I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Exactly.
We seem to assume that simply saying someone is going to play fast and loose with institutions and norms, will put voters off.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Yes but he needs the support of the armed services to do so, that was why his January 2021 arguable attempted coup failed as the military top brass didn't back him
If anyone thinks that Suella has not crafted her message and approach with the utmost care really doesn't have a role commenting on politics.
Whether it is successful or not we shall see but dismissing her as stupid is one of the stupidest things I've seen written on here.
Braverman is intelligent and highly ambitious. She is also - it seems - somewhat naive and clumsy, her political experience is not profound
But she is obviously learning on the job. See how she has already improved her public speaking. And she correctly spotted that there is room and opportunity for a plain speaking right wing BME woman willing to take on the blob and the Woke
She is disliked by many, indeed derided. But so was Thatcher when she was the milk-snatcher
I’d say that’s where Braverman is on the Thatcher trajectory. Just past the milk-snatching
If Starmer screws up in his first term she could easily become PM as the nation thinks Fuck it why not
Since 2007, Centrist leaders in democracies have not exactly covered themselves in glory, so voters will often switch to populists.
If SKS's government were to become seriously unpopular, it probably wouldn't matter much who the Conservative leader was.
Another point about her is (based on my experience of living in Kenton), that her views are entirely representative of the voters among whom she grew up. Kenton, like Queensbury, Canons Park, and Stanmore, is very much a place for people who have made it in life. Once, these wards were heavily Jewish, now heavily Indian, Many of the locals were expelled, or the children of people expelled, by African nationalist governments, who came to this country with little and worked their way up. After a flirtation with New Labour, these wards are again Conservative.
My point is that the Tories will actually have a BETTER chance under her than under someone more centrist and collegial
My view is that you're just a troll and it was better when you were banned.
In the (extremely unlikely) world where this happens - do we think the LD LOTO attacks SKS' Labour government from the right, or the left?
(Also, how quickly would the likes of HYUFD start advocating for PR?)
That poll is 100% for the birds
Whilst I accept that, FPTP does create a point where the Tories do just crater - not because they aren't the second biggest vote getter, but because where some of those votes are isn't useful. An outcome like this is possible, if highly unlikely, and I would be interested in thoughts about the political fallout from it.
I think the best scenario Labour can hope for, is Lab 40%, Con 30, pretty sure Starmer would be over the moon with that result,
In the (extremely unlikely) world where this happens - do we think the LD LOTO attacks SKS' Labour government from the right, or the left?
(Also, how quickly would the likes of HYUFD start advocating for PR?)
This Yougov poll shows how the Tories have lost the middle class. But of every hundred 2019 Tories they have lost 17 to Labour and 16 to Reform (weighted result).
Which are the votes they want back in the long term? Those who used to vote for Ken Clarke and Heseltine, or those who used to vote for Dorries?
The broad centrist vote (the large group who aim to vote for the best government available) are not going to sway towards the populist end.
The huge mistake still made by the liberal talking heads and populists is that Brexit was a victory for an extremist view. It wasn't. Centrists voting Brexit made the difference. There aren't enough extremists to win any election or any referendum.
Somebody was asking about Braverman's intelligence upthread.
It's worth remembering that our brightest PMs (academically) would be Balfour, Asquith, Brown, Wilson, Heath.
Wilson was a fairly successful politician.
The others, rather less so.
The more staid Salisbury, Campbell-Bannerman, Attlee, Baldwin, however, were phenomenally successful.
I think considerable intelligence can be a handicap to politicians. First of all, it can breed arrogance. But secondly, it doesn't encourage them to understand ordinary people.
I have precision objections to TLDR News (they refuse to distinguish between "England and Wales" and Britain/UK, the idiots) but they have issued an explainer on this and it's the best I could get without digging. As ever, DYOR
And you think Nigel Farage got it bad from the banksters . . .
Courthouse News - Citigroup discriminated against Armenian Americans, federal regulator says; bank fined $25.9 million - “Citi stereotyped Armenians as prone to crime and fraud. In reality, Citi illegally fabricated documents to cover up its discrimination.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Citigroup intentionally discriminated against Armenian Americans when they applied for credit cards, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Wednesday.
The bureau said some bank employees argued internally that Armenian Americans were more likely to commit fraud and referred to applicants as “bad guys” or as affiliated with organized crime.
The CFPB found that Citi employees were trained to avoid approving applications with last names ending in “yan” or "ian" — the most common suffix to Armenian last names — as well applications that originated in Glendale, California, where a significant portion of the country's Armenian-American population lives. As part of the order, Citi will pay $24.5 million in fines as well as $1.4 million in remedies to impacted customers.
The origins of the case come as a result of some organized crime syndicates operating in Southern California that involve Armenian Americans. The leaders of the Armenian crime rings have been charged with identity theft and other financial crimes, including stealing Covid-19 financial relief funds in recent years.
Citi, based in New York, said a few employees were attempting to stop potential fraud due to this “well-documented Armenian fraud ring operating in certain parts of California" that often involved individuals running up credit card debts, then leaving the country.
However, in the bureau's order, these Citi employees used identifiable information that broadly discriminated against Armenian Americans in general. . . .
In its investigation, the bureau found that Citi employees were instructed to single out applications that had Armenian last names, but then to conceal the real reason why those applications were denied. These employees knew they were running afoul of bank laws that prohibit discrimination against national origin, and kept any decisions off recorded phone lines or writing it down. . . .
If anyone thinks that Suella has not crafted her message and approach with the utmost care really doesn't have a role commenting on politics.
Whether it is successful or not we shall see but dismissing her as stupid is one of the stupidest things I've seen written on here.
Braverman is intelligent and highly ambitious. She is also - it seems - somewhat naive and clumsy, her political experience is not profound
But she is obviously learning on the job. See how she has already improved her public speaking. And she correctly spotted that there is room and opportunity for a plain speaking right wing BME woman willing to take on the blob and the Woke
She is disliked by many, indeed derided. But so was Thatcher when she was the milk-snatcher
I’d say that’s where Braverman is on the Thatcher trajectory. Just past the milk-snatching
If Starmer screws up in his first term she could easily become PM as the nation thinks Fuck it why not
Since 2007, Centrist leaders in democracies have not exactly covered themselves in glory, so voters will often switch to populists.
If SKS's government were to become seriously unpopular, it probably wouldn't matter much who the Conservative leader was.
Another point about her is (based on my experience of living in Kenton), that her views are entirely representative of the voters among whom she grew up. Kenton, like Queensbury, Canons Park, and Stanmore, is very much a place for people who have made it in life. Once, these wards were heavily Jewish, now heavily Indian, Many of the locals were expelled, or the children of people expelled, by African nationalist governments, who came to this country with little and worked their way up. After a flirtation with New Labour, these wards are again Conservative.
My point is that the Tories will actually have a BETTER chance under her than under someone more centrist and collegial
Look at the apathy with which we greet Starmer. Yes Labour are miles ahead but that’s not enthusiasm for the opposition, it is (highly justified) contempt for the idiot Tories after Truss
We don’t expect Starmer to do much different apart from maybe be less chaotic
After five years of Starmerite tedium someone who says YES I AM DIFFERENT I WILL BE A RADICAL CHANGE could be super appealing
Not least because I reckon the culture wars are going to get worse not better. Eg the migration issue is only going to rise in salience, and Labour will be painfully Woke in office
This is a good post. I don’t actually support Braverman’s brand of Tory politics, but it chimes with my gut feeling that she shouldn’t be written off so quickly.
If anyone thinks that Suella has not crafted her message and approach with the utmost care really doesn't have a role commenting on politics.
Whether it is successful or not we shall see but dismissing her as stupid is one of the stupidest things I've seen written on here.
Braverman is intelligent and highly ambitious. She is also - it seems - somewhat naive and clumsy, her political experience is not profound
But she is obviously learning on the job. See how she has already improved her public speaking. And she correctly spotted that there is room and opportunity for a plain speaking right wing BME woman willing to take on the blob and the Woke
She is disliked by many, indeed derided. But so was Thatcher when she was the milk-snatcher
I’d say that’s where Braverman is on the Thatcher trajectory. Just past the milk-snatching
If Starmer screws up in his first term she could easily become PM as the nation thinks Fuck it why not
Since 2007, Centrist leaders in democracies have not exactly covered themselves in glory, so voters will often switch to populists.
