Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Okay. So as someone in my early 30s who earns less than £2k a month, no wonder I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb.
Of course, according to some on PB, this was all simply faux outrage from diehard Tories after all Louise Ellman was tweeting in support of the hapless Ali.
“ Keir Starmer is guilty of two kinds of flip-flop. The first kind is from positions he adopted in order to win the leadership of a party still in the grip of Corbynism. Those U-turns showed a cynicism that sometimes took the breath away, but the logic of “what it takes” was irresistible.”
I think I agree
No doubt the usual suspects will be labelling John Rentoul a serially offended Tory.
But, yes, I agree with what he says here and what he had to do to try to undo the harm of Jez he had to do. That was shrewd judgement and only diehard Owen Jones types on twitter won't be happy.
However he cannot keep flip flopping on matters like major policy or supporting then unsupporting a candidate who regurgitates anti semitic conspiracy theories. It starts to look bad.
The hapless shadow ministers who either gushingly endorsed Ali or did the media rounds at the weekend endorsing him must feel like twits and probably unhappy with Starmer
No one was available from Labour today to do the rounds (frit) and last night McFadden would only do a pooled interview.
This is the sort of crap we get from the Tories in govt, I was expecting better from Labour.
I see Andrew Sullivan is now joining the cult of Trump (and US isolationism).
Is he? That's not my reading of the interview at all. He is not voting for him and sees him as a massive threat to rule of law.
Yes, I linked that one a few days ago. He says he prefers Trump's policies but this is outweighed by his threat to democracy. The BTL bile he gets for his trouble from the relentlessly Trumpite unHerd crowd is striking.
Does Trump have policies, other than “what’s good for Trump”?
Genuine question. Is there a discernible ideology beyond a troubling fascination with the west’s enemies on a “groupee” level?
Import duties is probably his biggest consistent angle.
Also very few elected politicos: I count El Capitano (LD), Andy Cooke (LD), Nick Palmer (Lab) and yours truly (Con) as Councillors, and no declared MPs.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
There’s also a generally high level of interest in booze, cricket, and engineering, so despite the agnosticism we make decent recruiting ground for the clergy.
"There’s also a generally high level of interest in booze, cricket, and engineering, so despite with the agnosticism we make decent recruiting ground for the clergy."
Fixed that for you - £425.78 plus VAT
The CoE actively discriminates against those who bother God excessively. In their view.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Okay. So as someone in my early 30s who earns less than £2k a month, no wonder I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb.
And yet they're going over your finances with a fine tooth comb, and telling you where you're failing morally.
Also very few elected politicos: I count El Capitano (LD), Andy Cooke (LD), Nick Palmer (Lab) and yours truly (Con) as Councillors, and no declared MPs.
Louise Mensch, formerly of this parish.
Also we've had a few incognito. Snowflake springs to mind, and I think one or two others moonlighted here.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Well, everyone's experience is different. In financial terms, I've never been more comfortable than I am, right now.
Me too. If I voted based on my own circumstances and narrow financial interests I'd be a fanatical Tory. I suppose this must make me one of those rich lefty hypocrites.
It’s strange that people like yourself are happy to do that, but when less well off people are said to be voting against their own economic interests, by wanting to reduce immigration, they get laughed at with “You’re literally voting to make yourself poorer!!!”
Not that I can remember you personally saying that, but it is often said in a kind of “How dense are they?!” manner
Because he can afford to make himself poorer, when poorer people do not. (Not that I particularly enjoy this form of argument).
The poorer people obviously don’t mind being a big poorer if they think there are other benefits to reducing immigration, it’s surely their choice?
Although they probably don’t believe the GDP way of working out the effects of mass immigration on low wages
(i) Less immigration will improve my lot via higher wages and less stressed public services.
(ii) Less immigration will make me more comfortable in my own country because incomers don't look like me and don't share my values.
The relative strength (and degree of overlap) of the above 2 sentiments would be interesting to know.
Not that there has been less immigration since it became a big issue.
Knock-on effects and all that.
Even RefUK's "one in one out" plan seems like the sort of thing you can only promise if you know there is minimal chance on being required to make it happen. See what's happening in Italy.
I see Andrew Sullivan is now joining the cult of Trump (and US isolationism).
Is he? That's not my reading of the interview at all. He is not voting for him and sees him as a massive threat to rule of law.
Yes, I linked that one a few days ago. He says he prefers Trump's policies but this is outweighed by his threat to democracy. The BTL bile he gets for his trouble from the relentlessly Trumpite unHerd crowd is striking.
Does Trump have policies, other than “what’s good for Trump”?
Genuine question. Is there a discernible ideology beyond a troubling fascination with the west’s enemies on a “groupee” level?
He doesn't, no, but there's a hard right grouping around him who do.
That’s what’s most dangerous about him I think. He really does believe in nothing, and so can be manipulated into anything.
Take Ukraine. The obvious worry is that he withdraws support. But if Putin was a bit rude and some photogenic Ukrainian school kids were murdered, these actually a chance he’d start WW3.
Senate passes Ukraine funding in predawn vote https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4464434-senate-passes-ukraine-funding/ The Senate voted early Tuesday morning to pass a $95 billion emergency defense spending bill, including $60 billion for Ukraine, after an all-night filibuster by conservative opponents finally ran out of steam shortly after 5 a.m. The 70-29 vote capped nearly a week of floor debate and four months of wrangling over President Biden’s request to fund the war in Ukraine, which he submitted to Congress in October.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Any contribution can be looked at in multiple ways. One is through the hermeneutic of suspicion - 'What unjust self interest does this lying bastard conceal in this comment' in which case the background and particularity of the person matters. This is a bit rife, but also can be unrewarding.
Another is to view all comments WRT their quality of argument and coherence with facts, and start with a presumption of good faith.
If you are a Marxist or a religious fanatic this latter is impossible. For the rest of us it is how a liberal and open society works. The enemies of an open society hate it.
The point you make needs more precision if it to get near any target. To one person 'right wing' means not increasing CGT. To another 'right wing' means arbitrary arrest and Belsen. Etc.
I mean the political compass exists for a reason - it's a crude measuring tool but it is still a measuring tool.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Okay. So as someone in my early 30s who earns less than £2k a month, no wonder I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb.
Of course, according to some on PB, this was all simply faux outrage from diehard Tories after all Louise Ellman was tweeting in support of the hapless Ali.
Hmm. That article is timestamped three minutes ago (only just before your post). You are editor of the Indy AICMFP.
It is paywalled but for this part: The time it took the Labour leader to drop his would-be MP for sharing antisemitic conspiracy theories suggests he’ll find the speed and pressure of making calls at No 10 a worrying challenge, writes John Rentoul
That much might be true. We see every week at PMQs that Starmer is leaden-footed. He has excellently scripted, forensic questions that ultimately saw off Boris as Prime Minister, but he cannot think on his feet and react when an unexpected answer is given; he just ploughs on through the script.
If I was the Indy editor I would not be here, happily dragging down the average wealth per poster here. Still what I lack in wealth I make up for with a happy life
Also very few elected politicos: I count El Capitano (LD), Andy Cooke (LD), Nick Palmer (Lab) and yours truly (Con) as Councillors, and no declared MPs.
Had a brief but intense thunderstorm today. 500,000 without power. An entire transport network collapsed.
Chastening. It's not the gradual rise in temperatures, or the slow change in local climates. These extreme weather events might be the story of the next 50 years, and I don't think people back home in the UK appreciate how disruptive they are.
Your australian friends certainly need to reduce their carbon footprint at a whopping 15 tons per person per year.
I think we need to start pivoting to adaptation (while prodding mitigation along - sort out wind auctions, solar investment etc).
Some adaptation won't be worth it though. Some hard-nosed CBA required.
Of course, according to some on PB, this was all simply faux outrage from diehard Tories after all Louise Ellman was tweeting in support of the hapless Ali.
Hmm. That article is timestamped three minutes ago (only just before your post). You are editor of the Indy AICMFP.
It is paywalled but for this part: The time it took the Labour leader to drop his would-be MP for sharing antisemitic conspiracy theories suggests he’ll find the speed and pressure of making calls at No 10 a worrying challenge, writes John Rentoul
That much might be true. We see every week at PMQs that Starmer is leaden-footed. He has excellently scripted, forensic questions that ultimately saw off Boris as Prime Minister, but he cannot think on his feet and react when an unexpected answer is given; he just ploughs on through the script.
Er. He took about a day. Presumably to ask the chap for what he said and why, write up etc.
Not an especial Starmer fan. But I think expecting him to off people like Saddam Hussein is a bit much.
Had a brief but intense thunderstorm today. 500,000 without power. An entire transport network collapsed.
Chastening. It's not the gradual rise in temperatures, or the slow change in local climates. These extreme weather events might be the story of the next 50 years, and I don't think people back home in the UK appreciate how disruptive they are.
