It is a miracle we won World War I with the Liberals in charge.
They had the self restraint of randy rabbits and thus became national security risks.
H.H. Asquith joins David Lloyd George as a degenerate who put his libido above all else, thank goodness they were eclipsed.
Herbert Asquith ‘had passionate weekly trysts with aristocrat in back of car’
First World War PM took young socialite on long drives in ‘bedroom on wheels’, creating security risk by giving away secrets, claims author
Herbert Asquith had passionate weekly trysts with his mistress socialite in the back of his official prime ministerial car, author Robert Harris has claimed.
The risky affair of the Liberal prime minister (1908-16) with aristocrat Venetia Stanley – who was 35 years his junior – contributed to a series of military and political crises at the onset of the First World War.
Piecing together information from Asquith’s letters to Stanley while doing research for his new book, Precipice, Harris found the married father of seven was smitten with his young mistress.
He also discovered that Asquith shared state secrets during their trysts, with copies of classified documents later handed over to police after being discarded from his car.
Been picking up something interesting stuff about the French arrest of Telegram guy.
Apparently the French government thinks it has found a solution to the E2E encryption problem.
For those who are already asleep, this is the issue that, increasingly, social media platforms are adding encryption behind the scenes. In a way that means *they* can’t read your messages either. This is spreading from 1-1 chats to chat rooms.
The problem is that E2E is required for financial transactions online. And just about any kind of online security.
Apparently the French are going to push for a European law that if E2E is used, without a back door for spooks/law enforcement, then it will only be allowed to be used for financial transactions or verification - severe limits on amounts of data.
If the state can’t get into a chat, the company in question will be held liable - if they build the platform so that they (the company m) doesn’t have access, that will simply make them guilty of a crime.
A courageous decision there, say goodbye to iMessage and WhatsApp for starters.
Cue someone setting up a messaging service which transfers 0.01c to the recipient of each message... and so all messages are financial transactions.
Which amply demonstrates the stupidity of the idea, as you can always piggy back bad uses on top of the legitimate uses. Any observable state change can act as a communication channel, I'm sure that even in France there are people who know that.
Been picking up something interesting stuff about the French arrest of Telegram guy.
Apparently the French government thinks it has found a solution to the E2E encryption problem.
For those who are already asleep, this is the issue that, increasingly, social media platforms are adding encryption behind the scenes. In a way that means *they* can’t read your messages either. This is spreading from 1-1 chats to chat rooms.
The problem is that E2E is required for financial transactions online. And just about any kind of online security.
Apparently the French are going to push for a European law that if E2E is used, without a back door for spooks/law enforcement, then it will only be allowed to be used for financial transactions or verification - severe limits on amounts of data.
If the state can’t get into a chat, the company in question will be held liable - if they build the platform so that they (the company m) doesn’t have access, that will simply make them guilty of a crime.
A courageous decision there, say goodbye to iMessage and WhatsApp for starters.
Cue someone setting up a messaging service which transfers 0.01c to the recipient of each message... and so all messages are financial transactions.
It would be interesting to see where it leads.
The key is - create a platform where we can’t read the messages. You (the provider) are a criminal.
On topic, a tie is quite possible All it requires is Trump to win the sunbelt (AZ, NV and GA), while Biden holds on in the rustbelt... And Nebraska's single elector from the 2nd flips.
Right now, the Dems are leading in the polls in MI and WI; let's give them those. And were it not for AZ's abortion referendum, I think that and AZ would be an easy pickup. NV and GA will be close, but Trump should probably be favorite. And PA is probably the other way around.
Which means it all comes down to Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District. Here Biden led Trump by 6.5% in 2020 (while the District returned a Republican congressman). Said race was won again by the Republican incumbent in 2022, albeit narrowly.
Could the Republicans flip it? Sure they can. Will they? Well, there's been no polling, so who knows. I'd make it in a one-in-four shot.
So you know what: I'd say that an electoral tie is far from impossible. I'd probably want fairly decent odds on it, but it's far from an outrageous possibility.
Biden?
You don't honestly think the Dems are going to stick with Harris? It's also just a clever bait and switch, and Biden will become nominee again in a month, just you wait and see...
Yes. As soon as Harris has trounced Trump in the debate on Sept 10th, she'll hand over to Biden. Job done. Biden is 1000 on Betfair.
On topic - a tie is very unlikely. Rather more likely is local Reps trying to prevent certification in states won by Harris so that those votes do not count towards 270. In other words the role of third candidate would be taken by vacant seats. This is absolutely in the minds of people around Trump.
However, their best chance here is Georgia. Which I suspect will vote Rep anyway. The current Gov of North Carolina pulled out of the Dem Veep stakes in large part to ensure his MAGA Deputy couldn't fix the state. Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona all have Dem Governors who could certify Electors in the event of shenanigans. Nevada has a Dem SOS and a Rep Gov who probably wouldn't want to get involved.
As for the Supreme Court - I suspect it will be done and dusted before they get a chance to stick their oar in. This is not 2000 and the Dems do not view Trump as they did Bush. Hard ball will be the order of the day.
Got to love writing an F1 article then finding the sport's own website had the title numbers wrong.
Anyway, leads are 30 for McLaren and 70 for Verstappen. Right now, I still think Verstappen's the favourite. He needs just one or two good weekends, Norris needs every weekend to be good.
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Pretty awful scenes coming in from Kyiv and Ukraine after yet more attacks by Russia.
Germany, Biden and the whole civilised world needs to give Ukraine more weapons, and permission to hit these bombers wherever they are in Russia. We're asking Ukraine to fight with one hand tied behind their back.
Damn the Russians. Damn them all to Hell. Every single man, woman and child; Every single one of them, until they renounce Putin and fascism.
What's notable about the Ukrainian occupation of Sudzha, and other parts of Kursk, it's that the Russian civilians don't seem to care.
They aren't telling the Ukrainians to go home, or demonstrating against them, as Ukrainians did in response to Russian occupation. But neither did they protest against their own government and its war. They've perhaps learned that it's safer not to give a damn either way.
Been picking up something interesting stuff about the French arrest of Telegram guy.
Apparently the French government thinks it has found a solution to the E2E encryption problem.
For those who are already asleep, this is the issue that, increasingly, social media platforms are adding encryption behind the scenes. In a way that means *they* can’t read your messages either. This is spreading from 1-1 chats to chat rooms.
The problem is that E2E is required for financial transactions online. And just about any kind of online security.
Apparently the French are going to push for a European law that if E2E is used, without a back door for spooks/law enforcement, then it will only be allowed to be used for financial transactions or verification - severe limits on amounts of data.
If the state can’t get into a chat, the company in question will be held liable - if they build the platform so that they (the company m) doesn’t have access, that will simply make them guilty of a crime.
A courageous decision there, say goodbye to iMessage and WhatsApp for starters.
Cue someone setting up a messaging service which transfers 0.01c to the recipient of each message... and so all messages are financial transactions.
Which amply demonstrates the stupidity of the idea, as you can always piggy back bad uses on top of the legitimate uses. Any observable state change can act as a communication channel, I'm sure that even in France there are people who know that.
And you cannot unlearn what is learned: things like Clipper just don't work in the real world, because knowledge of how encryption works is so widely shared. Unless your government is willing to be exceptionally repressive, then people will find ways around these measures.
Pretty awful scenes coming in from Kyiv and Ukraine after yet more attacks by Russia.
Germany, Biden and the whole civilised world needs to give Ukraine more weapons, and permission to hit these bombers wherever they are in Russia. We're asking Ukraine to fight with one hand tied behind their back.
Damn the Russians. Damn them all to Hell. Every single man, woman and child; Every single one of them, until they renounce Putin and fascism.
What's notable about the Ukrainian occupation of Sudzha, and other parts of Kursk, it's that the Russian civilians don't seem to care.
They aren't telling the Ukrainians to go home, or demonstrating against them, as Ukrainians did in response to Russian occupation. But neither did they protest against their own government and its war. They've perhaps learned that it's safer not to give a damn either way.
Phillips O'Brien puts the refusal to change policy down to Washington being incapable of accepting that's its got things wrong.
Been picking up something interesting stuff about the French arrest of Telegram guy.
Apparently the French government thinks it has found a solution to the E2E encryption problem.
For those who are already asleep, this is the issue that, increasingly, social media platforms are adding encryption behind the scenes. In a way that means *they* can’t read your messages either. This is spreading from 1-1 chats to chat rooms.
The problem is that E2E is required for financial transactions online. And just about any kind of online security.
Apparently the French are going to push for a European law that if E2E is used, without a back door for spooks/law enforcement, then it will only be allowed to be used for financial transactions or verification - severe limits on amounts of data.
If the state can’t get into a chat, the company in question will be held liable - if they build the platform so that they (the company m) doesn’t have access, that will simply make them guilty of a crime.
A courageous decision there, say goodbye to iMessage and WhatsApp for starters.
Cue someone setting up a messaging service which transfers 0.01c to the recipient of each message... and so all messages are financial transactions.
Which amply demonstrates the stupidity of the idea, as you can always piggy back bad uses on top of the legitimate uses. Any observable state change can act as a communication channel, I'm sure that even in France there are people who know that.
And you cannot unlearn what is learned: things like Clipper just don't work in the real world, because knowledge of how encryption works is so widely shared. Unless your government is willing to be exceptionally repressive, then people will find ways around these measures.
The point is that 99.99% of people - even criminals don’t bother. So if E2E isn’t provided for them, without asking them…
The remaining 0.01% can be tackled with practical crypto analysis
Been picking up something interesting stuff about the French arrest of Telegram guy.
Apparently the French government thinks it has found a solution to the E2E encryption problem.
For those who are already asleep, this is the issue that, increasingly, social media platforms are adding encryption behind the scenes. In a way that means *they* can’t read your messages either. This is spreading from 1-1 chats to chat rooms.