If SKS's government were to become seriously unpopular, it probably wouldn't matter much who the Conservative leader was.
Another point about her is (based on my experience of living in Kenton), that her views are entirely representative of the voters among whom she grew up. Kenton, like Queensbury, Canons Park, and Stanmore, is very much a place for people who have made it in life. Once, these wards were heavily Jewish, now heavily Indian, Many of the locals were expelled, or the children of people expelled, by African nationalist governments, who came to this country with little and worked their way up. After a flirtation with New Labour, these wards are again Conservative.
My point is that the Tories will actually have a BETTER chance under her than under someone more centrist and collegial
My view is that you're just a troll and it was better when you were banned.
I think it's a worthwhile test - the downside risk is that come the 2028/9 election the Tory party could end up with way less than 100 seats as centralist votes refuse to vote for a rabid right wing party.
I’d say Suella Braverman is a bit like Ann Coulter, in deliberately saying provocative things. Coulter is not stupid, for stupid people don’t get to edit the Michigan Law Review. The Michigan Law School is probably the best in the USA.
That then begs the question what Braverman's game-plan is.
She presumably wants to be PM but her actions have been so cruel, divisive and self-serving that she must be putting off MPs, party activists and public alike. You do not win elections by playing to the 20%.
You do win party leadership elections by playing to the 20% when your party is bumping along just above 20% in the polls.
I suspect her game-plan is (a) Sunak loses next GE, (b) Braverman becomes Tory leader, (c) wait for Starmer to slip up.
I can see two flaws in that plan.
Starmer will slip up but there's absolutely no reason to assume that when he does so it will be a sufficiently big mistake for the Tories to assume the lead in the polls, or that the Tories would even be the prime beneficiaries - and both assume that Braverman, if elected, would retain the leadership; her interpersonal skills suggest trouble on that score.
I am now considering going on this march on Saturday.
I wouldn't have remotely considered it, if it hadn't been for Braverman. But I think she has turned it into a question of principle.
Yes please go because if you do you will prove Braverman's point about people on the march going with a different agenda to the core Gaza issue.
Braverman says in her Times article that you should only go on protest marches if the majority of the public support you, which is a rather odd view of democracy.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
In the (extremely unlikely) world where this happens - do we think the LD LOTO attacks SKS' Labour government from the right, or the left?
(Also, how quickly would the likes of HYUFD start advocating for PR?)
That poll is 100% for the birds
Whilst I accept that, FPTP does create a point where the Tories do just crater - not because they aren't the second biggest vote getter, but because where some of those votes are isn't useful. An outcome like this is possible, if highly unlikely, and I would be interested in thoughts about the political fallout from it.
The Tories still have a large local councillor base of 5719 councillors (Labour 6417, Lib Dem 2959, figures from Wikipedia), so they would have a good chance of recovering from such a defeat. I don't think it would lead to Tory support for PR.
The ambitious move from the Lib Dems would be to oppose Labour from the right (at least economically and fiscally), as that would give them the best chance of attracting converts from the Tories as the most credible non-left alternative to Labour tax and spend.
I am now considering going on this march on Saturday.
I wouldn't have remotely considered it, if it hadn't been for Braverman. But I think she has turned it into a question of principle.
Yes please go because if you do you will prove Braverman's point about people on the march going with a different agenda to the core Gaza issue.
Braverman says in her Times article that you should only go on protest marches if the majority of the public support you, which is a rather odd view of democracy.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
Were simply getting in to election nonsense. Mrs gaga is getting in on the act too.
But the dem media keep pumping Trump so I struggle to sympathise, they need him. However keeping him front of voters minds might be a stupid play.
He is a creature of the media. Right from The Apprentice. That beamed him into millions of homes primetime every week for years as this savvy no bullshit operator who could get things done. Fed into the 'businessman not a politician' shit that a certain sort of gullible pleb seems to lap up. It's a type of forelocking really although they fail to recognize that's what they're doing. The Apprentice was extremely important to his arc of assent imo. No Apprentice, no President Trump.
But anyway that's the point. To stop covering him as a reality tv star and instead start to calmly and repeatedly lay out the threat he poses, based on the record of what he's done and what he's said, hyperbole not required. Stop searching for balance and context, for equivalences with the other side (there aren't any), just do what he and his ilk on the populist right are always (mendaciously) claiming that they do - 'tell it like it is'.
Some folk on here reacting to me calling out Suella as 'intellectually challenged.'
Oddly there were folk who reacted in the same way when I told them about La Truss.
Now I admit that I've never met Suella. I can only judge her on her past performance.
Is she an idiot? No. Does she have the brains to successfully operate in a great (or even relatively minor) office of state? Also no.
Out of her depth.
Very clever people can also not be very with it. The first time I met my PhD supervisor I followed him back to his office from a lecture room in the same building and he got lost.
I've sometimes thought if we hadn't met the departmental secretary we might be wandering aimlessly around Adeilad Hugh Owen yet...
I am now considering going on this march on Saturday.
I wouldn't have remotely considered it, if it hadn't been for Braverman. But I think she has turned it into a question of principle.
Yes please go because if you do you will prove Braverman's point about people on the march going with a different agenda to the core Gaza issue.
Thanks. One vote in favour of attendance, even though your motivation is the rather unusual one of wanting Braverman to be proved right. I have a certain respect for people who are willing to stand out from the crowd.
Somebody was asking about Braverman's intelligence upthread.
It's worth remembering that our brightest PMs (academically) would be Balfour, Asquith, Brown, Wilson, Heath.
Wilson was a fairly successful politician.
The others, rather less so.
The more staid Salisbury, Campbell-Bannerman, Attlee, Baldwin, however, were phenomenally successful.
I think considerable intelligence can be a handicap to politicians. First of all, it can breed arrogance. But secondly, it doesn't encourage them to understand ordinary people.
Yes super intelligence is a must for academics and maybe the commercial bar but doesn't lead to automatic success elsewhere, including politics, especially if it comes with zero people skills.
Halifax too was far more intellectual than Churchill but it was the latter who kept out the Nazis
I am now considering going on this march on Saturday.
I wouldn't have remotely considered it, if it hadn't been for Braverman. But I think she has turned it into a question of principle.
Yes please go because if you do you will prove Braverman's point about people on the march going with a different agenda to the core Gaza issue.
Braverman says in her Times article that you should only go on protest marches if the majority of the public support you, which is a rather odd view of democracy.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
Were simply getting in to election nonsense. Mrs gaga is getting in on the act too.
But the dem media keep pumping Trump so I struggle to sympathise, they need him. However keeping him front of voters minds might be a stupid play.
He is a creature of the media. Right from The Apprentice. That beamed him into millions of homes primetime every week for years as this savvy no bullshit operator who could get things done. Fed into the 'businessman not a politician' shit that a certain sort of gullible pleb seems to lap up. It's a type of forelocking really although they fail to recognize that's what they're doing. The Apprentice was extremely important to his arc of assent imo. No Apprentice, no President Trump.
But anyway that's the point. To stop covering him as a reality tv star and instead start to calmly and repeatedly lay out the threat he poses, based on the record of what he's done and what he's said, hyperbole not required. Stop searching for balance and context, for equivalences with the other side (there aren't any), just do what he and his ilk on the populist right are always (mendaciously) claiming that they do - 'tell it like it is'.
How are they going to do that ? If they paint him as a demon it just plays to his victim narcissism. Likewise many of the claims made just are not true and the electorate can see that. He didnt kill democracy, he didnt crash the economy he didnt start world war 3 when he was President.
He is like a spoilt two years old and the best thing to do is ignore him. Having some credible policies might also help.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
Until the 1990s however 90% of the population didn't go to university at all, so free university education only benefited the elite anyway.
Until the 1980s most people rented as well, only in the last few decades have most owned their own homes, helped by right to buy of course
I am now considering going on this march on Saturday.
I wouldn't have remotely considered it, if it hadn't been for Braverman. But I think she has turned it into a question of principle.
