Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
So scrap the NI credits (which the second Wilson government introduced to expand welfare dependency) so you can't get state pension unless you have made enough NI contributions in work, otherwise you only get pension credit
Realistically nobody my age (early 30s) will be getting a state pension anyway
I think, for young people, starting in work, the govt would be far better off putting something like 5 grand into an S&P tracker and leaving it for them for 40 years to fund their retirement.
We cannot have a situation where people like me will get a pension in a few years time, on the basis that I have worked all my life and paid for others pensions so it is my turn, which is fair enough but then the next generation have to pay for ours and won;t get one at all.
How can young people support capitalism and a capitalist system if they cannot have a stake in it and it only takes from them.
It needs to be sustainable and it needs to be there for the next generations too.
They will stick it in income tax and scrap state pension.
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
So scrap the NI credits (which the second Wilson government introduced to expand welfare dependency) so you can't get state pension unless you have made enough NI contributions in work, otherwise you only get pension credit
Realistically nobody my age (early 30s) will be getting a state pension anyway
Not if you have a successful legal career, which I am sure you will. It will be means tested and for the poor and feckless only by then.
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
The unifying character here is the desire to lick the boot of authority. Authoritarians will latch onto to whichever self appointed “strong leader” is most appealing at a given time & Putin fits the bill perfectly.
They all want to break the British state to promote their revolutionary aims. Ironically precisely the sort of thing the Conservative Party was created to prevent.
Not at all. All Reform would do is restore the pre-Blairite constitutional settlement when life was far better. Blair's changes were far reaching and enormously damaging.
What do you mean by pre-Blairite constitutional settlement? He did a lot on the constitution but reversing most of the ones I can think of would surely be either near-impossible or very esoteric?
- Scottish and Welsh devolution - Good Friday agreement - abolishing (most) hereditary peers - Supreme Court and judicial appointments committee
The only 2 that seem to chime with the Reform position would be the human rights act, which was repeatedly slated for scrapping under the Tories then abandoned, and the Lisbon Treaty which is irrelevant now given we’ve left the EU.
The Constitutional Reform Act of 2005 The Human Rights Act of 1998
Both are wholly pernicious and need to, and I think will go.
Bank of England independence also has a constitutional bearing, and has been equally harmful, whilst patently failing in its stated aim to avoid economic shocks. The lack of political accountability has actually led to worse and more reckless monetary policy.
I do wonder when the Reformy types work out that all they need is different judges. Even MAGA got there in the end.
“Judge rules that drowning boat immigrants is protecting their human rights.”
I find this rather silly response somewhat at odds with your NU10K hobby horse, given that the judiciary are a key example of the type.
Judges that were not working to undermine the aims of democratically elected Governments (including this one) would be great, but we must first: 1. Remove the basis in law for the dangerous and grotesque verdicts and encroachments into policy that we're seeing 2. Ensure that the top judge is once again a member of the Government and therefore accountable to the public
With all due respect you don’t understand the legal system at all if you think re-forming the appellate committee of the House of Lords will change ANYTHING. The judges are the same, regardless of whether they sit in the Lords or in the Supreme Court. At the end of the day Parliament is still sovereign and judges can only interpret inconsistencies in the law. If you want less “judicial activism” then Parliament should write better and clearer laws. The commons literally leaves gaping gaps in legislation because they are lazy for judges to fix. All you are spouting is populist nonsense about all the solutions being easy when they are not. As usual the actual answer is hard work and actual accountability of our elected representatives.
No, it is you who is spouting lazy nonsense, lazy and innacurate. UK parliaments cannot do anything about the ECHR, whose authority is enshrined in the Human Rights Act, and now that it interprets its own remit using the living instrument doctrine, there is virtually no Government action that it could not strike down using a human rights pretext. We can do nothing except leaving the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act which is what I'm proposing.
The UK's most senior judge being part of the UK cabinet introduces a democratic accountability into the system which has now gone, and contributes to a wide sense that judges can do what they like. Personally I think parliamentary statutes are plenty clear enough, but we previously relied upon a system where judges didn't rip the piss. No judge in the 1990s would have allowed a paedophile to avoid deportation due to the negative impact that it would have on his child for example.
Sorry but you’re just wrong. Parliament can amend, repeal, and/or disapply the Human Rights Act if they want. The courts can’t stop that. If you think judicial activism didn’t happen before 1997 then you don’t know much legal history.
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
So scrap the NI credits (which the second Wilson government introduced to expand welfare dependency) so you can't get state pension unless you have made enough NI contributions in work, otherwise you only get pension credit
Realistically nobody my age (early 30s) will be getting a state pension anyway
Not if you have a successful legal career, which I am sure you will. It will be means tested and for the poor and feckless only by then.
No it will and should be only for those who have made sufficient NI contributions, the poor and feckless will be on pension credit
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
So scrap the NI credits (which the second Wilson government introduced to expand welfare dependency) so you can't get state pension unless you have made enough NI contributions in work, otherwise you only get pension credit
Realistically nobody my age (early 30s) will be getting a state pension anyway
Certainly not one consumerate with our contributions - otherwise it would be significantly bigger in real terms than the one on offer today.
Are we at the analogy of the point where they stopped being useful idiots for Mussolini in the 1920s?
"Trump got things done very quickly after his inauguration" (despite most of it being illegal) will be the 2024 "Mussolini made the trains run on time".
(Good morning everyone.)
I wonder at which point, we get the equivalent of someone proclaiming at CPAC:
“Heil Hitler! I want the world to know that I am a Jew hater!”
@viewcode may be able to tell us how close it has come.
There will be some surprises buried therein, or in NATCON, but unlikely to be fascist salutes - unless Musk or Calvin Robinson have been around
Musk's salute was at a Trump rally. Calvin Robinson's was at a Pro-Life rally.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
Which would require an unlikely GOP landslide in next year's midterms to get the 2/3 majority required in Congress to change the constitutional amendment barring a president running for a third election.
He is more likely to get the SC to agree he can just not hold another presidential election again, which there isn't a constitutional bar too, though by that unlikely point the US would be near civil war and the blue states breaking away
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
It's a bit of a headscratcher. Zelensky is a native Russian speaker and only learned Ukranian as an adult.
It's funny reading BBC articles from 2019. Lots of worries about Zelensky being a Russian puppet, and he did better in the Russian-speaking/eastern parts of Ukraine than he did elsewhere. He was also elected on an anti-corruption platform, and was pushing for a ceasefire in Donbas etc.
Z was elected on a platform of normalising relations with Russia and stamping out corruption. Epic fail on both scores. However, I think he'd be in with a fighting chance in an election as the opposition would obviously be The Chocolate King who is a known and not much liked quantity. Zaluzhny and Klitschko don't have the media owning oligarch backing which is essential to get anywhere in Ukrainian politics. Z doesn't need oligarch backing as he is one now. That's why he's dispensed with and locked up Kolomoisky who was so instrumental in propelling Z into the Marinisky Palace.
Excellent post. I'm not sure Kolomoisky is finished though. Z++ jailed him but for full effect they'd have had him whacked.
The calling of an election itself would weaken Z insofar as choices he has made as a war leader would be questioned.
What do you reckon on the idea that Z may himself have been ~KGB and that the Tories don't have a fucking clue where the real ~KGB is concerned?
Surely the election would be a “say no to the £500B deal being offered to us” versus “just take the deal and all the fringe benefits from it.” With an impoverished populace voting overwhelmingly to accept the deal?
The current leader is getting bullied into tripe for not signing a deal carving up his country’s mineral wealth, that his country will definitely sign up to in the end - so what gain is he prolonging the drama for? The USA and Russia working together clearly hold all the aces here, and will get what they want, won’t they?
https://x.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1892681372583530782 Trump’s consolidating control over economic outcomes in a way that’s functionally communist, even if the methods have evolved past the old Soviet playbook. He’s learned from history’s failures—why bother seizing factories when you can rig the game so profits flow to you and yours anyway? It’s a slicker, modern twist: control without the clunky state-ownership label..
..Trump’s sidestepping class talk—not because it’s irrelevant, but because it’s been reframed into something more visceral, more 21st-century. The wealthy dodge class to keep power quiet, but Trump flips it into a new currency: validation. He’s not promising a classless utopia like the Soviets; he’s feeding a hunger to feel superior, especially for folks—poor, undereducated—who’ve been kicked down by elites and systems. It’s still class war, just dressed up as a culture war or a knowledge flex.
Class used to be the battleground—Marx made it about workers versus owners, and the Soviets ran with it, even if they botched the execution. But today, class is a dirty word; it’s too academic, too stiff for a world of TikTok and soundbites. People don’t see themselves as "proletariat" anymore—they’re "real Americans" or "forgotten deplorables." Trump gets that. He doesn’t say, “I’ll level the economic playing field”; he says, “I’ll make you feel smarter than the snobs who look down on you.” It’s genius bait for the disenfranchised—poor folks in red states, rust-belt workers—who’ve been told they’re dumb by coastal liberals or college grads. He’s not offering them wealth; he’s offering them pride, a middle finger to the "woke" or the "experts."
...So, is this communist? In spirit. It’s a top-down power grab that exploits the masses’ grievances, like Lenin whipping up peasants against the tsar. But the Soviet endgame was a state-run economy, while Trump’s is a loyalty-run one. He’s not centralizing production; he’s centralizing attention. The wealthy stay rich (his buddies still profit), but the poor get a psychological payout instead of a material one. Communism preached equality as a lie to mask elite rule; Trump skips the lie and sells superiority straight-up. It’s evolved—less about class as a structure, more about class as a feeling.
Trump is not mimicking the USSR’s machinery, just its manipulation. He’s swapped Marx’s class lens for a reality-TV one—everyone’s a star in his show, even if the profits still pool at the top. It’s a new beast, still kicking the same old class hornet’s nest, but with a playbook the Soviets never dreamed of.
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
It's a bit of a headscratcher. Zelensky is a native Russian speaker and only learned Ukranian as an adult.
It's funny reading BBC articles from 2019. Lots of worries about Zelensky being a Russian puppet, and he did better in the Russian-speaking/eastern parts of Ukraine than he did elsewhere. He was also elected on an anti-corruption platform, and was pushing for a ceasefire in Donbas etc.
Have you got some links for the Russian puppet suggestion? That's interesting if British regime media was putting that out in 2019, when Zelensky was elected.
You are right to say Zelensky was elected on an "anti-corruption platform". For an equivalent, imagine Paul Eddington running on an "Anti Sir Humphrey" platform for the "Yes, Prime Minister Party".
To add to the comedy, Zelensky was put up by billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, who owned the TV act and the campaign. Ukraine is a country like Colombia where every campaign to replace the current administration must always say it's against corruption.
Personally I think
1. The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake, and therefore the territories should be in Russia, and
2. The ~KGB is a formidable organisation, with strong tentacles in France, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Britain, etc., etc. (did I mention Oxford, Cambridge, the City, the Temple, and Mayfair?) as well as in the USA (MAGA), and it has long been assisting the far and neo-Nazi right.
3. Zelensky may himself have been a Russian puppet and Kiev's policies from 2014-15 and through 2019 and 2022 may have amounted to a set of provocations teleguided from Moscow.
(It's quite possible 3 is not the case too. But the naive mouthy types who predominate in online discussions have probably not even considered the possibility, and their kneejerk reaction would be to respond with insults and sneers when it's raised.)
As for Tory types, they seem to be going on about "imperialism" a lot. LOL - do they have something against it? They never complain about the brain drain, the Fulbright Program, or foreign military installations on British soil. Where the Russkies are concerned, they seem to forget there's always economics involved in imperialism. Non-British versions aren't reducible to the barbarism of not being born Blightyesque. They are about profits, just as much as the British empire ever was.
The Russian government isn't aiming for Kiev-run Ukraine to be under its economic control. Not out of kindness but because it's out of reach. They're happy to let it be in the EU. They just don't want it to be in NATO.
It's the now breaking up parts of the "ex-west" [1] who are after the minerals in that region and of course they want their military there, just as Russia wants its military on the other side of the line. Seems to me they'll only manage to put a few toes in. They probably know that. But never mind. The war dividend of some grrreat weapons contracts need not require putting lotsa weapons anywhere near Ukraine. Because, Reader, those contracts are all about the money too. Internal dividends in how the home country is run may also be available.