The problem is that E2E is required for financial transactions online. And just about any kind of online security.
Apparently the French are going to push for a European law that if E2E is used, without a back door for spooks/law enforcement, then it will only be allowed to be used for financial transactions or verification - severe limits on amounts of data.
If the state can’t get into a chat, the company in question will be held liable - if they build the platform so that they (the company m) doesn’t have access, that will simply make them guilty of a crime.
A courageous decision there, say goodbye to iMessage and WhatsApp for starters.
Cue someone setting up a messaging service which transfers 0.01c to the recipient of each message... and so all messages are financial transactions.
Which amply demonstrates the stupidity of the idea, as you can always piggy back bad uses on top of the legitimate uses. Any observable state change can act as a communication channel, I'm sure that even in France there are people who know that.
And you cannot unlearn what is learned: things like Clipper just don't work in the real world, because knowledge of how encryption works is so widely shared. Unless your government is willing to be exceptionally repressive, then people will find ways around these measures.
The point is that 99.99% of people - even criminals don’t bother. So if E2E isn’t provided for them, without asking them…
The remaining 0.01% can be tackled with practical crypto analysis
One of my all time favourite XKCDs.
That said, I have solved the problem myself: I have simply forgotten all my passwords. In this way, I can't be forced to hand them over.
Pretty awful scenes coming in from Kyiv and Ukraine after yet more attacks by Russia.
Germany, Biden and the whole civilised world needs to give Ukraine more weapons, and permission to hit these bombers wherever they are in Russia. We're asking Ukraine to fight with one hand tied behind their back.
Damn the Russians. Damn them all to Hell. Every single man, woman and child; Every single one of them, until they renounce Putin and fascism.
What's notable about the Ukrainian occupation of Sudzha, and other parts of Kursk, it's that the Russian civilians don't seem to care.
They aren't telling the Ukrainians to go home, or demonstrating against them, as Ukrainians did in response to Russian occupation. But neither did they protest against their own government and its war. They've perhaps learned that it's safer not to give a damn either way.
Phillips O'Brien puts the refusal to change policy down to Washington being incapable of accepting that's its got things wrong.
Normally in a democracy the way this works is that the opposition hammers the government for its mistake, and so the government is forced to correct the mistake to stop the damage to its popularity.
This is broken in the US now because Trump has turned much of the GOP into a pro-Putin fanclub for dictators. There isn't the domestic pressure you would expect to fix mistakes. So we can see how much damage is done by Trump even out of office.
It is also why the Conservative leadership election matters.
Been picking up something interesting stuff about the French arrest of Telegram guy.
Apparently the French government thinks it has found a solution to the E2E encryption problem.
For those who are already asleep, this is the issue that, increasingly, social media platforms are adding encryption behind the scenes. In a way that means *they* can’t read your messages either. This is spreading from 1-1 chats to chat rooms.
The problem is that E2E is required for financial transactions online. And just about any kind of online security.
Apparently the French are going to push for a European law that if E2E is used, without a back door for spooks/law enforcement, then it will only be allowed to be used for financial transactions or verification - severe limits on amounts of data.
If the state can’t get into a chat, the company in question will be held liable - if they build the platform so that they (the company m) doesn’t have access, that will simply make them guilty of a crime.
A courageous decision there, say goodbye to iMessage and WhatsApp for starters.
Cue someone setting up a messaging service which transfers 0.01c to the recipient of each message... and so all messages are financial transactions.
Which amply demonstrates the stupidity of the idea, as you can always piggy back bad uses on top of the legitimate uses. Any observable state change can act as a communication channel, I'm sure that even in France there are people who know that.
And you cannot unlearn what is learned: things like Clipper just don't work in the real world, because knowledge of how encryption works is so widely shared. Unless your government is willing to be exceptionally repressive, then people will find ways around these measures.
The point is that 99.99% of people - even criminals don’t bother. So if E2E isn’t provided for them, without asking them…
The remaining 0.01% can be tackled with practical crypto analysis
Yes, or find the password scribbled on a post-it note, index card, label on the bottom of the keyboard, etc.
Been picking up something interesting stuff about the French arrest of Telegram guy.
Apparently the French government thinks it has found a solution to the E2E encryption problem.
For those who are already asleep, this is the issue that, increasingly, social media platforms are adding encryption behind the scenes. In a way that means *they* can’t read your messages either. This is spreading from 1-1 chats to chat rooms.
The problem is that E2E is required for financial transactions online. And just about any kind of online security.
Apparently the French are going to push for a European law that if E2E is used, without a back door for spooks/law enforcement, then it will only be allowed to be used for financial transactions or verification - severe limits on amounts of data.
If the state can’t get into a chat, the company in question will be held liable - if they build the platform so that they (the company m) doesn’t have access, that will simply make them guilty of a crime.
A courageous decision there, say goodbye to iMessage and WhatsApp for starters.
Cue someone setting up a messaging service which transfers 0.01c to the recipient of each message... and so all messages are financial transactions.
Which amply demonstrates the stupidity of the idea, as you can always piggy back bad uses on top of the legitimate uses. Any observable state change can act as a communication channel, I'm sure that even in France there are people who know that.
And you cannot unlearn what is learned: things like Clipper just don't work in the real world, because knowledge of how encryption works is so widely shared. Unless your government is willing to be exceptionally repressive, then people will find ways around these measures.
The point is that 99.99% of people - even criminals don’t bother. So if E2E isn’t provided for them, without asking them…
The remaining 0.01% can be tackled with practical crypto analysis
One of my all time favourite XKCDs.
That said, I have solved the problem myself: I have simply forgotten all my passwords. In this way, I can't be forced to hand them over.
Pretty much exactly how they got the Silk Road guy.
And you cannot unlearn what is learned: things like Clipper just don't work in the real world, because knowledge of how encryption works is so widely shared. Unless your government is willing to be exceptionally repressive, then people will find ways around these measures.
Clipper is one of the best examples of why these plans are such a terrible idea.
Clipper (the chip) implemented the NSA designed Skipjack (the cipher) the one flaw it had was that the LEAF (law enforcement access field) which protected the session key was flawed and could be spoofed, as the checksum was so small it could be brute-forced quite rapidly, rendering the message unaccessible by law enforcement. So if even the NSA can't get it right and can screw up the one feature that necessitated government intervention don't expect anyone else to nail it first time.
And the 90s are an eon ago in cryptological terms, the best cryptographers don't go and work for the NSA anymore, there is more money, more chance of doing great work, and at least as much prestige working for a web giant. The days when government agencies were the source of most cryptological and computer security innovation are long gone.
And you cannot unlearn what is learned: things like Clipper just don't work in the real world, because knowledge of how encryption works is so widely shared. Unless your government is willing to be exceptionally repressive, then people will find ways around these measures.
Clipper is one of the best examples of why these plans are such a terrible idea.
Clipper (the chip) implemented the NSA designed Skipjack (the cipher) the one flaw it had was that the LEAF (law enforcement access field) which protected the session key was flawed and could be spoofed, as the checksum was so small it could be brute-forced quite rapidly, rendering the message unaccessible by law enforcement. So if even the NSA can't get it right and can screw up the one feature that necessitated government intervention don't expect anyone else to nail it first time.
And the 90s are an eon ago in cryptological terms, the best cryptographers don't go and work for the NSA anymore, there is more money, more chance of doing great work, and at least as much prestige working for a web giant. The days when government agencies were the source of most cryptological and computer security innovation are long gone.
It makes me proud to be British that GCHQ invented RSA before R S and A did, but had the good sense to keep quiet about it.
Risky strategy, if Trump rejects a federal abortion ban that will depress evangelical and conservative Catholic turnout for him while women who are strongly pro choice will still vote for Harris and the Democrats anyway
On topic - a tie is very unlikely. Rather more likely is local Reps trying to prevent certification in states won by Harris so that those votes do not count towards 270. In other words the role of third candidate would be taken by vacant seats. This is absolutely in the minds of people around Trump.
However, their best chance here is Georgia. Which I suspect will vote Rep anyway. The current Gov of North Carolina pulled out of the Dem Veep stakes in large part to ensure his MAGA Deputy couldn't fix the state. Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona all have Dem Governors who could certify Electors in the event of shenanigans. Nevada has a Dem SOS and a Rep Gov who probably wouldn't want to get involved.
As for the Supreme Court - I suspect it will be done and dusted before they get a chance to stick their oar in. This is not 2000 and the Dems do not view Trump as they did Bush. Hard ball will be the order of the day.
Harris as VP reads out the Electoral College result this time, not Pence as in 2020.
She would likely call herself the winner of a state therefore if the networks called it for her even if a GOP Governor or state legislature refused to certify that
It is a miracle we won World War I with the Liberals in charge.
They had the self restraint of randy rabbits and thus became national security risks.
H.H. Asquith joins David Lloyd George as a degenerate who put his libido above all else, thank goodness they were eclipsed.
Herbert Asquith ‘had passionate weekly trysts with aristocrat in back of car’
First World War PM took young socialite on long drives in ‘bedroom on wheels’, creating security risk by giving away secrets, claims author
Herbert Asquith had passionate weekly trysts with his mistress socialite in the back of his official prime ministerial car, author Robert Harris has claimed.
The risky affair of the Liberal prime minister (1908-16) with aristocrat Venetia Stanley – who was 35 years his junior – contributed to a series of military and political crises at the onset of the First World War.
Piecing together information from Asquith’s letters to Stanley while doing research for his new book, Precipice, Harris found the married father of seven was smitten with his young mistress.
He also discovered that Asquith shared state secrets during their trysts, with copies of classified documents later handed over to police after being discarded from his car.