Fine but be aware Tommy Robinson's EDL are turning up at the same time so it may not be an entirely peaceful afternoon
Yeah, and I wonder why they feel emboldened to? Is it because politicians in government / the governing party, along with the right wing press, have blown the pro-Palestinian marches out of such proportion that they feel like they will be heroes for doing so - deputising themselves to do what the "woke" Met won't?
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
Until the 1990s however 90% of the population didn't go to university at all, so free university education only benefited the elite anyway.
Until the 1980s most people rented as well, only in the last few decades have most owned their own homes, helped by right to buy of course
Nonsense. Quite a few working class and poorer middle class people got to university that way pre-1990s. I sure did. Really pissed off the conservative elite who think they should be the only ones who go to uni, as you demonstrate still.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
Until the 1990s however 90% of the population didn't go to university at all, so free university education only benefited the elite anyway.
Until the 1980s most people rented as well, only in the last few decades have most owned their own homes, helped by right to buy of course
Nonsense. Quite a few working class and poorer middle class people got to university that way pre-1990s. I sure did. Really pissed off the conservative elite who think they should be the only ones who go to uni, as you demonstrate still.
They may have done but only because they were academic enough to be in the top 10% and enter the elite who were deemed suitable of a university education and then largely entered the professions (as they still do today, the number of top professional jobs hasn't expanded much beyond the levels of the 1980s even if the number of graduates has)
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
I am now considering going on this march on Saturday.
I wouldn't have remotely considered it, if it hadn't been for Braverman. But I think she has turned it into a question of principle.
Yes please go because if you do you will prove Braverman's point about people on the march going with a different agenda to the core Gaza issue.
Thanks. One vote in favour of attendance, even though your motivation is the rather unusual one of wanting Braverman to be proved right. I have a certain respect for people who are willing to stand out from the crowd.
Let us know what flag you will be carrying so we can look out for you.
I am now considering going on this march on Saturday.
I wouldn't have remotely considered it, if it hadn't been for Braverman. But I think she has turned it into a question of principle.
Yes please go because if you do you will prove Braverman's point about people on the march going with a different agenda to the core Gaza issue.
Thanks. One vote in favour of attendance, even though your motivation is the rather unusual one of wanting Braverman to be proved right. I have a certain respect for people who are willing to stand out from the crowd.
Let us know what flag you will be carrying so we can look out for you.
Do they allow you to watch the television where you are?
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
Were simply getting in to election nonsense. Mrs gaga is getting in on the act too.
But the dem media keep pumping Trump so I struggle to sympathise, they need him. However keeping him front of voters minds might be a stupid play.
He is a creature of the media. Right from The Apprentice. That beamed him into millions of homes primetime every week for years as this savvy no bullshit operator who could get things done. Fed into the 'businessman not a politician' shit that a certain sort of gullible pleb seems to lap up. It's a type of forelocking really although they fail to recognize that's what they're doing. The Apprentice was extremely important to his arc of assent imo. No Apprentice, no President Trump.
But anyway that's the point. To stop covering him as a reality tv star and instead start to calmly and repeatedly lay out the threat he poses, based on the record of what he's done and what he's said, hyperbole not required. Stop searching for balance and context, for equivalences with the other side (there aren't any), just do what he and his ilk on the populist right are always (mendaciously) claiming that they do - 'tell it like it is'.
How are they going to do that ? If they paint him as a demon it just plays to his victim narcissism. Likewise many of the claims made just are not true and the electorate can see that. He didnt kill democracy, he didnt crash the economy he didnt start world war 3 when he was President.
He is like a spoilt two years old and the best thing to do is ignore him. Having some credible policies might also help.
This is exactly the issue. He paints the media who call him out as partial and fake news and it just whips up his base even more.
There was an argument that the media should have been better at calling out his s**t when he was first running for president rather than the “both sides” equivalency but that time has long gone.
Really the only way to reduce his impact is to ignore him. Something media outlets are desperate to avoid because he actually generates a lot of drama for them. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
I am now considering going on this march on Saturday.
I wouldn't have remotely considered it, if it hadn't been for Braverman. But I think she has turned it into a question of principle.
Fine but be aware Tommy Robinson's EDL are turning up at the same time so it may not be an entirely peaceful afternoon
Yeah, and I wonder why they feel emboldened to? Is it because politicians in government / the governing party, along with the right wing press, have blown the pro-Palestinian marches out of such proportion that they feel like they will be heroes for doing so - deputising themselves to do what the "woke" Met won't?
Back when I was helping to run student demos. the same kind of people would infest your demo, if you didn't accept the help of the police in weeding them out. If the demo was about cause X, you'd get an infestation of right wing fuckwits. If it was about Y, you got the left wing fuckwits.
They never seemed to need much emboldening.
Hopefully the people running the pro-Palestine demo this weekend are accepting advice - otherwise they will get a nasty case of Black Blok types and Religious Fascists. Shame that we can't pen those beauties up with the EDL in an amphitheatre and get pop corn....
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
It's about the relative size of the following groupings in the voting population:
(i) Not realizing what Trump 2.0 is likely to entail. (ii) Realizing it and liking it.
I think (i) is bigger than (ii) and it's them you need to focus on. People in (ii) are a lost cause, most of them. No bang for your buck there.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
I'm 32, my dad is in his early 50s (my mum is already dead). So, like, maybe in 30-35 years I'll have something to inherit, as long as the housing market bubble doesn't explode? Yay.
And I don't keep voting for people who put me there - that would be Tory voters who vote for politicians and policies that make it harder for younger people and easier for older and wealthy people. Whether it's the environment or the economy - the Tory party can't be trusted with the future. Unfortunately the next Labour government doesn't look much better...
Somebody was asking about Braverman's intelligence upthread.
It's worth remembering that our brightest PMs (academically) would be Balfour, Asquith, Brown, Wilson, Heath.
Wilson was a fairly successful politician.
The others, rather less so.
The more staid Salisbury, Campbell-Bannerman, Attlee, Baldwin, however, were phenomenally successful.
I think considerable intelligence can be a handicap to politicians. First of all, it can breed arrogance. But secondly, it doesn't encourage them to understand ordinary people.
What a good thing for the future leadership of the country, then, that the DoE are working so hard to reduce intelligence.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
My Dad was born in 1946, so he's 77, but still going strong. My daughter, currently one of five grandchildren, is 21. If my Dad lives as long as his Dad, then my daughter will be in her 40s before she can hope to inherit anything from him. Asking people to wait for an inheritance isn't going to do much good for them.
Somebody was asking about Braverman's intelligence upthread.
It's worth remembering that our brightest PMs (academically) would be Balfour, Asquith, Brown, Wilson, Heath.
Wilson was a fairly successful politician.
The others, rather less so.
The more staid Salisbury, Campbell-Bannerman, Attlee, Baldwin, however, were phenomenally successful.
I think considerable intelligence can be a handicap to politicians. First of all, it can breed arrogance. But secondly, it doesn't encourage them to understand ordinary people.
What a good thing for the future leadership of the country, then, that the DoE are working so hard to reduce intelligence.
I am now considering going on this march on Saturday.
I wouldn't have remotely considered it, if it hadn't been for Braverman. But I think she has turned it into a question of principle.
Fine but be aware Tommy Robinson's EDL are turning up at the same time so it may not be an entirely peaceful afternoon
Yeah, and I wonder why they feel emboldened to? Is it because politicians in government / the governing party, along with the right wing press, have blown the pro-Palestinian marches out of such proportion that they feel like they will be heroes for doing so - deputising themselves to do what the "woke" Met won't?
Back when I was helping to run student demos. the same kind of people would infest your demo, if you didn't accept the help of the police in weeding them out. If the demo was about cause X, you'd get an infestation of right wing fuckwits. If it was about Y, you got the left wing fuckwits.
They never seemed to need much emboldening.
Hopefully the people running the pro-Palestine demo this weekend are accepting advice - otherwise they will get a nasty case of Black Blok types and Religious Fascists. Shame that we can't pen those beauties up with the EDL in an amphitheatre and get pop corn....
In the demos I go the Met make sure the fash are safe to scream and shout and literally do "Roman salutes" and push back local activists who want them out of their neighbourhood with batons; working with the cops doesn't necessarily protect you from the fascists, especially if their only advice is "well, don't do the protest and the fash won't show up".
I am now considering going on this march on Saturday.
I wouldn't have remotely considered it, if it hadn't been for Braverman. But I think she has turned it into a question of principle.
