Looking back on it. We thought that Fury would try to overwhelm Usyk and throw him around like a plaything. That's what Fury himself thought he'd done in the first fight. But he came out tonight and tried to box from a distance. You don't win back the belts by keeping your opponent away with your jab and four uppercuts.
Can't call the fight. Fury will think he can overwhelm Usyk but Usyk's camp will know this so will adapt. I've backed the draw at 19.5 (bf).
Well after four rounds there’s very little between them.
Not sure that draws happen as often as we think they do though.
Yep. I think Usyk won because Fury didn't really do anything. Usyk came forward and the impression was that at least he was trying to win it. So I can see why he got the decision.
I only had Fury winning rounds 1, 2, 4 and 10. Usyk had the rest with maybe a marginal win in 12. The scorecards were very fair.
Can't call the fight. Fury will think he can overwhelm Usyk but Usyk's camp will know this so will adapt. I've backed the draw at 19.5 (bf).
Well after four rounds there’s very little between them.
Not sure that draws happen as often as we think they do though.
Yep. I think Usyk won because Fury didn't really do anything. Usyk came forward and the impression was that at least he was trying to win it. So I can see why he got the decision.
I only had Fury winning rounds 1, 2, 4 and 10. Usyk had the rest with maybe a marginal win in 12. The scorecards were very fair.
Yep. Easy to see how they got there. Fury needed you win more rounds. As in go out and grab them from Usyk but he didn't do that. Usyk is fantastic technical fighter and the judges noticed that.
The traditional political parties in Germany have utterly failed the people.
🇩🇪 AfD is the only hope for Germany 🇩🇪
Do we really need hourly updates on that ?
It's also bizarre:
German people live longer than Americans, they're less likely to be murdered or medicated or depressed. They are far less likely to be homeless.
America is an amazing place to be rich. Germany is a much, much better place to be lower or middle income.
American statistics are heavily distorted by its demographics so it can be misleading to compare them directly with European countries. For example a *majority* of murder victims are black:
Now would you like to check out what the German murder rate is?
It's about 0.8 per 100,000 people.
The murder rate for white, non-Hispanic, in the US is more than 4. (Which is a hell of a lot better than the 30-32 for African Americans.)
But... even picking the lowest likelihood of getting murdered ethnic group, the US homicide rate is 5x the German rate.
So, the murder rate for African Americans in the US is nearly 40x the German rate? Bloody hell. That's incredible.
What's the murder rate for Jews in Germany?
Now? No idea. There has been a rise in anti Semitic attacks since Gaza started but I am not aware of how many involve murder.
What's your point? That the US is better that Nazi Germany?
Well, obviously, the much higher murder rate for Black people in the US, along with much else, is a sign of how the US has failed to deal with the legacies of slavery. This should be a stain upon that nation's conscience.
Since the comparison is between the US and Germany it's natural to think about how Germany has dealt with the Holocaust and its legacy. But then, of course, the Jewish population in Germany is no longer high enough to calculate a statistically meaningful murder rate. So Germany doesn't have to deal with the legacy of its history in as difficult a way as the US does.
So perhaps the US deserves to be cut some slack? What they are trying to do - in recovering from a monumental historical wrong like race-based slavery, without an external power forcing them to face up to it, and without the two sides separating into different polities - is really very difficult, and I don't think it has been achieved by any country before.
Maybe they've done quite well to get as far as they have?
I do cut the US some slack. Indeed, I love the US.
But what I take exception to is the absurd claims of Musk and others that Germany is some kind of hell hole that needs rescuing.
That surely is just an artefact of Musk's in(s)anity? (Choose your option).
The issue is how to deal with it. A prominent international figure who has significant influence in the incoming USA Government believing he is above the law, and behaving in line with that belief, is not a small thing.
It wouldn't surprise me if he was the subject of an international arrest warrant before long. By Spain, perhaps - they were the ones who went after Pinochet?
Can't call the fight. Fury will think he can overwhelm Usyk but Usyk's camp will know this so will adapt. I've backed the draw at 19.5 (bf).
Well after four rounds there’s very little between them.
Not sure that draws happen as often as we think they do though.
Yep. I think Usyk won because Fury didn't really do anything. Usyk came forward and the impression was that at least he was trying to win it. So I can see why he got the decision.
I only had Fury winning rounds 1, 2, 4 and 10. Usyk had the rest with maybe a marginal win in 12. The scorecards were very fair.
Yep. Easy to see how they got there. Fury needed you win more rounds. As in go out and grab them from Usyk but he didn't do that. Usyk is fantastic technical fighter and the judges noticed that.
Fury needed a knock down in 10 to get the win and the marginal rounds scored in his favour. As you say, he didn't earn favourable scoring from the judges in tighter rounds. I also think the weight made him uncompetitive in the second half, rounds 1-6 I scored 3-3, rounds 7-12 I had 5-1 to Usyk. Fury just looked dead on his feet from 8 onwards, rallied for 10 a bit but overall just no energy and spent what little he did have on jabs from range onto Usyk's gloves which the judges didn't rate either.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 12m 🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
The traditional political parties in Germany have utterly failed the people.
🇩🇪 AfD is the only hope for Germany 🇩🇪
Do we really need hourly updates on that ?
It's also bizarre:
German people live longer than Americans, they're less likely to be murdered or medicated or depressed. They are far less likely to be homeless.
America is an amazing place to be rich. Germany is a much, much better place to be lower or middle income.
American statistics are heavily distorted by its demographics so it can be misleading to compare them directly with European countries. For example a *majority* of murder victims are black:
Now would you like to check out what the German murder rate is?
It's about 0.8 per 100,000 people.
The murder rate for white, non-Hispanic, in the US is more than 4. (Which is a hell of a lot better than the 30-32 for African Americans.)
But... even picking the lowest likelihood of getting murdered ethnic group, the US homicide rate is 5x the German rate.
So, the murder rate for African Americans in the US is nearly 40x the German rate? Bloody hell. That's incredible.
What's the murder rate for Jews in Germany?
Now? No idea. There has been a rise in anti Semitic attacks since Gaza started but I am not aware of how many involve murder.
What's your point? That the US is better that Nazi Germany?
Well, obviously, the much higher murder rate for Black people in the US, along with much else, is a sign of how the US has failed to deal with the legacies of slavery. This should be a stain upon that nation's conscience.
Since the comparison is between the US and Germany it's natural to think about how Germany has dealt with the Holocaust and its legacy. But then, of course, the Jewish population in Germany is no longer high enough to calculate a statistically meaningful murder rate. So Germany doesn't have to deal with the legacy of its history in as difficult a way as the US does.
So perhaps the US deserves to be cut some slack? What they are trying to do - in recovering from a monumental historical wrong like race-based slavery, without an external power forcing them to face up to it, and without the two sides separating into different polities - is really very difficult, and I don't think it has been achieved by any country before.
Maybe they've done quite well to get as far as they have?
I do cut the US some slack. Indeed, I love the US.
But what I take exception to is the absurd claims of Musk and others that Germany is some kind of hell hole that needs rescuing.
Based on similar reasoning you could have argued against the idea that communist Eastern Europe was some kind of hell hole that needed rescuing.
I think Rawl's Veil of Ignorance applies, don't you?
Assume you have no knowedge as to your race, intelligence, social stature; which country would you choose to be born in?
I think most people, given that choice right now, would go with Norway or Australia or Canada or New Zealand or Singapore or Denmark.
But would you really have chosen Eastern Europe in communist days over the US?
I certainly wouldn't.
Are you fully applying the veil of ignorance though or are you assuming you would be a 'cishet white male'? You might choose Denmark, but by a stroke of bad luck it turns out that you are a persecuted minority who is having their 'ghetto' bulldozed by the state.
The whole point is that you don't know.
Precisely. Therefore aggregate statistics aren't decisive and you need to consider how minorities are treated. For better or worse that doesn't necessarily favour Europe.
Nowhere is perfect William.
It's all a balance of pros and cons.
But I'd certainly choose Denmark over the US if I had no idea of who I would be born as. On the other hand, I'd choose the US over Hungary, Greece or Italy.
Doesn't that depend in what State and what colour you were born? Alabama versus Lombardy? I'll take Lombardy.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
I wish I'd gone to somewhere like St Andrews.
No train station! You have to get the bus from Dundee or Leuchars!
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
I think the rewilding is great idea tp get some fresh air and help the environment. I imagine she is planting trees and hedges, reintroducing wolves and culling deer.
Rerwilding is something of a contradiction-in-terms.
It's supposed to be letting nature take care of itself, but they are doing it by intervening ...
Far better imo if someone thought up a coherent philosophy to build on.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
It is very nice, she says. It certainly suits her. She's even going to pubs, and she has a lovely social life, so far
My God I was worried about her (and her sister) and yet suddenly they are both doing OK, indeed thriving, after some tough times. Ins;allah it continues for a while. Nothing continues forever
I saw an interview with Elton John the other day where he said "I don't give a fuck about my reputation as a musician or composer, I just want to be remembered as a good husband, and father"
Now, much of this must be taken in context. Elton knows his reputation as a musician is solid forever, he is almost without peer as a modern popstar, so he can afford to ignore that. Also, he's made seventy trillion quid
But nonetheless he speaks a truth, in the end perhaps the ultimate tests are: were you a decent lover, friend, spouse, parent? Did you make people happier than they would have been otherwise? Are your kids OK, or at least as OK as they can be despite your own flaws and failings? Do you make your friends laugh, and feel nicer?