For 100 years the evidence spoke to a platonic relationship. Robert Harris, a fiction writer, with a book to sell suggests otherwise.... well, well. Doesn't mean it's true though.
It is a miracle we won World War I with the Liberals in charge.
They had the self restraint of randy rabbits and thus became national security risks.
H.H. Asquith joins David Lloyd George as a degenerate who put his libido above all else, thank goodness they were eclipsed.
Herbert Asquith ‘had passionate weekly trysts with aristocrat in back of car’
First World War PM took young socialite on long drives in ‘bedroom on wheels’, creating security risk by giving away secrets, claims author
Herbert Asquith had passionate weekly trysts with his mistress socialite in the back of his official prime ministerial car, author Robert Harris has claimed.
The risky affair of the Liberal prime minister (1908-16) with aristocrat Venetia Stanley – who was 35 years his junior – contributed to a series of military and political crises at the onset of the First World War.
Piecing together information from Asquith’s letters to Stanley while doing research for his new book, Precipice, Harris found the married father of seven was smitten with his young mistress.
He also discovered that Asquith shared state secrets during their trysts, with copies of classified documents later handed over to police after being discarded from his car.
Been picking up something interesting stuff about the French arrest of Telegram guy.
Apparently the French government thinks it has found a solution to the E2E encryption problem.
For those who are already asleep, this is the issue that, increasingly, social media platforms are adding encryption behind the scenes. In a way that means *they* can’t read your messages either. This is spreading from 1-1 chats to chat rooms.
The problem is that E2E is required for financial transactions online. And just about any kind of online security.
Apparently the French are going to push for a European law that if E2E is used, without a back door for spooks/law enforcement, then it will only be allowed to be used for financial transactions or verification - severe limits on amounts of data.
If the state can’t get into a chat, the company in question will be held liable - if they build the platform so that they (the company m) doesn’t have access, that will simply make them guilty of a crime.
A courageous decision there, say goodbye to iMessage and WhatsApp for starters.
Cue someone setting up a messaging service which transfers 0.01c to the recipient of each message... and so all messages are financial transactions.
Which amply demonstrates the stupidity of the idea, as you can always piggy back bad uses on top of the legitimate uses. Any observable state change can act as a communication channel, I'm sure that even in France there are people who know that.
And you cannot unlearn what is learned: things like Clipper just don't work in the real world, because knowledge of how encryption works is so widely shared. Unless your government is willing to be exceptionally repressive, then people will find ways around these measures.
The point is that 99.99% of people - even criminals don’t bother. So if E2E isn’t provided for them, without asking them…
The remaining 0.01% can be tackled with practical crypto analysis
One of my all time favourite XKCDs.
That said, I have solved the problem myself: I have simply forgotten all my passwords. In this way, I can't be forced to hand them over.
In U.K. law, you can be sent to prison for refusing to hand over a key/password on demand.
If you forget or don’t know - that’s not a defence.
So if you have a file of random numbers on your computer, you can be prosecuted with the claim it’s really a secret message….
It is a miracle we won World War I with the Liberals in charge.
They had the self restraint of randy rabbits and thus became national security risks.
H.H. Asquith joins David Lloyd George as a degenerate who put his libido above all else, thank goodness they were eclipsed.
Herbert Asquith ‘had passionate weekly trysts with aristocrat in back of car’
First World War PM took young socialite on long drives in ‘bedroom on wheels’, creating security risk by giving away secrets, claims author
Herbert Asquith had passionate weekly trysts with his mistress socialite in the back of his official prime ministerial car, author Robert Harris has claimed.
The risky affair of the Liberal prime minister (1908-16) with aristocrat Venetia Stanley – who was 35 years his junior – contributed to a series of military and political crises at the onset of the First World War.
Piecing together information from Asquith’s letters to Stanley while doing research for his new book, Precipice, Harris found the married father of seven was smitten with his young mistress.
He also discovered that Asquith shared state secrets during their trysts, with copies of classified documents later handed over to police after being discarded from his car.
The vast majority of people only had 4 tv channels between 82 and 97.
(Thinks better of musing about how many people lived in places where they could get, say, Granada and ATV when they were meaningfully different.)
But, at risk of sounding like an Unherd columnist, you may be right. Eyeballs concentrated on fewer options meant more money spent on the programmes that were broadcast. And I'm pretty sure that a nation where most people watched the same evening news bulletins (which knew they had to try and be neutralish, and were under massive scrutiny to be so) was better-informed than one where we all choose our own news.
Same for local radio. Having lots of different Radio Yourtowns was probably a better service than what we have now.
No way of putting the genie back in the bottle, though.
Indeed. That was very evident in the public health warnings over covid - in contrast to the AIDS public health campaign, which was far more unified. Same with the print media. Now it's far too fractured and refracted through the little bits of media one has today.
From the perspective of now, the AIDS campaign was a blooming miracle. There must have been some "it only affects gays, perverts and Liberal MPs" pushback, but I don't recall it getting anywhere.
Perhaps worth watching the Russell T Davies Channel 4 drama “It’s a Sin”.
Risky strategy, if Trump rejects a federal abortion ban that will depress evangelical and conservative Catholic turnout for him while women who are strongly pro choice will still vote for Harris and the Democrats anyway
Not really, they have nowhere else to go and can still campaign for abortion bans in their states.
To me, the risk here is not a tie (which is incredibly unlikely) but that Trump supporting officials prevent the proper recording of the results of enough states to ensure that neither candidate can make 270. This strikes me as a far more likely scenario.
It may also not matter very much which House of Representatives purports to make the decision. At the moment the Democratic generic lead for Congress is probably not large enough to overcome the bias and gerrymandering benefit that the Republicans get. Congress, once again, is looking incredibly close and an overall Democratic majority is probably less than 50%, just.
The Constitution of the United States is really not fit for purpose.
Risky strategy, if Trump rejects a federal abortion ban that will depress evangelical and conservative Catholic turnout for him while women who are strongly pro choice will still vote for Harris and the Democrats anyway
Not really, they have nowhere else to go and can still campaign for abortion bans in their states.
State bans are largely meaningless when you just have to drive a few hours and can get it done anyway. It increases the cost but it worthless in preventing people who are even slightly determined from getting it done.
It is a miracle we won World War I with the Liberals in charge.
They had the self restraint of randy rabbits and thus became national security risks.
H.H. Asquith joins David Lloyd George as a degenerate who put his libido above all else, thank goodness they were eclipsed.
Herbert Asquith ‘had passionate weekly trysts with aristocrat in back of car’
First World War PM took young socialite on long drives in ‘bedroom on wheels’, creating security risk by giving away secrets, claims author
Herbert Asquith had passionate weekly trysts with his mistress socialite in the back of his official prime ministerial car, author Robert Harris has claimed.
The risky affair of the Liberal prime minister (1908-16) with aristocrat Venetia Stanley – who was 35 years his junior – contributed to a series of military and political crises at the onset of the First World War.
Piecing together information from Asquith’s letters to Stanley while doing research for his new book, Precipice, Harris found the married father of seven was smitten with his young mistress.
He also discovered that Asquith shared state secrets during their trysts, with copies of classified documents later handed over to police after being discarded from his car.
To me, the risk here is not a tie (which is incredibly unlikely) but that Trump supporting officials prevent the proper recording of the results of enough states to ensure that neither candidate can make 270. This strikes me as a far more likely scenario.
It may also not matter very much which House of Representatives purports to make the decision. At the moment the Democratic generic lead for Congress is probably not large enough to overcome the bias and gerrymandering benefit that the Republicans get. Congress, once again, is looking incredibly close and an overall Democratic majority is probably less than 50%, just.
The Constitution of the United States is really not fit for purpose.
Good point about some states not providing results. There seems little doubt that Trump has been installing people in key places who will refuse to certify results if they go the wrong way.
It is going to be a total and highly dangerous mess unless Harris wins a landslide.
Will Supreme Court end up deciding who is President?
Risky strategy, if Trump rejects a federal abortion ban that will depress evangelical and conservative Catholic turnout for him while women who are strongly pro choice will still vote for Harris and the Democrats anyway
Not really, they have nowhere else to go and can still campaign for abortion bans in their states.
State bans are largely meaningless when you just have to drive a few hours and can get it done anyway. It increases the cost but it worthless in preventing people who are even slightly determined from getting it done.
The more MAGA state governments have been trying to prosecute women for getting an abortion in another state. Complete with illegal use of tracking data from social media - they are demanding he the right to track all pregnant women, it seems
They have also tried prosecuting individuals and organisations who are involved in abortions on other states.
And sued to demand information about abortions in other states….
It’s malevolent and very aggressive. And redolent of the attempts by the slave states to get the anti-slavery states to enforce their Peculiar Institution.
To me, the risk here is not a tie (which is incredibly unlikely) but that Trump supporting officials prevent the proper recording of the results of enough states to ensure that neither candidate can make 270. This strikes me as a far more likely scenario.
It may also not matter very much which House of Representatives purports to make the decision. At the moment the Democratic generic lead for Congress is probably not large enough to overcome the bias and gerrymandering benefit that the Republicans get. Congress, once again, is looking incredibly close and an overall Democratic majority is probably less than 50%, just.
The Constitution of the United States is really not fit for purpose.
Good point about some states not providing results. There seems little doubt that Trump has been installing people in key places who will refuse to certify results if they go the wrong way.
It is going to be a total and highly dangerous mess unless Harris wins a landslide.
Will Supreme Court end up deciding who is President?
Well that wouldn't take them very long, would it? They are more partisan than Congress.
To me, the risk here is not a tie (which is incredibly unlikely) but that Trump supporting officials prevent the proper recording of the results of enough states to ensure that neither candidate can make 270. This strikes me as a far more likely scenario.