The power network issue is very easy to fix. Bury the power lines, problem solved. It's only because they've been stung out in fresh air on the cheap in the first place it's a problem.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Okay. So as someone in my early 30s who earns less than £2k a month, no wonder I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb.
Don't you own a mortgage free property though ?
I can't tell if this is good faith or not - but no, my dad does; I just happen to live in it rent free.
Of course, according to some on PB, this was all simply faux outrage from diehard Tories after all Louise Ellman was tweeting in support of the hapless Ali.
“ Keir Starmer is guilty of two kinds of flip-flop. The first kind is from positions he adopted in order to win the leadership of a party still in the grip of Corbynism. Those U-turns showed a cynicism that sometimes took the breath away, but the logic of “what it takes” was irresistible.”
I think I agree
Starmer is a politician who intend success and power. This involves all sorts of contortions most of us stay out of politics to avoid. Rory Stewart has similar centrist views to SKS, but doesn't do the cynical stuff, so he is out of the game. Starmer is still in.
After attaining the leadership his changes or flip flops are of two sorts: Those designed to get the centrist vote, including 2-3 million Tories, to vote for him, essential for winning. And secondly the mistakes. Rochdale in all its aspects is by far the worst. The only way it would be worse would be if he hadn't, too late, junked him.
But because of the bigger question it raises - Labour is a home to conspiracy theorists, Islamist collaborators and anti-Semites, and the power base in Labour have no real control over them - is has potential to derail. This is the first truly fissile material there is for the Tories to try to get the two/three million switchers back. Game on. NOM remains value.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Well, everyone's experience is different. In financial terms, I've never been more comfortable than I am, right now.
Me too. If I voted based on my own circumstances and narrow financial interests I'd be a fanatical Tory. I suppose this must make me one of those rich lefty hypocrites.
Lord Cameron could, even while retaining his peerage, relinquish his right to sit in the Lords and then be elected as a Conservative MP and then be elected party leader (who must sit in the House of Commons) and thus Prime Minister. That might be worth 100/1 since a safe seat can be arranged.
But the scheme discussed in the header for a PM in the House of Lords which even in 1940 was unacceptable, is far more than a 100/1 shot.
That's a myth about it being unacceptable in 1940 for a PM to sit in the Lords. To state the most obvious point: you do not risk losing a world war for a minor, and unembedded, point of constitutional nicety. Had the roles been reversed, with Churchill in the Lords and Halifax in the Commons (not that implausible a scenario - Churchill was the grandson of a duke; Halifax was his father's fourth son), would it really have been impossible for such an obvious candidate to serve as PM?
The very fact that Halifax was so seriously considered for the job of itself proves that his being a peer wasn't a bar. A drawback, certainly, but not a disqualification. Likewise, while the fact that Curzon was a peer was a fact held against him succeeding Bonar Law in 1923, it wasn't of itself decisive.
Indeed, IIRC, at least two schemes were considered whereby Halifax could address the Commons were he appointed. One was to amend the Commons' standing orders (or to pass a brief Act?) to allow him to speak from the despatch box; the other was for the king to put Halifax's peerages into abeyance and so to enable him to return to the Commons.
Obviously, circumstances in 1940 were rather more desperate than the politics-as-normal now, and such constitutional indulgences couldn't be expected as might have been necessary then. But the point is that they could have been done.
It certainly was decisive in 1923. Had Curzon been in the Commons, there is no doubt whatsoever that he would have been preferred to Baldwin. In fact, it's unlikely Baldwin would have been Chancellor. The reason why Balfour harped on about it to the King, admittedly from ulterior motives, was because he knew that George was already thinking along those lines so he was pushing at an open door.
It is worth remembering both Stamfordham and Salisbury advised the king to appoint Curzon, as did Beaverbrook. Davidson and Balfour's warnings that a peer could not be PM were what tipped it the other way.
With regard to Halifax, the issue wasn't that he was a peer - it was that his peerage gave him a graceful reason for a withdrawal that would really have been needed anyway for other reasons.
Admittedly, it's just as well Curzon never became PM for other reasons too.
Also very few elected politicos: I count El Capitano (LD), Andy Cooke (LD), Nick Palmer (Lab) and yours truly (Con) as Councillors, and no declared MPs.
It woud be quite "brave" for a declared MP to regularly post here.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Okay. So as someone in my early 30s who earns less than £2k a month, no wonder I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb.
Don't you own a mortgage free property though ?
I can't tell if this is good faith or not - but no, my dad does; I just happen to live in it rent free.
OK thanks, & yes it was in good faith re our convo yesterday.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Any contribution can be looked at in multiple ways. One is through the hermeneutic of suspicion - 'What unjust self interest does this lying bastard conceal in this comment' in which case the background and particularity of the person matters. This is a bit rife, but also can be unrewarding.
Another is to view all comments WRT their quality of argument and coherence with facts, and start with a presumption of good faith.
If you are a Marxist or a religious fanatic this latter is impossible. For the rest of us it is how a liberal and open society works. The enemies of an open society hate it.
The point you make needs more precision if it to get near any target. To one person 'right wing' means not increasing CGT. To another 'right wing' means arbitrary arrest and Belsen. Etc.
I mean the political compass exists for a reason - it's a crude measuring tool but it is still a measuring tool.
Not if you are using a tape measure to tell the time.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Okay. So as someone in my early 30s who earns less than £2k a month, no wonder I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb.
“Earns” or “gets paid”? Don’t let the ##### grind you down.
Had a brief but intense thunderstorm today. 500,000 without power. An entire transport network collapsed.
Chastening. It's not the gradual rise in temperatures, or the slow change in local climates. These extreme weather events might be the story of the next 50 years, and I don't think people back home in the UK appreciate how disruptive they are.
Your australian friends certainly need to reduce their carbon footprint at a whopping 15 tons per person per year.
I think we need to start pivoting to adaptation (while prodding mitigation along - sort out wind auctions, solar investment etc).
Some adaptation won't be worth it though. Some hard-nosed CBA required.
The Australians I know tell me that Solar + modernised air source installs (aka AC that can reverse) is all the rage there.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
Had a brief but intense thunderstorm today. 500,000 without power. An entire transport network collapsed.
Chastening. It's not the gradual rise in temperatures, or the slow change in local climates. These extreme weather events might be the story of the next 50 years, and I don't think people back home in the UK appreciate how disruptive they are.
Your australian friends certainly need to reduce their carbon footprint at a whopping 15 tons per person per year.
I think we need to start pivoting to adaptation (while prodding mitigation along - sort out wind auctions, solar investment etc).
Some adaptation won't be worth it though. Some hard-nosed CBA required.
The Australians I know tell me that Solar + modernised air source installs (aka AC that can reverse) is all the rage there.
Just fitted mine, here in the UK
“AC” that can reverse? How does that work? Heat the coolant?
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Okay. So as someone in my early 30s who earns less than £2k a month, no wonder I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb.
Don't you own a mortgage free property though ?
I can't tell if this is good faith or not - but no, my dad does; I just happen to live in it rent free.
OK thanks, & yes it was in good faith re our convo yesterday.
Sorry - it was just a long topic of discussion here about an hour ago and it's hard to tell sometimes what is tongue in cheek
Also very few elected politicos: I count El Capitano (LD), Andy Cooke (LD), Nick Palmer (Lab) and yours truly (Con) as Councillors, and no declared MPs.
It woud be quite "brave" for a declared MP to regularly post here.
Also very few elected politicos: I count El Capitano (LD), Andy Cooke (LD), Nick Palmer (Lab) and yours truly (Con) as Councillors, and no declared MPs.
It woud be quite "brave" for a declared MP to regularly post here.
Aaron Bell posted under his own name for years, then changed it to Tissue Price when he switched to a political career. This was understandable, but probably unnecessary. His postings here have not, I believe, ever landed him in any difficulty.
He has posted occasionally since becoming an MP, and would probably do so more if he were not so busy.
If he were my MP I would vote for him in a trice, but I'm afraid my endorsement is unlikely to save him from the coming cull.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Any contribution can be looked at in multiple ways. One is through the hermeneutic of suspicion - 'What unjust self interest does this lying bastard conceal in this comment' in which case the background and particularity of the person matters. This is a bit rife, but also can be unrewarding.
Another is to view all comments WRT their quality of argument and coherence with facts, and start with a presumption of good faith.
If you are a Marxist or a religious fanatic this latter is impossible. For the rest of us it is how a liberal and open society works. The enemies of an open society hate it.
The point you make needs more precision if it to get near any target. To one person 'right wing' means not increasing CGT. To another 'right wing' means arbitrary arrest and Belsen. Etc.
I mean the political compass exists for a reason - it's a crude measuring tool but it is still a measuring tool.
Not if you are using a tape measure to tell the time.