That is largely it - ultimately. Those are the tests. You are given a hand to play and often it is a shit hand, but you can still play it in a way that makes people around you happier, and if you do that, you have played the game of life well
Spare a thought for those of us who are failures at this game.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
It is very nice, she says. It certainly suits her. She's even going to pubs, and she has a lovely social life, so far
My God I was worried about her (and her sister) and yet suddenly they are both doing OK, indeed thriving, after some tough times. Ins;allah it continues for a while. Nothing continues forever
I saw an interview with Elton John the other day where he said "I don't give a fuck about my reputation as a musician or composer, I just want to be remembered as a good husband, and father"
Now, much of this must be taken in context. Elton knows his reputation as a musician is solid forever, he is almost without peer as a modern popstar, so he can afford to ignore that. Also, he's made seventy trillion quid
But nonetheless he speaks a truth, in the end perhaps the ultimate tests are: were you a decent lover, friend, spouse, parent? Did you make people happier than they would have been otherwise? Are your kids OK, or at least as OK as they can be despite your own flaws and failings? Do you make your friends laugh, and feel nicer?
That is largely it - ultimately. Those are the tests. You are given a hand to play and often it is a shit hand, but you can still play it in a way that makes people around you happier, and if you do that, you have played the game of life well
Spare a thought for those of us who are failures at this game.
I don't know if you are referring to your relationships or your children, but if it helps there are limits on how much a reasonable person should blame themselves (I assume you did not beat your children nor your partner). Treat your partner and children how you would wish to be treated, but all you can do is the best you can, and if that doesn't work, well you did all you could. With regards to children, all you can do is give them a good start: after some point they are adults and responsible for their own lives, for good or ill. Don't beat yourself up over it.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
St Andrews is also way more handsome and historic than "Guildford"
I'd never been there until I dropped my eldest off for Uni in September. It's a rather magnificent little city, gritty yet alluring, superbly old, and with an impressive seaside location. I'm not sure there is an equivalent in England, or indeed anywhere in the world
It's certainly not as lovely as the best bits of Cambridge or Oxford, and its climate is much more cruel. But it also lacks the hideous "base and brackish" burbs of Oxford and the fenland sprawl of Cambridge
If anything I'd say it is a Nordic/Celtic Heidelberg
And - as others have noted- it is really small and friendly and a great place for a shy scholastic girl, who takes time to make friends but then makes very good friends
It is unique, there is genuinely nowhere else in the world like it. A Scottish seaside town, home to the third oldest university in the English-speaking world - also the place they invented golf. Miles of golden sand beaches. In Fife, the strangest and most idiosyncratic place in lowland Scotland. Dundee - a bleak working class city sat on a sunning river mouth - half an hour away. Edinburgh - the most beautiful city in Britain - an hour away. The Firths of Forth and Tay on either side, crossed on historic bridges. The East Neuk, pantiled fishing villages, down the coast. A thousand years of history. The initials of protestant martyrs burned alive marked on the pavement. Medieval streets, the Lammas market. So many great pubs. Obviously, being born there, I couldn't wait to leave. But it really is like nowhere else on Earth.
Donald Trump has named his former Producer on “The Apprentice”, Mark Burnett, as Special Envoy to Britain.
It’s not clear precisely what Burnett’s role will be, given the new Ambassador has already been named.
I assume the ambassador does the parties and the public face, and the special envoy is the enforcer and the person who handles the access money. Good cop, bad cop
Donald Trump has named his former Producer on “The Apprentice”, Mark Burnett, as Special Envoy to Britain.
It’s not clear precisely what Burnett’s role will be, given the new Ambassador has already been named.
Wheels within wheels. Not sure if he is a Trumpist, currently high up in TV for MGM, born in London. Some significant achievements in TV/Movies.
Got into a fight with Tom Arnold at a celebrity something something something * in 2018, but TBF Tom Arnold would get into a fight with himself when alone in a lift.
Tom Arnold was trying to make a programme about Trump's racist and other language allegedly on tape, and says Burnett had the tapes which he was sitting on. So it could be "my dealmaking old producer friend" or it could be "give me a job or I squeal, Donnie", or it could be a traditional business / celeb friend of POTUS appointment - we've had them before.
Is the UK's big film and TV industry a factor?
Just another prep day for Trump's Venezuelan-style Administration .
Donald Trump has named his former Producer on “The Apprentice”, Mark Burnett, as Special Envoy to Britain.
It’s not clear precisely what Burnett’s role will be, given the new Ambassador has already been named.
I assume the ambassador does the parties and the public face, and the special envoy is the enforcer and the person who handles the access money. Good cop, bad cop
I'd put it the other way round.
From wiki, the Ambassador is a billionaire old school Republican political money collector / shoveller, Warren Stephens, who runs a private investment bank (eg Walmart IPO). He goes back as far as Bob Dole in 1996. Like Trump, he got money form family; unlike Trump, he seems good at his business without having any obvious criminal career.
Last time round he opposed Trump, but like others has flipped and donated millions.
I'd say that Stephens will be the back room political svengali, and Burnett the public facing one.
I'd also say we have a pair who are competent, high-level operators, who may not make too many mistakes, unless Burnett gets into a fight in Nobu.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
I think the rewilding is great idea tp get some fresh air and help the environment. I imagine she is planting trees and hedges, reintroducing wolves and culling deer.
Eating them I hope. We hav e just had mallard duck breasts pan fried with shallots and home grown blackcurrants for dinner.
We decided to have goose this year after Capon last time. I just bought the Christmas and Twixtmas food shop. First, 80 Euros for a goose and another 20 for “farce”. Farce indeed. But it was a local farm producer and I reasoned that this must be the price you pay for good lovingly raised foul.
Then the rest of it at Carrefour, including Christmas wines. €485. I gulped and the checkout lady looked nervous until the card went through. I was also nervous until the card went through.
I’ve never spent so much on a food shop before and I hope never to again.
€450 on plonk and fizz?
There is a reason goose was displaced at the heart of our Christmas dinner. It is 95 per cent fat. In olden times, you might save that fat and use it to keep infants warm in a harsh winter.
Serious point: you will need to drain that fat during cooking in order to avoid getting splashed with hot fat or spending the next three days cleaning the oven.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
It is very nice, she says. It certainly suits her. She's even going to pubs, and she has a lovely social life, so far
My God I was worried about her (and her sister) and yet suddenly they are both doing OK, indeed thriving, after some tough times. Ins;allah it continues for a while. Nothing continues forever
I saw an interview with Elton John the other day where he said "I don't give a fuck about my reputation as a musician or composer, I just want to be remembered as a good husband, and father"
Now, much of this must be taken in context. Elton knows his reputation as a musician is solid forever, he is almost without peer as a modern popstar, so he can afford to ignore that. Also, he's made seventy trillion quid
But nonetheless he speaks a truth, in the end perhaps the ultimate tests are: were you a decent lover, friend, spouse, parent? Did you make people happier than they would have been otherwise? Are your kids OK, or at least as OK as they can be despite your own flaws and failings? Do you make your friends laugh, and feel nicer?
That is largely it - ultimately. Those are the tests. You are given a hand to play and often it is a shit hand, but you can still play it in a way that makes people around you happier, and if you do that, you have played the game of life well
I shall take the liberty of adding your penultimate paragraph to my list of pb almost poetic inspirational quotes. That makes three.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
It is very nice, she says. It certainly suits her. She's even going to pubs, and she has a lovely social life, so far
My God I was worried about her (and her sister) and yet suddenly they are both doing OK, indeed thriving, after some tough times. Ins;allah it continues for a while. Nothing continues forever
I saw an interview with Elton John the other day where he said "I don't give a fuck about my reputation as a musician or composer, I just want to be remembered as a good husband, and father"
Now, much of this must be taken in context. Elton knows his reputation as a musician is solid forever, he is almost without peer as a modern popstar, so he can afford to ignore that. Also, he's made seventy trillion quid
But nonetheless he speaks a truth, in the end perhaps the ultimate tests are: were you a decent lover, friend, spouse, parent? Did you make people happier than they would have been otherwise? Are your kids OK, or at least as OK as they can be despite your own flaws and failings? Do you make your friends laugh, and feel nicer?
That is largely it - ultimately. Those are the tests. You are given a hand to play and often it is a shit hand, but you can still play it in a way that makes people around you happier, and if you do that, you have played the game of life well
I shall take the liberty of adding your penultimate paragraph to my list of pb almost poetic inspirational quotes. That makes three.
"Are you righteous? Kind? Does your confidence lie in this? Are you loved by all? Know that I was too. Do you imagine your suffering will be any less because you loved goodness and truth"
It's from Malick's Thin Red Line. It's a voiceover from a dead Japanese soldier imagined by an American about to enter battle. A comfort in trying times.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 12m 🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
Two things about Musk's $100 million. First, it will probably not happen, not at that scale. Indeed, Musk might note that Reform's new treasurer is himself a billionaire. Second, there are already limits on foreign donations and campaign spending.
And a third, more important. Neither Labour nor Conservative parties will wish to cut off their own funding streams. It is like not curtailing the fraud-riddled postal voting system.
Rarely have I heard such ill-informed nonsense as the pro-Christianity rubbish spouted below (*)
Christianity has been the main religion in almost all of Europe for well over a Millenia. Aside from perhaps Moorish Spain, there has been no expansionist ability for Christianity as most of the continent was already Christian. (**)
But there has been plenty of Christian expansion outside Europe. And much more recently than the Crusades.
Leaving aside forced conversion via colonialism, I'd place Missionaries for especially harsh criticism. Restricting aid to people who only attend church is as much a 'forced' conversion as doing it via battle - and this was a common tactic. The 'civilising' approach to missionary work as seen in (say) the Belgian Congo was not exactly civilised.
Turning to the last two centuries: how come more Australian aboriginals identify as Christian than non-Aboriginals? How come their fairly wonderful and unique belief system has become corrupted in this manner?