Note
1) The "ex-west" is USA plus western Eurasia, the latter including a nuclear-armed loose-cannon fragment to the NW that was successfully split off from the EU by the ~KGB. Gotta apply Haushofer from a Beijing POV nowadays.
The referendums were fake.
Statements like "The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake," throws the rest of the post into doubt.
You should doubt everything, mate. What you mean is that it's either Crimea is forever Ukrainian and that's exactly how the population in that part of the world feels, or else your whole take on the war goes for a burton.
What do you reckon on the idea that Z may himself have been ~KGB and that the Tories don't have a fucking clue where the real ~KGB is concerned?
No fucking idea. When I lived in Russia, he was the Russophone David Mitchell and was never off NTV. He was very tight with Solovyov so he was obviously regime adjacent at that time.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
Which would require an unlikely GOP landslide in next year's midterms to get the 2/3 majority required in Congress to change the constitutional amendment barring a president running for a third election.
He is more likely to get the SC to agree he can just not hold another presidential election again, which there isn't a constitutional bar too, though by that unlikely point the US would be near civil war and the blue states breaking away
If civil war was imminent, then Trump would declare a need for emergency powers under which he is allowed to do anything. Problem solved.
There’s only 800K Catholics in Northern Ireland. No more difficult to “move to a better place better life” Northern Ireland Catholics, than two million Palestinians from the rubble of the GAZA strip?
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
Not fertile labour territory from the looks of it.
Sort of place where Labour are always going to be in a jam.
Is that THE actual Tiptree !!!!!
Cool if so.
Yes, if you go there the place smells of jam, from the giant factory
Actually quite a pedestrian result for the Tories, in a safe seat by-election where their vote share probably just reflects differential turnout. Labours performance clearly signals trouble for May; Reform did well, but given that this is Essex it doesn’t look like they are on course for the sort of stonking national result that HY keeps anticipating.
In terms of cost/benefit, and given the US export restrictions, this makes a lot of sense for China.
Samsung Foundry’s 4nm Process Sees a Surge in Orders, Achieving an 80% Yield
Korean media reports that Samsung Foundry has been delivering beyond expectations by securing a series of orders from Chinese ASIC customers with its recent 4nm process.
In particular, the media interpreted that the high profile of an AI model launched by Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has sparked a wave of enthusiastic inquiries from Chinese ASIC clients. Previously, Samsung Foundry had already gained recognition in the Chinese market by securing its first 3nm customer from China, and it is now observed that, following the DeepSeek breakthrough, Chinese AI companies are accelerating their investments, resulting in an increasing number of customers turning to Samsung Foundry once again.
The media concluded that the key to Samsung Foundry’s success in capturing customers with its 4nm process—rather than with its cutting-edge 3nm process—is none other than yield. After having raised the yield in its 4nm process to over 70% last year, the company has now succeeded in achieving a yield approaching 80%, thereby fully reestablishing its confidence in the 4nm segment. https://x.com/Jukanlosreve/status/1892424004952346920
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
Which would require an unlikely GOP landslide in next year's midterms to get the 2/3 majority required in Congress to change the constitutional amendment barring a president running for a third election.
He is more likely to get the SC to agree he can just not hold another presidential election again, which there isn't a constitutional bar too, though by that unlikely point the US would be near civil war and the blue states breaking away
If the GOP retained a simple majority in Congress and control of most state legislatures they can decide who constitutes the electoral college, hand pick them and effectively just nominate Trump for a third 4 year term via that college. There is no requirement for all American adults in the constitution to vote for President in a direct vote every 4 years, just for Presidents not to run in an election for more than 2 terms. It would be quite a stretch but the SC would have to argue the EC nominating Trump for a 3rd term was therefore not him being elected for a 3rd term
Would you like me to sort these alphabetically or group them by continent?
me: are you sure about those
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: I apologize - I should review these more carefully. Let me check each one specifically looking for the 'e' ending:
1. Frankreich (France) 2. Türkei (Turkey) 3. Ukraine (Ukraine)
These I am completely certain end in 'e'. I realize now that I made a significant error in my previous response by including many countries that don't end in 'e' in German (like Deutschland, Italien, etc.).
I should note that while I aim to be accurate with language translations, you may want to verify this list with an authoritative German language source. Would you like me to double-check any specific country names?"
This was a genuine query I had. Grok 3 was just as bad, or worse. Gemini gave me 3 countries, one of which does actually and with the letter e. ChapGPT gave me a bunch of countries that don't end in e.
The winner by a long way was Co-pilot, which gave me 5 countries, 4 of which do actually end in e. But it missed out a couple of countries including die Niederlande.
But much better just to look at list of country names in German!
I am now a granddad for the first time as of 8 this morning. Daughter has had a boy. Both seem to be fine.
So, granddad, grandpa? Difficult decisions. Is smoking a pipe now mandatory? Advice please.
Nowadays? Easy decision. Not smoking at all arond children is much the default position.
But seriously, congratulations.
Yeah, get that. What about a bunnet?
One of my grandfathers was killed in WW2 so I never met him. The other fought in WW1 and was very old when I became aware of him. I don't have much precedent to go on.
Don’t forget the open packet of Werthers Originals for them to choke on
My granddad could make a polo mint last over an hour.
Who remembers boxes of Fruit Gums, where the gums were in the shape of the fruits they represented? There was also a table of how long you could make one last. AFAIK if you made one last 60 minutes you were classed as a gumster in chief. Making sweets last as long as possible doesn’t seem a good sales tactic.
https://x.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1892681372583530782 Trump’s consolidating control over economic outcomes in a way that’s functionally communist, even if the methods have evolved past the old Soviet playbook. He’s learned from history’s failures—why bother seizing factories when you can rig the game so profits flow to you and yours anyway? It’s a slicker, modern twist: control without the clunky state-ownership label..
..Trump’s sidestepping class talk—not because it’s irrelevant, but because it’s been reframed into something more visceral, more 21st-century. The wealthy dodge class to keep power quiet, but Trump flips it into a new currency: validation. He’s not promising a classless utopia like the Soviets; he’s feeding a hunger to feel superior, especially for folks—poor, undereducated—who’ve been kicked down by elites and systems. It’s still class war, just dressed up as a culture war or a knowledge flex.
Class used to be the battleground—Marx made it about workers versus owners, and the Soviets ran with it, even if they botched the execution. But today, class is a dirty word; it’s too academic, too stiff for a world of TikTok and soundbites. People don’t see themselves as "proletariat" anymore—they’re "real Americans" or "forgotten deplorables." Trump gets that. He doesn’t say, “I’ll level the economic playing field”; he says, “I’ll make you feel smarter than the snobs who look down on you.” It’s genius bait for the disenfranchised—poor folks in red states, rust-belt workers—who’ve been told they’re dumb by coastal liberals or college grads. He’s not offering them wealth; he’s offering them pride, a middle finger to the "woke" or the "experts."
...So, is this communist? In spirit. It’s a top-down power grab that exploits the masses’ grievances, like Lenin whipping up peasants against the tsar. But the Soviet endgame was a state-run economy, while Trump’s is a loyalty-run one. He’s not centralizing production; he’s centralizing attention. The wealthy stay rich (his buddies still profit), but the poor get a psychological payout instead of a material one. Communism preached equality as a lie to mask elite rule; Trump skips the lie and sells superiority straight-up. It’s evolved—less about class as a structure, more about class as a feeling.
Trump is not mimicking the USSR’s machinery, just its manipulation. He’s swapped Marx’s class lens for a reality-TV one—everyone’s a star in his show, even if the profits still pool at the top. It’s a new beast, still kicking the same old class hornet’s nest, but with a playbook the Soviets never dreamed of.
"Lenin whipping up peasants against the tsar." Lol. Read a book on the period.
Trump certainly appeals to the uneducated "little man" with an inferiority complex and not much to be proud of other than not being descended from slaves. Just as the US regime has done for a long while - see the gun culture etc. etc. - but more so. No doubt about that. It's all about the wrestling. There - I've made Andrew Perpetua's point without all the ignorant comparisons and contrasts. State versus loyalty. Structure versus feeling, FFS. Don't be too impressed by this, @NigelB and @viewcode.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
Which would require an unlikely GOP landslide in next year's midterms to get the 2/3 majority required in Congress to change the constitutional amendment barring a president running for a third election.
He is more likely to get the SC to agree he can just not hold another presidential election again, which there isn't a constitutional bar too, though by that unlikely point the US would be near civil war and the blue states breaking away
If civil war was imminent, then Trump would declare a need for emergency powers under which he is allowed to do anything. Problem solved.
Which would also require the military's support, so still likely civil war as not all the military would agree as they take an oath to the constitution and the President
After 11 weeks in Kiwiland, a real change of pace and my first visit here in 19 years. Capitalism reigns supreme here but it works because society seems so well ordered. While enjoying my SGD 6 chicken and curry rice just now, I mused on the fact the basic shop security mechanisms you see in most British large stores are absent here.
We have shopping centres on either side of our hotel - both are replete with eateries, many of which look empty most of the time. Western food is overpriced, the local Malay and Indonesian food much cheaper and decent.
The MRT would win no prizes for comfort but a train every 4-5 minutes works. The Gardens by the Bay are spectacular.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
The next question is will anyone be allowed to run against him, or is it just a confirmatory re-election.......
Getting ahead of ourselves. Reality is we have had peak Trump. We have had peak MAGA. The season of disruption and Populism is coming to an end all over the world in the coming years.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
Not fertile labour territory from the looks of it.
Sort of place where Labour are always going to be in a jam.
Is that THE actual Tiptree !!!!!
Cool if so.
Yes, if you go there the place smells of jam, from the giant factory
Actually quite a pedestrian result for the Tories, in a safe seat by-election where their vote share probably just reflects differential turnout. Labours performance clearly signals trouble for May; Reform did well, but given that this is Essex it doesn’t look like they are on course for the sort of stonking national result that HY keeps anticipating.
Labour losing its majority after a landslide the previous GE and a possible Tory and Reform government replacing it would be an unprecedented swing after only one term of a party in government in UK electoral history
https://x.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1892681372583530782 Trump’s consolidating control over economic outcomes in a way that’s functionally communist, even if the methods have evolved past the old Soviet playbook. He’s learned from history’s failures—why bother seizing factories when you can rig the game so profits flow to you and yours anyway? It’s a slicker, modern twist: control without the clunky state-ownership label..
..Trump’s sidestepping class talk—not because it’s irrelevant, but because it’s been reframed into something more visceral, more 21st-century. The wealthy dodge class to keep power quiet, but Trump flips it into a new currency: validation. He’s not promising a classless utopia like the Soviets; he’s feeding a hunger to feel superior, especially for folks—poor, undereducated—who’ve been kicked down by elites and systems. It’s still class war, just dressed up as a culture war or a knowledge flex.
Class used to be the battleground—Marx made it about workers versus owners, and the Soviets ran with it, even if they botched the execution. But today, class is a dirty word; it’s too academic, too stiff for a world of TikTok and soundbites. People don’t see themselves as "proletariat" anymore—they’re "real Americans" or "forgotten deplorables." Trump gets that. He doesn’t say, “I’ll level the economic playing field”; he says, “I’ll make you feel smarter than the snobs who look down on you.” It’s genius bait for the disenfranchised—poor folks in red states, rust-belt workers—who’ve been told they’re dumb by coastal liberals or college grads. He’s not offering them wealth; he’s offering them pride, a middle finger to the "woke" or the "experts."
...So, is this communist? In spirit. It’s a top-down power grab that exploits the masses’ grievances, like Lenin whipping up peasants against the tsar. But the Soviet endgame was a state-run economy, while Trump’s is a loyalty-run one. He’s not centralizing production; he’s centralizing attention. The wealthy stay rich (his buddies still profit), but the poor get a psychological payout instead of a material one. Communism preached equality as a lie to mask elite rule; Trump skips the lie and sells superiority straight-up. It’s evolved—less about class as a structure, more about class as a feeling.
Trump is not mimicking the USSR’s machinery, just its manipulation. He’s swapped Marx’s class lens for a reality-TV one—everyone’s a star in his show, even if the profits still pool at the top. It’s a new beast, still kicking the same old class hornet’s nest, but with a playbook the Soviets never dreamed of.
"Lenin whipping up peasants against the tsar." Lol. Read a book on the period.