It may also not matter very much which House of Representatives purports to make the decision. At the moment the Democratic generic lead for Congress is probably not large enough to overcome the bias and gerrymandering benefit that the Republicans get. Congress, once again, is looking incredibly close and an overall Democratic majority is probably less than 50%, just.
The Constitution of the United States is really not fit for purpose.
Good point about some states not providing results. There seems little doubt that Trump has been installing people in key places who will refuse to certify results if they go the wrong way.
It is going to be a total and highly dangerous mess unless Harris wins a landslide.
Will Supreme Court end up deciding who is President?
Even if Harris wins by just 1 EC vote under the constitution she as VP reads out the EC result and can declare herself the winner
Risky strategy, if Trump rejects a federal abortion ban that will depress evangelical and conservative Catholic turnout for him while women who are strongly pro choice will still vote for Harris and the Democrats anyway
Not really, they have nowhere else to go and can still campaign for abortion bans in their states.
State bans are largely meaningless when you just have to drive a few hours and can get it done anyway. It increases the cost but it worthless in preventing people who are even slightly determined from getting it done.
The more MAGA state governments have been trying to prosecute women for getting an abortion in another state. Complete with illegal use of tracking data from social media - they are demanding he the right to track all pregnant women, it seems
They have also tried prosecuting individuals and organisations who are involved in abortions on other states.
And sued to demand information about abortions in other states….
It’s malevolent and very aggressive. And redolent of the attempts by the slave states to get the anti-slavery states to enforce their Peculiar Institution.
It’s redolent of
Were you going to suggest the pre-Civil war slave cases such as Dred Scott-v-Sandford? It is indeed.
Personally, I prefer the Walz approach that it is none of their damn business.
To me, the risk here is not a tie (which is incredibly unlikely) but that Trump supporting officials prevent the proper recording of the results of enough states to ensure that neither candidate can make 270. This strikes me as a far more likely scenario.
It may also not matter very much which House of Representatives purports to make the decision. At the moment the Democratic generic lead for Congress is probably not large enough to overcome the bias and gerrymandering benefit that the Republicans get. Congress, once again, is looking incredibly close and an overall Democratic majority is probably less than 50%, just.
The Constitution of the United States is really not fit for purpose.
There is no constitutional requirement to get 270 EC votes just a majority of certified state EC votes submitted. As VP Harris could declare herself elected President with just 250 submitted votes if Trump had only 240 say submitted to Congress
Risky strategy, if Trump rejects a federal abortion ban that will depress evangelical and conservative Catholic turnout for him while women who are strongly pro choice will still vote for Harris and the Democrats anyway
Not really, they have nowhere else to go and can still campaign for abortion bans in their states.
They do, they can stay home and hope Trump and Vance lose and back say Pence in 2028 who does back a Federal abortion ban or DeSantis who backs a Federal abortion ban after 15 weeks
Risky strategy, if Trump rejects a federal abortion ban that will depress evangelical and conservative Catholic turnout for him while women who are strongly pro choice will still vote for Harris and the Democrats anyway
Not really, they have nowhere else to go and can still campaign for abortion bans in their states.
State bans are largely meaningless when you just have to drive a few hours and can get it done anyway. It increases the cost but it worthless in preventing people who are even slightly determined from getting it done.
(a) Some states are very big.
(b) The states banning abortion are clustered together, so if you’re in the middle of them, you’re fucked.
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Risky strategy, if Trump rejects a federal abortion ban that will depress evangelical and conservative Catholic turnout for him while women who are strongly pro choice will still vote for Harris and the Democrats anyway
Not really, they have nowhere else to go and can still campaign for abortion bans in their states.
State bans are largely meaningless when you just have to drive a few hours and can get it done anyway. It increases the cost but it worthless in preventing people who are even slightly determined from getting it done.
The more MAGA state governments have been trying to prosecute women for getting an abortion in another state. Complete with illegal use of tracking data from social media - they are demanding he the right to track all pregnant women, it seems
They have also tried prosecuting individuals and organisations who are involved in abortions on other states.
And sued to demand information about abortions in other states….
It’s malevolent and very aggressive. And redolent of the attempts by the slave states to get the anti-slavery states to enforce their Peculiar Institution.
It’s redolent of
Were you going to suggest the pre-Civil war slave cases such as Dred Scott-v-Sandford? It is indeed.
Personally, I prefer the Walz approach that it is none of their damn business.
Indeed.
The thing that is often misunderstood about Dred Scott is this -
The implication was that slavery was legalised in anti-slave states. Instead of the Peculiar Institution being confined to the slaves states, slavery could expand everywhere.
Anti-slavery was based on a mix of three things. Antipathy to slavery on moral grounds, the belief that free labour couldn’t compete and racism against black people. The last might seem strange - but no slavery, no black people in the neighbourhood (well, not many)
Pre Dred Scott, the majority or Northerners thought that slavery, confined in the South, could be tolerated. Kind of. And would wither away, due to lack of fresh land for h th e cotton crop.
Dred Scott united most in becoming *actively* anti-slavery.
Otherwise, they believed, the Southerners would bring slaves everywhere, reducing the working class to poverty and entrenching a feudalistic system with a tiny, all powerful slave owning class at the top of society.
Pretty awful scenes coming in from Kyiv and Ukraine after yet more attacks by Russia.
Germany, Biden and the whole civilised world needs to give Ukraine more weapons, and permission to hit these bombers wherever they are in Russia. We're asking Ukraine to fight with one hand tied behind their back.
Damn the Russians. Damn them all to Hell. Every single man, woman and child; Every single one of them, until they renounce Putin and fascism.
What's notable about the Ukrainian occupation of Sudzha, and other parts of Kursk, it's that the Russian civilians don't seem to care.
They aren't telling the Ukrainians to go home, or demonstrating against them, as Ukrainians did in response to Russian occupation. But neither did they protest against their own government and its war. They've perhaps learned that it's safer not to give a damn either way.
Probably has something to do with the Ukrainians not raping and murdering them.
And you cannot unlearn what is learned: things like Clipper just don't work in the real world, because knowledge of how encryption works is so widely shared. Unless your government is willing to be exceptionally repressive, then people will find ways around these measures.
Clipper is one of the best examples of why these plans are such a terrible idea.
Clipper (the chip) implemented the NSA designed Skipjack (the cipher) the one flaw it had was that the LEAF (law enforcement access field) which protected the session key was flawed and could be spoofed, as the checksum was so small it could be brute-forced quite rapidly, rendering the message unaccessible by law enforcement. So if even the NSA can't get it right and can screw up the one feature that necessitated government intervention don't expect anyone else to nail it first time.
And the 90s are an eon ago in cryptological terms, the best cryptographers don't go and work for the NSA anymore, there is more money, more chance of doing great work, and at least as much prestige working for a web giant. The days when government agencies were the source of most cryptological and computer security innovation are long gone.
It makes me proud to be British that GCHQ invented RSA before R S and A did, but had the good sense to keep quiet about it.
Between suppressing news of RSA, the foundation of ecommerce, and smashing up Colossus after the war, the British government did more harm to computing and enterprise than any terrorist could dream of.
And you cannot unlearn what is learned: things like Clipper just don't work in the real world, because knowledge of how encryption works is so widely shared. Unless your government is willing to be exceptionally repressive, then people will find ways around these measures.
Clipper is one of the best examples of why these plans are such a terrible idea.
Clipper (the chip) implemented the NSA designed Skipjack (the cipher) the one flaw it had was that the LEAF (law enforcement access field) which protected the session key was flawed and could be spoofed, as the checksum was so small it could be brute-forced quite rapidly, rendering the message unaccessible by law enforcement. So if even the NSA can't get it right and can screw up the one feature that necessitated government intervention don't expect anyone else to nail it first time.
And the 90s are an eon ago in cryptological terms, the best cryptographers don't go and work for the NSA anymore, there is more money, more chance of doing great work, and at least as much prestige working for a web giant. The days when government agencies were the source of most cryptological and computer security innovation are long gone.
It makes me proud to be British that GCHQ invented RSA before R S and A did, but had the good sense to keep quiet about it.
Between suppressing news of RSA, the foundation of ecommerce, and smashing up Colossus after the war, the British government did more harm to computing and enterprise than any terrorist could dread of.
Colossus wasn’t broken up - the early machines mostly disposed of, but advanced versions were built and used for a long time.
All in the names of flogging this brilliant German encryption machine to their allies. Couldn’t break it during the war, you see. Must be top stuff. Here, have some, cheap.
The hilarious bit was that because of various spies, the Russians knew and were reading our allies mail as well.
Risky strategy, if Trump rejects a federal abortion ban that will depress evangelical and conservative Catholic turnout for him while women who are strongly pro choice will still vote for Harris and the Democrats anyway
His base one he's a liar, and don't care. So not that risky.
(Adding or subtracting one member from the House of Representatives would reduce the chance of ties in the electoral college -- but increase the chances for ties in the vote for the Speaker.)
Risky strategy, if Trump rejects a federal abortion ban that will depress evangelical and conservative Catholic turnout for him while women who are strongly pro choice will still vote for Harris and the Democrats anyway
Not really, they have nowhere else to go and can still campaign for abortion bans in their states.
State bans are largely meaningless when you just have to drive a few hours and can get it done anyway. It increases the cost but it worthless in preventing people who are even slightly determined from getting it done.
It's quite effective at rendering emergency medicine for pregnant women far more dangerous.
In any event, the endgame for the religious right is fetal personhood via Supreme Court decision. A legislative ban is beside the point.
Risky strategy, if Trump rejects a federal abortion ban that will depress evangelical and conservative Catholic turnout for him while women who are strongly pro choice will still vote for Harris and the Democrats anyway
Not really, they have nowhere else to go and can still campaign for abortion bans in their states.