Then there's the issue of inter-Christian conflict. You know, to this day, there is zero conflict *at all* between different sects of Christianity. None at all. No siree. Catholics and Protestants get on brilliantly together, the differences in their faiths meaning nothing compared to their commonalities. Go to Glasgow on a Derby day and you'll see Rangers and Celtic fans having a fraternal time together.
I'd also point out that, just as 'Christianity' isn't one thing, there isn't a single 'Islam' either. And just as Christianity is broader than just 'Protestant' or 'Catholic', so Islam is broader than just 'Sunni' and 'Shia'.
Christianity is a wonderful faith. But some of its followers and adherents have performed countless evil acts in its name. The same is true for Islam. Criticising bad acts by followers of Islam is fair enough. But don't whitewash, ignore or condone the bad acts performed by 'Christians'.
(*) I could say 'Islamophobic', but that would trigger some people... (**) Though that did not stop rivalry within Christian sects.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue. Personally I think the evidence is that Musk has a glass jaw when appropriately confronted; he's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue:
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
It was a little more than a few people helping out on a phone bank and it was well organised by labour staffers. They were offered accomodation for the trip. Over 100 went. Not a case of individuals owing over to help.
What about donations to influential lobbying groups from wealthy overseas donors, like the millions Blair’s institute gets from Larry Ellison. These are not benign organisations but influential on govt policy.
This whole furore stinks because it is just about Musk and Reform triggering the main parties. Neither of whom has had any interest in doing anything about this previously as it would harm their finances and neither of whom would be saying a thing about it had this not happened.
It also plays into Reforms hands as the insurgent the mainstream don’t like and want to keep down.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue:
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
It was a little more than a few people helping out on a phone bank and it was well organised by labour staffers. They were offered accomodation for the trip. Over 100 went. Not a case of individuals owing over to help.
What about donations to influential lobbying groups from wealthy overseas donors, like the millions Blair’s institute gets from Larry Ellison. These are not benign organisations but influential on govt policy.
This whole furore stinks because it is just about Musk and Reform triggering the main parties. Neither of whom has had any interest in doing anything about this previously as it would harm their finances and neither of whom would be saying a thing about it had this not happened.
It also plays into Reforms hands as the insurgent the mainstream don’t like and want to keep down.
It's more about the scale and breadth of Musk's influence and money.
Let's take an example. Musky Baby was very quick to use the attack in Germany to promote the AfD. Those messages were seen by millions both outside and within Germany. But it then was alleged that the attacker may have been sympathetic to the AfD. Does he 'promote' that possibility? No.
He controls the news much more stringently than any newspaper proprietor in the past, and has global reach - and the money and will to really screw up democracies. And that's the issue: people complain about Murdoch, but Musk is orders of magnitude more malignant.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue. Personally I think the evidence is that Musk has a glass jaw when appropriately confronted; he's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue:
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
It was a little more than a few people helping out on a phone bank and it was well organised by labour staffers. They were offered accomodation for the trip. Over 100 went. Not a case of individuals owing over to help.
What about donations to influential lobbying groups from wealthy overseas donors, like the millions Blair’s institute gets from Larry Ellison. These are not benign organisations but influential on govt policy.
This whole furore stinks because it is just about Musk and Reform triggering the main parties. Neither of whom has had any interest in doing anything about this previously as it would harm their finances and neither of whom would be saying a thing about it had this not happened.
It also plays into Reforms hands as the insurgent the mainstream don’t like and want to keep down.
It's more about the scale and breadth of Musk's influence and money.
Let's take an example. Musky Baby was very quick to use the attack in Germany to promote the AfD. Those messages were seen by millions both outside and within Germany. But it then was alleged that the attacker may have been sympathetic to the AfD. Does he 'promote' that possibility? No.
He controls the news much more stringently than any newspaper proprietor in the past, and has global reach - and the money and will to really screw up democracies. And that's the issue: people complain about Murdoch, but Musk is orders of magnitude more malignant.
Oh I get it’s the scale, it’s the attempted diminishing of labours organised assistance of the Harris campaign and the double standards by the main parties I am taking issue with and I also suspect if they did move to curtail any large donation (not that I think there’ll be one) it would play into Reforms hands. “Foreign money into our politics is okay when it’s the main parties or centrist lobbyists.””
I don’t know whether Musk is malignant or not. Will make a view after January 20th.
Musk claims that AFD policies are not that far removed from the Democrats 🤷♂️
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue. Personally I think the evidence is that Musk has a glass jaw when appropriately confronted; he's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
Reform have to lose the argument and you do not do that by bending rules, or screaming and shouting.
Reform are the protest party but an improvement in the economy, the NHS and immigration will win the day
Whether labour can do that is the question
Not with the hapless Reeves as Chancellor
I’d also say there needs to be some sort of proper levelling up or some effort to revive many of these left behind towns too. Improving an economy that only works, or mainly works, for London and the South East does not help these Reform leaning red wall towns.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue:
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
It was a little more than a few people helping out on a phone bank and it was well organised by labour staffers. They were offered accomodation for the trip. Over 100 went. Not a case of individuals owing over to help.
What about donations to influential lobbying groups from wealthy overseas donors, like the millions Blair’s institute gets from Larry Ellison. These are not benign organisations but influential on govt policy.
This whole furore stinks because it is just about Musk and Reform triggering the main parties. Neither of whom has had any interest in doing anything about this previously as it would harm their finances and neither of whom would be saying a thing about it had this not happened.
It also plays into Reforms hands as the insurgent the mainstream don’t like and want to keep down.
It's more about the scale and breadth of Musk's influence and money.
Let's take an example. Musky Baby was very quick to use the attack in Germany to promote the AfD. Those messages were seen by millions both outside and within Germany. But it then was alleged that the attacker may have been sympathetic to the AfD. Does he 'promote' that possibility? No.
He controls the news much more stringently than any newspaper proprietor in the past, and has global reach - and the money and will to really screw up democracies. And that's the issue: people complain about Murdoch, but Musk is orders of magnitude more malignant.
Oh I get it’s the scale, it’s the attempted diminishing of labours organised assistance of the Harris campaign and the double standards by the main parties I am taking issue with and I also suspect if they did move to curtail any large donation (not that I think there’ll be one) it would play into Reforms hands. “Foreign money into our politics is okay when it’s the main parties or centrist lobbyists.””
I don’t know whether Musk is malignant or not. Will make a view after January 20th.
Musk claims that AFD policies are not that far removed from the Democrats 🤷♂️
You don’t know whether Musk is malignant? Might I suggest…
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue. Personally I think the evidence is that Musk has a glass jaw when appropriately confronted; he's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
Reform have to lose the argument and you do not do that by bending rules, or screaming and shouting.
Reform are the protest party but an improvement in the economy, the NHS and immigration will win the day
Whether labour can do that is the question
Not with the hapless Reeves as Chancellor
I’d also say there needs to be some sort of proper levelling up or some effort to revive many of these left behind towns too. Improving an economy that only works, or mainly works, for London and the South East does not help these Reform leaning red wall towns.
Basically the Johnson agenda mark 2. Remind me what happened to mark 1 and remind me which party dropped large segments of that agenda.
You don’t think you’ll get any “levelling up” from Labour but you know you won’t from the Conservatives either.
Reform might offer a version of levelling up but it means money for WWC communities in the midlands and north which will mean either tax rises or more borrowing.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue. Personally I think the evidence is that Musk has a glass jaw when appropriately confronted; he's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
Reform have to lose the argument and you do not do that by bending rules, or screaming and shouting.
Reform are the protest party but an improvement in the economy, the NHS and immigration will win the day
Whether labour can do that is the question
Not with the hapless Reeves as Chancellor
I’d also say there needs to be some sort of proper levelling up or some effort to revive many of these left behind towns too. Improving an economy that only works, or mainly works, for London and the South East does not help these Reform leaning red wall towns.
Basically the Johnson agenda mark 2. Remind me what happened to mark 1 and remind me which party dropped large segments of that agenda.
You don’t think you’ll get any “levelling up” from Labour but you know you won’t from the Conservatives either.
Reform might offer a version of levelling up but it means money for WWC communities in the midlands and north which will mean either tax rises or more borrowing.
"You don’t think you’ll get any “levelling up” from Labour but you know you won’t from the Conservatives either."
To be fair to Johnson (why?), Covid utterly derailed any plans he had for government, and his successors then had other things on their minds and agenda.
Would Johnson have delivered some form of “levelling up”? Perhaps; perhaps not - and it's a task for decades, not years. But I reckon he'd have had at least paid lip service to it.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue. Personally I think the evidence is that Musk has a glass jaw when appropriately confronted; he's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
Reform have to lose the argument and you do not do that by bending rules, or screaming and shouting.
Reform are the protest party but an improvement in the economy, the NHS and immigration will win the day
Whether labour can do that is the question
I half-agree.
Debate is one thing, but it is also about having rules which are fit for purpose, which currently we do not, and about the law being followed, which currently it is not by Musk..
We have seen Musk put out, and promote, using his platform, entirely false claims, and we have seen him maintain illegal publication of material on his in the UK in outright violation of Court Orders. In addition he deliberately manipulates his media platform to distort debate. That cannot stand.
We are also in a new hybrid war, and have seen extensive interference by foreign actors aka agents of the Russian Government, to the extent that Elections in European democracies have been heavily distorted, or even had to be cancelled to be rerun.
We need a sufficiently robust Electoral system, to withstand these pressures.
IMO currently our Starmer Government are politically too timid. The last time we had this was with the BNP doing their Polite Fascism thing, and they were taken on via both routes.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue:
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
It was a little more than a few people helping out on a phone bank and it was well organised by labour staffers. They were offered accomodation for the trip. Over 100 went. Not a case of individuals owing over to help.