Trump certainly appeals to the uneducated "little man" with an inferiority complex. Just as the US regime has done for a long while - see the gun culture etc. etc. - but more so. No doubt about that. It's all about the wrestling. There - I've made Andrew Perpetua's point without all the ignorant comparisons and contrasts. State versus loyalty. Structure versus feeling, FFS. Don't be too impressed by this, @NigelB and @viewcode.
If you explained it in a less sardonic manner, I might understand you better. Genuinely. I am always keen to learn, except these days I'm prone to forget it within the month ☹️
Would you like me to sort these alphabetically or group them by continent?
me: are you sure about those
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: I apologize - I should review these more carefully. Let me check each one specifically looking for the 'e' ending:
1. Frankreich (France) 2. Türkei (Turkey) 3. Ukraine (Ukraine)
These I am completely certain end in 'e'. I realize now that I made a significant error in my previous response by including many countries that don't end in 'e' in German (like Deutschland, Italien, etc.).
I should note that while I aim to be accurate with language translations, you may want to verify this list with an authoritative German language source. Would you like me to double-check any specific country names?"
This was a genuine query I had. Grok 3 was just as bad, or worse. Gemini gave me 3 countries, one of which does actually and with the letter e. ChapGPT gave me a bunch of countries that don't end in e.
The winner by a long way was Co-pilot, which gave me 5 countries, 4 of which do actually end in e. But it missed out a couple of countries including die Niederlande.
But much better just to look at list of country names in German!
Those programs often amaze by producing detailed analysis within seconds, but they can also stun by making obvious gross errors. The worry is the more minor errors buried within the apparently detailed analysis.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
Which would require an unlikely GOP landslide in next year's midterms to get the 2/3 majority required in Congress to change the constitutional amendment barring a president running for a third election.
He is more likely to get the SC to agree he can just not hold another presidential election again, which there isn't a constitutional bar too, though by that unlikely point the US would be near civil war and the blue states breaking away
If civil war was imminent, then Trump would declare a need for emergency powers under which he is allowed to do anything. Problem solved.
Which would also require the military's support, so still likely civil war as not all the military would agree as they take an oath to the constitution and the President
Hegseth is this week working towards removing the higher echelons of military and replacing with MAGA supporters.
As for the 2/3 in congress: they will vote for it under extreme duress imho.
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
Not fertile labour territory from the looks of it.
Sort of place where Labour are always going to be in a jam.
Is that THE actual Tiptree !!!!!
Cool if so.
Yes, if you go there the place smells of jam, from the giant factory
Actually quite a pedestrian result for the Tories, in a safe seat by-election where their vote share probably just reflects differential turnout. Labours performance clearly signals trouble for May; Reform did well, but given that this is Essex it doesn’t look like they are on course for the sort of stonking national result that HY keeps anticipating.
Labour losing its majority after a landslide the previous GE and a possible Tory and Reform government replacing it would be an unprecedented swing after only one term of a party in government in UK electoral history
The Little Scarlet jam is worth the journey alone.
Extrapolating GE results from a swing in a local Council by-election is the sort of thing Liberal Democrats used to do. It shows the Stygian depths to which the Conservative Party has now sunk it is doing the same.
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
The unifying character here is the desire to lick the boot of authority. Authoritarians will latch onto to whichever self appointed “strong leader” is most appealing at a given time & Putin fits the bill perfectly.
They all want to break the British state to promote their revolutionary aims. Ironically precisely the sort of thing the Conservative Party was created to prevent.
Not at all. All Reform would do is restore the pre-Blairite constitutional settlement when life was far better. Blair's changes were far reaching and enormously damaging.
What do you mean by pre-Blairite constitutional settlement? He did a lot on the constitution but reversing most of the ones I can think of would surely be either near-impossible or very esoteric?
- Scottish and Welsh devolution - Good Friday agreement - abolishing (most) hereditary peers - Supreme Court and judicial appointments committee
The only 2 that seem to chime with the Reform position would be the human rights act, which was repeatedly slated for scrapping under the Tories then abandoned, and the Lisbon Treaty which is irrelevant now given we’ve left the EU.
The Constitutional Reform Act of 2005 The Human Rights Act of 1998
Both are wholly pernicious and need to, and I think will go.
Bank of England independence also has a constitutional bearing, and has been equally harmful, whilst patently failing in its stated aim to avoid economic shocks. The lack of political accountability has actually led to worse and more reckless monetary policy.
I do wonder when the Reformy types work out that all they need is different judges. Even MAGA got there in the end.
“Judge rules that drowning boat immigrants is protecting their human rights.”
I find this rather silly response somewhat at odds with your NU10K hobby horse, given that the judiciary are a key example of the type.
Judges that were not working to undermine the aims of democratically elected Governments (including this one) would be great, but we must first: 1. Remove the basis in law for the dangerous and grotesque verdicts and encroachments into policy that we're seeing 2. Ensure that the top judge is once again a member of the Government and therefore accountable to the public
With all due respect you don’t understand the legal system at all if you think re-forming the appellate committee of the House of Lords will change ANYTHING. The judges are the same, regardless of whether they sit in the Lords or in the Supreme Court. At the end of the day Parliament is still sovereign and judges can only interpret inconsistencies in the law. If you want less “judicial activism” then Parliament should write better and clearer laws. The commons literally leaves gaping gaps in legislation because they are lazy for judges to fix. All you are spouting is populist nonsense about all the solutions being easy when they are not. As usual the actual answer is hard work and actual accountability of our elected representatives.
No, it is you who is spouting lazy nonsense, lazy and innacurate. UK parliaments cannot do anything about the ECHR, whose authority is enshrined in the Human Rights Act, and now that it interprets its own remit using the living instrument doctrine, there is virtually no Government action that it could not strike down using a human rights pretext. We can do nothing except leaving the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act which is what I'm proposing.
The UK's most senior judge being part of the UK cabinet introduces a democratic accountability into the system which has now gone, and contributes to a wide sense that judges can do what they like. Personally I think parliamentary statutes are plenty clear enough, but we previously relied upon a system where judges didn't rip the piss. No judge in the 1990s would have allowed a paedophile to avoid deportation due to the negative impact that it would have on his child for example.
Sorry but you’re just wrong. Parliament can amend, repeal, and/or disapply the Human Rights Act if they want. The courts can’t stop that. If you think judicial activism didn’t happen before 1997 then you don’t know much legal history.
Yes, I know we can repeal it ducks, that's exactly what I'm suggesting!
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
The next question is will anyone be allowed to run against him, or is it just a confirmatory re-election.......
Getting ahead of ourselves. Reality is we have had peak Trump. We have had peak MAGA. The season of disruption and Populism is coming to an end all over the world in the coming years.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
Amazing people are still blind to what is happening. The US is on a short path to dictatorship.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
The next question is will anyone be allowed to run against him, or is it just a confirmatory re-election.......
Getting ahead of ourselves. Reality is we have had peak Trump. We have had peak MAGA. The season of disruption and Populism is coming to an end all over the world in the coming years.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
Amazing people are still blind to what is happening. The US is on a short path to dictatorship.
Exactly.
It may be stopped but the hour is late and where is the kick-back?
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
Not fertile labour territory from the looks of it.
Sort of place where Labour are always going to be in a jam.
Is that THE actual Tiptree !!!!!
Cool if so.
Yes, if you go there the place smells of jam, from the giant factory
Actually quite a pedestrian result for the Tories, in a safe seat by-election where their vote share probably just reflects differential turnout. Labours performance clearly signals trouble for May; Reform did well, but given that this is Essex it doesn’t look like they are on course for the sort of stonking national result that HY keeps anticipating.
Labour losing its majority after a landslide the previous GE and a possible Tory and Reform government replacing it would be an unprecedented swing after only one term of a party in government in UK electoral history
The Little Scarlet jam is worth the journey alone.
Extrapolating GE results from a swing in a local Council by-election is the sort of thing Liberal Democrats used to do. It shows the Stygian depths to which the Conservative Party has now sunk it is doing the same.
The Tiptree loganberry jam is the very tippermost of the toppermost.
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
The unifying character here is the desire to lick the boot of authority. Authoritarians will latch onto to whichever self appointed “strong leader” is most appealing at a given time & Putin fits the bill perfectly.
They all want to break the British state to promote their revolutionary aims. Ironically precisely the sort of thing the Conservative Party was created to prevent.
Not at all. All Reform would do is restore the pre-Blairite constitutional settlement when life was far better. Blair's changes were far reaching and enormously damaging.
What do you mean by pre-Blairite constitutional settlement? He did a lot on the constitution but reversing most of the ones I can think of would surely be either near-impossible or very esoteric?
- Scottish and Welsh devolution - Good Friday agreement - abolishing (most) hereditary peers - Supreme Court and judicial appointments committee
The only 2 that seem to chime with the Reform position would be the human rights act, which was repeatedly slated for scrapping under the Tories then abandoned, and the Lisbon Treaty which is irrelevant now given we’ve left the EU.
The Constitutional Reform Act of 2005 The Human Rights Act of 1998
Both are wholly pernicious and need to, and I think will go.
Bank of England independence also has a constitutional bearing, and has been equally harmful, whilst patently failing in its stated aim to avoid economic shocks. The lack of political accountability has actually led to worse and more reckless monetary policy.
I do wonder when the Reformy types work out that all they need is different judges. Even MAGA got there in the end.
“Judge rules that drowning boat immigrants is protecting their human rights.”
I find this rather silly response somewhat at odds with your NU10K hobby horse, given that the judiciary are a key example of the type.
Judges that were not working to undermine the aims of democratically elected Governments (including this one) would be great, but we must first: 1. Remove the basis in law for the dangerous and grotesque verdicts and encroachments into policy that we're seeing 2. Ensure that the top judge is once again a member of the Government and therefore accountable to the public
With all due respect you don’t understand the legal system at all if you think re-forming the appellate committee of the House of Lords will change ANYTHING. The judges are the same, regardless of whether they sit in the Lords or in the Supreme Court. At the end of the day Parliament is still sovereign and judges can only interpret inconsistencies in the law. If you want less “judicial activism” then Parliament should write better and clearer laws. The commons literally leaves gaping gaps in legislation because they are lazy for judges to fix. All you are spouting is populist nonsense about all the solutions being easy when they are not. As usual the actual answer is hard work and actual accountability of our elected representatives.
No, it is you who is spouting lazy nonsense, lazy and innacurate. UK parliaments cannot do anything about the ECHR, whose authority is enshrined in the Human Rights Act, and now that it interprets its own remit using the living instrument doctrine, there is virtually no Government action that it could not strike down using a human rights pretext. We can do nothing except leaving the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act which is what I'm proposing.
The UK's most senior judge being part of the UK cabinet introduces a democratic accountability into the system which has now gone, and contributes to a wide sense that judges can do what they like. Personally I think parliamentary statutes are plenty clear enough, but we previously relied upon a system where judges didn't rip the piss. No judge in the 1990s would have allowed a paedophile to avoid deportation due to the negative impact that it would have on his child for example.
Sorry but you’re just wrong. Parliament can amend, repeal, and/or disapply the Human Rights Act if they want. The courts can’t stop that. If you think judicial activism didn’t happen before 1997 then you don’t know much legal history.
I think this came up in a previous thread, but I could never tell whether Lord Atkins identified the neighbour principle, which he maintained existed at common law, or whether he was just dead keen for it and waiting for the moment (the right case) where he could spring it on the world. I've heard both views expressed and I suppose the fact that it's difficult to tell speaks to his skill.
Of course, the issue is that people like judicial activism they agree with and they dislike judicial activism they disagree with.
After 11 weeks in Kiwiland, a real change of pace and my first visit here in 19 years. Capitalism reigns supreme here but it works because society seems so well ordered. While enjoying my SGD 6 chicken and curry rice just now, I mused on the fact the basic shop security mechanisms you see in most British large stores are absent here.
We have shopping centres on either side of our hotel - both are replete with eateries, many of which look empty most of the time. Western food is overpriced, the local Malay and Indonesian food much cheaper and decent.
The MRT would win no prizes for comfort but a train every 4-5 minutes works. The Gardens by the Bay are spectacular.