They do, they can stay home and hope Trump and Vance lose and back say Pence in 2028 who does back a Federal abortion ban or DeSantis who backs a Federal abortion ban after 15 weeks
They won't. The religious right know it's all about the Supreme Court. And they know Trump will nominate the judges they want.
Risky strategy, if Trump rejects a federal abortion ban that will depress evangelical and conservative Catholic turnout for him while women who are strongly pro choice will still vote for Harris and the Democrats anyway
Not really, they have nowhere else to go and can still campaign for abortion bans in their states.
State bans are largely meaningless when you just have to drive a few hours and can get it done anyway. It increases the cost but it worthless in preventing people who are even slightly determined from getting it done.
The more MAGA state governments have been trying to prosecute women for getting an abortion in another state. Complete with illegal use of tracking data from social media - they are demanding he the right to track all pregnant women, it seems
They have also tried prosecuting individuals and organisations who are involved in abortions on other states.
And sued to demand information about abortions in other states….
It’s malevolent and very aggressive. And redolent of the attempts by the slave states to get the anti-slavery states to enforce their Peculiar Institution.
It’s redolent of
Were you going to suggest the pre-Civil war slave cases such as Dred Scott-v-Sandford? It is indeed.
Personally, I prefer the Walz approach that it is none of their damn business.
Indeed.
The thing that is often misunderstood about Dred Scott is this -
The implication was that slavery was legalised in anti-slave states. Instead of the Peculiar Institution being confined to the slaves states, slavery could expand everywhere.
Anti-slavery was based on a mix of three things. Antipathy to slavery on moral grounds, the belief that free labour couldn’t compete and racism against black people. The last might seem strange - but no slavery, no black people in the neighbourhood (well, not many)
Pre Dred Scott, the majority or Northerners thought that slavery, confined in the South, could be tolerated. Kind of. And would wither away, due to lack of fresh land for h th e cotton crop.
Dred Scott united most in becoming *actively* anti-slavery.
Otherwise, they believed, the Southerners would bring slaves everywhere, reducing the working class to poverty and entrenching a feudalistic system with a tiny, all powerful slave owning class at the top of society.
Just as in the South.
The other issue with Dred Scott was Taney’s ruling that only white people could be US citizens - which was no part of the litigation.
Some MAGA’s consider this part of the decision to be good law, still.
Risky strategy, if Trump rejects a federal abortion ban that will depress evangelical and conservative Catholic turnout for him while women who are strongly pro choice will still vote for Harris and the Democrats anyway
Not really, they have nowhere else to go and can still campaign for abortion bans in their states.
They do, they can stay home and hope Trump and Vance lose and back say Pence in 2028 who does back a Federal abortion ban or DeSantis who backs a Federal abortion ban after 15 weeks
Risky strategy, if Trump rejects a federal abortion ban that will depress evangelical and conservative Catholic turnout for him while women who are strongly pro choice will still vote for Harris and the Democrats anyway
Not really, they have nowhere else to go and can still campaign for abortion bans in their states.
They do, they can stay home and hope Trump and Vance lose and back say Pence in 2028 who does back a Federal abortion ban or DeSantis who backs a Federal abortion ban after 15 weeks
They won't. The religious right know it's all about the Supreme Court. And they know Trump will nominate the judges they want.
They turned out for Trump en masse in 2016 to 2020 to get a SC which would overturn Roe v Wade and turn abortion to the states.
Now that has been done pro life evangelicals and Catholics want a Federal abortion ban as the next step and if Trump won't they will look to a Republican like Pence or DeSantis who might next time.
Trump's core supporters are white working class voters who are anti immigration and anti free trade and pro tariff. Anti abortion voters used Trump to repeal Roe v Wade but if another Republican is better placed to get a national abortion ban they will switch to them
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
Not least because it's not going to prevent the acquisition and proliferation of medium range missiles in Europe.
This is just daft. The US has also rejected Norway's request to be given the opportunity to buy the GMLRS Extended Range missile with a range of 150 kilometers. The Norwegian Defense Forces may only purchase versions of the missile with a shorter range (up to 90 K)
To me, the risk here is not a tie (which is incredibly unlikely) but that Trump supporting officials prevent the proper recording of the results of enough states to ensure that neither candidate can make 270. This strikes me as a far more likely scenario.
It may also not matter very much which House of Representatives purports to make the decision. At the moment the Democratic generic lead for Congress is probably not large enough to overcome the bias and gerrymandering benefit that the Republicans get. Congress, once again, is looking incredibly close and an overall Democratic majority is probably less than 50%, just.
The Constitution of the United States is really not fit for purpose.
The US constitution was created by lawyers to suit lawyers.
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
Wishful thinking rubbish. The bank bailouts (vs. what happened in Iceland) were an object lesson in the merits of a small state vs. the big alternative.
My very, very off topic investigation today is ... Church of England churches with baptistries for full immersion adult baptism.
Reflecting on recent conversations around evangelicals and politics, I was musing on how to think about it. Demand for adult baptisms seems one indicator of where the church is engaged, and I couldn't find a list.
My gut feel is that there may be several hundred CofE places with a full immersion adult baptistry, correlated with growing congregations, major reordering projects, modern buildings say since the war or where a previous one burnt down, joint Anglican/Baptist Local Ecumenical Projects (LEPs), or liturgical renewal of various kinds.
So I've asked on xitter, and people are identifying some in places I did not expect - which is interesting.
There's a wonderful one in Portsmouth Cathedral which looks like a tomb, so the symbolism of Dying and Rising with a New Life is very strong.
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
Wishful thinking rubbish. The bank bailouts (vs. what happened in Iceland) were an object lesson in the merits of a small state vs. the big alternative.
The small state option would have been to have no bank bailouts.
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
Wishful thinking rubbish. The bank bailouts (vs. what happened in Iceland) were an object lesson in the merits of a small state vs. the big alternative.
The small state option would have been to have no bank bailouts.
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
Wishful thinking rubbish. The bank bailouts (vs. what happened in Iceland) were an object lesson in the merits of a small state vs. the big alternative.
The small state option would have been to have no bank bailouts.
Yes. Let them go bust, which has worked extremely well in Iceland.
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
Wishful thinking rubbish. The bank bailouts (vs. what happened in Iceland) were an object lesson in the merits of a small state vs. the big alternative.
The small state option would have been to have no bank bailouts.
Yes. Let them go bust, which has worked extremely well in Iceland.
It wouldn't have worked so well for those bankers who were bailed out.
And who quickly changed their minds about the merits of government intervening in business.
If you are hoping that certain Supreme Court justices will die, and be replaced by others more to your tastes, you can get a quick idea of the chances by looking at the CDC tables of life expectancy by age: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/life-expectancy.htm
But you might also want to look at Chuck Grassley, who will turn 91 in September, and is still an effective senator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Grassley He's an extreme example, but older Americans have been getting healthier in recent decades.
(US life expectancy fell in the last year or two of Obama's presidency, mostly because of drug overdoses, and fell again during COVID. I think we are recovering from the effects of COVID on life expectancy.)
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
Wishful thinking rubbish. The bank bailouts (vs. what happened in Iceland) were an object lesson in the merits of a small state vs. the big alternative.
The small state option would have been to have no bank bailouts.
Yes. Let them go bust, which has worked extremely well in Iceland.
If you are hoping that certain Supreme Court justices will die, and be replaced by others more to your tastes, you can get a quick idea of the chances by looking at the CDC tables of life expectancy by age: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/life-expectancy.htm
But you might also want to look at Chuck Grassley, who will turn 91 in September, and is still an effective senator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Grassley He's an extreme example, but older Americans have been getting healthier in recent decades.
(US life expectancy fell in the last year or two of Obama's presidency, mostly because of drug overdoses, and fell again during COVID. I think we are recovering from the effects of COVID on life expectancy.)
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Johnson and Wagenknecht are miles apart. Wagenknecht is anti-immigration. Wagenknecht is for greater rights for trade unions and workers. Wagenknecht is against any weapons for Ukraine. Wagenknecht has flirted with anti-vaxism. Wagenknecht is anti-NATO. Wagenknecht is in favour of strong rent controls. They don't really have so much in common. Also the BSW has never got more than 10%, I think, in any national opinion poll, so so far nowhere near as popular as Johnson was in his prime.
The small state option would have been to have no bank bailouts.
What I'd have done is let the failed banks go to the wall, but reimburse the individual customers so nobody lost out through no fault of their own. (I suppose there arises the question of what to do with net borrowers, but there would probably be no shortage of banks willing to take these on.)
The state bailing out and/or taking over institutions is the worst of absolutely all worlds. The 'Too big to fail' mentality breaks the Libertarian chain of importance, which goes Individual>Organisation>Government.
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
I said at the time (back when there are five posts a day on PB and each one was the length of an academic dissertation or even thesis) the Government had no option to bail out RBS and the other banks.
The Northern Rock crisis had shown the psychological, societal, cultural and economic impacts of a potential run on the banks. Never mind the potential pauperisation of millions of people and the enormous disruption to the economy (analogous to Covid in my view), there would have been severe social unrest with riots and looting.
This wasn't small town America in the 1920s - a complex economy in the 2000s just couldn't afford to see one bank fail let alone a number. RBS came frighteningly close to turning off the cash points and refusing the cards - imagine that, as an RBS customer, not being able to access your money or spend anything or pay bills.
The two options were either for the banks to get together and intervene (and the subsequent collapse of Lehmann Brothers showed they were neither willing nor able to throw good money after bad) or for the Government to step in and the latter is what happened (and would have happened had it occurred under a Conservative Government).
With the deposit guarantee came security for smaller investors and indeed most people which meant no one was worried if a bank came under pressure because they knew, if the worst happened and the bank collapsed, the Government would ensure their money was safe.