As someone who used to walk a lot, I did tend to measure distance in time (this walk took me an hour, versus this walk that took me three. Miles? Don't know him, isn't that Frasier's brother?)
Also very few elected politicos: I count El Capitano (LD), Andy Cooke (LD), Nick Palmer (Lab) and yours truly (Con) as Councillors, and no declared MPs.
It woud be quite "brave" for a declared MP to regularly post here.
I agree...but for a shortish period between 2005-10, we had both Nick Palmer and Stewart Jackson posting here; the latter flounced spectacularly and, to be honest, wasn't greatly missed (particularly by the then 'dominant' pbTories!).
Of course, according to some on PB, this was all simply faux outrage from diehard Tories after all Louise Ellman was tweeting in support of the hapless Ali.
Hmm. That article is timestamped three minutes ago (only just before your post). You are editor of the Indy AICMFP.
It is paywalled but for this part: The time it took the Labour leader to drop his would-be MP for sharing antisemitic conspiracy theories suggests he’ll find the speed and pressure of making calls at No 10 a worrying challenge, writes John Rentoul
That much might be true. We see every week at PMQs that Starmer is leaden-footed. He has excellently scripted, forensic questions that ultimately saw off Boris as Prime Minister, but he cannot think on his feet and react when an unexpected answer is given; he just ploughs on through the script.
Er. He took about a day. Presumably to ask the chap for what he said and why, write up etc.
Not an especial Starmer fan. But I think expecting him to off people like Saddam Hussein is a bit much.
He could have suspended Ali pending investigation the moment the news hit, then formally binned him off when the investigation revealed that he did indeed say what it was claimed he said. Instead for some stupid reason he tried to tough it out, let it dominate the news cycle for a day, then inevitably binned him off anyway.
I think I've said the before, but the current Labour party reminds me of the scene in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" where the White Witch marches up to the stone table to kill Aslan. The White Witch looks kind of presentable (bit like SKS), but the rabble of ogres, warewolves, gouls (aka Labour backbenchers and PCCs) that follow behind her are truly terrifying. Every now and then we see one of them show their true colours - and it should make one realise that the Labour party should never ever be allowed anywhere near government ever. It's just a pity that the Tories are a bunch of useless morons, given they are about the only alternative.
Senate passes Ukraine funding in predawn vote https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4464434-senate-passes-ukraine-funding/ The Senate voted early Tuesday morning to pass a $95 billion emergency defense spending bill, including $60 billion for Ukraine, after an all-night filibuster by conservative opponents finally ran out of steam shortly after 5 a.m. The 70-29 vote capped nearly a week of floor debate and four months of wrangling over President Biden’s request to fund the war in Ukraine, which he submitted to Congress in October.
House GOP has 219, Dems have 212, or 213 if they win Santos's seat. Is the US military industrial complex really such a shadow of its former self that it can't flip 4 GOP members to vote for a temporary speaker and pass some weapons spending?
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
If you are thinking of the Native American Indians, that certainly didn't work out too well for them.
Imagine how different history would have been if the Wampanoag had arrested the Pilgrim Fathers for trespassing.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Okay. So as someone in my early 30s who earns less than £2k a month, no wonder I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb.
Don't you own a mortgage free property though ?
I can't tell if this is good faith or not - but no, my dad does; I just happen to live in it rent free.
OK thanks, & yes it was in good faith re our convo yesterday.
Sorry - it was just a long topic of discussion here about an hour ago and it's hard to tell sometimes what is tongue in cheek
No worries at all, and yes I've looked back at the comments an hour ago now. One thing about property - it's an asset class that's historically done well in the UK but it's shockingly illiquid with huge transactional costs. Even if I had the money I wouldn't buy another property, I'd just stick more in general stock markets via ISAs/pension.
It may be that he is just too disliked by their voters and their members, but I wish George W Bush was more visible on this, and my god we must all wish Reagan was there to lecture the modern Republican Party on this (amongst other issues).
They would probably call the pro-immigrant, anti-Russia, pro-NATO, Reagan a RINO though.
Also very few elected politicos: I count El Capitano (LD), Andy Cooke (LD), Nick Palmer (Lab) and yours truly (Con) as Councillors, and no declared MPs.
It woud be quite "brave" for a declared MP to regularly post here.
Unless he was an EXTREMELY good friend of Israel.
eh? Did you see who forced Mike Freer out by arson and death threats? Clue: it wasn't the Jews.
Had a brief but intense thunderstorm today. 500,000 without power. An entire transport network collapsed.
Chastening. It's not the gradual rise in temperatures, or the slow change in local climates. These extreme weather events might be the story of the next 50 years, and I don't think people back home in the UK appreciate how disruptive they are.
Your australian friends certainly need to reduce their carbon footprint at a whopping 15 tons per person per year.
I think we need to start pivoting to adaptation (while prodding mitigation along - sort out wind auctions, solar investment etc).
Some adaptation won't be worth it though. Some hard-nosed CBA required.
The Australians I know tell me that Solar + modernised air source installs (aka AC that can reverse) is all the rage there.
Just fitted mine, here in the UK
“AC” that can reverse? How does that work? Heat the coolant?
Air-to-air heat pump.
So if you want to pull heat from the outside air, you can use your "A/C" unit as an air heater. 4-1 gain is perfectly possible.
In the loft I am having converted, we haven't even bothered to put in radiators. It's so well insulated that it traps heat. Even without the final windows - just some plastic sheets - it is warmer there than the rest of the house. Chimney effect. In the cold snap, no problem, even with no heating running.
The big issue is that in summer, lofts get a lot of heat soak from above. Eventually this means you'll need the A/C - and that is where the solar panels come in.
So we have air-to-air heat pumps for the cooling and what little heating is required, and solar to run it in summer.
Senate passes Ukraine funding in predawn vote https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4464434-senate-passes-ukraine-funding/ The Senate voted early Tuesday morning to pass a $95 billion emergency defense spending bill, including $60 billion for Ukraine, after an all-night filibuster by conservative opponents finally ran out of steam shortly after 5 a.m. The 70-29 vote capped nearly a week of floor debate and four months of wrangling over President Biden’s request to fund the war in Ukraine, which he submitted to Congress in October.
House GOP has 219, Dems have 212, or 213 if they win Santos's seat. Is the US military industrial complex really such a shadow of its former self that it can't flip 4 GOP members to vote for a temporary speaker and pass some weapons spending?
More romantically, are there not four Republicans willing to vote for their principles? Does that just not happen there?
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
I don't know about natural vs unnatural but human migration is certainly older and more intrinsic to the species than private property is. I should add, I am not against private property.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Okay. So as someone in my early 30s who earns less than £2k a month, no wonder I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb.
And yet they're going over your finances with a fine tooth comb, and telling you where you're failing morally.
148 lives rent free in his dad's house AND in PB Tory heads!
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
So why didn't the Native Americans develop the idea, Sean? They weren't all nomadic.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
There’s also a generally high level of interest in booze, cricket, and engineering, so despite the agnosticism we make decent recruiting ground for the clergy.
We even have some home brewers such is the love of the old falling over water.
I saw someone posting about their homebrew last week, I have been making my own wine and beer for the last 5 years too.
I am sure others do as well.
Got the 2023 vintage crab apple on the go currently.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
So why didn't the Native Americans develop the idea, Sean? They weren't all nomadic.
A bunch of the non-nomadic ones did have definite ideas about owning land. They even farmed. The nomadic types regarded them a prey and the settlers stole their land as well.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
So why didn't the Native Americans develop the idea, Sean? They weren't all nomadic.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
So why didn't the Native Americans develop the idea, Sean? They weren't all nomadic.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Well, everyone's experience is different. In financial terms, I've never been more comfortable than I am, right now.
Me too. If I voted based on my own circumstances and narrow financial interests I'd be a fanatical Tory. I suppose this must make me one of those rich lefty hypocrites.
Had a brief but intense thunderstorm today. 500,000 without power. An entire transport network collapsed.
Chastening. It's not the gradual rise in temperatures, or the slow change in local climates. These extreme weather events might be the story of the next 50 years, and I don't think people back home in the UK appreciate how disruptive they are.
Your australian friends certainly need to reduce their carbon footprint at a whopping 15 tons per person per year.
I think we need to start pivoting to adaptation (while prodding mitigation along - sort out wind auctions, solar investment etc).
Some adaptation won't be worth it though. Some hard-nosed CBA required.
The Australians I know tell me that Solar + modernised air source installs (aka AC that can reverse) is all the rage there.
Just fitted mine, here in the UK
“AC” that can reverse? How does that work? Heat the coolant?
Air-to-air heat pump.
So if you want to pull heat from the outside air, you can use your "A/C" unit as an air heater. 4-1 gain is perfectly possible.
In the loft I am having converted, we haven't even bothered to put in radiators. It's so well insulated that it traps heat. Even without the final windows - just some plastic sheets - it is warmer there than the rest of the house. Chimney effect. In the cold snap, no problem, even with no heating running.