I spent a week in Singapore back in the early 1990s, as part of my MBA course, during which we had the chance to tour and meet all sorts of local businesses, large and small. And of course all of us young aspiring businesspeople returned to write essays about how competitive their business model was, and how with employees prepared to sleep in the factory, it would be difficult for the West to compete. Yet not that long after, the Asian economies collapsed; a development that, with Leon-like blindness to the bigger picture, none of us had the insight to foresee.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
Which would require an unlikely GOP landslide in next year's midterms to get the 2/3 majority required in Congress to change the constitutional amendment barring a president running for a third election.
He is more likely to get the SC to agree he can just not hold another presidential election again, which there isn't a constitutional bar too, though by that unlikely point the US would be near civil war and the blue states breaking away
If civil war was imminent, then Trump would declare a need for emergency powers under which he is allowed to do anything. Problem solved.
Wouldn’t Zelenskyy have something to say about that?
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
The next question is will anyone be allowed to run against him, or is it just a confirmatory re-election.......
Getting ahead of ourselves. Reality is we have had peak Trump. We have had peak MAGA. The season of disruption and Populism is coming to an end all over the world in the coming years.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
Amazing people are still blind to what is happening. The US is on a short path to dictatorship.
You need to be more precise. What type of regime are you predicting and how do you get from here to there? Trump doing things you don't like or pushing the limits of what his office can do does not constitute a dictatorship.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
The next question is will anyone be allowed to run against him, or is it just a confirmatory re-election.......
Getting ahead of ourselves. Reality is we have had peak Trump. We have had peak MAGA. The season of disruption and Populism is coming to an end all over the world in the coming years.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
Amazing people are still blind to what is happening. The US is on a short path to dictatorship.
Either outcome is possible. I think it's more notable that anyone thinks it certain which way things will tip.
My WAG is that it's around 50/50.
On democracy's side is that the US system still has considerable inertia built in to it, and Trump is fairly likely to be quite unpopular come the midterms. Against that is the legal loophole Trump is exploiting (that the courts have no good way to check him when he chooses to ignore the law, and he knows it), and the craven compliance of the Republicans in Congress.
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
So scrap the NI credits (which the second Wilson government introduced to expand welfare dependency) so you can't get state pension unless you have made enough NI contributions in work, otherwise you only get pension credit
What about your comments about having more babies. So the non-working mother will be penalised for staying at home. You really should avoid commenting on this area unless you understand how it all works.
When you have finally worked it out, you might actually get a job in government explaining it to them (and Kemi)
After 11 weeks in Kiwiland, a real change of pace and my first visit here in 19 years. Capitalism reigns supreme here but it works because society seems so well ordered. While enjoying my SGD 6 chicken and curry rice just now, I mused on the fact the basic shop security mechanisms you see in most British large stores are absent here.
We have shopping centres on either side of our hotel - both are replete with eateries, many of which look empty most of the time. Western food is overpriced, the local Malay and Indonesian food much cheaper and decent.
The MRT would win no prizes for comfort but a train every 4-5 minutes works. The Gardens by the Bay are spectacular.
I spent a week in Singapore back in the early 1990s, as part of my MBA course, during which we had the chance to tour and meet all sorts of local businesses, large and small. And of course all of us young aspiring businesspeople returned to write essays about how competitive their business model was, and how with employees prepared to sleep in the factory, it would be difficult for the West to compete. Yet not that long after, the Asian economies collapsed; a development that, with Leon-like blindness to the bigger picture, none of us had the insight to foresee.
Collapsed? A momentary pause more like. Their GDP per capita has grown by a factor of four since 2000. The UK has not even doubled since then.
There are some suggestions that Trump will put sanctions on Zelensky and his inner circle.
The US constitution is supposed to be all checks and balances, such that an individual elected as president simply can’t go doing all sorts of mad stuff without a lot of other people getting a say.
How did the safeguards within the US constitution - which prevented even presidents with noble objectives, like Obama, achieving very much - suddenly get overridden?
Would you like me to sort these alphabetically or group them by continent?
me: are you sure about those
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: I apologize - I should review these more carefully. Let me check each one specifically looking for the 'e' ending:
1. Frankreich (France) 2. Türkei (Turkey) 3. Ukraine (Ukraine)
These I am completely certain end in 'e'. I realize now that I made a significant error in my previous response by including many countries that don't end in 'e' in German (like Deutschland, Italien, etc.).
I should note that while I aim to be accurate with language translations, you may want to verify this list with an authoritative German language source. Would you like me to double-check any specific country names?"
This was a genuine query I had. Grok 3 was just as bad, or worse. Gemini gave me 3 countries, one of which does actually and with the letter e. ChapGPT gave me a bunch of countries that don't end in e.
The winner by a long way was Co-pilot, which gave me 5 countries, 4 of which do actually end in e. But it missed out a couple of countries including die Niederlande.
But much better just to look at list of country names in German!
Those programs often amaze by producing detailed analysis within seconds, but they can also stun by making obvious gross errors. The worry is the more minor errors buried within the apparently detailed analysis.
Someone asked me why 'die Ukraine' is feminine in German. And I thought about other feminine countries die Türkei, die Schweiz, die Slowakei etc. I thought, OK the ones ending in 'ei' are feminine, which makes sense as words in German with the suffix 'ei' are feminine. So I figured maybe die Ukraine is feminine because most German words ending in 'e' are feminine. But the only other country I could think of ending in 'e' was die Niederlande, which is no help because it is plural. Google couldn't help, but I though it was the kind of question AI should be able to answer, but obviously looking at a list is much better.
You are right - if AI had given me eg just die Ukraine and die Niederlande I would have assumed that these are really the only ones, but there are a few others - Chile, Belize, Elfenbeinküste etc. It was only because the AIs weirdly gave me countries that don't end in e that I knew that they were wrong.
I am now a granddad for the first time as of 8 this morning. Daughter has had a boy. Both seem to be fine.
So, granddad, grandpa? Difficult decisions. Is smoking a pipe now mandatory? Advice please.
Nowadays? Easy decision. Not smoking at all arond children is much the default position.
But seriously, congratulations.
Yeah, get that. What about a bunnet?
One of my grandfathers was killed in WW2 so I never met him. The other fought in WW1 and was very old when I became aware of him. I don't have much precedent to go on.
Harley Davidson, RFK jr style guns and Trumpery in my recent experience. May not be quite your cup of tea..
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
The next question is will anyone be allowed to run against him, or is it just a confirmatory re-election.......
Getting ahead of ourselves. Reality is we have had peak Trump. We have had peak MAGA. The season of disruption and Populism is coming to an end all over the world in the coming years.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
Amazing people are still blind to what is happening. The US is on a short path to dictatorship.
Tackle the points I made then, rather than being so hysterical.
historic erosion of income put Trump in, not popular support. He didn’t fight and win on what he is actually doing. And raising to the ground only works for you if you build back better than before. Conclusion - unless he can stop competitive elections and a free media by 2026 and 2028, Trump political power is toast.
Then there is MAGA, and prolonging of dictorial style beyond Trump. It’s built around Trumps charisma, no Trump, no charismatic leader, no MAGA influence.
And then there is how this “disruption” stuff is happening worldwide. Like it can go on and on forever? Or for everything there is a season, a flavour of the month, that doesn’t satisfy the human psyche that soon turns away wanting something else, something very different.
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
So scrap the NI credits (which the second Wilson government introduced to expand welfare dependency) so you can't get state pension unless you have made enough NI contributions in work, otherwise you only get pension credit
What about your comments about having more babies. So the non-working mother will be penalised for staying at home. You really should avoid commenting on this area unless you understand how it all works.
When you have finally worked it out, you might actually get a job in government explaining it to them (and Kemi)
As I said, child benefit can be increased from the savings (most non working mothers will either have a husband with a fat pension and high income or work part time and still pay NI contributions anyway as I also said).
https://x.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1892681372583530782 Trump’s consolidating control over economic outcomes in a way that’s functionally communist, even if the methods have evolved past the old Soviet playbook. He’s learned from history’s failures—why bother seizing factories when you can rig the game so profits flow to you and yours anyway? It’s a slicker, modern twist: control without the clunky state-ownership label..
..Trump’s sidestepping class talk—not because it’s irrelevant, but because it’s been reframed into something more visceral, more 21st-century. The wealthy dodge class to keep power quiet, but Trump flips it into a new currency: validation. He’s not promising a classless utopia like the Soviets; he’s feeding a hunger to feel superior, especially for folks—poor, undereducated—who’ve been kicked down by elites and systems. It’s still class war, just dressed up as a culture war or a knowledge flex.
Class used to be the battleground—Marx made it about workers versus owners, and the Soviets ran with it, even if they botched the execution. But today, class is a dirty word; it’s too academic, too stiff for a world of TikTok and soundbites. People don’t see themselves as "proletariat" anymore—they’re "real Americans" or "forgotten deplorables." Trump gets that. He doesn’t say, “I’ll level the economic playing field”; he says, “I’ll make you feel smarter than the snobs who look down on you.” It’s genius bait for the disenfranchised—poor folks in red states, rust-belt workers—who’ve been told they’re dumb by coastal liberals or college grads. He’s not offering them wealth; he’s offering them pride, a middle finger to the "woke" or the "experts."
...So, is this communist? In spirit. It’s a top-down power grab that exploits the masses’ grievances, like Lenin whipping up peasants against the tsar. But the Soviet endgame was a state-run economy, while Trump’s is a loyalty-run one. He’s not centralizing production; he’s centralizing attention. The wealthy stay rich (his buddies still profit), but the poor get a psychological payout instead of a material one. Communism preached equality as a lie to mask elite rule; Trump skips the lie and sells superiority straight-up. It’s evolved—less about class as a structure, more about class as a feeling.
Trump is not mimicking the USSR’s machinery, just its manipulation. He’s swapped Marx’s class lens for a reality-TV one—everyone’s a star in his show, even if the profits still pool at the top. It’s a new beast, still kicking the same old class hornet’s nest, but with a playbook the Soviets never dreamed of.
"Lenin whipping up peasants against the tsar." Lol. Read a book on the period.
Trump certainly appeals to the uneducated "little man" with an inferiority complex and not much to be proud of other than not being descended from slaves. Just as the US regime has done for a long while - see the gun culture etc. etc. - but more so. No doubt about that. It's all about the wrestling. There - I've made Andrew Perpetua's point without all the ignorant comparisons and contrasts. State versus loyalty. Structure versus feeling, FFS. Don't be too impressed by this, @NigelB and @viewcode.
The peasants never got any say in the tragedy that befell their country, as they transitioned from one form of dictatorship to another. They were merely its victims, before and after.
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
It's a bit of a headscratcher. Zelensky is a native Russian speaker and only learned Ukranian as an adult.
It's funny reading BBC articles from 2019. Lots of worries about Zelensky being a Russian puppet, and he did better in the Russian-speaking/eastern parts of Ukraine than he did elsewhere. He was also elected on an anti-corruption platform, and was pushing for a ceasefire in Donbas etc.
Have you got some links for the Russian puppet suggestion? That's interesting if British regime media was putting that out in 2019, when Zelensky was elected.
You are right to say Zelensky was elected on an "anti-corruption platform". For an equivalent, imagine Paul Eddington running on an "Anti Sir Humphrey" platform for the "Yes, Prime Minister Party".
To add to the comedy, Zelensky was put up by billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, who owned the TV act and the campaign. Ukraine is a country like Colombia where every campaign to replace the current administration must always say it's against corruption.
Personally I think
1. The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake, and therefore the territories should be in Russia, and
2. The ~KGB is a formidable organisation, with strong tentacles in France, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Britain, etc., etc. (did I mention Oxford, Cambridge, the City, the Temple, and Mayfair?) as well as in the USA (MAGA), and it has long been assisting the far and neo-Nazi right.
3. Zelensky may himself have been a Russian puppet and Kiev's policies from 2014-15 and through 2019 and 2022 may have amounted to a set of provocations teleguided from Moscow.
(It's quite possible 3 is not the case too. But the naive mouthy types who predominate in online discussions have probably not even considered the possibility, and their kneejerk reaction would be to respond with insults and sneers when it's raised.)
As for Tory types, they seem to be going on about "imperialism" a lot. LOL - do they have something against it? They never complain about the brain drain, the Fulbright Program, or foreign military installations on British soil. Where the Russkies are concerned, they seem to forget there's always economics involved in imperialism. Non-British versions aren't reducible to the barbarism of not being born Blightyesque. They are about profits, just as much as the British empire ever was.