This was cold comfort to shareholders but some, including Allister Heath, before he went mad, argued for every organisation to have an Insolvency Plan so in the event of the worst happening, administrators would have clear instructions what to do and who to support.
Very OT: I have to get a flight from 'London' Stansted.
The airport is, of course, in Kemi Badenoch's seat, but it got me wondering: just how many airports are now in Tory constituencies? Not many.
Birmingham is the big one, though purely by virtue of not technically being in Birmingham. And I think Bournemouth Airport might be in Chope's seat, but that's not exactly a major international hub. And then I'm really struggling.
The situation seems almost as bad as football stadia. (Go Bromley FC!)
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
Wishful thinking rubbish. The bank bailouts (vs. what happened in Iceland) were an object lesson in the merits of a small state vs. the big alternative.
The small state option would have been to have no bank bailouts.
Yes. Let them go bust, which has worked extremely well in Iceland.
Would you have had the deposit guarantee or would you have been happy to see all the RBS or Nat West customers lose their money? Imagine the economic effect if a significant portion of the population can no longer access money or pay bills.
My very, very off topic investigation today is ... Church of England churches with baptistries for full immersion adult baptism.
Reflecting on recent conversations around evangelicals and politics, I was musing on how to think about it. Demand for adult baptisms seems one indicator of where the church is engaged, and I couldn't find a list.
My gut feel is that there may be several hundred CofE places with a full immersion adult baptistry, correlated with growing congregations, major reordering projects, modern buildings say since the war or where a previous one burnt down, joint Anglican/Baptist Local Ecumenical Projects (LEPs), or liturgical renewal of various kinds.
So I've asked on xitter, and people are identifying some in places I did not expect - which is interesting.
There's a wonderful one in Portsmouth Cathedral which looks like a tomb, so the symbolism of Dying and Rising with a New Life is very strong.
Article 27 of the Church of England makes clear it supports baptism of young children. It allows baptism of adults not baptised before but if you want adult baptism prioritised really you should leave the Church of England and become Baptist or Pentecostal
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
I said at the time (back when there are five posts a day on PB and each one was the length of an academic dissertation or even thesis) the Government had no option to bail out RBS and the other banks.
The Northern Rock crisis had shown the psychological, societal, cultural and economic impacts of a potential run on the banks. Never mind the potential pauperisation of millions of people and the enormous disruption to the economy (analogous to Covid in my view), there would have been severe social unrest with riots and looting.
This wasn't small town America in the 1920s - a complex economy in the 2000s just couldn't afford to see one bank fail let alone a number. RBS came frighteningly close to turning off the cash points and refusing the cards - imagine that, as an RBS customer, not being able to access your money or spend anything or pay bills.
The two options were either for the banks to get together and intervene (and the subsequent collapse of Lehmann Brothers showed they were neither willing nor able to throw good money after bad) or for the Government to step in and the latter is what happened (and would have happened had it occurred under a Conservative Government).
With the deposit guarantee came security for smaller investors and indeed most people which meant no one was worried if a bank came under pressure because they knew, if the worst happened and the bank collapsed, the Government would ensure their money was safe.
This was cold comfort to shareholders but some, including Allister Heath, before he went mad, argued for every organisation to have an Insolvency Plan so in the event of the worst happening, administrators would have clear instructions what to do and who to support.
If the UK had let the banks in trouble fail it would have led to an economic catastrophe .
Iceland seems to be used by some to justify the same course of action . Completely ignoring that Iceland has a different economy , different society and is a tiny fraction of the global economy .
If the UK had let the banks in trouble fail it would have led to an economic catastrophe .
Iceland seems to be used by some to justify the same course of action . Completely ignoring that Iceland has a different economy , different society and is a tiny fraction of the global economy .
Iceland also had to take a 5 billion dollar loan from the IMF to tackle its debt and restart its banking system
If the UK had let the banks in trouble fail it would have led to an economic catastrophe .
Iceland seems to be used by some to justify the same course of action . Completely ignoring that Iceland has a different economy , different society and is a tiny fraction of the global economy .
Iceland also had to take a 5 billion dollar loan from the IMF to tackle its debt and restart its banking system
Good point . I get that some people don’t think much of banks but if a high street bank was allowed to fail the impact on the economy would be disastrous, you simply can’t allow that to happen and the government would have to step in .
"Woman stabbed on 'family day' at Notting Hill Carnival was with her young child, Met reveals: Police chief says he is 'tired of saying the same words every year' as event is once again marred by violence - with officers braced for more trouble today"
"Woman stabbed on 'family day' at Notting Hill Carnival was with her young child, Met reveals: Police chief says he is 'tired of saying the same words every year' as event is once again marred by violence - with officers braced for more trouble today"
Been picking up something interesting stuff about the French arrest of Telegram guy.
Apparently the French government thinks it has found a solution to the E2E encryption problem.
For those who are already asleep, this is the issue that, increasingly, social media platforms are adding encryption behind the scenes. In a way that means *they* can’t read your messages either. This is spreading from 1-1 chats to chat rooms.
The problem is that E2E is required for financial transactions online. And just about any kind of online security.
Apparently the French are going to push for a European law that if E2E is used, without a back door for spooks/law enforcement, then it will only be allowed to be used for financial transactions or verification - severe limits on amounts of data.
If the state can’t get into a chat, the company in question will be held liable - if they build the platform so that they (the company m) doesn’t have access, that will simply make them guilty of a crime.
A courageous decision there, say goodbye to iMessage and WhatsApp for starters.
Cue someone setting up a messaging service which transfers 0.01c to the recipient of each message... and so all messages are financial transactions.
Which amply demonstrates the stupidity of the idea, as you can always piggy back bad uses on top of the legitimate uses. Any observable state change can act as a communication channel, I'm sure that even in France there are people who know that.
And you cannot unlearn what is learned: things like Clipper just don't work in the real world, because knowledge of how encryption works is so widely shared. Unless your government is willing to be exceptionally repressive, then people will find ways around these measures.
The point is that 99.99% of people - even criminals don’t bother. So if E2E isn’t provided for them, without asking them…
The remaining 0.01% can be tackled with practical crypto analysis
Yes, or find the password scribbled on a post-it note, index card, label on the bottom of the keyboard, etc.
At my old fund management firm, they had a stupid policy of forcing regular password changes, which meant either (a) people kept the same password, and just appended a number, making them no more secure than previously, or (b) wrote the password down on a post it note and stuck it to their monitor.
If the UK had let the banks in trouble fail it would have led to an economic catastrophe .
Iceland seems to be used by some to justify the same course of action . Completely ignoring that Iceland has a different economy , different society and is a tiny fraction of the global economy .
Iceland also had to take a 5 billion dollar loan from the IMF to tackle its debt and restart its banking system
Good point . I get that some people don’t think much of banks but if a high street bank was allowed to fail the impact on the economy would be disastrous, you simply can’t allow that to happen and the government would have to step in .
This is a very good argument for banks to be paying rather large sums of money to the government as insurance for the lender of last resort facility.
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
Wishful thinking rubbish. The bank bailouts (vs. what happened in Iceland) were an object lesson in the merits of a small state vs. the big alternative.
The small state option would have been to have no bank bailouts.
Yes. Let them go bust, which has worked extremely well in Iceland.
It wouldn't have worked so well for those bankers who were bailed out.
And who quickly changed their minds about the merits of government intervening in business.
I think the really big banks and businesses have always been delighted about the big state. It raises barriers for entry against smaller competitors.
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
Wishful thinking rubbish. The bank bailouts (vs. what happened in Iceland) were an object lesson in the merits of a small state vs. the big alternative.
The small state option would have been to have no bank bailouts.
Yes. Let them go bust, which has worked extremely well in Iceland.
They should have gone for
1) the bank gets taken over by the government 2) the shareholders are completely wiped out. 3) the management can either kill themselves, starve to death in a slum in Paris or get on their yachts, try and sail to Norway in winter and get murdered by financially astute whalers.
If the UK had let the banks in trouble fail it would have led to an economic catastrophe .
Iceland seems to be used by some to justify the same course of action . Completely ignoring that Iceland has a different economy , different society and is a tiny fraction of the global economy .
Iceland also had to take a 5 billion dollar loan from the IMF to tackle its debt and restart its banking system
Good point . I get that some people don’t think much of banks but if a high street bank was allowed to fail the impact on the economy would be disastrous, you simply can’t allow that to happen and the government would have to step in .
This is a very good argument for banks to be paying rather large sums of money to the government as insurance for the lender of last resort facility.
Interesting. Seems fair although I expect they’d pass the cost onto customers .
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
Wishful thinking rubbish. The bank bailouts (vs. what happened in Iceland) were an object lesson in the merits of a small state vs. the big alternative.
The small state option would have been to have no bank bailouts.
Yes. Let them go bust, which has worked extremely well in Iceland.
They should have gone for
1) the bank gets taken over by the government 2) the shareholders are completely wiped out. 3) the management can either kill themselves, starve to death in a slum in Paris or get on their yachts, try and sail to Norway in winter and get murdered by financially astute whalers.
That's not that different from what did happen: the shareholders got completely wiped out at Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley, while at RBS and HBOS, they lost 95% of their money.
Now, you can argue that they should have lost 100% of their money (and I wouldn't disagree with you), but the idea that shareholders were bailed out is really not the case.
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
Wishful thinking rubbish. The bank bailouts (vs. what happened in Iceland) were an object lesson in the merits of a small state vs. the big alternative.
The small state option would have been to have no bank bailouts.
Yes. Let them go bust, which has worked extremely well in Iceland.
They should have gone for
1) the bank gets taken over by the government 2) the shareholders are completely wiped out. 3) the management can either kill themselves, starve to death in a slum in Paris or get on their yachts, try and sail to Norway in winter and get murdered by financially astute whalers.