Fine but be aware Tommy Robinson's EDL are turning up at the same time so it may not be an entirely peaceful afternoon
Yeah, and I wonder why they feel emboldened to? Is it because politicians in government / the governing party, along with the right wing press, have blown the pro-Palestinian marches out of such proportion that they feel like they will be heroes for doing so - deputising themselves to do what the "woke" Met won't?
Back when I was helping to run student demos. the same kind of people would infest your demo, if you didn't accept the help of the police in weeding them out. If the demo was about cause X, you'd get an infestation of right wing fuckwits. If it was about Y, you got the left wing fuckwits.
They never seemed to need much emboldening.
Hopefully the people running the pro-Palestine demo this weekend are accepting advice - otherwise they will get a nasty case of Black Blok types and Religious Fascists. Shame that we can't pen those beauties up with the EDL in an amphitheatre and get pop corn....
In the demos I go the Met make sure the fash are safe to scream and shout and literally do "Roman salutes" and push back local activists who want them out of their neighbourhood with batons; working with the cops doesn't necessarily protect you from the fascists, especially if their only advice is "well, don't do the protest and the fash won't show up".
Out of interest, why are you going on fascist demos?
"Spain’s Socialist Party reached an agreement with Junts per Catalunya, a Catalan separatist party, to form a new government. Junts agreed to back the Socialists in exchange for a controversial amnesty that would wipe out criminal charges against people who supported an illegal referendum for Catalan independence in 2017. The deal ends a four-month stalemate after a snap election in July."
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
I'm 32, my dad is in his early 50s (my mum is already dead). So, like, maybe in 30-35 years I'll have something to inherit, as long as the housing market bubble doesn't explode? Yay.
And I don't keep voting for people who put me there - that would be Tory voters who vote for politicians and policies that make it harder for younger people and easier for older and wealthy people. Whether it's the environment or the economy - the Tory party can't be trusted with the future. Unfortunately the next Labour government doesn't look much better...
Though if Starmer fulfils his plans to build over much of the greenbelt with new homes and create new towns then the older Nimbys won't be too happy
If there’s one person who needs to keep well away from the 2024 election, it’s Hillary Clinton.
Look, I never understand the painting of her as some kind of gorgon. I actually have a lot of respect for her, as unpopular and uncool an opinion as that is nowadays, and despite the fact I don’t agree with her on everything. But sheesh, perhaps she needs to work out she isn’t the best messenger on this one….
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
Are you forgetting how long people live these days? Most people will be pretty old by the time they inherit anything.
The irony being that such extreme predictions seek to legitimise the bending of democratic rules to prevent a Trump victory - exactly what they predict he will do.
If anyone thinks that Suella has not crafted her message and approach with the utmost care really doesn't have a role commenting on politics.
Whether it is successful or not we shall see but dismissing her as stupid is one of the stupidest things I've seen written on here.
Braverman is intelligent and highly ambitious. She is also - it seems - somewhat naive and clumsy, her political experience is not profound
But she is obviously learning on the job. See how she has already improved her public speaking. And she correctly spotted that there is room and opportunity for a plain speaking right wing BME woman willing to take on the blob and the Woke
She is disliked by many, indeed derided. But so was Thatcher when she was the milk-snatcher
I’d say that’s where Braverman is on the Thatcher trajectory. Just past the milk-snatching
If Starmer screws up in his first term she could easily become PM as the nation thinks Fuck it why not
Since 2007, Centrist leaders in democracies have not exactly covered themselves in glory, so voters will often switch to populists.
If SKS's government were to become seriously unpopular, it probably wouldn't matter much who the Conservative leader was.
Another point about her is (based on my experience of living in Kenton), that her views are entirely representative of the voters among whom she grew up. Kenton, like Queensbury, Canons Park, and Stanmore, is very much a place for people who have made it in life. Once, these wards were heavily Jewish, now heavily Indian, Many of the locals were expelled, or the children of people expelled, by African nationalist governments, who came to this country with little and worked their way up. After a flirtation with New Labour, these wards are again Conservative.
Although I share the overall opinion that Suella is probably not a good idea, I suspect she is entirely genuine and authentic in her views as @Sean_F suggests.
This is from wiki:
"She is the daughter of Uma (née Mootien-Pillay) and Christie Fernandes,[2] both of Indian origin,[3][4] who immigrated to Britain in the 1960s from Mauritius and Kenya respectively. She is named after the character Sue Ellen Ewing from the American television soap opera Dallas, which her mother was a fan of, but Sue-Ellen was abbreviated to Suella by her primary school teachers.[5] Her mother, of Hindu Tamil Mauritian descent, was a nurse and a councillor in Brent,[4] and the Conservative candidate for Tottenham in the 2001 general election and the 2003 Brent East by-election."
So, she is the daughter of immigrants of a decidedly conservative bent, and of a mother who made a point of taking on the extreme left in Brent - a pretty thankless if noble task. No doubt they are very strong British patriots and intensely family-oriented and self-reliant.
Very easy to see how someone with that background would be so angry and indignant about the marchers and anyone playing the game with state benefits.
It certainly doesn't preclude her from being just another calculating politician but there is definitely a potentially compelling narrative there which could chime with a lot of folk.
"Spain’s Socialist Party reached an agreement with Junts per Catalunya, a Catalan separatist party, to form a new government. Junts agreed to back the Socialists in exchange for a controversial amnesty that would wipe out criminal charges against people who supported an illegal referendum for Catalan independence in 2017. The deal ends a four-month stalemate after a snap election in July."
Seattle Times ($) - What we know about the suspicious powder sent to WA elections offices
Elections offices in four counties were evacuated Wednesday after unknown white powder, some including traces of fentanyl, was found in envelopes.
No one has been harmed, but employees had to get out of the buildings while emergency and law enforcement agencies investigated.
The incident, seemingly intended to threaten the election process, strikes fear after a series of items containing suspicious powders were sent to multiple Seattle-area synagogues last week.
Here’s what we know so far. . . .
Election offices in King, Pierce, Skagit and Spokane counties were evacuated.
The envelopes halted or slowed ballot counting in major local elections . . .
The offices in Spokane and King counties received envelopes with traces of fentanyl. No employees were harmed by the substance. Fentanyl cannot cause overdoses from contact. . . .
The investigation in King County was turned over to the FBI.
At the Pierce County Elections Office, an elections worker found an envelope that dispersed a white powdery substance. It was later found to be baking soda.
A message inside the envelope said “something to the effect of stopping the election,” said William Muse, a Tacoma police spokesperson.” . . .
How did this impact the vote count? King County resumed counting after the office was deemed safe, and posted the results of a smaller batch of votes by 4 p.m. In the first updated vote count since initial returns, King County Elections posted just 20,000 new ballots. Each undecided race inched closer to final results, but barely changed.
No votes were posted in Spokane County on Wednesday, said Patrick Bell, communications director for Spokane County, and election workers there were sent home. . . .
There was no indication of similar events taking place at other election offices in other parts of the United States.
According to the Washington Secretary of State’s Office, the incidents illustrate how serious threats are to the election process.
“The safety of staff and observers is paramount as elections workers across the state open envelopes and count each voter’s ballot,” Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said in a release. “These incidents underscore the critical need for stronger protections for all election workers. Democracy rests upon free and fair elections. These incidents are acts of terrorism to threaten our elections.”
Wednesday’s incident also comes on the heels of a series of items containing suspicious powders being sent to multiple Seattle-area synagogues last week, causing a similar concern in the local Jewish community.
The appearance of these suspicious letters over the past week is an unnerving reminder of letters laced with anthrax and ricin, which can be deadly when inhaled, sent through the U.S. mail in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Those letters killed five people and sickened 17 others. . . .
I am now considering going on this march on Saturday.
I wouldn't have remotely considered it, if it hadn't been for Braverman. But I think she has turned it into a question of principle.
Fine but be aware Tommy Robinson's EDL are turning up at the same time so it may not be an entirely peaceful afternoon
Yeah, and I wonder why they feel emboldened to? Is it because politicians in government / the governing party, along with the right wing press, have blown the pro-Palestinian marches out of such proportion that they feel like they will be heroes for doing so - deputising themselves to do what the "woke" Met won't?