What about donations to influential lobbying groups from wealthy overseas donors, like the millions Blair’s institute gets from Larry Ellison. These are not benign organisations but influential on govt policy.
This whole furore stinks because it is just about Musk and Reform triggering the main parties. Neither of whom has had any interest in doing anything about this previously as it would harm their finances and neither of whom would be saying a thing about it had this not happened.
It also plays into Reforms hands as the insurgent the mainstream don’t like and want to keep down.
It's more about the scale and breadth of Musk's influence and money.
Let's take an example. Musky Baby was very quick to use the attack in Germany to promote the AfD. Those messages were seen by millions both outside and within Germany. But it then was alleged that the attacker may have been sympathetic to the AfD. Does he 'promote' that possibility? No.
He controls the news much more stringently than any newspaper proprietor in the past, and has global reach - and the money and will to really screw up democracies. And that's the issue: people complain about Murdoch, but Musk is orders of magnitude more malignant.
Oh I get it’s the scale, it’s the attempted diminishing of labours organised assistance of the Harris campaign and the double standards by the main parties I am taking issue with and I also suspect if they did move to curtail any large donation (not that I think there’ll be one) it would play into Reforms hands. “Foreign money into our politics is okay when it’s the main parties or centrist lobbyists.””
I don’t know whether Musk is malignant or not. Will make a view after January 20th.
Musk claims that AFD policies are not that far removed from the Democrats 🤷♂️
Musk may claim that. But remember:
Musk lies.
He's the sort of 'man' who will lie about his own son dying in his arms. About his dad owning, then not owning, an emerald mine. He lied about Covid to try to keep his factories open.
Truth does not matter to him; all that matters is progressing his agenda. Which is fine if you are in tune with his agenda; less so if you are not...
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue. Personally I think the evidence is that Musk has a glass jaw when appropriately confronted; he's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
Reform have to lose the argument and you do not do that by bending rules, or screaming and shouting.
Reform are the protest party but an improvement in the economy, the NHS and immigration will win the day
Whether labour can do that is the question
Not with the hapless Reeves as Chancellor
I’d also say there needs to be some sort of proper levelling up or some effort to revive many of these left behind towns too. Improving an economy that only works, or mainly works, for London and the South East does not help these Reform leaning red wall towns.
Basically the Johnson agenda mark 2. Remind me what happened to mark 1 and remind me which party dropped large segments of that agenda.
You don’t think you’ll get any “levelling up” from Labour but you know you won’t from the Conservatives either.
Reform might offer a version of levelling up but it means money for WWC communities in the midlands and north which will mean either tax rises or more borrowing.
That's Reforms problem in a nutshell. What their voters want in Stoke and Skegness is not what their leaders want.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue. Personally I think the evidence is that Musk has a glass jaw when appropriately confronted; he's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
Reform have to lose the argument and you do not do that by bending rules, or screaming and shouting.
Reform are the protest party but an improvement in the economy, the NHS and immigration will win the day
Whether labour can do that is the question
I half-agree.
Debate is one thing, but it is also about having rules which are fit for purpose, which currently we do not, and about the law being followed, which currently it is not by Musk..
We have seen Musk put out, and promote, using his platform, entirely false claims, and we have seen him maintain illegal publication of material on his in the UK in outright violation of Court Orders. In addition he deliberately manipulates his media platform to distort debate. That cannot stand.
We are also in a new hybrid war, and have seen extensive interference by foreign actors aka agents of the Russian Government, to the extent that Elections in European democracies have been heavily distorted, or even had to be cancelled to be rerun.
We need a sufficiently robust Electoral system, to withstand these pressures.
IMO currently our Starmer Government are politically too timid. The last time we had this was with the BNP doing their Polite Fascism thing, and they were taken on via both routes.
Yes, we cannot have political debate that works when lies and falsehoods are the foundations.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue. Personally I think the evidence is that Musk has a glass jaw when appropriately confronted; he's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
Reform have to lose the argument and you do not do that by bending rules, or screaming and shouting.
Reform are the protest party but an improvement in the economy, the NHS and immigration will win the day
Whether labour can do that is the question
Not with the hapless Reeves as Chancellor
I’d also say there needs to be some sort of proper levelling up or some effort to revive many of these left behind towns too. Improving an economy that only works, or mainly works, for London and the South East does not help these Reform leaning red wall towns.
Basically the Johnson agenda mark 2. Remind me what happened to mark 1 and remind me which party dropped large segments of that agenda.
You don’t think you’ll get any “levelling up” from Labour but you know you won’t from the Conservatives either.
Reform might offer a version of levelling up but it means money for WWC communities in the midlands and north which will mean either tax rises or more borrowing.
"You don’t think you’ll get any “levelling up” from Labour but you know you won’t from the Conservatives either."
To be fair to Johnson (why?), Covid utterly derailed any plans he had for government, and his successors then had other things on their minds and agenda.
Would Johnson have delivered some form of “levelling up”? Perhaps; perhaps not - and it's a task for decades, not years. But I reckon he'd have had at least paid lip service to it.
From my point of view, as someone who left the Conservatives over their deliberate burning down of levelling up, after having joined the Party to support it, it is fairly straighforward:
The Conservatives have proven they will not deliver, and do not genuinely embrace, levelling up. Labour have not.
So for someone who supports movement in that direction, it's a choice between a "Never", and a "possibly".
That's leaving aside that the Blues are utterly exhausted ... a group of headless chickens having a punch up in a cess pit, whilst the Reds are a Government, with values and policies, even with all the imperfections.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue:
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
It was a little more than a few people helping out on a phone bank and it was well organised by labour staffers. They were offered accomodation for the trip. Over 100 went. Not a case of individuals owing over to help.
What about donations to influential lobbying groups from wealthy overseas donors, like the millions Blair’s institute gets from Larry Ellison. These are not benign organisations but influential on govt policy.
This whole furore stinks because it is just about Musk and Reform triggering the main parties. Neither of whom has had any interest in doing anything about this previously as it would harm their finances and neither of whom would be saying a thing about it had this not happened.
It also plays into Reforms hands as the insurgent the mainstream don’t like and want to keep down.
It's more about the scale and breadth of Musk's influence and money.
Let's take an example. Musky Baby was very quick to use the attack in Germany to promote the AfD. Those messages were seen by millions both outside and within Germany. But it then was alleged that the attacker may have been sympathetic to the AfD. Does he 'promote' that possibility? No.
He controls the news much more stringently than any newspaper proprietor in the past, and has global reach - and the money and will to really screw up democracies. And that's the issue: people complain about Murdoch, but Musk is orders of magnitude more malignant.
Oh I get it’s the scale, it’s the attempted diminishing of labours organised assistance of the Harris campaign and the double standards by the main parties I am taking issue with and I also suspect if they did move to curtail any large donation (not that I think there’ll be one) it would play into Reforms hands. “Foreign money into our politics is okay when it’s the main parties or centrist lobbyists.””
I don’t know whether Musk is malignant or not. Will make a view after January 20th.
Musk claims that AFD policies are not that far removed from the Democrats 🤷♂️
You don’t know whether Musk is malignant? Might I suggest…
My opinion of Musk was decided by the Thai cave rescue.
The pettiness and childishness of calling the lead caver a paedo for declining Musk's offer of a "rescue pod" told me all I needed to know about him as a person.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue. Personally I think the evidence is that Musk has a glass jaw when appropriately confronted; he's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
Reform have to lose the argument and you do not do that by bending rules, or screaming and shouting.
Reform are the protest party but an improvement in the economy, the NHS and immigration will win the day
Whether labour can do that is the question
Not with the hapless Reeves as Chancellor
I’d also say there needs to be some sort of proper levelling up or some effort to revive many of these left behind towns too. Improving an economy that only works, or mainly works, for London and the South East does not help these Reform leaning red wall towns.
Basically the Johnson agenda mark 2. Remind me what happened to mark 1 and remind me which party dropped large segments of that agenda.
You don’t think you’ll get any “levelling up” from Labour but you know you won’t from the Conservatives either.
Reform might offer a version of levelling up but it means money for WWC communities in the midlands and north which will mean either tax rises or more borrowing.
That's Reforms problem in a nutshell. What their voters want in Stoke and Skegness is not what their leaders want.
That paradox will sink Reform or cause it to schism. Farage is the UK’s answer to Winston Peters over here but opposition to immigration is the glue that holds Reform together. Beyond that, it’s a dysfunctional mess of those wanting supply side reforms and big tax and spending cuts and those who want more money in the WWC towns and cities including education and health.
The latter are of course the threat to Labour and England’s version of Bundnis Wagenknecht.
We've had about a century of attempts to level up by spraying money at the Distressed Areas as they were known between the wars. And the Distressed Areas are still distressed. But, like all madmen, we keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.
It is of course completely the wrong approach as all it does is entrench welfare dependence, a huge state sector and general poverty and despair as government is disastrously bad at backing winners and amazing at strangling the entrepreneurial class who, for all their faults, are the main motor of economic development in a capitalist economy. Government is terrible at picking winners, amazing at picking losers and then sticking with them.
And that's a criticism of government generally, not any one political party - they are all terrible at it. When I worked in government, I had occasional dealings with the department at the Treasury then in charge of running some of the government's industrial investments, and I found it quite striking how everybody who worked there for more than a few months ended up convinced that, in the words of one of them, "We're a terrible shareholder" and that government had no business meddling in industry.
Levelling up/regional aid/structural funds whatever it's called is all very well as a slogan to buy some Northern votes. But it is not just useless but actively damaging as a policy. We should be helping people not regions, and the way to do that is to foster a dynamic environment nationally, with low taxes, light but effective regulation and an entrepreneurial culture. This should not be controversial - it's basic economics, validated by two centuries of experience. In growing, successful economies, people move to where the jobs are, they aren't kept in dead-end towns on life support by make-work schemes.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue. Personally I think the evidence is that Musk has a glass jaw when appropriately confronted; he's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
Reform have to lose the argument and you do not do that by bending rules, or screaming and shouting.