The big issue is that in summer, lofts get a lot of heat soak from above. Eventually this means you'll need the A/C - and that is where the solar panels come in.
So we have air-to-air heat pumps for the cooling and what little heating is required, and solar to run it in summer.
Thank you. I have plans to convert the loft and that’s food for thought. Of course I’ll have to keep the aircon a secret so our bedroom doesn’t become a zoo in high summer. Kids can sweat it out like I had to.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
I don't know about natural vs unnatural but human migration is certainly older and more intrinsic to the species than private property is. I should add, I am not against private property.
Is that really true? Even many non-human species understand the concept of possession and territory.
But like it or not, this is going to be a race between Biden and Trump — and somehow the lucid, well-informed candidate is getting more heat over his age than his ranting, factually challenged opponent.
As I said, until just the other day I was feeling somewhat optimistic. But now I’m deeply troubled about our nation’s future.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
I don't know about natural vs unnatural but human migration is certainly older and more intrinsic to the species than private property is. I should add, I am not against private property.
Is that really true? Even many non-human species understand the concept of possession and territory.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Okay. So as someone in my early 30s who earns less than £2k a month, no wonder I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb.
If it makes you feel any better, I'm in my early-40s, living with my wife's parents, and just been told that I can't get life insurance (and therefore: no mortgage, no buying a house).
Senate passes Ukraine funding in predawn vote https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4464434-senate-passes-ukraine-funding/ The Senate voted early Tuesday morning to pass a $95 billion emergency defense spending bill, including $60 billion for Ukraine, after an all-night filibuster by conservative opponents finally ran out of steam shortly after 5 a.m. The 70-29 vote capped nearly a week of floor debate and four months of wrangling over President Biden’s request to fund the war in Ukraine, which he submitted to Congress in October.
House GOP has 219, Dems have 212, or 213 if they win Santos's seat. Is the US military industrial complex really such a shadow of its former self that it can't flip 4 GOP members to vote for a temporary speaker and pass some weapons spending?
More romantically, are there not four Republicans willing to vote for their principles? Does that just not happen there?
There were some but they either quit or lost their primaries.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Okay. So as someone in my early 30s who earns less than £2k a month, no wonder I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb.
If it makes you feel any better, I'm in my early-40s, living with my wife's parents, and just been told that I can't get life insurance (and therefore: no mortgage, no buying a house).
Oh ? I've never been asked about life insurance for a mortgage and don't hold any. Have the rules changed since... 2022 ? First Direct only wanted to see buildings insurance.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Well, everyone's experience is different. In financial terms, I've never been more comfortable than I am, right now.
Me too. If I voted based on my own circumstances and narrow financial interests I'd be a fanatical Tory. I suppose this must make me one of those rich lefty hypocrites.
Champagne Socialist, dear boy.
Toodle pip!
I don't like champagne though.
You need more practice.
I'd much prefer a pint of Moet than a pint of Old Peculiar.
Had a brief but intense thunderstorm today. 500,000 without power. An entire transport network collapsed.
Chastening. It's not the gradual rise in temperatures, or the slow change in local climates. These extreme weather events might be the story of the next 50 years, and I don't think people back home in the UK appreciate how disruptive they are.
Your australian friends certainly need to reduce their carbon footprint at a whopping 15 tons per person per year.
I think we need to start pivoting to adaptation (while prodding mitigation along - sort out wind auctions, solar investment etc).
Some adaptation won't be worth it though. Some hard-nosed CBA required.
The Australians I know tell me that Solar + modernised air source installs (aka AC that can reverse) is all the rage there.
Just fitted mine, here in the UK
“AC” that can reverse? How does that work? Heat the coolant?
Air-to-air heat pump.
So if you want to pull heat from the outside air, you can use your "A/C" unit as an air heater. 4-1 gain is perfectly possible.
In the loft I am having converted, we haven't even bothered to put in radiators. It's so well insulated that it traps heat. Even without the final windows - just some plastic sheets - it is warmer there than the rest of the house. Chimney effect. In the cold snap, no problem, even with no heating running.
The big issue is that in summer, lofts get a lot of heat soak from above. Eventually this means you'll need the A/C - and that is where the solar panels come in.
So we have air-to-air heat pumps for the cooling and what little heating is required, and solar to run it in summer.
Thank you. I have plans to convert the loft and that’s food for thought. Of course I’ll have to keep the aircon a secret so our bedroom doesn’t become a zoo in high summer. Kids can sweat it out like I had to.
If you have space you can hide the internal units and just have ducts.
Have a look at Daikan - their units are very quiet, both the internal and external.
We ran the pipes for radiators, since we were building from scratch - a few feet of copper costs nothing next to a loft conversion and makes it totally future proof. Just didn't bring them up through the floor.
Oh, and if you have issues about head height in the loft, ask the architect about "90mm C section steel" and stroke your chin knowingly.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
So why didn't the Native Americans develop the idea, Sean? They weren't all nomadic.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
So why didn't the Native Americans develop the idea, Sean? They weren't all nomadic.
Some of them did develop the idea of owning land.
John Locke was wrong.
Land ownership comes with agrarian farming. If you are ploughing, planting, weeding and fertilising a bit of land for your crop everyone else had better keep off. You've done the work, you get the crop. Simples. Over time the idea that you have the right to a particular piece of land that you have been cultivating will gradually turn into what we call ownership.
They may not have registered title but pretty much every society with an agrarian base will go down that path.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
I don't know about natural vs unnatural but human migration is certainly older and more intrinsic to the species than private property is. I should add, I am not against private property.
Is that really true? Even many non-human species understand the concept of possession and territory.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Well, everyone's experience is different. In financial terms, I've never been more comfortable than I am, right now.
Me too. If I voted based on my own circumstances and narrow financial interests I'd be a fanatical Tory. I suppose this must make me one of those rich lefty hypocrites.
Champagne Socialist, dear boy.
Toodle pip!
I don't like champagne though.
You need more practice.
I'd much prefer a pint of Moet than a pint of Old Peculiar.
Another convert to the Government’s new size of bottles! Tell Kemi!
But like it or not, this is going to be a race between Biden and Trump — and somehow the lucid, well-informed candidate is getting more heat over his age than his ranting, factually challenged opponent.
As I said, until just the other day I was feeling somewhat optimistic. But now I’m deeply troubled about our nation’s future.
Krugman, NY Times
The NYT focus group with swing voters also deeply troubling.
Also very few elected politicos: I count El Capitano (LD), Andy Cooke (LD), Nick Palmer (Lab) and yours truly (Con) as Councillors, and no declared MPs.
It woud be quite "brave" for a declared MP to regularly post here.
I agree...but for a shortish period between 2005-10, we had both Nick Palmer and Stewart Jackson posting here; the latter flounced spectacularly and, to be honest, wasn't greatly missed (particularly by the then 'dominant' pbTories!).
2010-15 was peak PB, I think
Very varied contributors, much less polarised, a shared sense of humour, fewer lawyers and accountants (or they were more diluted), - nice balance of barbed insults and genuine wit, and a proper conviviality
When did it end? Like so much, perhaps around the time of the Scottish indyref
If I had to pinpoint THE time when the world went mad, a state from which it has never recovered, and it may in fact still be worsening, it is then. Indyref. The UK nearly broke up FFS
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Okay. So as someone in my early 30s who earns less than £2k a month, no wonder I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb.
If it makes you feel any better, I'm in my early-40s, living with my wife's parents, and just been told that I can't get life insurance (and therefore: no mortgage, no buying a house).
Oh ? I've never been asked about life insurance for a mortgage and don't hold any. Have the rules changed since... 2022 ? First Direct only wanted to see buildings insurance.
Different rules in Ireland.
Edit: and only about six mortgage providers, and recent experience of severe negative equity making lenders very cautious.
Also very few elected politicos: I count El Capitano (LD), Andy Cooke (LD), Nick Palmer (Lab) and yours truly (Con) as Councillors, and no declared MPs.
It woud be quite "brave" for a declared MP to regularly post here.
I agree...but for a shortish period between 2005-10, we had both Nick Palmer and Stewart Jackson posting here; the latter flounced spectacularly and, to be honest, wasn't greatly missed (particularly by the then 'dominant' pbTories!).
2010-15 was peak PB, I think
Very varied contributors, much less polarised, a shared sense of humour, fewer lawyers and accountants (or they were more diluted), - nice balance of barbed insults and genuine wit, and a proper conviviality
When did it end? Like so much, perhaps around the time of the Scottish indyref
If I had to pinpoint THE time when the world went mad, a state from which it has never recovered, and it may in fact still be worsening, it is then. Indyref. The UK nearly broke up FFS
The planet has not been the same since
Your exertion to avoid identifying Brexit as the cause is hilarious.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
I mean, it does if you're the person with the biggest stick and can claim you now own the land and therefore extract rents from it. Not so much if you're the guy who just happened to be living on it at the time they do that.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Okay. So as someone in my early 30s who earns less than £2k a month, no wonder I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb.