Back when I was helping to run student demos. the same kind of people would infest your demo, if you didn't accept the help of the police in weeding them out. If the demo was about cause X, you'd get an infestation of right wing fuckwits. If it was about Y, you got the left wing fuckwits.
They never seemed to need much emboldening.
Hopefully the people running the pro-Palestine demo this weekend are accepting advice - otherwise they will get a nasty case of Black Blok types and Religious Fascists. Shame that we can't pen those beauties up with the EDL in an amphitheatre and get pop corn....
In the demos I go the Met make sure the fash are safe to scream and shout and literally do "Roman salutes" and push back local activists who want them out of their neighbourhood with batons; working with the cops doesn't necessarily protect you from the fascists, especially if their only advice is "well, don't do the protest and the fash won't show up".
Out of interest, why are you going on fascist demos?
I have friends in south London and have attended many of the demos preventing fascists storming the Honor Oak pub in an attempt to stop a Drag Queen Story Time event.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
Were simply getting in to election nonsense. Mrs gaga is getting in on the act too.
But the dem media keep pumping Trump so I struggle to sympathise, they need him. However keeping him front of voters minds might be a stupid play.
He is a creature of the media. Right from The Apprentice. That beamed him into millions of homes primetime every week for years as this savvy no bullshit operator who could get things done. Fed into the 'businessman not a politician' shit that a certain sort of gullible pleb seems to lap up. It's a type of forelocking really although they fail to recognize that's what they're doing. The Apprentice was extremely important to his arc of assent imo. No Apprentice, no President Trump.
But anyway that's the point. To stop covering him as a reality tv star and instead start to calmly and repeatedly lay out the threat he poses, based on the record of what he's done and what he's said, hyperbole not required. Stop searching for balance and context, for equivalences with the other side (there aren't any), just do what he and his ilk on the populist right are always (mendaciously) claiming that they do - 'tell it like it is'.
How are they going to do that ? If they paint him as a demon it just plays to his victim narcissism. Likewise many of the claims made just are not true and the electorate can see that. He didnt kill democracy, he didnt crash the economy he didnt start world war 3 when he was President.
He is like a spoilt two years old and the best thing to do is ignore him. Having some credible policies might also help.
This is exactly the issue. He paints the media who call him out as partial and fake news and it just whips up his base even more.
There was an argument that the media should have been better at calling out his s**t when he was first running for president rather than the “both sides” equivalency but that time has long gone.
Really the only way to reduce his impact is to ignore him. Something media outlets are desperate to avoid because he actually generates a lot of drama for them. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
Ignoring him is the impossible dream sadly - he's the GOP frontrunner and the betting fav for next president. So it's about *how* he's covered.
I am now considering going on this march on Saturday.
I wouldn't have remotely considered it, if it hadn't been for Braverman. But I think she has turned it into a question of principle.
Fine but be aware Tommy Robinson's EDL are turning up at the same time so it may not be an entirely peaceful afternoon
Yeah, and I wonder why they feel emboldened to? Is it because politicians in government / the governing party, along with the right wing press, have blown the pro-Palestinian marches out of such proportion that they feel like they will be heroes for doing so - deputising themselves to do what the "woke" Met won't?
Back when I was helping to run student demos. the same kind of people would infest your demo, if you didn't accept the help of the police in weeding them out. If the demo was about cause X, you'd get an infestation of right wing fuckwits. If it was about Y, you got the left wing fuckwits.
They never seemed to need much emboldening.
Hopefully the people running the pro-Palestine demo this weekend are accepting advice - otherwise they will get a nasty case of Black Blok types and Religious Fascists. Shame that we can't pen those beauties up with the EDL in an amphitheatre and get pop corn....
In the demos I go the Met make sure the fash are safe to scream and shout and literally do "Roman salutes" and push back local activists who want them out of their neighbourhood with batons; working with the cops doesn't necessarily protect you from the fascists, especially if their only advice is "well, don't do the protest and the fash won't show up".
Sigh. They always show up. That's one of the fun things about living its semi-free country. The same reason that you don't arrested on the spot for your demo.
The best you can do is exclude them from your own demo.
Very easy to see how someone with that background would be so angry and indignant about the marchers ...
What exactly in her background do you think would make her angry and indignant about people protesting about the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza?
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
I'm 32, my dad is in his early 50s (my mum is already dead). So, like, maybe in 30-35 years I'll have something to inherit, as long as the housing market bubble doesn't explode? Yay.
And I don't keep voting for people who put me there - that would be Tory voters who vote for politicians and policies that make it harder for younger people and easier for older and wealthy people. Whether it's the environment or the economy - the Tory party can't be trusted with the future. Unfortunately the next Labour government doesn't look much better...
Though if Starmer fulfils his plans to build over much of the greenbelt with new homes and create new towns then the older Nimbys won't be too happy
If he builds some of the NIMBYS into the core infrastructure of the country, he'll get my vote.
Politico.eu - Meet Alf Dubs: The child refugee who became a UK parliament grandee
. . . As war rages in the Middle East, host Jack Blanchard sits down with Alf Dubs, the 91-year-old Labour peer who arrived in Britain on the Kindertransport — which organized the rescue of children from the Nazis — aged just six.
Dubs reflects on his experiences as a child refugee in 1939 and on how he forged a new life in the U.K. He explains why he got into politics, and how he has since devoted much of his life to helping other young people in dire need. He calls for more humanitarian support for those affected by the current wars in Israel / Gaza and Ukraine, and would like to see the U.K. government take a new approach toward those seeking asylum. . . .
I would like to make it crystal clear to the 41% of Tory voters who think living in a tent is a lifestyle choice - we're talking about the homeless, not Duke of Edinburgh Award participants.
Is this tents an upmarket thing? Most of the homeless people around here sleep in doorways that smell of piss, near some warm air vent if they are very lucky, where they will be beaten up or sexually assaulted if they are not.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
I'm 32, my dad is in his early 50s (my mum is already dead). So, like, maybe in 30-35 years I'll have something to inherit, as long as the housing market bubble doesn't explode? Yay.
And I don't keep voting for people who put me there - that would be Tory voters who vote for politicians and policies that make it harder for younger people and easier for older and wealthy people. Whether it's the environment or the economy - the Tory party can't be trusted with the future. Unfortunately the next Labour government doesn't look much better...
Having lived through the recent past longer than you the whole nobody can afford to live nonsense started in in the late nineties with the so called Third Way kicked off. This started with the news that the government can solve all our problems rather than leaving us to sort our own lives out. It worked in the post cold war environment while we had a peace dividend to spend. But then the money ran out and we started to borrow, we passed more and more laws thus restricting the simple things in life - like building a house - and capitalism became corporatism where its who you know not what you know that counts. Both Conservatives and Labour are signed up to this, so we wont see much changes until one of them comes to their senses. Starmer is a north London lawyer so I cant see him rocking the boat, the Tories might come to their senses after a heavy defeat or lose of heavily they no longer exist.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
Until the 1990s however 90% of the population didn't go to university at all, so free university education only benefited the elite anyway.
Until the 1980s most people rented as well, only in the last few decades have most owned their own homes, helped by right to buy of course
Nonsense. Quite a few working class and poorer middle class people got to university that way pre-1990s. I sure did. Really pissed off the conservative elite who think they should be the only ones who go to uni, as you demonstrate still.
They may have done but only because they were academic enough to be in the top 10% and enter the elite who were deemed suitable of a university education and then largely entered the professions (as they still do today, the number of top professional jobs hasn't expanded much beyond the levels of the 1980s even if the number of graduates has)
But they weren't the elite to begin with. That's the whole point.
PS And if you are going to cram every single schoolteacher, for instance, into the 'elite' of 1989, then that is getting thoroughly muddled.
Very easy to see how someone with that background would be so angry and indignant about the marchers ...
What exactly in her background do you think would make her angry and indignant about people protesting about the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza?
LOL. You mean the "hate" marchers? Maybe the suspicion that many of them are anti-Western, anti-British, and anti-Semitic which would be anathema to someone like her. Not just her either.
PS. "Indiscriminate killing"? You have Hamas to thank for that.
I am now considering going on this march on Saturday.
I wouldn't have remotely considered it, if it hadn't been for Braverman. But I think she has turned it into a question of principle.