That's not that different from what did happen: the shareholders got completely wiped out at Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley, while at RBS and HBOS, they lost 95% of their money.
Now, you can argue that they should have lost 100% of their money (and I wouldn't disagree with you), but the idea that shareholders were bailed out is really not the case.
A lot of the management remained.
Hilariously, the government got upset that Barclays didn’t fail with rest. They’d arranged re-finance on their own.
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
Small statism died with: Welfare State, NHS, free state education, social housing, planning, social services, pensions.
A large state that just and only did what you might call the Adam Smith stuff - defence, law and order, courts, prisons and law making, the most basic infrastructure of ports, roads, railtrack, runways allowing a complete free for all within the rule of law would be a fascinating experiment. Sadly we won't see it.
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
Wishful thinking rubbish. The bank bailouts (vs. what happened in Iceland) were an object lesson in the merits of a small state vs. the big alternative.
The small state option would have been to have no bank bailouts.
Yes. Let them go bust, which has worked extremely well in Iceland.
They should have gone for
1) the bank gets taken over by the government 2) the shareholders are completely wiped out. 3) the management can either kill themselves, starve to death in a slum in Paris or get on their yachts, try and sail to Norway in winter and get murdered by financially astute whalers.
Am I spotting a subtle Sherlock Holmes reference there?
My very, very off topic investigation today is ... Church of England churches with baptistries for full immersion adult baptism.
Reflecting on recent conversations around evangelicals and politics, I was musing on how to think about it. Demand for adult baptisms seems one indicator of where the church is engaged, and I couldn't find a list.
My gut feel is that there may be several hundred CofE places with a full immersion adult baptistry, correlated with growing congregations, major reordering projects, modern buildings say since the war or where a previous one burnt down, joint Anglican/Baptist Local Ecumenical Projects (LEPs), or liturgical renewal of various kinds.
So I've asked on xitter, and people are identifying some in places I did not expect - which is interesting.
There's a wonderful one in Portsmouth Cathedral which looks like a tomb, so the symbolism of Dying and Rising with a New Life is very strong.
Article 27 of the Church of England makes clear it supports baptism of young children. It allows baptism of adults not baptised before but if you want adult baptism prioritised really you should leave the Church of England and become Baptist or Pentecostal
One of the interesting features of the current evangelical Anglican scene (or certainly the growing bits of it, anyway) is that it's pretty much dumped the infant baptism thing. I'm part of a large Evangelical Anglican congregation, in the 16 years I've been around we have baptised a number of adults, dozens of teenagers, and zero infants. We nearly fulfilled your criteria by building an adult bapistry when we did some building works 10 years ago, only to be stymed by the structural engineers deciding it would be really expensive, so we've continued to use a substantial paddling pool outside on the drive as required. The exception to this is of course the ordained ministry staff, who have to sign up to the 39 Articles - which includes one on infant baptism which baptists like myself couldn't agree to.
Been picking up something interesting stuff about the French arrest of Telegram guy.
Apparently the French government thinks it has found a solution to the E2E encryption problem.
For those who are already asleep, this is the issue that, increasingly, social media platforms are adding encryption behind the scenes. In a way that means *they* can’t read your messages either. This is spreading from 1-1 chats to chat rooms.
The problem is that E2E is required for financial transactions online. And just about any kind of online security.
Apparently the French are going to push for a European law that if E2E is used, without a back door for spooks/law enforcement, then it will only be allowed to be used for financial transactions or verification - severe limits on amounts of data.
If the state can’t get into a chat, the company in question will be held liable - if they build the platform so that they (the company m) doesn’t have access, that will simply make them guilty of a crime.
A courageous decision there, say goodbye to iMessage and WhatsApp for starters.
Cue someone setting up a messaging service which transfers 0.01c to the recipient of each message... and so all messages are financial transactions.
Which amply demonstrates the stupidity of the idea, as you can always piggy back bad uses on top of the legitimate uses. Any observable state change can act as a communication channel, I'm sure that even in France there are people who know that.
And you cannot unlearn what is learned: things like Clipper just don't work in the real world, because knowledge of how encryption works is so widely shared. Unless your government is willing to be exceptionally repressive, then people will find ways around these measures.
The point is that 99.99% of people - even criminals don’t bother. So if E2E isn’t provided for them, without asking them…
The remaining 0.01% can be tackled with practical crypto analysis
Yes, or find the password scribbled on a post-it note, index card, label on the bottom of the keyboard, etc.
At my old fund management firm, they had a stupid policy of forcing regular password changes, which meant either (a) people kept the same password, and just appended a number, making them no more secure than previously, or (b) wrote the password down on a post it note and stuck it to their monitor.
The classic "Choose a memorable password... Now forget it and start again." nonsense. At least ours just have to be changed every 3 months, rather than monthly. Otherwise I'd be appending a three digit number by now.
Very OT: I have to get a flight from 'London' Stansted.
The airport is, of course, in Kemi Badenoch's seat, but it got me wondering: just how many airports are now in Tory constituencies? Not many.
Birmingham is the big one, though purely by virtue of not technically being in Birmingham. And I think Bournemouth Airport might be in Chope's seat, but that's not exactly a major international hub. And then I'm really struggling.
The situation seems almost as bad as football stadia. (Go Bromley FC!)
Ben Houchen International* is within the domain of a Tory Mayor.
Fascinating piece on Wagenknecht and the BSW who seem to be the coming force in German politics.
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some.
Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting money to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). Indeed, on that part of it, Anderson seems to be a traditional socialist interventionist (no small state for him?)
I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they won't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across from the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany).
If that's what you think of as a fault line in modern politics, there you have it.
What I find fascinating is almost no one is advocating small state traditional conservatism. The argument is more over where and how the State intervenes - spending money in WWC areas for example. Stodge's Fifth Law of Politics states politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If a gap exists, someone will try to fill it.
Thanks. Very interesting. A useful mental/political discipline is to think about political difference without using any generic abstract terms like 'left', 'centre', right', 'conservative', 'socialist' etc, and focus remorselessly on the actual outcomes and policies being pursued. In my view this process reveals both how narrow the practical Overton window really is, and also how much is about the private interests of particular groups, and which group of mates you belong to.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
Thanks for the response, my friend.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
Small statism died when the banks were bailed out.
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
Wishful thinking rubbish. The bank bailouts (vs. what happened in Iceland) were an object lesson in the merits of a small state vs. the big alternative.
The small state option would have been to have no bank bailouts.
Yes. Let them go bust, which has worked extremely well in Iceland.
They should have gone for
1) the bank gets taken over by the government 2) the shareholders are completely wiped out. 3) the management can either kill themselves, starve to death in a slum in Paris or get on their yachts, try and sail to Norway in winter and get murdered by financially astute whalers.
That's not that different from what did happen: the shareholders got completely wiped out at Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley, while at RBS and HBOS, they lost 95% of their money.
Now, you can argue that they should have lost 100% of their money (and I wouldn't disagree with you), but the idea that shareholders were bailed out is really not the case.
A lot of the management remained.
Hilariously, the government got upset that Barclays didn’t fail with rest. They’d arranged re-finance on their own.
How much of the senior management of those banks were kept on? Of the top 20 people in the firm in 2007, how many were still employed in 2009? I suspect the answer will be close to zero. Certainly none of the CxOs kept their jobs, nor the heads of business units.
So, when we talk about "management", who are we talking about?
Comments
The key is - create a platform where we can’t read the messages. You (the provider) are a criminal.
However, their best chance here is Georgia. Which I suspect will vote Rep anyway. The current Gov of North Carolina pulled out of the Dem Veep stakes in large part to ensure his MAGA Deputy couldn't fix the state. Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona all have Dem Governors who could certify Electors in the event of shenanigans. Nevada has a Dem SOS and a Rep Gov who probably wouldn't want to get involved.
As for the Supreme Court - I suspect it will be done and dusted before they get a chance to stick their oar in. This is not 2000 and the Dems do not view Trump as they did Bush. Hard ball will be the order of the day.
Got to love writing an F1 article then finding the sport's own website had the title numbers wrong.
Anyway, leads are 30 for McLaren and 70 for Verstappen. Right now, I still think Verstappen's the favourite. He needs just one or two good weekends, Norris needs every weekend to be good.
Sad to see so few well known public names among the 604 academic signatories in the letter to Phillipson. Whatever happened to the great and the good?
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc9GcINYCmoeyuiOLPNmmfJ_cUYNfbbf_m09xMCl7S2RQYASA/viewform?pli=1
https://x.com/meetthepress/status/1827473548853616804
In other news, Ribbentrop has said Hitler would veto the mass killing of the Jews because he promised Kritzinger he wouldn't kill them all.
Politicans prefer the meaningless generic labels. It keeps the proles (us) in their place.
(No-one is serious about 'small state' (sadly) because it is a practical and political impossibility once you put the tiniest bit of flesh on its skeleton.)
They aren't telling the Ukrainians to go home, or demonstrating against them, as Ukrainians did in response to Russian occupation. But neither did they protest against their own government and its war. They've perhaps learned that it's safer not to give a damn either way.
The remaining 0.01% can be tackled with practical crypto analysis
That said, I have solved the problem myself: I have simply forgotten all my passwords. In this way, I can't be forced to hand them over.
This is broken in the US now because Trump has turned much of the GOP into a pro-Putin fanclub for dictators. There isn't the domestic pressure you would expect to fix mistakes. So we can see how much damage is done by Trump even out of office.
It is also why the Conservative leadership election matters.
Clipper (the chip) implemented the NSA designed Skipjack (the cipher) the one flaw it had was that the LEAF (law enforcement access field) which protected the session key was flawed and could be spoofed, as the checksum was so small it could be brute-forced quite rapidly, rendering the message unaccessible by law enforcement. So if even the NSA can't get it right and can screw up the one feature that necessitated government intervention don't expect anyone else to nail it first time.