And yet they're going over your finances with a fine tooth comb, and telling you where you're failing morally.
148 lives rent free in his dad's house AND in PB Tory heads!
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Okay. So as someone in my early 30s who earns less than £2k a month, no wonder I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb.
If it makes you feel any better, I'm in my early-40s, living with my wife's parents, and just been told that I can't get life insurance (and therefore: no mortgage, no buying a house).
Oh ? I've never been asked about life insurance for a mortgage and don't hold any. Have the rules changed since... 2022 ? First Direct only wanted to see buildings insurance.
You don't need life insurance to get a mortgage,
Lenders used to insist on this via an endowment policy (interest only mortgage) or decreasing term assurance (repayment mortgage) but this is going back many years.
(That doesn't mean to say that you don't need life assurance in general if you have dependants.)
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
So why didn't the Native Americans develop the idea, Sean? They weren't all nomadic.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
So why didn't the Native Americans develop the idea, Sean? They weren't all nomadic.
Some of them did develop the idea of owning land.
John Locke was wrong.
Land ownership comes with agrarian farming. If you are ploughing, planting, weeding and fertilising a bit of land for your crop everyone else had better keep off. You've done the work, you get the crop. Simples. Over time the idea that you have the right to a particular piece of land that you have been cultivating will gradually turn into what we call ownership.
They may not have registered title but pretty much every society with an agrarian base will go down that path.
John Locke, like many who write about primitive societies, forgot to get some people from said primitive societies to review his work before publication.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
I don't know about natural vs unnatural but human migration is certainly older and more intrinsic to the species than private property is. I should add, I am not against private property.
Is that really true? Even many non-human species understand the concept of possession and territory.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
I don't know about natural vs unnatural but human migration is certainly older and more intrinsic to the species than private property is. I should add, I am not against private property.
Is that really true? Even many non-human species understand the concept of possession and territory.
Private property and personal property are, again, not the same thing. Animals obviously have dominance hierarchies, and many of those involve some form of giving resources to the most dominant within the species - but I don't quite know if I'd go full Jordan Peterson and think that would therefore provide any evidence for the natural order of rent payments.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
I mean, it does if you're the person with the biggest stick and can claim you now own the land and therefore extract rents from it. Not so much if you're the guy who just happened to be living on it at the time they do that.
Some kind of tenure is required to any kind of agriculture. Farming is not just for Summer. It's an all seasons sport.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Reading PB regularly no doubt contributes to our gaiety
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
So why didn't the Native Americans develop the idea, Sean? They weren't all nomadic.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
So why didn't the Native Americans develop the idea, Sean? They weren't all nomadic.
Some of them did develop the idea of owning land.
John Locke was wrong.
Land ownership comes with agrarian farming. If you are ploughing, planting, weeding and fertilising a bit of land for your crop everyone else had better keep off. You've done the work, you get the crop. Simples. Over time the idea that you have the right to a particular piece of land that you have been cultivating will gradually turn into what we call ownership.
They may not have registered title but pretty much every society with an agrarian base will go down that path.
For a lot of history - this was not true. The person who owned the land was the king or the duke or the lord or whatever. You were permitted to live on the land because you, as a serf, were viewed as much a part of the land as the trees or the deer. When you farmed the crops you had to give 70-80% of the crops to your feudal lord, or they would come around with swords and burn down your house and rape your women and what not. That was how property relations were maintained.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Okay. So as someone in my early 30s who earns less than £2k a month, no wonder I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb.
If it makes you feel any better, I'm in my early-40s, living with my wife's parents, and just been told that I can't get life insurance (and therefore: no mortgage, no buying a house).
Oh ? I've never been asked about life insurance for a mortgage and don't hold any. Have the rules changed since... 2022 ? First Direct only wanted to see buildings insurance.
You don't need life insurance to get a mortgage,
Lenders used to insist on this via an endowment policy (interest only mortgage) or decreasing term assurance (repayment mortgage) but this is going back many years.
(That doesn't mean to say that you don't need life assurance in general if you have dependants.)
Different rules in Ireland.
"The lender is legally required to make sure that you have mortgage protection insurance before giving you a mortgage."
There are exceptions if you can't get life insurance due to a serious illness, but, ridiculously, I don't have a serious illness, but still can't get life insurance (at least not until I have this ten year old benign cyst removed from my leg).
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark. We are predominantly male, with a few women. I think we may be gayer than average, but that's tentative. I couldn't guess at the ethnic/racial mix: I'd hazard mostly agnostic, with some Christians, Muslims and Hindus. There are some around the median wealth or lower, but the presence and volubility of the rich makes it seem a bit less lopsided. In terms of age we do have a larger number of old and retired people, some of which are probably in their last decade or less. I think we're slightly older than the UK population, but given how that skews we may be simply representative. We have many professionals and skilled trades (lawyers, doctors, a couple of warfighters, and at least two statisticians ) and others in the managerial class. We do skew towards the educated and I think the number of postgrads is higher than normal.
Given our profile and engagement I assume we're an advertiser's dream...
Okay. So as someone in my early 30s who earns less than £2k a month, no wonder I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb.
If it makes you feel any better, I'm in my early-40s, living with my wife's parents, and just been told that I can't get life insurance (and therefore: no mortgage, no buying a house).
Oh ? I've never been asked about life insurance for a mortgage and don't hold any. Have the rules changed since... 2022 ? First Direct only wanted to see buildings insurance.
You don't need life insurance to get a mortgage,
Lenders used to insist on this via an endowment policy (interest only mortgage) or decreasing term assurance (repayment mortgage) but this is going back many years.
(That doesn't mean to say that you don't need life assurance in general if you have dependants.)
FD let me have an interest only mortgage on my first house (2010), which meant I had fantastic free cash (about 20 grand on Hilary Clinton winning the popular vote on Betfair at one point) but they (And others) wanted repayment for this purchase (2018). Many of the mortgage sob stories seem to be from people still on IO who have been err... spending the forgone capital repayments rather than investing or keeping as cash.
Of course, according to some on PB, this was all simply faux outrage from diehard Tories after all Louise Ellman was tweeting in support of the hapless Ali.
Hmm. That article is timestamped three minutes ago (only just before your post). You are editor of the Indy AICMFP.
It is paywalled but for this part: The time it took the Labour leader to drop his would-be MP for sharing antisemitic conspiracy theories suggests he’ll find the speed and pressure of making calls at No 10 a worrying challenge, writes John Rentoul
That much might be true. We see every week at PMQs that Starmer is leaden-footed. He has excellently scripted, forensic questions that ultimately saw off Boris as Prime Minister, but he cannot think on his feet and react when an unexpected answer is given; he just ploughs on through the script.
Er. He took about a day. Presumably to ask the chap for what he said and why, write up etc.
Not an especial Starmer fan. But I think expecting him to off people like Saddam Hussein is a bit much.
With a mixture of election coming and, rather boringly one side 20 points ahead, the media have lost their heads frothing around calling anything and everything game changers and “dramatic”.
Until the media can actually return to reality, we are on our own on here trying to make sense of things. 😒
But like it or not, this is going to be a race between Biden and Trump — and somehow the lucid, well-informed candidate is getting more heat over his age than his ranting, factually challenged opponent.
As I said, until just the other day I was feeling somewhat optimistic. But now I’m deeply troubled about our nation’s future.
Krugman, NY Times
The NYT focus group with swing voters also deeply troubling.
Krugman is a fucking idiot. Biden is not ‘lucid’
The democrats are not helped by this imbecilic level of denial
But like it or not, this is going to be a race between Biden and Trump — and somehow the lucid, well-informed candidate is getting more heat over his age than his ranting, factually challenged opponent.
As I said, until just the other day I was feeling somewhat optimistic. But now I’m deeply troubled about our nation’s future.
Krugman, NY Times
The NYT focus group with swing voters also deeply troubling.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
I don't know about natural vs unnatural but human migration is certainly older and more intrinsic to the species than private property is. I should add, I am not against private property.
Is that really true? Even many non-human species understand the concept of possession and territory.
Private property and personal property are, again, not the same thing. Animals obviously have dominance hierarchies, and many of those involve some form of giving resources to the most dominant within the species - but I don't quite know if I'd go full Jordan Peterson and think that would therefore provide any evidence for the natural order of rent payments.
It's a distinction without a difference. Is your laptop private property or personal property?
Good morning from Aberdeen airport. Could I please offer my congratulations to @NickPalmer ? His attempted smear of the Liberal Democrat’s over Cyril Smith in response to his own candidate being thrown out in disgrace was quality entertainment.
It’s pretty clear in this by election. We have a choice of disgraced former Labour candidates - Ali, Galloway, Danczuk. We have a disgraced party - the Tories. Or we have the LibDems.