The Russian government isn't aiming for Kiev-run Ukraine to be under its economic control. Not out of kindness but because it's out of reach. They're happy to let it be in the EU. They just don't want it to be in NATO.
It's the now breaking up parts of the "ex-west" [1] who are after the minerals in that region and of course they want their military there, just as Russia wants its military on the other side of the line. Seems to me they'll only manage to put a few toes in. They probably know that. But never mind. The war dividend of some grrreat weapons contracts need not require putting lotsa weapons anywhere near Ukraine. Because, Reader, those contracts are all about the money too. Internal dividends in how the home country is run may also be available.
Note
1) The "ex-west" is USA plus western Eurasia, the latter including a nuclear-armed loose-cannon fragment to the NW that was successfully split off from the EU by the ~KGB. Gotta apply Haushofer from a Beijing POV nowadays.
The referendums were fake.
Statements like "The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake," throws the rest of the post into doubt.
You should doubt everything, mate. What you mean is that it's either Crimea is forever Ukrainian and that's exactly how the population in that part of the world feels, or else your whole take on the war goes for a burton.
No.
People are perfectly willing to change their minds. There is the *chance* that the populations in the areas that were under occupation had legitimately changed their views.
But:
*) The evidence of the earlier referendum was fairly solid. The gap between the referenda votes was rather large. Was there that much change? *) The referenda were held under military occupation. It was not free and fair. *) Many Ukrainian citizens of the area could not vote, either because they had fled, their properties requisitioned, imprisonment, or forced movement into Russia. *) There is plenty of evidence that the voters were somewhat *encouraged* to vote by Russian soldiers. *) The evidence from the way Ukraine has been fighting is that Ukrainians are not pro-Russian, to a very large degree.
All of these, and probably more, indicate that the Russian referenda is as bogus as they possibly can be.
Would you like me to sort these alphabetically or group them by continent?
me: are you sure about those
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: I apologize - I should review these more carefully. Let me check each one specifically looking for the 'e' ending:
1. Frankreich (France) 2. Türkei (Turkey) 3. Ukraine (Ukraine)
These I am completely certain end in 'e'. I realize now that I made a significant error in my previous response by including many countries that don't end in 'e' in German (like Deutschland, Italien, etc.).
I should note that while I aim to be accurate with language translations, you may want to verify this list with an authoritative German language source. Would you like me to double-check any specific country names?"
This was a genuine query I had. Grok 3 was just as bad, or worse. Gemini gave me 3 countries, one of which does actually and with the letter e. ChapGPT gave me a bunch of countries that don't end in e.
The winner by a long way was Co-pilot, which gave me 5 countries, 4 of which do actually end in e. But it missed out a couple of countries including die Niederlande.
But much better just to look at list of country names in German!
Those programs often amaze by producing detailed analysis within seconds, but they can also stun by making obvious gross errors. The worry is the more minor errors buried within the apparently detailed analysis.
The problem with AI is that people see them as the final answer when in reality they are the first attempt of a graduate trainee who may (or may not) know the broad picture but really doesn't know the minutia.
I.e. it will be obvious in seconds if they've gone down the wrong track but you still need to check the details for assumptions that derailed the final answer into something that's wrong but looks right.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
The next question is will anyone be allowed to run against him, or is it just a confirmatory re-election.......
Getting ahead of ourselves. Reality is we have had peak Trump. We have had peak MAGA. The season of disruption and Populism is coming to an end all over the world in the coming years.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
Amazing people are still blind to what is happening. The US is on a short path to dictatorship.
Either outcome is possible. I think it's more notable that anyone thinks it certain which way things will tip.
My WAG is that it's around 50/50.
On democracy's side is that the US system still has considerable inertia built in to it, and Trump is fairly likely to be quite unpopular come the midterms. Against that is the legal loophole Trump is exploiting (that the courts have no good way to check him when he chooses to ignore the law, and he knows it), and the craven compliance of the Republicans in Congress.
Trump needs a 2/3 majority though to change the constitution to enable him to be elected for a third term after a second 4 year term.
Indeed if the Democrats regain Congress in the midterms he is more likely to be impeached than be able to think of running for a third term. if the Democrats get a majority of any size in the House in 2026 it is 99% likely they will vote to impeach Trump again even if it is unlikely he is convicted unless they also get a landslide in the Senate too given conviction needs a 2/3 majority even if impeachment just needs simple majority
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
It's a bit of a headscratcher. Zelensky is a native Russian speaker and only learned Ukranian as an adult.
It's funny reading BBC articles from 2019. Lots of worries about Zelensky being a Russian puppet, and he did better in the Russian-speaking/eastern parts of Ukraine than he did elsewhere. He was also elected on an anti-corruption platform, and was pushing for a ceasefire in Donbas etc.
Have you got some links for the Russian puppet suggestion? That's interesting if British regime media was putting that out in 2019, when Zelensky was elected.
You are right to say Zelensky was elected on an "anti-corruption platform". For an equivalent, imagine Paul Eddington running on an "Anti Sir Humphrey" platform for the "Yes, Prime Minister Party".
To add to the comedy, Zelensky was put up by billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, who owned the TV act and the campaign. Ukraine is a country like Colombia where every campaign to replace the current administration must always say it's against corruption.
Personally I think
1. The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake, and therefore the territories should be in Russia, and
2. The ~KGB is a formidable organisation, with strong tentacles in France, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Britain, etc., etc. (did I mention Oxford, Cambridge, the City, the Temple, and Mayfair?) as well as in the USA (MAGA), and it has long been assisting the far and neo-Nazi right.
3. Zelensky may himself have been a Russian puppet and Kiev's policies from 2014-15 and through 2019 and 2022 may have amounted to a set of provocations teleguided from Moscow.
(It's quite possible 3 is not the case too. But the naive mouthy types who predominate in online discussions have probably not even considered the possibility, and their kneejerk reaction would be to respond with insults and sneers when it's raised.)
As for Tory types, they seem to be going on about "imperialism" a lot. LOL - do they have something against it? They never complain about the brain drain, the Fulbright Program, or foreign military installations on British soil. Where the Russkies are concerned, they seem to forget there's always economics involved in imperialism. Non-British versions aren't reducible to the barbarism of not being born Blightyesque. They are about profits, just as much as the British empire ever was.
The Russian government isn't aiming for Kiev-run Ukraine to be under its economic control. Not out of kindness but because it's out of reach. They're happy to let it be in the EU. They just don't want it to be in NATO.
It's the now breaking up parts of the "ex-west" [1] who are after the minerals in that region and of course they want their military there, just as Russia wants its military on the other side of the line. Seems to me they'll only manage to put a few toes in. They probably know that. But never mind. The war dividend of some grrreat weapons contracts need not require putting lotsa weapons anywhere near Ukraine. Because, Reader, those contracts are all about the money too. Internal dividends in how the home country is run may also be available.
Note
1) The "ex-west" is USA plus western Eurasia, the latter including a nuclear-armed loose-cannon fragment to the NW that was successfully split off from the EU by the ~KGB. Gotta apply Haushofer from a Beijing POV nowadays.
The referendums were fake.
Statements like "The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake," throws the rest of the post into doubt.
You should doubt everything, mate. What you mean is that it's either Crimea is forever Ukrainian and that's exactly how the population in that part of the world feels, or else your whole take on the war goes for a burton.
What do you reckon on the idea that Z may himself have been ~KGB and that the Tories don't have a fucking clue where the real ~KGB is concerned?
No fucking idea. When I lived in Russia, he was the Russophone David Mitchell and was never off NTV. He was very tight with Solovyov so he was obviously regime adjacent at that time.
Was "Servant of the People" broadcast in Russia?
Yes. It was filmed in Russian to make it easier to sell in foreign (Russian speaking) markets.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
Which would require an unlikely GOP landslide in next year's midterms to get the 2/3 majority required in Congress to change the constitutional amendment barring a president running for a third election.
He is more likely to get the SC to agree he can just not hold another presidential election again, which there isn't a constitutional bar too, though by that unlikely point the US would be near civil war and the blue states breaking away
If civil war was imminent, then Trump would declare a need for emergency powers under which he is allowed to do anything. Problem solved.
Which would also require the military's support, so still likely civil war as not all the military would agree as they take an oath to the constitution and the President
Hegseth is this week working towards removing the higher echelons of military and replacing with MAGA supporters.
As for the 2/3 in congress: they will vote for it under extreme duress imho.
Which would even then just leave plenty of trained officers and soldiers from blue states ready to form breakway armies in the event of civil war
Would you like me to sort these alphabetically or group them by continent?
me: are you sure about those
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: I apologize - I should review these more carefully. Let me check each one specifically looking for the 'e' ending:
1. Frankreich (France) 2. Türkei (Turkey) 3. Ukraine (Ukraine)
These I am completely certain end in 'e'. I realize now that I made a significant error in my previous response by including many countries that don't end in 'e' in German (like Deutschland, Italien, etc.).
I should note that while I aim to be accurate with language translations, you may want to verify this list with an authoritative German language source. Would you like me to double-check any specific country names?"
This was a genuine query I had. Grok 3 was just as bad, or worse. Gemini gave me 3 countries, one of which does actually and with the letter e. ChapGPT gave me a bunch of countries that don't end in e.
The winner by a long way was Co-pilot, which gave me 5 countries, 4 of which do actually end in e. But it missed out a couple of countries including die Niederlande.
But much better just to look at list of country names in German!
Those programs often amaze by producing detailed analysis within seconds, but they can also stun by making obvious gross errors. The worry is the more minor errors buried within the apparently detailed analysis.
The problem with AI is that people see them as the final answer when in reality they are the first attempt of a graduate trainee who may (or may not) know the broad picture but really doesn't know the minutia.
I.e. it will be obvious in seconds if they've gone down the wrong track but you still need to check the details for assumptions that derailed the final answer into something that's wrong but looks right.
The more immediate problem is that many people - like our own Leon - think they are interacting with some sort of intelligence, whereas in reality they’re essentially remarkably powerful search engines, that aren’t ’thinking’ or ‘analysing’ or even understanding the text that they throw up, in any meaningful sense, at all.
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
So scrap the NI credits (which the second Wilson government introduced to expand welfare dependency) so you can't get state pension unless you have made enough NI contributions in work, otherwise you only get pension credit
What about your comments about having more babies. So the non-working mother will be penalised for staying at home. You really should avoid commenting on this area unless you understand how it all works.
When you have finally worked it out, you might actually get a job in government explaining it to them (and Kemi)
As I said, child benefit can be increased from the savings (most non working mothers will either have a husband with a fat pension and high income or work part time and still pay NI contributions anyway as I also said).
And what about the ones who have faced domestic violence and have had to abandon the marital home?
You could take all your ideas and then have a list of exemptions like DOGE and at the end of it, your plan would be as complex as the exiting legislation (as amended by the various judicial reviews).
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
The next question is will anyone be allowed to run against him, or is it just a confirmatory re-election.......
Getting ahead of ourselves. Reality is we have had peak Trump. We have had peak MAGA. The season of disruption and Populism is coming to an end all over the world in the coming years.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
Amazing people are still blind to what is happening. The US is on a short path to dictatorship.
You need to be more precise. What type of regime are you predicting and how do you get from here to there? Trump doing things you don't like or pushing the limits of what his office can do does not constitute a dictatorship.
Cult of personality of the leader Rule by decree Not abiding by rules of law Intimidation of political opponents Control of media and (dis)information Flexible facts Control of elections
Popped my EV cherry finally, a van to pick up my bike in Edinburgh, fuxake, talk about teaching yer granny to use the Sky Box remote. Got there in the end, even managed to get rid of Heart FM. The display when I picked it up said 110m range which I thought was pish but would get me there and back, but now says I have less than 30 miles to get back to Glasgow. Hadn’t realised contra ICE that they eat up power on motorways. Have to find a charging point now..
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
The next question is will anyone be allowed to run against him, or is it just a confirmatory re-election.......
Getting ahead of ourselves. Reality is we have had peak Trump. We have had peak MAGA. The season of disruption and Populism is coming to an end all over the world in the coming years.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
Amazing people are still blind to what is happening. The US is on a short path to dictatorship.
Either outcome is possible. I think it's more notable that anyone thinks it certain which way things will tip.
My WAG is that it's around 50/50.