Reform are the protest party but an improvement in the economy, the NHS and immigration will win the day
Whether labour can do that is the question
Not with the hapless Reeves as Chancellor
I’d also say there needs to be some sort of proper levelling up or some effort to revive many of these left behind towns too. Improving an economy that only works, or mainly works, for London and the South East does not help these Reform leaning red wall towns.
Basically the Johnson agenda mark 2. Remind me what happened to mark 1 and remind me which party dropped large segments of that agenda.
You don’t think you’ll get any “levelling up” from Labour but you know you won’t from the Conservatives either.
Reform might offer a version of levelling up but it means money for WWC communities in the midlands and north which will mean either tax rises or more borrowing.
"You don’t think you’ll get any “levelling up” from Labour but you know you won’t from the Conservatives either."
To be fair to Johnson (why?), Covid utterly derailed any plans he had for government, and his successors then had other things on their minds and agenda.
Would Johnson have delivered some form of “levelling up”? Perhaps; perhaps not - and it's a task for decades, not years. But I reckon he'd have had at least paid lip service to it.
From my point of view, as someone who left the Conservatives over their deliberate burning down of levelling up, after having joined the Party to support it, it is fairly straighforward:
The Conservatives have proven they will not deliver, and do not genuinely embrace, levelling up. Labour have not.
So for someone who supports movement in that direction, it's a choice between a "Never", and a "possibly".
That's leaving aside that the Blues are utterly exhausted ... a group of headless chickens having a punch up in a cess pit, whilst the Reds are a Government, with values and policies, even with all the imperfections.
Trouble is that true, sustainable levelling up requires money (at least to start with) and change- so that places do things differently and sustainabiy in the decades to come. A lot of the left behind towns were left behind for a reason- the businesses that created them have gone, or don't need many people now, and that's not changing.
Neither of those fits well on a Conservative mental map of the world, and a large chunk of their support is based on a good old days theory.
We've had about a century of attempts to level up by spraying money at the Distressed Areas as they were known between the wars. And the Distressed Areas are still distressed. But, like all madmen, we keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.
It is of course completely the wrong approach as all it does is entrench welfare dependence, a huge state sector and general poverty and despair as government is disastrously bad at backing winners and amazing at strangling the entrepreneurial class who, for all their faults, are the main motor of economic development in a capitalist economy. Government is terrible at picking winners, amazing at picking losers and then sticking with them.
And that's a criticism of government generally, not any one political party - they are all terrible at it. When I worked in government, I had occasional dealings with the department at the Treasury then in charge of running some of the government's industrial investments, and I found it quite striking how everybody who worked there for more than a few months ended up convinced that, in the words of one of them, "We're a terrible shareholder" and that government had no business meddling in industry.
Levelling up/regional aid/structural funds whatever it's called is all very well as a slogan to buy some Northern votes. But it is not just useless but actively damaging as a policy. We should be helping people not regions, and the way to do that is to foster a dynamic environment nationally, with low taxes, light but effective regulation and an entrepreneurial culture. This should not be controversial - it's basic economics, validated by two centuries of experience. In growing, successful economies, people move to where the jobs are, they aren't kept in dead-end towns on life support by make-work schemes.
There's quite a lot of good evidence that good transport infrastructure is key for providing the right conditions to allow an economy to flourish.
Improving the road and rail infrastructure across the North, so that the cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield can operate as one economic region with the scale to compete, would not be a makework scheme.
Rarely have I heard such ill-informed nonsense as the pro-Christianity rubbish spouted below (*)
Christianity has been the main religion in almost all of Europe for well over a Millenia. Aside from perhaps Moorish Spain, there has been no expansionist ability for Christianity as most of the continent was already Christian. (**)
But there has been plenty of Christian expansion outside Europe. And much more recently than the Crusades.
Leaving aside forced conversion via colonialism, I'd place Missionaries for especially harsh criticism. Restricting aid to people who only attend church is as much a 'forced' conversion as doing it via battle - and this was a common tactic. The 'civilising' approach to missionary work as seen in (say) the Belgian Congo was not exactly civilised.
Turning to the last two centuries: how come more Australian aboriginals identify as Christian than non-Aboriginals? How come their fairly wonderful and unique belief system has become corrupted in this manner?
Then there's the issue of inter-Christian conflict. You know, to this day, there is zero conflict *at all* between different sects of Christianity. None at all. No siree. Catholics and Protestants get on brilliantly together, the differences in their faiths meaning nothing compared to their commonalities. Go to Glasgow on a Derby day and you'll see Rangers and Celtic fans having a fraternal time together.
I'd also point out that, just as 'Christianity' isn't one thing, there isn't a single 'Islam' either. And just as Christianity is broader than just 'Protestant' or 'Catholic', so Islam is broader than just 'Sunni' and 'Shia'.
Christianity is a wonderful faith. But some of its followers and adherents have performed countless evil acts in its name. The same is true for Islam. Criticising bad acts by followers of Islam is fair enough. But don't whitewash, ignore or condone the bad acts performed by 'Christians'.
(*) I could say 'Islamophobic', but that would trigger some people... (**) Though that did not stop rivalry within Christian sects.
Or, further back in history, compared the degree of tolerance shown by al-Andalus and reconquista Spain.
It's fair to say that you have to work quite hard to get a justification for militaristic expansionism out of the source texts of Christianity. But that hasn't stopped people making the effort and succeeding, at least to their own satisfaction.
We've had about a century of attempts to level up by spraying money at the Distressed Areas as they were known between the wars. And the Distressed Areas are still distressed. But, like all madmen, we keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.
It is of course completely the wrong approach as all it does is entrench welfare dependence, a huge state sector and general poverty and despair as government is disastrously bad at backing winners and amazing at strangling the entrepreneurial class who, for all their faults, are the main motor of economic development in a capitalist economy. Government is terrible at picking winners, amazing at picking losers and then sticking with them.
And that's a criticism of government generally, not any one political party - they are all terrible at it. When I worked in government, I had occasional dealings with the department at the Treasury then in charge of running some of the government's industrial investments, and I found it quite striking how everybody who worked there for more than a few months ended up convinced that, in the words of one of them, "We're a terrible shareholder" and that government had no business meddling in industry.
Levelling up/regional aid/structural funds whatever it's called is all very well as a slogan to buy some Northern votes. But it is not just useless but actively damaging as a policy. We should be helping people not regions, and the way to do that is to foster a dynamic environment nationally, with low taxes, light but effective regulation and an entrepreneurial culture. This should not be controversial - it's basic economics, validated by two centuries of experience. In growing, successful economies, people move to where the jobs are, they aren't kept in dead-end towns on life support by make-work schemes.
Yes, the better approach is free zones and tax breaks for businesses setting up in these locations, not picking winners or handing out piles of taxpayer cash with added bureaucracy and corruption.
Limit direct government involvement to enabling roads, railways, and gigabit internet.
Rarely have I heard such ill-informed nonsense as the pro-Christianity rubbish spouted below (*)
Christianity has been the main religion in almost all of Europe for well over a Millenia. Aside from perhaps Moorish Spain, there has been no expansionist ability for Christianity as most of the continent was already Christian. (**)
But there has been plenty of Christian expansion outside Europe. And much more recently than the Crusades.
Leaving aside forced conversion via colonialism, I'd place Missionaries for especially harsh criticism. Restricting aid to people who only attend church is as much a 'forced' conversion as doing it via battle - and this was a common tactic. The 'civilising' approach to missionary work as seen in (say) the Belgian Congo was not exactly civilised.
Turning to the last two centuries: how come more Australian aboriginals identify as Christian than non-Aboriginals? How come their fairly wonderful and unique belief system has become corrupted in this manner?
Then there's the issue of inter-Christian conflict. You know, to this day, there is zero conflict *at all* between different sects of Christianity. None at all. No siree. Catholics and Protestants get on brilliantly together, the differences in their faiths meaning nothing compared to their commonalities. Go to Glasgow on a Derby day and you'll see Rangers and Celtic fans having a fraternal time together.
I'd also point out that, just as 'Christianity' isn't one thing, there isn't a single 'Islam' either. And just as Christianity is broader than just 'Protestant' or 'Catholic', so Islam is broader than just 'Sunni' and 'Shia'.
Christianity is a wonderful faith. But some of its followers and adherents have performed countless evil acts in its name. The same is true for Islam. Criticising bad acts by followers of Islam is fair enough. But don't whitewash, ignore or condone the bad acts performed by 'Christians'.
(*) I could say 'Islamophobic', but that would trigger some people... (**) Though that did not stop rivalry within Christian sects.
Or, further back in history, compared the degree of tolerance shown by al-Andalus and reconquista Spain.
It's fair to say that you have to work quite hard to get a justification for militaristic expansionism out of the source texts of Christianity. But that hasn't stopped people making the effort and succeeding, at least to their own satisfaction.
Certainly historically true, but not the case in the last half century or so. Christianity is far more tolerant and accepting, Islam and Hinduism increasingly less so. There are lots of Christian minorities around the world that are heavily persecuted.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue. Personally I think the evidence is that Musk has a glass jaw when appropriately confronted; he's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
Reform have to lose the argument and you do not do that by bending rules, or screaming and shouting.
Reform are the protest party but an improvement in the economy, the NHS and immigration will win the day
Whether labour can do that is the question
Not with the hapless Reeves as Chancellor
I’d also say there needs to be some sort of proper levelling up or some effort to revive many of these left behind towns too. Improving an economy that only works, or mainly works, for London and the South East does not help these Reform leaning red wall towns.