We know that people want to Get The Tories Out. Happily in Rochdale they don’t have a chance. Plenty of people also seem to want to vote for foaming dog fever. If you want to stop both, vote LibDem.
On this topic; ages ago I argued that Labour were going to get such a stonking majority, that they would be inundated with new, untested MPs. And therefore there might be more examples of (ahem) 'poor' MPs, such as the ex-member for Sheffield Hallam (and I don't mean Clegg...).
It seems this is coming true much earlier than I expected. There's something rotten in the way Labour chooses candidates. The same might be true for the other parties, as well.
I’ve been a candidate. I’ve interviewed candidates. I’ve discussed candidates with regional office staff. I cannot understand how they managed to miss this.
Worst thing is that it would appear that at least some local party members had heard the comments - and voted for Ali anyway. Which means the CLP needs suspending. This wasn’t an HQ parachute candidate, the CLP actively chose him.
What have they actually missed though. The only thing the mail on Sunday came up with are remarks the Israeli government allowed the Hamas attack so they could have the war they wanted - not the most blisteringly anti semitic of statements, unless you disagree?
The latest remarks that have come to light are that he said Israel wanted to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Obviously Labour thinks that even saying that is unacceptable!
I think we just have to accept that all criticism of Israel is a thought crime in Britain. If the Israelis want to kill another 12000 Gazan children who are we to question them?
While it would be untrue to say that "Israel wants" to ethnically cleanse Gaza, there is undeniably a movement for that, which has support in the more extreme elements of Netanyahu's coalition.
Netenyau himself is as much opportunist as ideologue, so it's hard to be sure exactly what is his position.
https://www.politico.eu/article/prominent-settler-pushes-pm-benjamin-netanyahu-rebuild-israeli-homes-gaza/ ...Still, Dagan is not a total outlier. Some in Israel’s defense establishment are also lobbying for a permanent change in Gaza. In mid-October, the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, an Israeli think tank founded by former security officials, urged Netanyahu to seize the “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip”. That’s been echoed by the Israeli Intelligence Ministry, a think tank within the government, which has recommended Gazans be relocated to Egypt’s northern Sinai..
...Remarks from members of Netanyahu’s government – though not from any ministers in the emergency war cabinet – are only fueling fears. This week Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, a former head of the Shin Bet intelligence service, said on television: “We are now rolling out the Gaza nakba.”
Despite some PBers posting earlier, this conflict has been going on for ages, it seems to me, the Israeli Palestinian conflict is very different these days, and not the same old same old of years gone by.
The position of the Arab States is different these days. Let’s look at Egypt, who at one point were the authority on the Gaza Strip. Egypt doesn’t want Palestinians entering Egypt. They see the Gaza Palestinians as radicalised. They see them as a political danger, a political enemy. .
On the other side of the coin, during this generational period of Gazan’s becoming radicalised, has Israeli governments also become less moderate, more extreme?
Unlike the Labour Candidate in Rochdale, I’m certain the Israeli government didn’t want this war, that’s obvious enough in their thrashing about struggling to achieve military goals, like free hostages and the vague smash Hamas once and for all - and shredding much of the sympathy the international community had for them a few months ago.
Egypt’s position on a radicalised Gazan population makes Israel’s war aim of “smash Hamas once and for all” seem utterly fanciful. So how exactly does the Israeli government extract itself from what it’s got into? Where does the next extended period of calm - built on reflection, reconciliation and good will gestures - come from?
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
I mean, it does if you're the person with the biggest stick and can claim you now own the land and therefore extract rents from it. Not so much if you're the guy who just happened to be living on it at the time they do that.
Some kind of tenure is required to any kind of agriculture. Farming is not just for Summer. It's an all seasons sport.
There's a lot of flexibility though. Common land was incredibly, well, common. Likewise, agriculture didn't result in private land ownership in North America, until European settlers arrived.
But there could still be circumstances where conflicts over land would result in violence, so there was some kind of tenure, even if it wasn't the freehold private ownership we are used to today.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
I don't know about natural vs unnatural but human migration is certainly older and more intrinsic to the species than private property is. I should add, I am not against private property.
Is that really true? Even many non-human species understand the concept of possession and territory.
While the Rochdale event is clearly damaging to Labour, I'm not sure that the charge that Starmer was very slow to act is that powerful. The story broke on Saturday night/Sunday morning; Azhar Ali was disowned last night, I think. I know a couple of days seems like an eternity in the modern news cycle, but actually he was suspended pretty quickly. I suspect it will be forgotten about in a week or two, unless other similar candidates emerge from the woodwork.
Also very few elected politicos: I count El Capitano (LD), Andy Cooke (LD), Nick Palmer (Lab) and yours truly (Con) as Councillors, and no declared MPs.
It woud be quite "brave" for a declared MP to regularly post here.
I agree...but for a shortish period between 2005-10, we had both Nick Palmer and Stewart Jackson posting here; the latter flounced spectacularly and, to be honest, wasn't greatly missed (particularly by the then 'dominant' pbTories!).
2010-15 was peak PB, I think
Very varied contributors, much less polarised, a shared sense of humour, fewer lawyers and accountants (or they were more diluted), - nice balance of barbed insults and genuine wit, and a proper conviviality
When did it end? Like so much, perhaps around the time of the Scottish indyref
If I had to pinpoint THE time when the world went mad, a state from which it has never recovered, and it may in fact still be worsening, it is then. Indyref. The UK nearly broke up FFS
The planet has not been the same since
Your exertion to avoid identifying Brexit as the cause is hilarious.
Not at all. I would certainly include Brexit in my list of mad things that should not really have happened - along with Trump, global plague, massive European war, and much else
I’m just trying to pinpoint when this Era of Weirdness began, and sindyref is for me a good place to start. Something unthinkable -the UK splitting - came horribly close to happening - and also it was our first taste in the Uk of brutally polarised politics, especially online - the cybernats
So, no, I’m not ignoring Brexit. It simply wasn’t the start of the Madness
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
I mean, it does if you're the person with the biggest stick and can claim you now own the land and therefore extract rents from it. Not so much if you're the guy who just happened to be living on it at the time they do that.
Some kind of tenure is required to any kind of agriculture. Farming is not just for Summer. It's an all seasons sport.
There's a lot of flexibility though. Common land was incredibly, well, common. Likewise, agriculture didn't result in private land ownership in North America, until European settlers arrived.
But there could still be circumstances where conflicts over land would result in violence, so they're was some kind of tenure, even if it wasn't the freehold private ownership we are used to today.
There were plenty of civilisations in North and South (and Central) America that had land ownership. Including varieties of private land ownership, feudal tenancy systems etc.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
I don't know about natural vs unnatural but human migration is certainly older and more intrinsic to the species than private property is. I should add, I am not against private property.
Is that really true? Even many non-human species understand the concept of possession and territory.
Private property and personal property are, again, not the same thing. Animals obviously have dominance hierarchies, and many of those involve some form of giving resources to the most dominant within the species - but I don't quite know if I'd go full Jordan Peterson and think that would therefore provide any evidence for the natural order of rent payments.
It's a distinction without a difference. Is your laptop private property or personal property?
Did Marx own his pen when he penned "Das Kapital" ? His laptop is a devaluing asset so anything you see as an issue philosophically here goes away in time...
Good morning from Aberdeen airport. Could I please offer my congratulations to @NickPalmer ? His attempted smear of the Liberal Democrat’s over Cyril Smith in response to his own candidate being thrown out in disgrace was quality entertainment.
It’s pretty clear in this by election. We have a choice of disgraced former Labour candidates - Ali, Galloway, Danczuk. We have a disgraced party - the Tories. Or we have the LibDems.
We know that people want to Get The Tories Out. Happily in Rochdale they don’t have a chance. Plenty of people also seem to want to vote for foaming dog fever. If you want to stop both, vote LibDem.
On this topic; ages ago I argued that Labour were going to get such a stonking majority, that they would be inundated with new, untested MPs. And therefore there might be more examples of (ahem) 'poor' MPs, such as the ex-member for Sheffield Hallam (and I don't mean Clegg...).
It seems this is coming true much earlier than I expected. There's something rotten in the way Labour chooses candidates. The same might be true for the other parties, as well.
I’ve been a candidate. I’ve interviewed candidates. I’ve discussed candidates with regional office staff. I cannot understand how they managed to miss this.
Worst thing is that it would appear that at least some local party members had heard the comments - and voted for Ali anyway. Which means the CLP needs suspending. This wasn’t an HQ parachute candidate, the CLP actively chose him.
What have they actually missed though. The only thing the mail on Sunday came up with are remarks the Israeli government allowed the Hamas attack so they could have the war they wanted - not the most blisteringly anti semitic of statements, unless you disagree?