And the 90s are an eon ago in cryptological terms, the best cryptographers don't go and work for the NSA anymore, there is more money, more chance of doing great work, and at least as much prestige working for a web giant. The days when government agencies were the source of most cryptological and computer security innovation are long gone.
She would likely call herself the winner of a state therefore if the networks called it for her even if a GOP Governor or state legislature refused to certify that
If you forget or don’t know - that’s not a defence.
So if you have a file of random numbers on your computer, you can be prosecuted with the claim it’s really a secret message….
It may also not matter very much which House of Representatives purports to make the decision. At the moment the Democratic generic lead for Congress is probably not large enough to overcome the bias and gerrymandering benefit that the Republicans get. Congress, once again, is looking incredibly close and an overall Democratic majority is probably less than 50%, just.
The Constitution of the United States is really not fit for purpose.
It is going to be a total and highly dangerous mess unless Harris wins a landslide.
Will Supreme Court end up deciding who is President?
They have also tried prosecuting individuals and organisations who are involved in abortions on other states.
And sued to demand information about abortions in other states….
It’s malevolent and very aggressive. And redolent of the attempts by the slave states to get the anti-slavery states to enforce their Peculiar Institution.
Personally, I prefer the Walz approach that it is none of their damn business.
(b) The states banning abortion are clustered together, so if you’re in the middle of them, you’re fucked.
I think a lot of the disgruntled Conservatives on here are aching for a party which is ostensibly pro-business, pro-small state anti-regulation and wanting to make the necessary supply side reforms to bring the public finances under control and generate economic growth.
As you suggest, rather like post-war Butskellism which ran out of road in the 1970s, the concept of a small state, pro-business anti-regulation party has also run out of road. The way many post-nationalised companies have comported themselves has trashed the reputation of capitalism whether it be obscene profits (British Gas) or incompetent governance (Thames Water) or the failure of the basic operating model (Transport for London).
That's not to argue for nationalisation but for private companies to recognise the provision of public service can't just be for the accumulation of shareholder profit or for moving that profit outside the British Isles to support the services being provided in other countries. Protectionism in terms of not allowing key services to be run by foreign-owned companies now looks back on the table.
The thing that is often misunderstood about Dred Scott is this -
The implication was that slavery was legalised in anti-slave states. Instead of the Peculiar Institution being confined to the slaves states, slavery could expand everywhere.
Anti-slavery was based on a mix of three things. Antipathy to slavery on moral grounds, the belief that free labour couldn’t compete and racism against black people. The last might seem strange - but no slavery, no black people in the neighbourhood (well, not many)
Pre Dred Scott, the majority or Northerners thought that slavery, confined in the South, could be tolerated. Kind of. And would wither away, due to lack of fresh land for h th e cotton crop.
Dred Scott united most in becoming *actively* anti-slavery.
Otherwise, they believed, the Southerners would bring slaves everywhere, reducing the working class to poverty and entrenching a feudalistic system with a tiny, all powerful slave owning class at the top of society.
Just as in the South.
Which they'd been told to expect.
All in the names of flogging this brilliant German encryption machine to their allies. Couldn’t break it during the war, you see. Must be top stuff. Here, have some, cheap.
The hilarious bit was that because of various spies, the Russians knew and were reading our allies mail as well.
So not that risky.
(Adding or subtracting one member from the House of Representatives would reduce the chance of ties in the electoral college -- but increase the chances for ties in the vote for the Speaker.)
In any event, the endgame for the religious right is fetal personhood via Supreme Court decision. A legislative ban is beside the point.
The religious right know it's all about the Supreme Court. And they know Trump will nominate the judges they want.
Some MAGA’s consider this part of the decision to be good law, still.
Now that has been done pro life evangelicals and Catholics want a Federal abortion ban as the next step and if Trump won't they will look to a Republican like Pence or DeSantis who might next time.
Trump's core supporters are white working class voters
who are anti immigration and anti free trade and pro tariff. Anti abortion voters used Trump to repeal Roe v Wade but if another Republican is better placed to get a national abortion ban they will switch to them
It seems that many of the louder proponents of a 'small state' change their mind when they require state help.
I would suggest that it isn't a discussion about a small state versus a big state any longer but more of a discussion about what a 'fair state' would be.
Likewise 'free trade' is being replaced by a need for 'fair trade'.
With differences in opinion about what a 'fair state' or 'fair trade' might be.
This is why we need to divert from US and preferably develop/choose European (or South Korean)
🇧🇻 Norway is not allowed to buy the Americans' new long-range missile
The procurement of long-range precision fire for the Army is in a decisive phase.</>
https://x.com/thelostcomms/status/1827942934655664485
Not least because it's not going to prevent the acquisition and proliferation of medium range missiles in Europe.
This is just daft.
The US has also rejected Norway's request to be given the opportunity to buy the GMLRS Extended Range missile with a range of 150 kilometers. The Norwegian Defense Forces may only purchase versions of the missile with a shorter range (up to 90 K)
https://x.com/thelostcomms/status/1827942943874789716
And it has served that purpose very well.
My very, very off topic investigation today is ... Church of England churches with baptistries for full immersion adult baptism.
Reflecting on recent conversations around evangelicals and politics, I was musing on how to think about it. Demand for adult baptisms seems one indicator of where the church is engaged, and I couldn't find a list.
My gut feel is that there may be several hundred CofE places with a full immersion adult baptistry, correlated with growing congregations, major reordering projects, modern buildings say since the war or where a previous one burnt down, joint Anglican/Baptist Local Ecumenical Projects (LEPs), or liturgical renewal of various kinds.
So I've asked on xitter, and people are identifying some in places I did not expect - which is interesting.
There's a wonderful one in Portsmouth Cathedral which looks like a tomb, so the symbolism of Dying and Rising with a New Life is very strong.
Thread and Portsmouth Cathedral pic:
https://x.com/mattwardman/status/1828001848730485131
https://www.flickr.com/photos/31068574@N05/11151491976
And who quickly changed their minds about the merits of government intervening in business.
https://x.com/joshtpm/status/1827738325651689560
But you might also want to look at Chuck Grassley, who will turn 91 in September, and is still an effective senator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Grassley
He's an extreme example, but older Americans have been getting healthier in recent decades.
(US life expectancy fell in the last year or two of Obama's presidency, mostly because of drug overdoses, and fell again during COVID. I think we are recovering from the effects of COVID on life expectancy.)
What I'd have done is let the failed banks go to the wall, but reimburse the individual customers so nobody lost out through no fault of their own. (I suppose there arises the question of what to do with net borrowers, but there would probably be no shortage of banks willing to take these on.)
The state bailing out and/or taking over institutions is the worst of absolutely all worlds. The 'Too big to fail' mentality breaks the Libertarian chain of importance, which goes Individual>Organisation>Government.
The Northern Rock crisis had shown the psychological, societal, cultural and economic impacts of a potential run on the banks. Never mind the potential pauperisation of millions of people and the enormous disruption to the economy (analogous to Covid in my view), there would have been severe social unrest with riots and looting.
This wasn't small town America in the 1920s - a complex economy in the 2000s just couldn't afford to see one bank fail let alone a number. RBS came frighteningly close to turning off the cash points and refusing the cards - imagine that, as an RBS customer, not being able to access your money or spend anything or pay bills.
The two options were either for the banks to get together and intervene (and the subsequent collapse of Lehmann Brothers showed they were neither willing nor able to throw good money after bad) or for the Government to step in and the latter is what happened (and would have happened had it occurred under a Conservative Government).
With the deposit guarantee came security for smaller investors and indeed most people which meant no one was worried if a bank came under pressure because they knew, if the worst happened and the bank collapsed, the Government would ensure their money was safe.
This was cold comfort to shareholders but some, including Allister Heath, before he went mad, argued for every organisation to have an Insolvency Plan so in the event of the worst happening, administrators would have clear instructions what to do and who to support.
The airport is, of course, in Kemi Badenoch's seat, but it got me wondering: just how many airports are now in Tory constituencies? Not many.
Birmingham is the big one, though purely by virtue of not technically being in Birmingham. And I think Bournemouth Airport might be in Chope's seat, but that's not exactly a major international hub. And then I'm really struggling.
The situation seems almost as bad as football stadia. (Go Bromley FC!)
"Articles of Religion | The Church of England" https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/book-common-prayer/articles-religion#XXVII
PB had hundreds of posts per day back in 2008.
About half of them from tim.
Iceland seems to be used by some to justify the same course of action . Completely ignoring that Iceland has a different economy , different society and is a tiny fraction of the global economy .
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13780253/Woman-stabbed-family-day-Notting-Hill-Carnival-young-child-Met-reveals-Police-chief-says-tired-saying-words-year-event-marred-violence-officers-braced-trouble-today.html
1) the bank gets taken over by the government
2) the shareholders are completely wiped out.
3) the management can either kill themselves, starve to death in a slum in Paris or get on their yachts, try and sail to Norway in winter and get murdered by financially astute whalers.
Now, you can argue that they should have lost 100% of their money (and I wouldn't disagree with you), but the idea that shareholders were bailed out is really not the case.
Hilariously, the government got upset that Barclays didn’t fail with rest. They’d arranged re-finance on their own.
A large state that just and only did what you might call the Adam Smith stuff - defence, law and order, courts, prisons and law making, the most basic infrastructure of ports, roads, railtrack, runways allowing a complete free for all within the rule of law would be a fascinating experiment. Sadly we won't see it.
The exception to this is of course the ordained ministry staff, who have to sign up to the 39 Articles - which includes one on infant baptism which baptists like myself couldn't agree to.
*Teesside Airport
So, when we talk about "management", who are we talking about?