On democracy's side is that the US system still has considerable inertia built in to it, and Trump is fairly likely to be quite unpopular come the midterms. Against that is the legal loophole Trump is exploiting (that the courts have no good way to check him when he chooses to ignore the law, and he knows it), and the craven compliance of the Republicans in Congress.
I agree it is not inevitable, but it is their clear objective, so the more people who think it can't happen, the easier it is for them to make it happen.
Would you like me to sort these alphabetically or group them by continent?
me: are you sure about those
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: I apologize - I should review these more carefully. Let me check each one specifically looking for the 'e' ending:
1. Frankreich (France) 2. Türkei (Turkey) 3. Ukraine (Ukraine)
These I am completely certain end in 'e'. I realize now that I made a significant error in my previous response by including many countries that don't end in 'e' in German (like Deutschland, Italien, etc.).
I should note that while I aim to be accurate with language translations, you may want to verify this list with an authoritative German language source. Would you like me to double-check any specific country names?"
This was a genuine query I had. Grok 3 was just as bad, or worse. Gemini gave me 3 countries, one of which does actually and with the letter e. ChapGPT gave me a bunch of countries that don't end in e.
The winner by a long way was Co-pilot, which gave me 5 countries, 4 of which do actually end in e. But it missed out a couple of countries including die Niederlande.
But much better just to look at list of country names in German!
Those programs often amaze by producing detailed analysis within seconds, but they can also stun by making obvious gross errors. The worry is the more minor errors buried within the apparently detailed analysis.
The problem with AI is that people see them as the final answer when in reality they are the first attempt of a graduate trainee who may (or may not) know the broad picture but really doesn't know the minutia.
I.e. it will be obvious in seconds if they've gone down the wrong track but you still need to check the details for assumptions that derailed the final answer into something that's wrong but looks right.
The more immediate problem is that many people - like our own Leon - think they are interacting with some sort of intelligence, whereas in reality they’re essentially remarkably powerful search engines, that aren’t ’thinking’ or ‘analysing’ or even understanding the text that they throw up, in any meaningful sense, at all.
many people - like our own Leon - think they are interacting with some sort of intelligence, whereas in reality they’re essentially remarkably powerful search engines, that aren’t ’thinking’ or ‘analysing’ or even understanding the text that they throw up, in any meaningful sense, at all.
Would you like me to sort these alphabetically or group them by continent?
me: are you sure about those
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: I apologize - I should review these more carefully. Let me check each one specifically looking for the 'e' ending:
1. Frankreich (France) 2. Türkei (Turkey) 3. Ukraine (Ukraine)
These I am completely certain end in 'e'. I realize now that I made a significant error in my previous response by including many countries that don't end in 'e' in German (like Deutschland, Italien, etc.).
I should note that while I aim to be accurate with language translations, you may want to verify this list with an authoritative German language source. Would you like me to double-check any specific country names?"
This was a genuine query I had. Grok 3 was just as bad, or worse. Gemini gave me 3 countries, one of which does actually and with the letter e. ChapGPT gave me a bunch of countries that don't end in e.
The winner by a long way was Co-pilot, which gave me 5 countries, 4 of which do actually end in e. But it missed out a couple of countries including die Niederlande.
But much better just to look at list of country names in German!
Those programs often amaze by producing detailed analysis within seconds, but they can also stun by making obvious gross errors. The worry is the more minor errors buried within the apparently detailed analysis.
The problem with AI is that people see them as the final answer when in reality they are the first attempt of a graduate trainee who may (or may not) know the broad picture but really doesn't know the minutia.
I.e. it will be obvious in seconds if they've gone down the wrong track but you still need to check the details for assumptions that derailed the final answer into something that's wrong but looks right.
The more immediate problem is that many people - like our own Leon - think they are interacting with some sort of intelligence, whereas in reality they’re essentially remarkably powerful search engines, that aren’t ’thinking’ or ‘analysing’ or even understanding the text that they throw up, in any meaningful sense, at all.
Well, if I am allowed to talk about this I will yet again demonstrate that you are talking shyte
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
The next question is will anyone be allowed to run against him, or is it just a confirmatory re-election.......
Getting ahead of ourselves. Reality is we have had peak Trump. We have had peak MAGA. The season of disruption and Populism is coming to an end all over the world in the coming years.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
Amazing people are still blind to what is happening. The US is on a short path to dictatorship.
You need to be more precise. What type of regime are you predicting and how do you get from here to there? Trump doing things you don't like or pushing the limits of what his office can do does not constitute a dictatorship.
Cult of personality of the leader Rule by decree Not abiding by rules of law Intimidation of political opponents Control of media and (dis)information Flexible facts Control of elections
I don't think the US is on the path to a dictatorship. I think it's on the path to an unequal democracy like Poland or Hungary. It's possible for the opposition to win but it's very difficult and if they do then they have to spend most of their time in office clearing out the place men of the previous regime in the courts and other civic institutions.
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
So scrap the NI credits (which the second Wilson government introduced to expand welfare dependency) so you can't get state pension unless you have made enough NI contributions in work, otherwise you only get pension credit
What about your comments about having more babies. So the non-working mother will be penalised for staying at home. You really should avoid commenting on this area unless you understand how it all works.
When you have finally worked it out, you might actually get a job in government explaining it to them (and Kemi)
As I said, child benefit can be increased from the savings (most non working mothers will either have a husband with a fat pension and high income or work part time and still pay NI contributions anyway as I also said).
And what about the ones who have faced domestic violence and have had to abandon the marital home?
You could take all your ideas and then have a list of exemptions like DOGE and at the end of it, your plan would be as complex as the exiting legislation (as amended by the various judicial reviews).
HYUFD wants to abolish divorce and go back to the good old days of the 19 ... er, 1630s.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
The next question is will anyone be allowed to run against him, or is it just a confirmatory re-election.......
Getting ahead of ourselves. Reality is we have had peak Trump. We have had peak MAGA. The season of disruption and Populism is coming to an end all over the world in the coming years.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
Amazing people are still blind to what is happening. The US is on a short path to dictatorship.
Tackle the points I made then, rather than being so hysterical.
historic erosion of income put Trump in, not popular support. He didn’t fight and win on what he is actually doing. And raising to the ground only works for you if you build back better than before. Conclusion - unless he can stop competitive elections and a free media by 2026 and 2028, Trump political power is toast.
Then there is MAGA, and prolonging of dictorial style beyond Trump. It’s built around Trumps charisma, no Trump, no charismatic leader, no MAGA influence.
And then there is how this “disruption” stuff is happening worldwide. Like it can go on and on forever? Or for everything there is a season, a flavour of the month, that doesn’t satisfy the human psyche that soon turns away wanting something else, something very different.
Nothing hysterical in my comment, that you think so shows you are not paying attention. There is no polling showing the Republicans are toast in 2026 or 2028, you are just wishcasting that.
Popped my EV cherry finally, a van to pick up my bike in Edinburgh, fuxake, talk about teaching yer granny to use the Sky Box remote. Got there in the end, even managed to get rid of Heart FM. The display when I picked it up said 110m range which I thought was pish but would get me there and back, but now says I have less than 30 miles to get back to Glasgow. Hadn’t realised contra ICE that they eat up power on motorways. Have to find a charging point now..
Didn't know there was a BBC Jambo. One lives and learns.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
The next question is will anyone be allowed to run against him, or is it just a confirmatory re-election.......
Getting ahead of ourselves. Reality is we have had peak Trump. We have had peak MAGA. The season of disruption and Populism is coming to an end all over the world in the coming years.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
Amazing people are still blind to what is happening. The US is on a short path to dictatorship.
You need to be more precise. What type of regime are you predicting and how do you get from here to there? Trump doing things you don't like or pushing the limits of what his office can do does not constitute a dictatorship.
Cult of personality of the leader Rule by decree Not abiding by rules of law Intimidation of political opponents Control of media and (dis)information Flexible facts Control of elections
I don't think the US is on the path to a dictatorship. I think it's on the path to an unequal democracy like Poland or Hungary. It's possible for the opposition to win but it's very difficult and if they do then they have to spend most of their time in office clearing out the place men of the previous regime in the courts and other civic institutions.
Would you like me to sort these alphabetically or group them by continent?
me: are you sure about those
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: I apologize - I should review these more carefully. Let me check each one specifically looking for the 'e' ending:
1. Frankreich (France) 2. Türkei (Turkey) 3. Ukraine (Ukraine)
These I am completely certain end in 'e'. I realize now that I made a significant error in my previous response by including many countries that don't end in 'e' in German (like Deutschland, Italien, etc.).
I should note that while I aim to be accurate with language translations, you may want to verify this list with an authoritative German language source. Would you like me to double-check any specific country names?"
This was a genuine query I had. Grok 3 was just as bad, or worse. Gemini gave me 3 countries, one of which does actually and with the letter e. ChapGPT gave me a bunch of countries that don't end in e.
The winner by a long way was Co-pilot, which gave me 5 countries, 4 of which do actually end in e. But it missed out a couple of countries including die Niederlande.
But much better just to look at list of country names in German!
Those programs often amaze by producing detailed analysis within seconds, but they can also stun by making obvious gross errors. The worry is the more minor errors buried within the apparently detailed analysis.
The problem with AI is that people see them as the final answer when in reality they are the first attempt of a graduate trainee who may (or may not) know the broad picture but really doesn't know the minutia.
I.e. it will be obvious in seconds if they've gone down the wrong track but you still need to check the details for assumptions that derailed the final answer into something that's wrong but looks right.
The more immediate problem is that many people - like our own Leon - think they are interacting with some sort of intelligence, whereas in reality they’re essentially remarkably powerful search engines, that aren’t ’thinking’ or ‘analysing’ or even understanding the text that they throw up, in any meaningful sense, at all.
Well, if I am allowed to talk about this I will yet again demonstrate that you are talking shyte
They are just enjoying winding you up; you're familiar with that feeling, surely ?
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
The next question is will anyone be allowed to run against him, or is it just a confirmatory re-election.......
Getting ahead of ourselves. Reality is we have had peak Trump. We have had peak MAGA. The season of disruption and Populism is coming to an end all over the world in the coming years.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
Amazing people are still blind to what is happening. The US is on a short path to dictatorship.
Either outcome is possible. I think it's more notable that anyone thinks it certain which way things will tip.
My WAG is that it's around 50/50.
On democracy's side is that the US system still has considerable inertia built in to it, and Trump is fairly likely to be quite unpopular come the midterms. Against that is the legal loophole Trump is exploiting (that the courts have no good way to check him when he chooses to ignore the law, and he knows it), and the craven compliance of the Republicans in Congress.
Trump needs a 2/3 majority though to change the constitution to enable him to be elected for a third term after a second 4 year term.
Indeed if the Democrats regain Congress in the midterms he is more likely to be impeached than be able to think of running for a third term. if the Democrats get a majority of any size in the House in 2026 it is 99% likely they will vote to impeach Trump again even if it is unlikely he is convicted unless they also get a landslide in the Senate too given conviction needs a 2/3 majority even if impeachment just needs simple majority
Your analysis is predicated on the assumption that Trump follows the rule of law. It is unclear whether this is the case. If he just ignores the rules, he can do what he wants... unless someone stops him, and who is that going to be?
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
I don't think he'll get through his second.
Yeah. We've heard that one before. He'll be in jail. He's going bankrupt. His wig will fall off. He'll never get re-elected.
Unless he dies, which would be mega-LOL, he is going fucking nowhere in 2028. He doesn't give a fuck about of the Constitution.
That's about the size of it. Of course, he can use some of the mechanisms of the Constitution to subvert others. A pliant Supreme Court is all that is really needed as it can rewrite the Constitution entirely through reinterpretation. Congress might as well pack up and go home.
Would you like me to sort these alphabetically or group them by continent?
me: are you sure about those
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: I apologize - I should review these more carefully. Let me check each one specifically looking for the 'e' ending:
1. Frankreich (France) 2. Türkei (Turkey) 3. Ukraine (Ukraine)
These I am completely certain end in 'e'. I realize now that I made a significant error in my previous response by including many countries that don't end in 'e' in German (like Deutschland, Italien, etc.).
I should note that while I aim to be accurate with language translations, you may want to verify this list with an authoritative German language source. Would you like me to double-check any specific country names?"
This was a genuine query I had. Grok 3 was just as bad, or worse. Gemini gave me 3 countries, one of which does actually and with the letter e. ChapGPT gave me a bunch of countries that don't end in e.