Fine but be aware Tommy Robinson's EDL are turning up at the same time so it may not be an entirely peaceful afternoon
Yeah, and I wonder why they feel emboldened to? Is it because politicians in government / the governing party, along with the right wing press, have blown the pro-Palestinian marches out of such proportion that they feel like they will be heroes for doing so - deputising themselves to do what the "woke" Met won't?
Back when I was helping to run student demos. the same kind of people would infest your demo, if you didn't accept the help of the police in weeding them out. If the demo was about cause X, you'd get an infestation of right wing fuckwits. If it was about Y, you got the left wing fuckwits.
They never seemed to need much emboldening.
Hopefully the people running the pro-Palestine demo this weekend are accepting advice - otherwise they will get a nasty case of Black Blok types and Religious Fascists. Shame that we can't pen those beauties up with the EDL in an amphitheatre and get pop corn....
In the demos I go the Met make sure the fash are safe to scream and shout and literally do "Roman salutes" and push back local activists who want them out of their neighbourhood with batons; working with the cops doesn't necessarily protect you from the fascists, especially if their only advice is "well, don't do the protest and the fash won't show up".
Out of interest, why are you going on fascist demos?
Looking for fashion tips?
I'm thinking the use of a Bergman is far more classy than an MP40, but the medallioned tassels are not well coordinated with the magazine pouches.
I would like to make it crystal clear to the 41% of Tory voters who think living in a tent is a lifestyle choice - we're talking about the homeless, not Duke of Edinburgh Award participants.
Is this tents an upmarket thing? Most of the homeless people around here sleep in doorways that smell of piss, near some warm air vent if they are very lucky, where they will be beaten up or sexually assaulted if they are not.
It's something a lot of softie southern homeless have gone in for. When I was last in Milton Keynes it was notable that so many of the underpasses had numerous tents in them.
In Ireland, tents are what passes for government-provided accommodation, so I'm not sure where that leaves those who fall between the cracks.
I am now considering going on this march on Saturday.
I wouldn't have remotely considered it, if it hadn't been for Braverman. But I think she has turned it into a question of principle.
Fine but be aware Tommy Robinson's EDL are turning up at the same time so it may not be an entirely peaceful afternoon
Yeah, and I wonder why they feel emboldened to? Is it because politicians in government / the governing party, along with the right wing press, have blown the pro-Palestinian marches out of such proportion that they feel like they will be heroes for doing so - deputising themselves to do what the "woke" Met won't?
Back when I was helping to run student demos. the same kind of people would infest your demo, if you didn't accept the help of the police in weeding them out. If the demo was about cause X, you'd get an infestation of right wing fuckwits. If it was about Y, you got the left wing fuckwits.
They never seemed to need much emboldening.
Hopefully the people running the pro-Palestine demo this weekend are accepting advice - otherwise they will get a nasty case of Black Blok types and Religious Fascists. Shame that we can't pen those beauties up with the EDL in an amphitheatre and get pop corn....
In the demos I go the Met make sure the fash are safe to scream and shout and literally do "Roman salutes" and push back local activists who want them out of their neighbourhood with batons; working with the cops doesn't necessarily protect you from the fascists, especially if their only advice is "well, don't do the protest and the fash won't show up".
Out of interest, why are you going on fascist demos?
Looking for fashion tips?
I'm thinking the use of a Bergman is far more classy than an MP40, but the medallioned tassels are not well coordinated with the magazine pouches.
What's the pistol the chap with the boom box is using? Seems to be toggling, so a P08?
34% thinking it *is" a lifestyle choice is actually quite a lot of people (far more than currently say they would vote Conservative).
And this, again, is why she is building herself a powerful brand (even if I disagree and even am concerned with a lot of it).
She is saying controversial things because her brand is that she is the only person in UK politics who is tough enough and honest enough to say them. It is all very Trumpian - dislike me all you like but I will at least say this stuff. Others won’t. They’re part of the Swamp/Blob.
This is going to cut through in a big way with the Tory membership, I fear, if she gets that far. And if she were to make it to LOTO, I don’t think anyone can afford to be complacent about her. I see a lot of complacency on here - she’s been a useless HS, nasty, mean spirited, incompetent, dangerous. All these things may be true, but they dont preclude someone from winning an election in the West, nowadays.
Her problem is that her positioning is pure GB News. I suspect she exists in such a silo that she thinks all that is mainstream. There was a hint with the 'homelessness in tents' stuff - that's a massive political totem in the US, but completely niche to non-existent over here. This suggests she's consuming the politics of right-wing American think tanks more than being alert to the concerns of the British public. Quite a scary situation.
But again, just because her positioning may not be in the political mainstream doesn’t mean that her shtick can’t be popular. Indeed, the point is that it is outside the political mainstream - i.e other politicians won’t do this but I will. I don’t think everyone who votes for Trump is completely down with everything he says and pledges (depressingly a good number are!), but they’re down with enough that the bits they find extreme or unappealing don’t matter to them.
The polling that prompted the article lead for our discussion, however, suggests her view here is not popular with the electorate at large.
No, you’re right - although 36% is a lot better than what the Tories are polling currently as has been pointed out on here - but my point was that not every point she makes is going to necessarily be in tune with 50%+1 of the electorate. But the offering generally could be in tune with enough people that she becomes a political force in her own right.
The point again - you don’t have to agree with everything a politician says to be inclined to vote for them.
Yes, you can have some individually unpopular policies while still being popular overall. However, I recall some previous polling the last time Braverman said something outrageous that looked the same as this. I don't see any evidence that Braverman as a general offering is popular with the electorate. (With Tory party members, maybe, but they're not the electorate.)
Maybe. It’s entirely plausible that she fails to become leader, or becomes leader and crashes and burns. My feeling is though, that she shouldn’t be underestimated.
No-one should be underestimated. No-one should be overestimated! Braverman may become leader by virtue of that role being chosen by the membership, not the general electorate. It's possible, although I think unlikely, that that happens before a general election and then she becomes the 4th Conservative female PM. It's more likely that that happens after a general election defeat. I'm not suggesting laying Braverman in the betting for next leader or next PM.
But I think the evidence, to date, is that her style and policies do not have widespread support in the electorate. In the Daily Mail comments section, maybe, but I don't see her leading the Tories to election victories.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
My Dad was born in 1946, so he's 77, but still going strong. My daughter, currently one of five grandchildren, is 21. If my Dad lives as long as his Dad, then my daughter will be in her 40s before she can hope to inherit anything from him. Asking people to wait for an inheritance isn't going to do much good for them.
Depends how you manage your finances. My parents passed me cash quite early and Ive done the same to my kids.
I am now considering going on this march on Saturday.
I wouldn't have remotely considered it, if it hadn't been for Braverman. But I think she has turned it into a question of principle.
Fine but be aware Tommy Robinson's EDL are turning up at the same time so it may not be an entirely peaceful afternoon
Yeah, and I wonder why they feel emboldened to? Is it because politicians in government / the governing party, along with the right wing press, have blown the pro-Palestinian marches out of such proportion that they feel like they will be heroes for doing so - deputising themselves to do what the "woke" Met won't?
Back when I was helping to run student demos. the same kind of people would infest your demo, if you didn't accept the help of the police in weeding them out. If the demo was about cause X, you'd get an infestation of right wing fuckwits. If it was about Y, you got the left wing fuckwits.
They never seemed to need much emboldening.
Hopefully the people running the pro-Palestine demo this weekend are accepting advice - otherwise they will get a nasty case of Black Blok types and Religious Fascists. Shame that we can't pen those beauties up with the EDL in an amphitheatre and get pop corn....
In the demos I go the Met make sure the fash are safe to scream and shout and literally do "Roman salutes" and push back local activists who want them out of their neighbourhood with batons; working with the cops doesn't necessarily protect you from the fascists, especially if their only advice is "well, don't do the protest and the fash won't show up".
Out of interest, why are you going on fascist demos?
Looking for fashion tips?
I'm thinking the use of a Bergman is far more classy than an MP40, but the medallioned tassels are not well coordinated with the magazine pouches.
What's the pistol the chap with the boom box is using? Seems to be toggling, so a P08?
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
Were simply getting in to election nonsense. Mrs gaga is getting in on the act too.