Basically the Johnson agenda mark 2. Remind me what happened to mark 1 and remind me which party dropped large segments of that agenda.
You don’t think you’ll get any “levelling up” from Labour but you know you won’t from the Conservatives either.
Reform might offer a version of levelling up but it means money for WWC communities in the midlands and north which will mean either tax rises or more borrowing.
That's Reforms problem in a nutshell. What their voters want in Stoke and Skegness is not what their leaders want.
That paradox will sink Reform or cause it to schism. Farage is the UK’s answer to Winston Peters over here but opposition to immigration is the glue that holds Reform together. Beyond that, it’s a dysfunctional mess of those wanting supply side reforms and big tax and spending cuts and those who want more money in the WWC towns and cities including education and health.
The latter are of course the threat to Labour and England’s version of Bundnis Wagenknecht.
The glue that holds together the entire voting (and non voting) class is the post war 1945 social democratic deal. Apart from an environment that allows free enterprise and jobs to flourish, the only deal voters want is more, and more costly more, of the post 1945 settlement.
The rest, apart from migration, is mostly the narcissism of small differences.
To the voter, Reform offer social democracy on the cheap even more than the other parties (impossible), and low migration (probably impossible if you want the welfare state to work).
We've had about a century of attempts to level up by spraying money at the Distressed Areas as they were known between the wars. And the Distressed Areas are still distressed. But, like all madmen, we keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.
It is of course completely the wrong approach as all it does is entrench welfare dependence, a huge state sector and general poverty and despair as government is disastrously bad at backing winners and amazing at strangling the entrepreneurial class who, for all their faults, are the main motor of economic development in a capitalist economy. Government is terrible at picking winners, amazing at picking losers and then sticking with them.
And that's a criticism of government generally, not any one political party - they are all terrible at it. When I worked in government, I had occasional dealings with the department at the Treasury then in charge of running some of the government's industrial investments, and I found it quite striking how everybody who worked there for more than a few months ended up convinced that, in the words of one of them, "We're a terrible shareholder" and that government had no business meddling in industry.
Levelling up/regional aid/structural funds whatever it's called is all very well as a slogan to buy some Northern votes. But it is not just useless but actively damaging as a policy. We should be helping people not regions, and the way to do that is to foster a dynamic environment nationally, with low taxes, light but effective regulation and an entrepreneurial culture. This should not be controversial - it's basic economics, validated by two centuries of experience. In growing, successful economies, people move to where the jobs are, they aren't kept in dead-end towns on life support by make-work schemes.
Yes, the better approach is free zones and tax breaks for businesses setting up in these locations, not picking winners or handing out piles of taxpayer cash with added bureaucracy and corruption.
Limit direct government involvement to enabling roads, railways, and gigabit internet.
Yep. Government still thinks it knows best, and that by swallowing a vast percentage of the nation's wealth and giving dribbles of it back to its pet projects, that is going to make things grow.
We need some sensible small state policies - a serious small state strategy from Kemi.
Rarely have I heard such ill-informed nonsense as the pro-Christianity rubbish spouted below (*)
Christianity has been the main religion in almost all of Europe for well over a Millenia. Aside from perhaps Moorish Spain, there has been no expansionist ability for Christianity as most of the continent was already Christian. (**)
But there has been plenty of Christian expansion outside Europe. And much more recently than the Crusades.
Leaving aside forced conversion via colonialism, I'd place Missionaries for especially harsh criticism. Restricting aid to people who only attend church is as much a 'forced' conversion as doing it via battle - and this was a common tactic. The 'civilising' approach to missionary work as seen in (say) the Belgian Congo was not exactly civilised.
Turning to the last two centuries: how come more Australian aboriginals identify as Christian than non-Aboriginals? How come their fairly wonderful and unique belief system has become corrupted in this manner?
Then there's the issue of inter-Christian conflict. You know, to this day, there is zero conflict *at all* between different sects of Christianity. None at all. No siree. Catholics and Protestants get on brilliantly together, the differences in their faiths meaning nothing compared to their commonalities. Go to Glasgow on a Derby day and you'll see Rangers and Celtic fans having a fraternal time together.
I'd also point out that, just as 'Christianity' isn't one thing, there isn't a single 'Islam' either. And just as Christianity is broader than just 'Protestant' or 'Catholic', so Islam is broader than just 'Sunni' and 'Shia'.
Christianity is a wonderful faith. But some of its followers and adherents have performed countless evil acts in its name. The same is true for Islam. Criticising bad acts by followers of Islam is fair enough. But don't whitewash, ignore or condone the bad acts performed by 'Christians'.
(*) I could say 'Islamophobic', but that would trigger some people... (**) Though that did not stop rivalry within Christian sects.
Or, further back in history, compared the degree of tolerance shown by al-Andalus and reconquista Spain.
It's fair to say that you have to work quite hard to get a justification for militaristic expansionism out of the source texts of Christianity. But that hasn't stopped people making the effort and succeeding, at least to their own satisfaction.
Certainly historically true, but not the case in the last half century or so. Christianity is far more tolerant and accepting, Islam and Hinduism increasingly less so. There are lots of Christian minorities around the world that are heavily persecuted.
Absolutely. But the variability over time points to the issue not being the religions so much as the way some powerful people exploit them.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue. Personally I think the evidence is that Musk has a glass jaw when appropriately confronted; he's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
Reform have to lose the argument and you do not do that by bending rules, or screaming and shouting.
Reform are the protest party but an improvement in the economy, the NHS and immigration will win the day
Whether labour can do that is the question
Not with the hapless Reeves as Chancellor
I’d also say there needs to be some sort of proper levelling up or some effort to revive many of these left behind towns too. Improving an economy that only works, or mainly works, for London and the South East does not help these Reform leaning red wall towns.
Basically the Johnson agenda mark 2. Remind me what happened to mark 1 and remind me which party dropped large segments of that agenda.
You don’t think you’ll get any “levelling up” from Labour but you know you won’t from the Conservatives either.
Reform might offer a version of levelling up but it means money for WWC communities in the midlands and north which will mean either tax rises or more borrowing.
So essentially communities like mine are fucked come what may then. We got very little from labour last time apart from a further decline in manufacturing which halved and plenty of factories closed and went to Eastern Europe or wherever.
As for borrowing it’s going through the roof anyway.
Rarely have I heard such ill-informed nonsense as the pro-Christianity rubbish spouted below (*)
Christianity has been the main religion in almost all of Europe for well over a Millenia. Aside from perhaps Moorish Spain, there has been no expansionist ability for Christianity as most of the continent was already Christian. (**)
But there has been plenty of Christian expansion outside Europe. And much more recently than the Crusades.
Leaving aside forced conversion via colonialism, I'd place Missionaries for especially harsh criticism. Restricting aid to people who only attend church is as much a 'forced' conversion as doing it via battle - and this was a common tactic. The 'civilising' approach to missionary work as seen in (say) the Belgian Congo was not exactly civilised.
Turning to the last two centuries: how come more Australian aboriginals identify as Christian than non-Aboriginals? How come their fairly wonderful and unique belief system has become corrupted in this manner?
Then there's the issue of inter-Christian conflict. You know, to this day, there is zero conflict *at all* between different sects of Christianity. None at all. No siree. Catholics and Protestants get on brilliantly together, the differences in their faiths meaning nothing compared to their commonalities. Go to Glasgow on a Derby day and you'll see Rangers and Celtic fans having a fraternal time together.
I'd also point out that, just as 'Christianity' isn't one thing, there isn't a single 'Islam' either. And just as Christianity is broader than just 'Protestant' or 'Catholic', so Islam is broader than just 'Sunni' and 'Shia'.
Christianity is a wonderful faith. But some of its followers and adherents have performed countless evil acts in its name. The same is true for Islam. Criticising bad acts by followers of Islam is fair enough. But don't whitewash, ignore or condone the bad acts performed by 'Christians'.
(*) I could say 'Islamophobic', but that would trigger some people... (**) Though that did not stop rivalry within Christian sects.
Or, further back in history, compared the degree of tolerance shown by al-Andalus and reconquista Spain.
It's fair to say that you have to work quite hard to get a justification for militaristic expansionism out of the source texts of Christianity. But that hasn't stopped people making the effort and succeeding, at least to their own satisfaction.
Certainly historically true, but not the case in the last half century or so. Christianity is far more tolerant and accepting, Islam and Hinduism increasingly less so. There are lots of Christian minorities around the world that are heavily persecuted.
I’ll also add that there are exceptions to every rule.
I will be joining thousands of others at Midnight Mass on Tuesday night, at the church where I married my wife nine years ago, in one of few Islamic countries that genuinely supports religious tolerance and acceptance.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue. Personally I think the evidence is that Musk has a glass jaw when appropriately confronted; he's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
Reform have to lose the argument and you do not do that by bending rules, or screaming and shouting.
Reform are the protest party but an improvement in the economy, the NHS and immigration will win the day
Whether labour can do that is the question
Not with the hapless Reeves as Chancellor
I’d also say there needs to be some sort of proper levelling up or some effort to revive many of these left behind towns too. Improving an economy that only works, or mainly works, for London and the South East does not help these Reform leaning red wall towns.
Basically the Johnson agenda mark 2. Remind me what happened to mark 1 and remind me which party dropped large segments of that agenda.
You don’t think you’ll get any “levelling up” from Labour but you know you won’t from the Conservatives either.
Reform might offer a version of levelling up but it means money for WWC communities in the midlands and north which will mean either tax rises or more borrowing.
So essentially communities like mine are fucked come what may then. We got very little from labour last time apart from a further decline in manufacturing which halved and plenty of factories closed and went to Eastern Europe or wherever.
As for borrowing it’s going through the roof anyway.