The winner by a long way was Co-pilot, which gave me 5 countries, 4 of which do actually end in e. But it missed out a couple of countries including die Niederlande.
But much better just to look at list of country names in German!
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
The next question is will anyone be allowed to run against him, or is it just a confirmatory re-election.......
Getting ahead of ourselves. Reality is we have had peak Trump. We have had peak MAGA. The season of disruption and Populism is coming to an end all over the world in the coming years.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
Amazing people are still blind to what is happening. The US is on a short path to dictatorship.
Either outcome is possible. I think it's more notable that anyone thinks it certain which way things will tip.
My WAG is that it's around 50/50.
On democracy's side is that the US system still has considerable inertia built in to it, and Trump is fairly likely to be quite unpopular come the midterms. Against that is the legal loophole Trump is exploiting (that the courts have no good way to check him when he chooses to ignore the law, and he knows it), and the craven compliance of the Republicans in Congress.
Trump needs a 2/3 majority though to change the constitution to enable him to be elected for a third term after a second 4 year term.
Indeed if the Democrats regain Congress in the midterms he is more likely to be impeached than be able to think of running for a third term. if the Democrats get a majority of any size in the House in 2026 it is 99% likely they will vote to impeach Trump again even if it is unlikely he is convicted unless they also get a landslide in the Senate too given conviction needs a 2/3 majority even if impeachment just needs simple majority
Your analysis is predicated on the assumption that Trump follows the rule of law. It is unclear whether this is the case. If he just ignores the rules, he can do what he wants... unless someone stops him, and who is that going to be?
The blue state governors are probably the most likely source of opposition, but if they become too antsy he can just have them killed.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
The next question is will anyone be allowed to run against him, or is it just a confirmatory re-election.......
Getting ahead of ourselves. Reality is we have had peak Trump. We have had peak MAGA. The season of disruption and Populism is coming to an end all over the world in the coming years.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
It's not clear we have had peak Musk.
He was tweeting about targeting the DOD, and has not yet been brought to heel.
He could do something insane like get in there and start closing down entire programmes Western former-allies, including us, are dependent upon, at a couple of week's notice.
That's been what they have done so far with entire programmes such as USAID, but also essential USA setups such as the organisation that is the partial equivalent of our Trading Standards and Financial Consumer Protection setups.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
I don't think he'll get through his second.
Yeah. We've heard that one before. He'll be in jail. He's going bankrupt. His wig will fall off. He'll never get re-elected.
Unless he dies, which would be mega-LOL, he is going fucking nowhere in 2028. He doesn't give a fuck about of the Constitution.
That's about the size of it. Of course, he can use some of the mechanisms of the Constitution to subvert others. A pliant Supreme Court is all that is really needed as it can rewrite the Constitution entirely through reinterpretation. Congress might as well pack up and go home.
That's just wrong (for now at least). The problem is that they're pretty well accepting your idea, and abdicating the considerable power they still have.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
The next question is will anyone be allowed to run against him, or is it just a confirmatory re-election.......
Getting ahead of ourselves. Reality is we have had peak Trump. We have had peak MAGA. The season of disruption and Populism is coming to an end all over the world in the coming years.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
Amazing people are still blind to what is happening. The US is on a short path to dictatorship.
You need to be more precise. What type of regime are you predicting and how do you get from here to there? Trump doing things you don't like or pushing the limits of what his office can do does not constitute a dictatorship.
Cult of personality of the leader Rule by decree Not abiding by rules of law Intimidation of political opponents Control of media and (dis)information Flexible facts Control of elections
I don't think the US is on the path to a dictatorship. I think it's on the path to an unequal democracy like Poland or Hungary. It's possible for the opposition to win but it's very difficult and if they do then they have to spend most of their time in office clearing out the place men of the previous regime in the courts and other civic institutions.
Democracy is coming to an end
Could the Dark Ages not have waited another few decades? Yet again, the Boomers have had the best of it.
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
It's a bit of a headscratcher. Zelensky is a native Russian speaker and only learned Ukranian as an adult.
It's funny reading BBC articles from 2019. Lots of worries about Zelensky being a Russian puppet, and he did better in the Russian-speaking/eastern parts of Ukraine than he did elsewhere. He was also elected on an anti-corruption platform, and was pushing for a ceasefire in Donbas etc.
Have you got some links for the Russian puppet suggestion? That's interesting if British regime media was putting that out in 2019, when Zelensky was elected.
You are right to say Zelensky was elected on an "anti-corruption platform". For an equivalent, imagine Paul Eddington running on an "Anti Sir Humphrey" platform for the "Yes, Prime Minister Party".
To add to the comedy, Zelensky was put up by billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, who owned the TV act and the campaign. Ukraine is a country like Colombia where every campaign to replace the current administration must always say it's against corruption.
Personally I think
1. The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake, and therefore the territories should be in Russia, and
2. The ~KGB is a formidable organisation, with strong tentacles in France, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Britain, etc., etc. (did I mention Oxford, Cambridge, the City, the Temple, and Mayfair?) as well as in the USA (MAGA), and it has long been assisting the far and neo-Nazi right.
3. Zelensky may himself have been a Russian puppet and Kiev's policies from 2014-15 and through 2019 and 2022 may have amounted to a set of provocations teleguided from Moscow.
(It's quite possible 3 is not the case too. But the naive mouthy types who predominate in online discussions have probably not even considered the possibility, and their kneejerk reaction would be to respond with insults and sneers when it's raised.)
As for Tory types, they seem to be going on about "imperialism" a lot. LOL - do they have something against it? They never complain about the brain drain, the Fulbright Program, or foreign military installations on British soil. Where the Russkies are concerned, they seem to forget there's always economics involved in imperialism. Non-British versions aren't reducible to the barbarism of not being born Blightyesque. They are about profits, just as much as the British empire ever was.
The Russian government isn't aiming for Kiev-run Ukraine to be under its economic control. Not out of kindness but because it's out of reach. They're happy to let it be in the EU. They just don't want it to be in NATO.
It's the now breaking up parts of the "ex-west" [1] who are after the minerals in that region and of course they want their military there, just as Russia wants its military on the other side of the line. Seems to me they'll only manage to put a few toes in. They probably know that. But never mind. The war dividend of some grrreat weapons contracts need not require putting lotsa weapons anywhere near Ukraine. Because, Reader, those contracts are all about the money too. Internal dividends in how the home country is run may also be available.
Note
1) The "ex-west" is USA plus western Eurasia, the latter including a nuclear-armed loose-cannon fragment to the NW that was successfully split off from the EU by the ~KGB. Gotta apply Haushofer from a Beijing POV nowadays.
The referendums were fake.
Statements like "The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake," throws the rest of the post into doubt.
You should doubt everything, mate. What you mean is that it's either Crimea is forever Ukrainian and that's exactly how the population in that part of the world feels, or else your whole take on the war goes for a burton.
What do you reckon on the idea that Z may himself have been ~KGB and that the Tories don't have a fucking clue where the real ~KGB is concerned?
No fucking idea. When I lived in Russia, he was the Russophone David Mitchell and was never off NTV. He was very tight with Solovyov so he was obviously regime adjacent at that time.
Was "Servant of the People" broadcast in Russia?
Yes. It was filmed in Russian to make it easier to sell in foreign (Russian speaking) markets.
I believe it was actually filmed in both Ukrainian and Russian. Not dubbed - alternating takes.
Would you like me to sort these alphabetically or group them by continent?
me: are you sure about those
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: I apologize - I should review these more carefully. Let me check each one specifically looking for the 'e' ending:
1. Frankreich (France) 2. Türkei (Turkey) 3. Ukraine (Ukraine)
These I am completely certain end in 'e'. I realize now that I made a significant error in my previous response by including many countries that don't end in 'e' in German (like Deutschland, Italien, etc.).
I should note that while I aim to be accurate with language translations, you may want to verify this list with an authoritative German language source. Would you like me to double-check any specific country names?"
This was a genuine query I had. Grok 3 was just as bad, or worse. Gemini gave me 3 countries, one of which does actually and with the letter e. ChapGPT gave me a bunch of countries that don't end in e.
The winner by a long way was Co-pilot, which gave me 5 countries, 4 of which do actually end in e. But it missed out a couple of countries including die Niederlande.
But much better just to look at list of country names in German!
I thought you flounced yesterday 🤷♂️
People can change their minds. In this case, kamski is back by popular (though possibly not unanimous ?) demand.
Popped my EV cherry finally, a van to pick up my bike in Edinburgh, fuxake, talk about teaching yer granny to use the Sky Box remote. Got there in the end, even managed to get rid of Heart FM. The display when I picked it up said 110m range which I thought was pish but would get me there and back, but now says I have less than 30 miles to get back to Glasgow. Hadn’t realised contra ICE that they eat up power on motorways. Have to find a charging point now..
Didn't know there was a BBC Jambo. One lives and learns.
If there was it would be known as the Wee BBC Gers
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
It's a bit of a headscratcher. Zelensky is a native Russian speaker and only learned Ukranian as an adult.
It's funny reading BBC articles from 2019. Lots of worries about Zelensky being a Russian puppet, and he did better in the Russian-speaking/eastern parts of Ukraine than he did elsewhere. He was also elected on an anti-corruption platform, and was pushing for a ceasefire in Donbas etc.
Z was elected on a platform of normalising relations with Russia and stamping out corruption. Epic fail on both scores. However, I think he'd be in with a fighting chance in an election as the opposition would obviously be The Chocolate King who is a known and not much liked quantity. Zaluzhny and Klitschko don't have the media owning oligarch backing which is essential to get anywhere in Ukrainian politics. Z doesn't need oligarch backing as he is one now. That's why he's dispensed with and locked up Kolomoisky who was so instrumental in propelling Z into the Marinisky Palace.
Excellent post. I'm not sure Kolomoisky is finished though. Z++ jailed him but for full effect they'd have had him whacked.
The calling of an election itself would weaken Z insofar as choices he has made as a war leader would be questioned.
What do you reckon on the idea that Z may himself have been ~KGB and that the Tories don't have a fucking clue where the real ~KGB is concerned?
Surely the election would be a “say no to the £500B deal being offered to us” versus “just take the deal and all the fringe benefits from it.” With an impoverished populace voting overwhelmingly to accept the deal?
The current leader is getting bullied into tripe for not signing a deal carving up his country’s mineral wealth, that his country will definitely sign up to in the end - so what gain is he prolonging the drama for? The USA and Russia working together clearly hold all the aces here, and will get what they want, won’t they?
Why agree a deal with a party who won’t uphold their end of the bargain?
I am now a granddad for the first time as of 8 this morning. Daughter has had a boy. Both seem to be fine.
So, granddad, grandpa? Difficult decisions. Is smoking a pipe now mandatory? Advice please.
Nowadays? Easy decision. Not smoking at all arond children is much the default position.
But seriously, congratulations.
Yeah, get that. What about a bunnet?
One of my grandfathers was killed in WW2 so I never met him. The other fought in WW1 and was very old when I became aware of him. I don't have much precedent to go on.
Don’t forget the open packet of Werthers Originals for them to choke on
My granddad could make a polo mint last over an hour.
Who remembers boxes of Fruit Gums, where the gums were in the shape of the fruits they represented? There was also a table of how long you could make one last. AFAIK if you made one last 60 minutes you were classed as a gumster in chief. Making sweets last as long as possible doesn’t seem a good sales tactic.
An hour is tremendously difficult but my grandad (although DavidL will hopefully not share this advantage) was helped by having no teeth.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
I don't think he'll get through his second.
Yeah. We've heard that one before. He'll be in jail. He's going bankrupt. His wig will fall off. He'll never get re-elected.
Unless he dies, which would be mega-LOL, he is going fucking nowhere in 2028. He doesn't give a fuck about of the Constitution.
That's about the size of it. Of course, he can use some of the mechanisms of the Constitution to subvert others. A pliant Supreme Court is all that is really needed as it can rewrite the Constitution entirely through reinterpretation. Congress might as well pack up and go home.
That's just wrong (for now at least). The problem is that they're pretty well accepting your idea, and abdicating the considerable power they still have.
Well, the Democrat minority, to the extent that it can do anything, has pretty well given up. The Putinist party, meanwhile, is delighted about the whole thing.