But the dem media keep pumping Trump so I struggle to sympathise, they need him. However keeping him front of voters minds might be a stupid play.
He is a creature of the media. Right from The Apprentice. That beamed him into millions of homes primetime every week for years as this savvy no bullshit operator who could get things done. Fed into the 'businessman not a politician' shit that a certain sort of gullible pleb seems to lap up. It's a type of forelocking really although they fail to recognize that's what they're doing. The Apprentice was extremely important to his arc of assent imo. No Apprentice, no President Trump.
But anyway that's the point. To stop covering him as a reality tv star and instead start to calmly and repeatedly lay out the threat he poses, based on the record of what he's done and what he's said, hyperbole not required. Stop searching for balance and context, for equivalences with the other side (there aren't any), just do what he and his ilk on the populist right are always (mendaciously) claiming that they do - 'tell it like it is'.
How are they going to do that ? If they paint him as a demon it just plays to his victim narcissism. Likewise many of the claims made just are not true and the electorate can see that. He didnt kill democracy, he didnt crash the economy he didnt start world war 3 when he was President.
He is like a spoilt two years old and the best thing to do is ignore him. Having some credible policies might also help.
This is exactly the issue. He paints the media who call him out as partial and fake news and it just whips up his base even more.
There was an argument that the media should have been better at calling out his s**t when he was first running for president rather than the “both sides” equivalency but that time has long gone.
Really the only way to reduce his impact is to ignore him. Something media outlets are desperate to avoid because he actually generates a lot of drama for them. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
Ignoring him is the impossible dream sadly - he's the GOP frontrunner and the betting fav for next president. So it's about *how* he's covered.
Agreed.
Much of US media (and ours too) has developed a bad habit of headlining any story about Trump with a direct quote of his latest incendiary (and usually mendacious) statement. It's like they've taken on the role of unpaid PR agency.
The BBC's US reporting tends to adopt this mode, too.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
Until the 1990s however 90% of the population didn't go to university at all, so free university education only benefited the elite anyway.
Until the 1980s most people rented as well, only in the last few decades have most owned their own homes, helped by right to buy of course
Nonsense. Quite a few working class and poorer middle class people got to university that way pre-1990s. I sure did. Really pissed off the conservative elite who think they should be the only ones who go to uni, as you demonstrate still.
They may have done but only because they were academic enough to be in the top 10% and enter the elite who were deemed suitable of a university education and then largely entered the professions (as they still do today, the number of top professional jobs hasn't expanded much beyond the levels of the 1980s even if the number of graduates has)
But they weren't the elite to begin with. That's the whole point.
PS And if you are going to cram every single schoolteacher, for instance, into the 'elite' of 1989, then that is getting thoroughly muddled.
So, they were still the academic elite. You only used to need a degree to be a doctor or surgeon, lawyer, Professor, senior engineer or top civil servant or a member of the clergy or secondary school teacher. Taxpayers could afford to pay for that.
Now you need a degree even to be a middle manager or police officer or primary school teacher or to be a nurse with all the fees and debt to match.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
My Dad was born in 1946, so he's 77, but still going strong. My daughter, currently one of five grandchildren, is 21. If my Dad lives as long as his Dad, then my daughter will be in her 40s before she can hope to inherit anything from him. Asking people to wait for an inheritance isn't going to do much good for them.
Depends how you manage your finances. My parents passed me cash quite early and Ive done the same to my kids.
BUT are you still selfishly hogging the family furniture, to the detriment and discomfort of your heirs?
Very easy to see how someone with that background would be so angry and indignant about the marchers ...
What exactly in her background do you think would make her angry and indignant about people protesting about the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza?
LOL. You mean the "hate" marchers? Maybe the suspicion that many of them are anti-Western, anti-British, and anti-Semitic which would be anathema to someone like her. Not just her either.
PS. "Indiscriminate killing"? You have Hamas to thank for that.
So what you meant is not that there is anything in her background that would make her angry and indignant to the marchers?
Just that if you assume all the right-wing propanganda about the marchers anyone would be angry and indignant about them, not just someone with Braverman's background?
Don't blame me - I'm just trying to make sense of what you posted!
The US understands that Israel will begin to implement four-hour pauses in areas of northern Gaza each day, White House spokesman John Kirby has told reporters.
He said an announcement would be made three hours beforehand.
Comments
We seem to assume that simply saying someone is going to play fast and loose with institutions and norms, will put voters off.
Not necessarily, I fear.
Sir Boyle Roche.
https://x.com/nbcnews/status/1722448898495483986
Which are the votes they want back in the long term? Those who used to vote for Ken Clarke and Heseltine, or those who used to vote for Dorries?
The broad centrist vote (the large group who aim to vote for the best government available) are not going to sway towards the populist end.
The huge mistake still made by the liberal talking heads and populists is that Brexit was a victory for an extremist view. It wasn't. Centrists voting Brexit made the difference. There aren't enough extremists to win any election or any referendum.
NB Note once again the Scottish subsample
https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/TheTimes_VI_231108_W.pdf
What is sad about this poll is that there are apparently 34% of the population who think anyone chooses to sleep in a doorway in January.
Makes you despair sometimes.
It's worth remembering that our brightest PMs (academically) would be Balfour, Asquith, Brown, Wilson, Heath.
Wilson was a fairly successful politician.
The others, rather less so.
The more staid Salisbury, Campbell-Bannerman, Attlee, Baldwin, however, were phenomenally successful.
I think considerable intelligence can be a handicap to politicians. First of all, it can breed arrogance. But secondly, it doesn't encourage them to understand ordinary people.
Courthouse News - Citigroup discriminated against Armenian Americans, federal regulator says; bank fined $25.9 million - “Citi stereotyped Armenians as prone to crime and fraud. In reality, Citi illegally fabricated documents to cover up its discrimination.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Citigroup intentionally discriminated against Armenian Americans when they applied for credit cards, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Wednesday.
The bureau said some bank employees argued internally that Armenian Americans were more likely to commit fraud and referred to applicants as “bad guys” or as affiliated with organized crime.
The CFPB found that Citi employees were trained to avoid approving applications with last names ending in “yan” or "ian" — the most common suffix to Armenian last names — as well applications that originated in Glendale, California, where a significant portion of the country's Armenian-American population lives.
As part of the order, Citi will pay $24.5 million in fines as well as $1.4 million in remedies to impacted customers.
The origins of the case come as a result of some organized crime syndicates operating in Southern California that involve Armenian Americans. The leaders of the Armenian crime rings have been charged with identity theft and other financial crimes, including stealing Covid-19 financial relief funds in recent years.
Citi, based in New York, said a few employees were attempting to stop potential fraud due to this “well-documented Armenian fraud ring operating in certain parts of California" that often involved individuals running up credit card debts, then leaving the country.
However, in the bureau's order, these Citi employees used identifiable information that broadly discriminated against Armenian Americans in general. . . .
In its investigation, the bureau found that Citi employees were instructed to single out applications that had Armenian last names, but then to conceal the real reason why those applications were denied. These employees knew they were running afoul of bank laws that prohibit discrimination against national origin, and kept any decisions off recorded phone lines or writing it down. . . .
https://www.courthousenews.com/citigroup-discriminated-against-armenian-americans-federal-regulator-says-bank-fined-25-9-million/
Starmer will slip up but there's absolutely no reason to assume that when he does so it will be a sufficiently big mistake for the Tories to assume the lead in the polls, or that the Tories would even be the prime beneficiaries - and both assume that Braverman, if elected, would retain the leadership; her interpersonal skills suggest trouble on that score.
But she won't win.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/207579/public-approval-rating-of-the-us-congress/
https://news.gallup.com/poll/4732/supreme-court.aspx
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/
https://morningconsult.com/senator-rankings/
The ambitious move from the Lib Dems would be to oppose Labour from the right (at least economically and fiscally), as that would give them the best chance of attracting converts from the Tories as the most credible non-left alternative to Labour tax and spend.
https://x.com/lewis_goodall/status/1722635692335874407?s=20
BRACE
Relax....
Oddly there were folk who reacted in the same way when I told them about La Truss.
Now I admit that I've never met Suella. I can only judge her on her past performance.
Is she an idiot? No. Does she have the brains to successfully operate in a great (or even relatively minor) office of state? Also no.