Economic growth in the medium term is almost perfectly invertly correlated with energy prices.
Sadly, Ed Miliband appears to be on a mission to make some of the world’s most expensive energy even more expensive, so it’s hardly surprising that manufacturing moves away.
We've had about a century of attempts to level up by spraying money at the Distressed Areas as they were known between the wars. And the Distressed Areas are still distressed. But, like all madmen, we keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.
It is of course completely the wrong approach as all it does is entrench welfare dependence, a huge state sector and general poverty and despair as government is disastrously bad at backing winners and amazing at strangling the entrepreneurial class who, for all their faults, are the main motor of economic development in a capitalist economy. Government is terrible at picking winners, amazing at picking losers and then sticking with them.
And that's a criticism of government generally, not any one political party - they are all terrible at it. When I worked in government, I had occasional dealings with the department at the Treasury then in charge of running some of the government's industrial investments, and I found it quite striking how everybody who worked there for more than a few months ended up convinced that, in the words of one of them, "We're a terrible shareholder" and that government had no business meddling in industry.
Levelling up/regional aid/structural funds whatever it's called is all very well as a slogan to buy some Northern votes. But it is not just useless but actively damaging as a policy. We should be helping people not regions, and the way to do that is to foster a dynamic environment nationally, with low taxes, light but effective regulation and an entrepreneurial culture. This should not be controversial - it's basic economics, validated by two centuries of experience. In growing, successful economies, people move to where the jobs are, they aren't kept in dead-end towns on life support by make-work schemes.
To a large extent I agree, but that is not what Reform voters want.
The Midlands and North has transformed over my life time with coal, steel, manufacturing all gone, in major decline or automated to need far fewer unskilled workers. They are never coming back in those forms.
However the major cities have revived, with Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Birmingham, Sheffield etc all far better places than they were in the Eighties, largely due to the expansion of higher education and the growth of knowledge based economies and employment. It is the second and third tier towns and cities that are in decline.
Infrastructure makes a difference to levelling up, but the biggest change needed is improved education, at all levels from Preschool to Postgraduate, from technical to creative arts. That is why the funding squeeze on Universities is such a problem, and the quality squeeze even more so. We need a better trained and skilled workforce to level up these towns, then businesses will set up or move there without subsidies.
Fake number plate news... which I know is a subject of enduring interest on pb.com.
I made a new set using the newly emergent 3d print with resin method and put them on a Copart 2017 Scirocco R I have at the moment. I takes longer than the previous vinyl method but it's less fiddly and I'd rate the result slighty better. Fooled the OB who were behind me for about 5 minutes.
I'm sure Musk would be completely sanguine about foreign interference in US domestic politics in return.
Like Labour and other parties' activists helping different campaigns?
Having a few people in helping out in a phonebank is a different matter from an oligarch pumping in amounts of money larger than exist in the campaigns of all the parties in an entire country.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue. Personally I think the evidence is that Musk has a glass jaw when appropriately confronted; he's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
Reform have to lose the argument and you do not do that by bending rules, or screaming and shouting.
Reform are the protest party but an improvement in the economy, the NHS and immigration will win the day
Whether labour can do that is the question
Not with the hapless Reeves as Chancellor
I’d also say there needs to be some sort of proper levelling up or some effort to revive many of these left behind towns too. Improving an economy that only works, or mainly works, for London and the South East does not help these Reform leaning red wall towns.
Basically the Johnson agenda mark 2. Remind me what happened to mark 1 and remind me which party dropped large segments of that agenda.
You don’t think you’ll get any “levelling up” from Labour but you know you won’t from the Conservatives either.
Reform might offer a version of levelling up but it means money for WWC communities in the midlands and north which will mean either tax rises or more borrowing.
So essentially communities like mine are fucked come what may then. We got very little from labour last time apart from a further decline in manufacturing which halved and plenty of factories closed and went to Eastern Europe or wherever.
As for borrowing it’s going through the roof anyway.
Economic growth in the medium term is almost perfectly invertly correlated with energy prices.
Sadly, Ed Miliband appears to be on a mission to make some of the world’s most expensive energy even more expensive, so it’s hardly surprising that manufacturing moves away.
I agree, and Ed Miliband is probably the most dangerous person in the cabinet.
But I was referring to the hollowing out of manufacturing under new labour 97-10
We've had about a century of attempts to level up by spraying money at the Distressed Areas as they were known between the wars. And the Distressed Areas are still distressed. But, like all madmen, we keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.
It is of course completely the wrong approach as all it does is entrench welfare dependence, a huge state sector and general poverty and despair as government is disastrously bad at backing winners and amazing at strangling the entrepreneurial class who, for all their faults, are the main motor of economic development in a capitalist economy. Government is terrible at picking winners, amazing at picking losers and then sticking with them.
And that's a criticism of government generally, not any one political party - they are all terrible at it. When I worked in government, I had occasional dealings with the department at the Treasury then in charge of running some of the government's industrial investments, and I found it quite striking how everybody who worked there for more than a few months ended up convinced that, in the words of one of them, "We're a terrible shareholder" and that government had no business meddling in industry.
Levelling up/regional aid/structural funds whatever it's called is all very well as a slogan to buy some Northern votes. But it is not just useless but actively damaging as a policy. We should be helping people not regions, and the way to do that is to foster a dynamic environment nationally, with low taxes, light but effective regulation and an entrepreneurial culture. This should not be controversial - it's basic economics, validated by two centuries of experience. In growing, successful economies, people move to where the jobs are, they aren't kept in dead-end towns on life support by make-work schemes.
Vastly more money has been "sprayed" in the London region. The issue is investment, not "welfare". There's no evidence for your assertion of what would work.
Fake number plate news... which I know is a subject of enduring interest on pb.com.
I made a new set using the newly emergent 3d print with resin method and put them on a Copart 2017 Scirocco R I have at the moment. I takes longer than the previous vinyl method but it's less fiddly and I'd rate the result slighty better. Fooled the OB who were behind me for about 5 minutes.
You still have OB that patrol? How quaint. We have one car that patrols the A38 between Plymouth and Exeter. Pretty much given up down here; instead we occasionally have the vans with a camera and a bloke with a flask of tea.
Comments
The issue is how to deal with it. A prominent international figure who has significant influence in the incoming USA Government believing he is above the law, and behaving in line with that belief, is not a small thing.
It wouldn't surprise me if he was the subject of an international arrest warrant before long. By Spain, perhaps - they were the ones who went after Pinochet?
Arguments? Reform UK? They found some? Where are they?
https://x.com/NickParkerPrint/status/1870524661089583543
There's a kill-switch in FaceID modules which we thought was antitampering, but it's actually laser safety!..
It's supposed to be letting nature take care of itself, but they are doing it by intervening ...
Far better imo if someone thought up a coherent philosophy to build on.
President-elect Donald Trump says he may demand the Panama Canal be returned to the United States:
Obviously, being born there, I couldn't wait to leave. But it really is like nowhere else on Earth.
It’s not clear precisely what Burnett’s role will be, given the new Ambassador has already been named.
Got into a fight with Tom Arnold at a celebrity something something something * in 2018, but TBF Tom Arnold would get into a fight with himself when alone in a lift.
Tom Arnold was trying to make a programme about Trump's racist and other language allegedly on tape, and says Burnett had the tapes which he was sitting on. So it could be "my dealmaking old producer friend" or it could be "give me a job or I squeal, Donnie", or it could be a traditional business / celeb friend of POTUS appointment - we've had them before.
Is the UK's big film and TV industry a factor?
Just another prep day for Trump's Venezuelan-style Administration
* https://archive.is/503hv
From wiki, the Ambassador is a billionaire old school Republican political money collector / shoveller, Warren Stephens, who runs a private investment bank (eg Walmart IPO). He goes back as far as Bob Dole in 1996. Like Trump, he got money form family; unlike Trump, he seems good at his business without having any obvious criminal career.
Last time round he opposed Trump, but like others has flipped and donated millions.
I'd say that Stephens will be the back room political svengali, and Burnett the public facing one.
I'd also say we have a pair who are competent, high-level operators, who may not make too many mistakes, unless Burnett gets into a fight in Nobu.
There is a reason goose was displaced at the heart of our Christmas dinner. It is 95 per cent fat. In olden times, you might save that fat and use it to keep infants warm in a harsh winter.
Serious point: you will need to drain that fat during cooking in order to avoid getting splashed with hot fat or spending the next three days cleaning the oven.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De9fflH5FQY
"Are you righteous? Kind? Does your confidence lie in this? Are you loved by all? Know that I was too. Do you imagine your suffering will be any less because you loved goodness and truth"
It's from Malick's Thin Red Line. It's a voiceover from a dead Japanese soldier imagined by an American about to enter battle. A comfort in trying times.
And a third, more important. Neither Labour nor Conservative parties will wish to cut off their own funding streams. It is like not curtailing the fraud-riddled postal voting system.
Christianity has been the main religion in almost all of Europe for well over a Millenia. Aside from perhaps Moorish Spain, there has been no expansionist ability for Christianity as most of the continent was already Christian. (**)
But there has been plenty of Christian expansion outside Europe. And much more recently than the Crusades.
Leaving aside forced conversion via colonialism, I'd place Missionaries for especially harsh criticism. Restricting aid to people who only attend church is as much a 'forced' conversion as doing it via battle - and this was a common tactic. The 'civilising' approach to missionary work as seen in (say) the Belgian Congo was not exactly civilised.
Turning to the last two centuries: how come more Australian aboriginals identify as Christian than non-Aboriginals? How come their fairly wonderful and unique belief system has become corrupted in this manner?