The latest remarks that have come to light are that he said Israel wanted to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Obviously Labour thinks that even saying that is unacceptable!
I think we just have to accept that all criticism of Israel is a thought crime in Britain. If the Israelis want to kill another 12000 Gazan children who are we to question them?
While it would be untrue to say that "Israel wants" to ethnically cleanse Gaza, there is undeniably a movement for that, which has support in the more extreme elements of Netanyahu's coalition.
Netenyau himself is as much opportunist as ideologue, so it's hard to be sure exactly what is his position.
https://www.politico.eu/article/prominent-settler-pushes-pm-benjamin-netanyahu-rebuild-israeli-homes-gaza/ ...Still, Dagan is not a total outlier. Some in Israel’s defense establishment are also lobbying for a permanent change in Gaza. In mid-October, the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, an Israeli think tank founded by former security officials, urged Netanyahu to seize the “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip”. That’s been echoed by the Israeli Intelligence Ministry, a think tank within the government, which has recommended Gazans be relocated to Egypt’s northern Sinai..
...Remarks from members of Netanyahu’s government – though not from any ministers in the emergency war cabinet – are only fueling fears. This week Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, a former head of the Shin Bet intelligence service, said on television: “We are now rolling out the Gaza nakba.”
Despite some PBers posting earlier, this conflict has been going on for ages, it seems to me, the Israeli Palestinian conflict is very different these days, and not the same old same old of years gone by.
The position of the Arab States is different these days. Let’s look at Egypt, who at one point were the authority on the Gaza Strip. Egypt doesn’t want Palestinians entering Egypt. They see the Gaza Palestinians as radicalised. They see them as a political danger, a political enemy. .
On the other side of the coin, during this generational period of Gazan’s becoming radicalised, has Israeli governments also become less moderate, more extreme?
Unlike the Labour Candidate in Rochdale, I’m certain the Israeli government didn’t want this war, that’s obvious enough in their thrashing about struggling to achieve military goals, like free hostages and the vague smash Hamas once and for all - and shredding much of the sympathy the international community had for them a few months ago.
Egypt’s position on a radicalised Gazan population makes Israel’s war aim of “smash Hamas once and for all” seem utterly fanciful. So how exactly does the Israeli government extract itself from what it’s got into? Where does the next extended period of calm - built on reflection, reconciliation and good will gestures - come from?
While the Rochdale event is clearly damaging to Labour, I'm not sure that the charge that Starmer was very slow to act is that powerful. The story broke on Saturday night/Sunday morning; Azhar Ali was disowned last night, I think. I know a couple of days seems like an eternity in the modern news cycle, but actually he was suspended pretty quickly. I suspect it will be forgotten about in a week or two, unless other similar candidates emerge from the woodwork.
Senior Labour politician agrees, describing Sir Keir’s action as ‘tough’ and ‘decisive’
Also very few elected politicos: I count El Capitano (LD), Andy Cooke (LD), Nick Palmer (Lab) and yours truly (Con) as Councillors, and no declared MPs.
Bartholomew Roberts is a Con councillor I think? I've been a councillor (LD then Green), and a parliamentary candidate (LD, LD, Green), but currently out of circulation
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
So why didn't the Native Americans develop the idea, Sean? They weren't all nomadic.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
So why didn't the Native Americans develop the idea, Sean? They weren't all nomadic.
Some of them did develop the idea of owning land.
John Locke was wrong.
Land ownership comes with agrarian farming. If you are ploughing, planting, weeding and fertilising a bit of land for your crop everyone else had better keep off. You've done the work, you get the crop. Simples. Over time the idea that you have the right to a particular piece of land that you have been cultivating will gradually turn into what we call ownership.
They may not have registered title but pretty much every society with an agrarian base will go down that path.
For a lot of history - this was not true. The person who owned the land was the king or the duke or the lord or whatever. You were permitted to live on the land because you, as a serf, were viewed as much a part of the land as the trees or the deer. When you farmed the crops you had to give 70-80% of the crops to your feudal lord, or they would come around with swords and burn down your house and rape your women and what not. That was how property relations were maintained.
That’s a fair description of parts of 18th century Poland or Russia.
But not really of England in c1300, where free tenancy was quite common, and villeinage was a lot less burdensome than that.
But, I’d accept that feudalism is like being part of a mafia family. The Boss will protect you from other predators (you’re his income source after all), but he gets the lion’s share.
The fighting there predicted the drone/long-range artillery ground war that has since become familiar in Ukraine. The ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh and the way the world has ignored it reminds of how often the West just ignores such events. We should all pay more attention to the region.
Has their ever been an unofficial survey of wealth / class / age / voting intention on this platform of its users? Because some of the stuff people are saying here about how the Tories are so lefty and how right wing stuff has never been tried seems... wildly out of joint with the material reality of lots of people on the ground, in a way I just find extremely difficult to comprehend. Like let alone the same country - I'm starting to worry I don't live on the same planet as many of you.
You often refer to controlling borders as "border fascism", so I guess you see favouring low immigration as a right-wing position. What has the level of immigration been like under the current government?
I mean, I consider the method we currently use to manage the border as border fascism. The numbers that pass the border have little to do with how I judge the regime that the state implements at the border. This government would be happy if every small boat sank into the Channel with everyone on board as long as the papers didn't care about it. The idea of immigrants or refugees as this big social drain, of an existential threat, is common in government discussions on the topic. The bureaucracy of immiseration - moving people from place to place, putting them in small rooms or boats, giving them a weekly allowance of under £10, all in the attempt to make things so awful that people stop coming here - to stop a process that is as natural as humans drinking water - over an imagined border. It is border fascism even if everyone was granted asylum who asked for it - not because of the outcome but because of the process of purposeful dehumanisation and hatred the government aims to enforce.
So people moving from place to place is as natural as drinking water, but people seeking to protect their property is an unnatural product of capitalism?
Private property and personal property are different things... Marx literally talked about that. It isn't a new part of leftist theory. It does sometimes hurt my brain when people only have a straw man view of what leftist thought is.
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
For nomadic, pastoral societies, owning land is as absurd as owning sea or air. Your wealth is your flocks and herds.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
I mean, it does if you're the person with the biggest stick and can claim you now own the land and therefore extract rents from it. Not so much if you're the guy who just happened to be living on it at the time they do that.
Some kind of tenure is required to any kind of agriculture. Farming is not just for Summer. It's an all seasons sport.
There's a lot of flexibility though. Common land was incredibly, well, common. Likewise, agriculture didn't result in private land ownership in North America, until European settlers arrived.
But there could still be circumstances where conflicts over land would result in violence, so they're was some kind of tenure, even if it wasn't the freehold private ownership we are used to today.
There were plenty of civilisations in North and South (and Central) America that had land ownership. Including varieties of private land ownership, feudal tenancy systems etc.
Not every Native American was an Apache.
I wrote difficult stuff North American, because I thought there was a pretty clear distinction between the central and southern American civilisations - where large started and hierarchies developed - and further north, where I didn't think they had.
But if I missed something, then it wouldn't be the first time.
While the Rochdale event is clearly damaging to Labour, I'm not sure that the charge that Starmer was very slow to act is that powerful. The story broke on Saturday night/Sunday morning; Azhar Ali was disowned last night, I think. I know a couple of days seems like an eternity in the modern news cycle, but actually he was suspended pretty quickly. I suspect it will be forgotten about pretty quickly, unless other similar candidates emerge from the woodwork.
He’s not even suspended tho, is he? He’s still the Labour candidate in some kind of weird limbo
It is a major fuck up by Starmer. It won’t matter, his poll lead is ginormous, but it’s a major unforced error and doesn’t augur well
The correct move was to come out immediately and disavow Ali as the Labour candidate, be honest about the tricky legal position but say no we are not supporting him. Instead we had 3 days of wanking about - ‘oh he picked up a conspiracy theory online he’s just an idiot please vote for him as MP’. Eesh
Comments
But, yes, I agree with what he says here and what he had to do to try to undo the harm of Jez he had to do. That was shrewd judgement and only diehard Owen Jones types on twitter won't be happy.
However he cannot keep flip flopping on matters like major policy or supporting then unsupporting a candidate who regurgitates anti semitic conspiracy theories. It starts to look bad.
The hapless shadow ministers who either gushingly endorsed Ali or did the media rounds at the weekend endorsing him must feel like twits and probably unhappy with Starmer
No one was available from Labour today to do the rounds (frit) and last night McFadden would only do a pooled interview.
This is the sort of crap we get from the Tories in govt, I was expecting better from Labour.
Fixed that for you - £425.78 plus VAT
The CoE actively discriminates against those who bother God excessively. In their view.
Also we've had a few incognito. Snowflake springs to mind, and I think one or two others moonlighted here.
Stewart Jackson?
Knock-on effects and all that.