Out of her depth.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
But anyway that's the point. To stop covering him as a reality tv star and instead start to calmly and repeatedly lay out the threat he poses, based on the record of what he's done and what he's said, hyperbole not required. Stop searching for balance and context, for equivalences with the other side (there aren't any), just do what he and his ilk on the populist right are always (mendaciously) claiming that they do - 'tell it like it is'.
I've sometimes thought if we hadn't met the departmental secretary we might be wandering aimlessly around Adeilad Hugh Owen yet...
https://www.politico.eu/article/right-wing-spain-popular-party-catalonia-politician-alejo-vidal-quadras-shot-face-madrid/
It says 'lifestyle choice' when it means 'death wish.'
Not that this has the same in tents city.
Halifax too was far more intellectual than Churchill but it was the latter who kept out the Nazis
He is like a spoilt two years old and the best thing to do is ignore him. Having some credible policies might also help.
Until the 1980s most people rented as well, only in the last few decades have most owned their own homes, helped by right to buy of course
There was an argument that the media should have been better at calling out his s**t when he was first running for president rather than the “both sides” equivalency but that time has long gone.
Really the only way to reduce his impact is to ignore him. Something media outlets are desperate to avoid because he actually generates a lot of drama for them. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
Former senator and secretary of state says Nazi leader was initially elected and that ‘Trump is telling us what he intends to do’"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/09/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-adolf-hitler
They never seemed to need much emboldening.
Hopefully the people running the pro-Palestine demo this weekend are accepting advice - otherwise they will get a nasty case of Black Blok types and Religious Fascists. Shame that we can't pen those beauties up with the EDL in an amphitheatre and get pop corn....
(i) Not realizing what Trump 2.0 is likely to entail.
(ii) Realizing it and liking it.
I think (i) is bigger than (ii) and it's them you need to focus on. People in (ii) are a lost cause, most of them. No bang for your buck there.
And I don't keep voting for people who put me there - that would be Tory voters who vote for politicians and policies that make it harder for younger people and easier for older and wealthy people. Whether it's the environment or the economy - the Tory party can't be trusted with the future. Unfortunately the next Labour government doesn't look much better...
https://www.economist.com/the-world-in-brief
Look, I never understand the painting of her as some kind of gorgon. I actually have a lot of respect for her, as unpopular and uncool an opinion as that is nowadays, and despite the fact I don’t agree with her on everything. But sheesh, perhaps she needs to work out she isn’t the best messenger on this one….
https://twitter.com/DNCWarRoom/status/1722628425784156628
This is from wiki:
"She is the daughter of Uma (née Mootien-Pillay) and Christie Fernandes,[2] both of Indian origin,[3][4] who immigrated to Britain in the 1960s from Mauritius and Kenya respectively. She is named after the character Sue Ellen Ewing from the American television soap opera Dallas, which her mother was a fan of, but Sue-Ellen was abbreviated to Suella by her primary school teachers.[5] Her mother, of Hindu Tamil Mauritian descent, was a nurse and a councillor in Brent,[4] and the Conservative candidate for Tottenham in the 2001 general election and the 2003 Brent East by-election."
So, she is the daughter of immigrants of a decidedly conservative bent, and of a mother who made a point of taking on the extreme left in Brent - a pretty thankless if noble task. No doubt they are very strong British patriots and intensely family-oriented and self-reliant.
Very easy to see how someone with that background would be so angry and indignant about the marchers and anyone playing the game with state benefits.
It certainly doesn't preclude her from being just another calculating politician but there is definitely a potentially compelling narrative there which could chime with a lot of folk.
Elections offices in four counties were evacuated Wednesday after unknown white powder, some including traces of fentanyl, was found in envelopes.
No one has been harmed, but employees had to get out of the buildings while emergency and law enforcement agencies investigated.
The incident, seemingly intended to threaten the election process, strikes fear after a series of items containing suspicious powders were sent to multiple Seattle-area synagogues last week.
Here’s what we know so far. . . .
Election offices in King, Pierce, Skagit and Spokane counties were evacuated.
The envelopes halted or slowed ballot counting in major local elections . . .
The offices in Spokane and King counties received envelopes with traces of fentanyl. No employees were harmed by the substance. Fentanyl cannot cause overdoses from contact. . . .
The investigation in King County was turned over to the FBI.
At the Pierce County Elections Office, an elections worker found an envelope that dispersed a white powdery substance. It was later found to be baking soda.
A message inside the envelope said “something to the effect of stopping the election,” said William Muse, a Tacoma police spokesperson.” . . .
How did this impact the vote count?
King County resumed counting after the office was deemed safe, and posted the results of a smaller batch of votes by 4 p.m. In the first updated vote count since initial returns, King County Elections posted just 20,000 new ballots. Each undecided race inched closer to final results, but barely changed.
No votes were posted in Spokane County on Wednesday, said Patrick Bell, communications director for Spokane County, and election workers there were sent home. . . .
There was no indication of similar events taking place at other election offices in other parts of the United States.
According to the Washington Secretary of State’s Office, the incidents illustrate how serious threats are to the election process.
“The safety of staff and observers is paramount as elections workers across the state open envelopes and count each voter’s ballot,” Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said in a release. “These incidents underscore the critical need for stronger protections for all election workers. Democracy rests upon free and fair elections. These incidents are acts of terrorism to threaten our elections.”
Wednesday’s incident also comes on the heels of a series of items containing suspicious powders being sent to multiple Seattle-area synagogues last week, causing a similar concern in the local Jewish community.
The appearance of these suspicious letters over the past week is an unnerving reminder of letters laced with anthrax and ricin, which can be deadly when inhaled, sent through the U.S. mail in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Those letters killed five people and sickened 17 others. . . .
The best you can do is exclude them from your own demo.
{Jimmy Hoffa has entered the chat}
. . . As war rages in the Middle East, host Jack Blanchard sits down with Alf Dubs, the 91-year-old Labour peer who arrived in Britain on the Kindertransport — which organized the rescue of children from the Nazis — aged just six.
Dubs reflects on his experiences as a child refugee in 1939 and on how he forged a new life in the U.K. He explains why he got into politics, and how he has since devoted much of his life to helping other young people in dire need. He calls for more humanitarian support for those affected by the current wars in Israel / Gaza and Ukraine, and would like to see the U.K. government take a new approach toward those seeking asylum. . . .
https://www.politico.eu/podcast/meet-alf-dubs-the-child-refugee-who-became-a-uk-parliament-grandee/
https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1722625599448203388
Both Conservatives and Labour are signed up to this, so we wont see much changes until one of them comes to their senses. Starmer is a north London lawyer so I cant see him rocking the boat, the Tories might come to their senses after a heavy defeat or lose of heavily they no longer exist.
PS And if you are going to cram every single schoolteacher, for instance, into the 'elite' of 1989, then that is getting thoroughly muddled.
Sack her because she's in the wrong, not because you have the parliamentary cover to do so, Mr Sunak.
PS. "Indiscriminate killing"? You have Hamas to thank for that.
Exclusive: Sunak’s team has held talks this week about a Cabinet reshuffle, multiple sources say
— Oliver Dowden met with No10 for discussions
— some in govt pushing for it to be brought forward to as soon as next week
— No10, Dowden decline to comment
I'm thinking the use of a Bergman is far more classy than an MP40, but the medallioned tassels are not well coordinated with the magazine pouches.
In Ireland, tents are what passes for government-provided accommodation, so I'm not sure where that leaves those who fall between the cracks.
But I think the evidence, to date, is that her style and policies do not have widespread support in the electorate. In the Daily Mail comments section, maybe, but I don't see her leading the Tories to election victories.
Much of US media (and ours too) has developed a bad habit of headlining any story about Trump with a direct quote of his latest incendiary (and usually mendacious) statement. It's like they've taken on the role of unpaid PR agency.
The BBC's US reporting tends to adopt this mode, too.
Now you need a degree even to be a middle manager or police officer or primary school teacher or to be a nurse with all the fees and debt to match.
Is the phrase, I think ?
Just that if you assume all the right-wing propanganda about the marchers anyone would be angry and indignant about them, not just someone with Braverman's background?
Don't blame me - I'm just trying to make sense of what you posted!
He said an announcement would be made three hours beforehand.