Then there's the issue of inter-Christian conflict. You know, to this day, there is zero conflict *at all* between different sects of Christianity. None at all. No siree. Catholics and Protestants get on brilliantly together, the differences in their faiths meaning nothing compared to their commonalities. Go to Glasgow on a Derby day and you'll see Rangers and Celtic fans having a fraternal time together.
I'd also point out that, just as 'Christianity' isn't one thing, there isn't a single 'Islam' either. And just as Christianity is broader than just 'Protestant' or 'Catholic', so Islam is broader than just 'Sunni' and 'Shia'.
Christianity is a wonderful faith. But some of its followers and adherents have performed countless evil acts in its name. The same is true for Islam. Criticising bad acts by followers of Islam is fair enough. But don't whitewash, ignore or condone the bad acts performed by 'Christians'.
(*) I could say 'Islamophobic', but that would trigger some people...
(**) Though that did not stop rivalry within Christian sects.
It's rather cold and rubbish outside.
That was the false equivalence featured in the clip from Lee Anderson's GBNews programme last Friday, posted by @rottenborough , to avoid the awkward point of enormous foreign donations.
https://x.com/GBNEWS/status/1870186419055976821
An interesting piece from the Observer yesterday evening about how the Govt are being cautious around funding reform because of fear of a RefUK backlash, despite a pledge to tighten up the rules. I think they are missing that Musk is trying to do the tradition Usonian "we'll do what the hell we want, and f*ck your laws" thing, and needs a sharp uppercut to wake him up before he goes even more rogue. Personally I think the evidence is that Musk has a glass jaw when appropriately confronted; he's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
While Labour has pledged to tighten up rules around political donations, insiders suggested reforms were not likely until the end of next year at the earliest.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/dec/21/ministers-resist-calls-to-block-musk-donations-to-farages-reform-uk
What about donations to influential lobbying groups from wealthy overseas donors, like the millions Blair’s institute gets from Larry Ellison. These are not benign organisations but influential on govt policy.
This whole furore stinks because it is just about Musk and Reform triggering the main parties. Neither of whom has had any interest in doing anything about this previously as it would harm their finances and neither of whom would be saying a thing about it had this not happened.
It also plays into Reforms hands as the insurgent the mainstream don’t like and want to keep down.
Let's take an example. Musky Baby was very quick to use the attack in Germany to promote the AfD. Those messages were seen by millions both outside and within Germany. But it then was alleged that the attacker may have been sympathetic to the AfD. Does he 'promote' that possibility? No.
He controls the news much more stringently than any newspaper proprietor in the past, and has global reach - and the money and will to really screw up democracies. And that's the issue: people complain about Murdoch, but Musk is orders of magnitude more malignant.
Now we’ve got that authentic, quality, essence of Madrid award winning drink, Madri.
A true blessing.
Reform have to lose the argument and you do not do that by bending rules, or screaming and shouting.
Reform are the protest party but an improvement in the economy, the NHS and immigration will win the day
Whether labour can do that is the question
I don’t know whether Musk is malignant or not. Will make a view after January 20th.
Musk claims that AFD policies are not that far removed from the Democrats 🤷♂️
I’d also say there needs to be some sort of proper levelling up or some effort to revive many of these left behind towns too. Improving an economy that only works, or mainly works, for London and the South East does not help these Reform leaning red wall towns.
Spreads political misinformation: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/18/elon-musk-false-claims-cr-00195252
Promotes antisemitic content: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-antisemitic-comments-x-post-actual-truth/ and https://www.timesofisrael.com/elon-musk-says-he-will-reinstate-x-account-of-antisemite-nick-fuentes/ and https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2022-12-02/ty-article/.premium/antisemitic-posts-spike-on-twitter-since-musk-takeover/00000184-d34f-dc50-adc4-ffefed220000
Had Twitter restore accounts that had posted child pornography: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/27/twitter-csam-dom-lucre-elon-musk/
Etc.
You don’t think you’ll get any “levelling up” from Labour but you know you won’t from the Conservatives either.
Reform might offer a version of levelling up but it means money for WWC communities in the midlands and north which will mean either tax rises or more borrowing.
To be fair to Johnson (why?), Covid utterly derailed any plans he had for government, and his successors then had other things on their minds and agenda.
Would Johnson have delivered some form of “levelling up”? Perhaps; perhaps not - and it's a task for decades, not years. But I reckon he'd have had at least paid lip service to it.
Debate is one thing, but it is also about having rules which are fit for purpose, which currently we do not, and about the law being followed, which currently it is not by Musk..
We have seen Musk put out, and promote, using his platform, entirely false claims, and we have seen him maintain illegal publication of material on his in the UK in outright violation of Court Orders. In addition he deliberately manipulates his media platform to distort debate. That cannot stand.
We are also in a new hybrid war, and have seen extensive interference by foreign actors aka agents of the Russian Government, to the extent that Elections in European democracies have been heavily distorted, or even had to be cancelled to be rerun.
We need a sufficiently robust Electoral system, to withstand these pressures.
IMO currently our Starmer Government are politically too timid. The last time we had this was with the BNP doing their Polite Fascism thing, and they were taken on via both routes.
Musk lies.
He's the sort of 'man' who will lie about his own son dying in his arms. About his dad owning, then not owning, an emerald mine. He lied about Covid to try to keep his factories open.
Truth does not matter to him; all that matters is progressing his agenda. Which is fine if you are in tune with his agenda; less so if you are not...
The Conservatives have proven they will not deliver, and do not genuinely embrace, levelling up.
Labour have not.
So for someone who supports movement in that direction, it's a choice between a "Never", and a "possibly".
That's leaving aside that the Blues are utterly exhausted ... a group of headless chickens having a punch up in a cess pit, whilst the Reds are a Government, with values and policies, even with all the imperfections.
The pettiness and childishness of calling the lead caver a paedo for declining Musk's offer of a "rescue pod" told me all I needed to know about him as a person.
The latter are of course the threat to Labour and England’s version of Bundnis Wagenknecht.
It is of course completely the wrong approach as all it does is entrench welfare dependence, a huge state sector and general poverty and despair as government is disastrously bad at backing winners and amazing at strangling the entrepreneurial class who, for all their faults, are the main motor of economic development in a capitalist economy. Government is terrible at picking winners, amazing at picking losers and then sticking with them.
And that's a criticism of government generally, not any one political party - they are all terrible at it. When I worked in government, I had occasional dealings with the department at the Treasury then in charge of running some of the government's industrial investments, and I found it quite striking how everybody who worked there for more than a few months ended up convinced that, in the words of one of them, "We're a terrible shareholder" and that government had no business meddling in industry.
Levelling up/regional aid/structural funds whatever it's called is all very well as a slogan to buy some Northern votes. But it is not just useless but actively damaging as a policy. We should be helping people not regions, and the way to do that is to foster a dynamic environment nationally, with low taxes, light but effective regulation and an entrepreneurial culture. This should not be controversial - it's basic economics, validated by two centuries of experience. In growing, successful economies, people move to where the jobs are, they aren't kept in dead-end towns on life support by make-work schemes.
Neither of those fits well on a Conservative mental map of the world, and a large chunk of their support is based on a good old days theory.
Improving the road and rail infrastructure across the North, so that the cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield can operate as one economic region with the scale to compete, would not be a makework scheme.
It's fair to say that you have to work quite hard to get a justification for militaristic expansionism out of the source texts of Christianity. But that hasn't stopped people making the effort and succeeding, at least to their own satisfaction.
Limit direct government involvement to enabling roads, railways, and gigabit internet.
The rest, apart from migration, is mostly the narcissism of small differences.
To the voter, Reform offer social democracy on the cheap even more than the other parties (impossible), and low migration (probably impossible if you want the welfare state to work).
https://x.com/compubox/status/1870616060963279307
Usyk landed a lot more punches, and from the stats it’s easy to see why the judges scored it as they did.
We need some sensible small state policies - a serious small state strategy from Kemi.
Can anyone tell me off teh top of their how the various main UK political parties are organised.
Unincorporated Associations, Co-operatives, Companies Limited by Guarantee etc?
I can go and find it, but does anyone know already?
(Clearly we know that RefUK are a Limited Compavy.)
As for borrowing it’s going through the roof anyway.
https://x.com/tomhfh/status/1870580246757757306?s=61
I will be joining thousands of others at Midnight Mass on Tuesday night, at the church where I married my wife nine years ago, in one of few Islamic countries that genuinely supports religious tolerance and acceptance.
Sadly, Ed Miliband appears to be on a mission to make some of the world’s most expensive energy even more expensive, so it’s hardly surprising that manufacturing moves away.
NEW THREAD
The Midlands and North has transformed over my life time with coal, steel, manufacturing all gone, in major decline or automated to need far fewer unskilled workers. They are never coming back in those forms.
However the major cities have revived, with Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Birmingham, Sheffield etc all far better places than they were in the Eighties, largely due to the expansion of higher education and the growth of knowledge based economies and employment. It is the second and third tier towns and cities that are in decline.
Infrastructure makes a difference to levelling up, but the biggest change needed is improved education, at all levels from Preschool to Postgraduate, from technical to creative arts. That is why the funding squeeze on Universities is such a problem, and the quality squeeze even more so. We need a better trained and skilled workforce to level up these towns, then businesses will set up or move there without subsidies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7ve11lr247o
Anyone who follows knows the story, but it's good to see some more generally prominent coverage.
Again, those of us who have folllowed closely know the horrific story, but these war crimes are now getting a wider audience.
I made a new set using the newly emergent 3d print with resin method and put them on a Copart 2017 Scirocco R I have at the moment. I takes longer than the previous vinyl method but it's less fiddly and I'd rate the result slighty better. Fooled the OB who were behind me for about 5 minutes.
But I was referring to the hollowing out of manufacturing under new labour 97-10
There's no evidence for your assertion of what would work.