network is the real Far-Right Social Network
It’s clearly blue on blue week. Those around Rishi panicking, I think needlessly about the weakness of his position. It’s Oliver Dowden who will go if this backfires, in order to shield Rishi Sunak. I think this particular sneak attack on Boris might backfire. They’ve over reached. I think Dowden is about to lose his job.
FWIW, I almost agree with kinabalu, except that I don't think Hunt would have even won a majority - he might, at best, have got back to 2017.
I may be no fan of Johnson. But for me, he achieved one big thing of note, which was keeping Corbyn out of power. (Of course, this is only an achievement of note if you believe, as I do, though others don't, that Corbyn would have been terrible. I know some hold a different view.)
Also vaccines, the details of which are, sadly for him, disappearing into the rear view mirror.
It used to be the case that Twitter suppressed far right voices (and also some perfectly unremarkable vaguely right of centre voices) in a way it clearly did not with the far left. Now it doesn't. But that doesn't make it far right.
"Bank of England officials hope the ratchet between higher prices and wages will soon moderate as official figures on Wednesday are set to show a large drop in the headline inflation rate.
The central bank is expecting the annual rate of consumer price inflation to drop almost 2 percentage points from 10.1 per cent in March to 8.4 per cent in April, and decline to its 2 per cent target in late 2024 or early 2025."
"American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/
Who's to say that the painter didn't just get lucky?
https://twitter.com/alexandrakuri/status/1660967887669010435
The Woke Left is so used to having Twitter as a nicely regulated safe space for itself, that when rightwing or simply non-approved voices are heard, it SEEMS like a babel of Nazis, because it is so unexpected and unusual
The irony is that Twitter is still fairly leftwing, it's just somewhay more diverse now. Diversity is strength
Perhaps it alternatively reveals despair on the part of the 'woke left', because they can no longer cancel right wing ideas by getting people banned on Twitter - a trick that worked very well for about 5 years. The cultural impact of this is massive - the 'woke' are now in retreat. People hear other perspectives and find themselves agreeing with them.
Some of the rise in yields takes its lead from the US, but the cost of UK borrowing is rising much quicker again.
There is a lot of gilt issuance this year, and there is some concern that UK DB pension funds don't need to buy much more, the Bank of England is selling rather than buying and other investors aren't of the same scale.
The period of cheap government borrowing may be at its end. That will make politics tricker.
"IQ rates are dropping in many developed countries and that doesn't bode well for humanity"
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-many-developed-countries-doesn-t-bode-ncna1008576
"An intelligence crisis could undermine our problem-solving capacities and dim the prospects of the global economy."
"People are getting dumber. That's not a judgment; it's a global fact. In a host of leading nations, IQ scores have started to decline."
You might know the answer to this.
Is the Sonia swap rate a decent real-time reference for uk residential mortgage rates?
Eg;
https://www.chathamfinancial.com/technology/european-market-rates
Or is there a better real-time reference that I can follow?
That’s still a high rate of continued increase in prices though. Strikes are not going away, but government not in any position to settle them, and that in turn hits NHS promises.
Inflation Down to 5 by eoy maybe, and then down to 2 before next years general election, no chance. And the longer it stays as a player, and I would call 4% in play, is bad news for UK debt not just cost of living crisis and income erosion, nest egg erosion, and personal borrowing and debt, it’s doing all that on macro level too.
Lady Thatcher used recession and money tightening to kill off the scourge of inflation, so unexpected growth and avoiding recession might not be such a good thing this year if it comes with sticky inflation, government debt problems, longer fiscal tightening, and I personally think but not reading it anywhere, threat of property price and stock price corrections.
Politically, Pre election tax cutting would look awful when there’s debt to be cleared first.
Fun fact - did you know Hunt had a say in the wording IMF said about us today? “Clear debt before cutting taxes” might even have been a line he put in.
We have both a Co-op and a bus stop within walking distance. They don't need to be on the estate to be in walking distance. I drive to the supermarkets because - well why wouldn't I? But if my wife who doesn't drive wants to get something herself via walking, she's able to do so.
Shops will get built organically and expand or close depending upon customer demand. No need for "planning", we don't and shouldn't live in a communist planned economy.
Basically gender = sex. Gender was a word for people too squeamish or polite to use the word 'sex'. There was an agreed truth that your gender was your sex. You could behave how you wanted, but, if you had a penis, you were a man; if you didn't, barring accidents, you were a woman.
And then - let's be charitable, and say that it was to make those few people on the path to changing sex but not actually there yet - some sort of ambiguity was introduced.*
And somehow this concept was introduced that you have a gender separate from your sex which is somehow innate and only you can know what it is. But it's nonsense, isn't it? We all KNOW it's nonsense. Don't we? We've tiptoed around the issue so as not to cause offence, but there is no such thing as gender, apart from biological sex. And you can choose whichever way to behave you want; you can like fighting or sewing or football or crafts or musical theatre or crawling through mud and firing machine guns. But that isn't gender, that's personality.
*Why? Fuck knows. To increase book sales? Some Chinese plot to destabilise the west? Because sex-change clinics are very profitable? Because it will annoy people? Because some people like being victims? Because people need a tribe to belong to and no-one is interested in what sort of music you like any more?
A lot of the art of the time was posing on the estate, in front the house, with the prize winning pig, or the trophy wife. Spin and lies of where and how the wealth was coming from, slots very neatly into the politics going on, in this world of art.
And that’s even before we come onto the brazen misogyny, in that world of art.
The huge recent American study merely confirms that the USA is not immune to a phenomenon already observed in multiple advanced countries. I genuinely believe we are beginning to see the effects of this in our culture. An intellectual passivity, a dumb acceptance of norms, an inability to imagine and a reluctance to entertain new ideas
Wokeness - where you are instructed what to think about everything, and everyone eagerly agrees - is a potential symptom
Maybe AI has arrived bang on time, it can do all the thinking for us, from now on
What is new in art is the passivity of the consumer, the gallery goer. Content to be spoon fed trite opinions they already know by heart, anyway. Absolute hallmark of intellectual mediocrity
I don't believe Tate Britain would have got away with this dreary box-ticking bullshit in a more creatively vigorous and philosophically combative era. Like, say, the 1990s
Twitter and facebook certainly seemed pretty keen on censoring any alternative views.