Even RefUK's "one in one out" plan seems like the sort of thing you can only promise if you know there is minimal chance on being required to make it happen. See what's happening in Italy.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italys-meloni-talks-tough-migrants-while-opening-up-foreign-workers-2023-12-06/
Take Ukraine. The obvious worry is that he withdraws support. But if Putin was a bit rude and some photogenic Ukrainian school kids were murdered, these actually a chance he’d start WW3.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4464434-senate-passes-ukraine-funding/
The Senate voted early Tuesday morning to pass a $95 billion emergency defense spending bill, including $60 billion for Ukraine, after an all-night filibuster by conservative opponents finally ran out of steam shortly after 5 a.m.
The 70-29 vote capped nearly a week of floor debate and four months of wrangling over President Biden’s request to fund the war in Ukraine, which he submitted to Congress in October.
Baggage checker says 'I reckon you've left your laptop inside'.
I nod "You're Scottish!" I say.
"I AM NOT Scottish-I'm French!!".
"But you've got a Glasgow accent".
'I've been French for almost a year". he says with a grin" I'm now a French citizen!'
'...and you live in Nice? " I ask
"Aye. Been here almost 20 years"
"You became French because of Brexit?"
"....Politicians just in it for themselves"
"Well looks like you've come well out of the deal"
"It can get a bit boring at times but I LOVE being French!
Some adaptation won't be worth it though. Some hard-nosed CBA required.
Not an especial Starmer fan. But I think expecting him to off people like Saddam Hussein is a bit much.
After attaining the leadership his changes or flip flops are of two sorts: Those designed to get the centrist vote, including 2-3 million Tories, to vote for him, essential for winning. And secondly the mistakes. Rochdale in all its aspects is by far the worst. The only way it would be worse would be if he hadn't, too late, junked him.
But because of the bigger question it raises - Labour is a home to conspiracy theorists, Islamist collaborators and anti-Semites, and the power base in Labour have no real control over them - is has potential to derail. This is the first truly fissile material there is for the Tories to try to get the two/three million switchers back. Game on. NOM remains value.
It is worth remembering both Stamfordham and Salisbury advised the king to appoint Curzon, as did Beaverbrook. Davidson and Balfour's warnings that a peer could not be PM were what tipped it the other way.
With regard to Halifax, the issue wasn't that he was a peer - it was that his peerage gave him a graceful reason for a withdrawal that would really have been needed anyway for other reasons.
Admittedly, it's just as well Curzon never became PM for other reasons too.
Just fitted mine, here in the UK
Was the enclosures of the commons something that naturally happened, or was it enforced on most people against their will under the threat of violence to the benefit of the wealthy? The understanding we have of private property has evolved from that. Indeed, mass ownership of land is a relatively new development - if we're talking about human nature. We can look at a number of cultures that, until relatively recently (really the last couple of hundred years when Westerners turned up), had a completely different understanding of land ownership all together - with many of them outright not having a concept of an individual who owns a patch of land and many things, arguably most things, held in common.
He has posted occasionally since becoming an MP, and would probably do so more if he were not so busy.
If he were my MP I would vote for him in a trice, but I'm afraid my endorsement is unlikely to save him from the coming cull.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68283041
I think I've said the before, but the current Labour party reminds me of the scene in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" where the White Witch marches up to the stone table to kill Aslan. The White Witch looks kind of presentable (bit like SKS), but the rabble of ogres, warewolves, gouls (aka Labour backbenchers and PCCs) that follow behind her are truly terrifying.
Every now and then we see one of them show their true colours - and it should make one realise that the Labour party should never ever be allowed anywhere near government ever.
It's just a pity that the Tories are a bunch of useless morons, given they are about the only alternative.
The False Romance of Russia
American conservatives who find themselves identifying with Putin’s regime refuse to see the country for what it actually is.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/false-romance-russia/603433/?gift=hVZeG3M9DnxL4CekrWGK3wIXGOgopQ5i6VvPmj3jVM4&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
(Free link courtesy of Applebaum.)
Imagine how different history would have been if the Wampanoag had arrested the Pilgrim Fathers for trespassing.
Land ownership becomes logical once people settle.
They would probably call the pro-immigrant, anti-Russia, pro-NATO, Reagan a RINO though.
So if you want to pull heat from the outside air, you can use your "A/C" unit as an air heater. 4-1 gain is perfectly possible.
In the loft I am having converted, we haven't even bothered to put in radiators. It's so well insulated that it traps heat. Even without the final windows - just some plastic sheets - it is warmer there than the rest of the house. Chimney effect. In the cold snap, no problem, even with no heating running.
The big issue is that in summer, lofts get a lot of heat soak from above. Eventually this means you'll need the A/C - and that is where the solar panels come in.
So we have air-to-air heat pumps for the cooling and what little heating is required, and solar to run it in summer.
owning land.
John Locke was wrong.
As I said, until just the other day I was feeling somewhat optimistic. But now I’m deeply troubled about our nation’s future.
Krugman, NY Times
Have a look at Daikan - their units are very quiet, both the internal and external.
We ran the pipes for radiators, since we were building from scratch - a few feet of copper costs nothing next to a loft conversion and makes it totally future proof. Just didn't bring them up through the floor.
Oh, and if you have issues about head height in the loft, ask the architect about "90mm C section steel" and stroke your chin knowingly.
They may not have registered title but pretty much every society with an agrarian base will go down that path.
Very varied contributors, much less polarised, a shared sense of humour, fewer lawyers and accountants (or they were more diluted), - nice balance of barbed insults and genuine wit, and a proper conviviality
When did it end? Like so much, perhaps around the time of the Scottish indyref
If I had to pinpoint THE time when the world went mad, a state from which it has never recovered, and it may in fact still be worsening, it is then. Indyref. The UK nearly broke up FFS
The planet has not been the same since
Edit: and only about six mortgage providers, and recent experience of severe negative equity making lenders very cautious.
Lenders used to insist on this via an endowment policy (interest only mortgage) or decreasing term assurance (repayment mortgage) but this is going back many years.
(That doesn't mean to say that you don't need life assurance in general if you have dependants.)
https://pro.morningconsult.com/trackers/2024-presidential-election-polling
"The lender is legally required to make sure that you have mortgage protection insurance before giving you a mortgage."
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/owning-a-home/buying-a-home/insurance-protection-on-mortgages/
There are exceptions if you can't get life insurance due to a serious illness, but, ridiculously, I don't have a serious illness, but still can't get life insurance (at least not until I have this ten year old benign cyst removed from my leg).
Until the media can actually return to reality, we are on our own on here trying to make sense of things. 😒
The democrats are not helped by this imbecilic level of denial
The position of the Arab States is different these days. Let’s look at Egypt, who at one point were the authority on the Gaza Strip. Egypt doesn’t want Palestinians entering Egypt. They see the Gaza Palestinians as radicalised. They see them as a political danger, a political enemy. .
On the other side of the coin, during this generational period of Gazan’s becoming radicalised, has Israeli governments also become less moderate, more extreme?
Unlike the Labour Candidate in Rochdale, I’m certain the Israeli government didn’t want this war, that’s obvious enough in their thrashing about struggling to achieve military goals, like free hostages and the vague smash Hamas once and for all - and shredding much of the sympathy the international community had for them a few months ago.
Egypt’s position on a radicalised Gazan population makes Israel’s war aim of “smash Hamas once and for all” seem utterly fanciful. So how exactly does the Israeli government extract itself from what it’s got into? Where does the next extended period of calm - built on reflection, reconciliation and good will gestures - come from?
But there could still be circumstances where conflicts over land would result in violence, so there was some kind of tenure, even if it wasn't the freehold private ownership we are used to today.
I’m just trying to pinpoint when this Era of Weirdness began, and sindyref is for me a good place to start. Something unthinkable -the UK splitting - came horribly close to happening - and also it was our first taste in the Uk of brutally polarised politics, especially online - the cybernats
So, no, I’m not ignoring Brexit. It simply wasn’t the start of the Madness
Not every Native American was an Apache.
Senior Labour politician agrees, describing Sir Keir’s action as ‘tough’ and ‘decisive’
https://x.com/skynews/status/1757394637004698107?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
I've been a councillor (LD then Green), and a parliamentary candidate (LD, LD, Green), but currently out of circulation
But not really of England in c1300, where free tenancy was quite common, and villeinage was a lot less burdensome than that.
But, I’d accept that feudalism is like being part of a mafia family. The Boss will protect you from other predators (you’re his income source after all), but he gets the lion’s share.
But if I missed something, then it wouldn't be the first time.
It is a major fuck up by Starmer. It won’t matter, his poll lead is ginormous, but it’s a major unforced error and doesn’t augur well
The correct move was to come out immediately and disavow Ali as the Labour candidate, be honest about the tricky legal position but say no we are not supporting him. Instead we had 3 days of wanking about - ‘oh he picked up a conspiracy theory online he’s just an idiot please vote for him as MP’. Eesh