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
I don't think he'll get through his second.
Yeah. We've heard that one before. He'll be in jail. He's going bankrupt. His wig will fall off. He'll never get re-elected.
Unless he dies, which would be mega-LOL, he is going fucking nowhere in 2028. He doesn't give a fuck about of the Constitution.
That's about the size of it. Of course, he can use some of the mechanisms of the Constitution to subvert others. A pliant Supreme Court is all that is really needed as it can rewrite the Constitution entirely through reinterpretation. Congress might as well pack up and go home.
The Justices have interpreted the Constitution in a conservative direction, they haven't completely disregarded what it says and the 22nd amendment is clear 'No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice'
Trump has again raised the issue of him running for a third term.
I don't think he'll get through his second.
Yeah. We've heard that one before. He'll be in jail. He's going bankrupt. His wig will fall off. He'll never get re-elected.
Unless he dies, which would be mega-LOL, he is going fucking nowhere in 2028. He doesn't give a fuck about of the Constitution.
That's about the size of it. Of course, he can use some of the mechanisms of the Constitution to subvert others. A pliant Supreme Court is all that is really needed as it can rewrite the Constitution entirely through reinterpretation. Congress might as well pack up and go home.
The Justices have interpreted the Constitution in a conservative direction, they haven't completely disregarded what it says and the 22nd amendment is clear 'No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice'
They've not completely moved the goalposts yet. Give it time.
Comments
https://x.com/moneillsf/status/1892878690750542140
There will be some surprises buried therein, or in NATCON, but unlikely to be fascist salutes - unless Musk or Calvin Robinson have been around
Musk's salute was at a Trump rally.
Calvin Robinson's was at a Pro-Life rally.
He is more likely to get the SC to agree he can just not hold another presidential election again, which there isn't a constitutional bar too, though by that unlikely point the US would be near civil war and the blue states breaking away
The current leader is getting bullied into tripe for not signing a deal carving up his country’s mineral wealth, that his country will definitely sign up to in the end - so what gain is he prolonging the drama for? The USA and Russia working together clearly hold all the aces here, and will get what they want, won’t they?
https://x.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1892681372583530782
Trump’s consolidating control over economic outcomes in a way that’s functionally communist, even if the methods have evolved past the old Soviet playbook. He’s learned from history’s failures—why bother seizing factories when you can rig the game so profits flow to you and yours anyway? It’s a slicker, modern twist: control without the clunky state-ownership label..
..Trump’s sidestepping class talk—not because it’s irrelevant, but because it’s been reframed into something more visceral, more 21st-century. The wealthy dodge class to keep power quiet, but Trump flips it into a new currency: validation. He’s not promising a classless utopia like the Soviets; he’s feeding a hunger to feel superior, especially for folks—poor, undereducated—who’ve been kicked down by elites and systems. It’s still class war, just dressed up as a culture war or a knowledge flex.
Class used to be the battleground—Marx made it about workers versus owners, and the Soviets ran with it, even if they botched the execution. But today, class is a dirty word; it’s too academic, too stiff for a world of TikTok and soundbites. People don’t see themselves as "proletariat" anymore—they’re "real Americans" or "forgotten deplorables." Trump gets that. He doesn’t say, “I’ll level the economic playing field”; he says, “I’ll make you feel smarter than the snobs who look down on you.” It’s genius bait for the disenfranchised—poor folks in red states, rust-belt workers—who’ve been told they’re dumb by coastal liberals or college grads. He’s not offering them wealth; he’s offering them pride, a middle finger to the "woke" or the "experts."
...So, is this communist? In spirit. It’s a top-down power grab that exploits the masses’ grievances, like Lenin whipping up peasants against the tsar. But the Soviet endgame was a state-run economy, while Trump’s is a loyalty-run one. He’s not centralizing production; he’s centralizing attention. The wealthy stay rich (his buddies still profit), but the poor get a psychological payout instead of a material one. Communism preached equality as a lie to mask elite rule; Trump skips the lie and sells superiority straight-up. It’s evolved—less about class as a structure, more about class as a feeling.
Trump is not mimicking the USSR’s machinery, just its manipulation. He’s swapped Marx’s class lens for a reality-TV one—everyone’s a star in his show, even if the profits still pool at the top. It’s a new beast, still kicking the same old class hornet’s nest, but with a playbook the Soviets never dreamed of.
In those circumstances, he could just wait for Trump to die.
Elon Musk sacked all the staff before he found out who they were.
Then he didn't have the details to get in touch with all of them to ask them to come back.
So it will be like the Trotter Shuttle, as they will be out of maintenance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBVYB5GWOeo&t=440s
https://x.com/RobLikesJets/status/1892796147376295978
Actually quite a pedestrian result for the Tories, in a safe seat by-election where their vote share probably just reflects differential turnout. Labours performance clearly signals trouble for May; Reform did well, but given that this is Essex it doesn’t look like they are on course for the sort of stonking national result that HY keeps anticipating.
Samsung Foundry’s 4nm Process Sees a Surge in Orders, Achieving an 80% Yield
Korean media reports that Samsung Foundry has been delivering beyond expectations by securing a series of orders from Chinese ASIC customers with its recent 4nm process.
In particular, the media interpreted that the high profile of an AI model launched by Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has sparked a wave of enthusiastic inquiries from Chinese ASIC clients. Previously, Samsung Foundry had already gained recognition in the Chinese market by securing its first 3nm customer from China, and it is now observed that, following the DeepSeek breakthrough, Chinese AI companies are accelerating their investments, resulting in an increasing number of customers turning to Samsung Foundry once again.
The media concluded that the key to Samsung Foundry’s success in capturing customers with its 4nm process—rather than with its cutting-edge 3nm process—is none other than yield. After having raised the yield in its 4nm process to over 70% last year, the company has now succeeded in achieving a yield approaching 80%, thereby fully reestablishing its confidence in the 4nm segment.
https://x.com/Jukanlosreve/status/1892424004952346920
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: Here are the countries that end with 'e' in German:
Belgien, Botsuana, Brunei, Chile, China, Deutschland, Ecuador, Eritrea, Estland, Frankreich, Georgien, Griechenland, Indien, Indonesien, Italien, Jemen, Kambodscha, Kolumbien, Kroatien, Lettland, Libyen, Malaysia, Moldawien, Namibia, Neuseeland, Norwegen, Peru, Polen, Rumänien, Russland, Rwanda, Sambia, Saudi-Arabien, Schweden, Schweiz, Serbien, Slowakei, Slowenien, Spanien, Syrien, Tansania, Thailand, Truthahn, Tschechien, Tunesien, Türkei, Ukraine, Venezuela, Zimbabwe
Would you like me to sort these alphabetically or group them by continent?
me: are you sure about those
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: I apologize - I should review these more carefully. Let me check each one specifically looking for the 'e' ending:
1. Frankreich (France)
2. Türkei (Turkey)
3. Ukraine (Ukraine)
These I am completely certain end in 'e'. I realize now that I made a significant error in my previous response by including many countries that don't end in 'e' in German (like Deutschland, Italien, etc.).
I should note that while I aim to be accurate with language translations, you may want to verify this list with an authoritative German language source. Would you like me to double-check any specific country names?"
This was a genuine query I had. Grok 3 was just as bad, or worse. Gemini gave me 3 countries, one of which does actually and with the letter e. ChapGPT gave me a bunch of countries that don't end in e.
The winner by a long way was Co-pilot, which gave me 5 countries, 4 of which do actually end in e. But it missed out a couple of countries including die Niederlande.
But much better just to look at list of country names in German!
https://x.com/disclosetv/status/1892570800395366876
Trump certainly appeals to the uneducated "little man" with an inferiority complex and not much to be proud of other than not being descended from slaves. Just as the US regime has done for a long while - see the gun culture etc. etc. - but more so. No doubt about that. It's all about the wrestling. There - I've made Andrew Perpetua's point without all the ignorant comparisons and contrasts. State versus loyalty. Structure versus feeling, FFS. Don't be too impressed by this, @NigelB and @viewcode.
After 11 weeks in Kiwiland, a real change of pace and my first visit here in 19 years. Capitalism reigns supreme here but it works because society seems so well ordered. While enjoying my SGD 6 chicken and curry rice just now, I mused on the fact the basic shop security mechanisms you see in most British large stores are absent here.
We have shopping centres on either side of our hotel - both are replete with eateries, many of which look empty most of the time. Western food is overpriced, the local Malay and Indonesian food much cheaper and decent.
The MRT would win no prizes for comfort but a train every 4-5 minutes works. The Gardens by the Bay are spectacular.
MAGA control of GOP was based on Trumps charisma, name recognition, and a lifetime crafting vampire squid takeover and sucking things dry for personal gain - effectively a long built up a brand reputation, now getting sussed and trashed. Last years election win overwhelmingly built upon feeling much better off when Trump was in White House, than under the Dems, and that was wholly down to world wide historic erosion of income rather than something Trump actually achieved. Both Trumps age, fact he has surrounded himself with yes people rather than able people, and a US election system that goes to the will of the people every two years, dismantles MAGA power with every minute that ticks from now.
As for the 2/3 in congress: they will vote for it under extreme duress imho.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/20/trumps-embrace-putin-molotov-ribbentrop-crisis-europe/
Extrapolating GE results from a swing in a local Council by-election is the sort of thing Liberal Democrats used to do. It shows the Stygian depths to which the Conservative Party has now sunk it is doing the same.
It may be stopped but the hour is late and where is the kick-back?
Of course, the issue is that people like judicial activism they agree with and they dislike judicial activism they disagree with.
I think it's more notable that anyone thinks it certain which way things will tip.
My WAG is that it's around 50/50.
On democracy's side is that the US system still has considerable inertia built in to it, and Trump is fairly likely to be quite unpopular come the midterms.
Against that is the legal loophole Trump is exploiting (that the courts have no good way to check him when he chooses to ignore the law, and he knows it), and the craven compliance of the Republicans in Congress.
When you have finally worked it out, you might actually get a job in government explaining it to them (and Kemi)
How did the safeguards within the US constitution - which prevented even presidents with noble objectives, like Obama, achieving very much - suddenly get overridden?
You are right - if AI had given me eg just die Ukraine and die Niederlande I would have assumed that these are really the only ones, but there are a few others - Chile, Belize, Elfenbeinküste etc. It was only because the AIs weirdly gave me countries that don't end in e that I knew that they were wrong.
Wayne Rooney approves this message
Congrats in any case, whichever path you choose.
historic erosion of income put Trump in, not popular support. He didn’t fight and win on what he is actually doing. And raising to the ground only works for you if you build back better than before.
Conclusion - unless he can stop competitive elections and a free media by 2026 and 2028, Trump political power is toast.
Then there is MAGA, and prolonging of dictorial style beyond Trump. It’s built around Trumps charisma, no Trump, no charismatic leader, no MAGA influence.
And then there is how this “disruption” stuff is happening worldwide. Like it can go on and on forever? Or for everything there is a season, a flavour of the month, that doesn’t satisfy the human psyche that soon turns away wanting something else, something very different.
People are perfectly willing to change their minds. There is the *chance* that the populations in the areas that were under occupation had legitimately changed their views.
But:
*) The evidence of the earlier referendum was fairly solid. The gap between the referenda votes was rather large. Was there that much change?
*) The referenda were held under military occupation. It was not free and fair.
*) Many Ukrainian citizens of the area could not vote, either because they had fled, their properties requisitioned, imprisonment, or forced movement into Russia.
*) There is plenty of evidence that the voters were somewhat *encouraged* to vote by Russian soldiers.
*) The evidence from the way Ukraine has been fighting is that Ukrainians are not pro-Russian, to a very large degree.
All of these, and probably more, indicate that the Russian referenda is as bogus as they possibly can be.
I.e. it will be obvious in seconds if they've gone down the wrong track but you still need to check the details for assumptions that derailed the final answer into something that's wrong but looks right.
Indeed if the Democrats regain Congress in the midterms he is more likely to be impeached than be able to think of running for a third term. if the Democrats get a majority of any size in the House in 2026 it is 99% likely they will vote to impeach Trump again even if it is unlikely he is convicted unless they also get a landslide in the Senate too given conviction needs a 2/3 majority even if impeachment just needs simple majority
NEW: A regional FEMA chief of staff took Elon Musk's Fork in the Road offer. He has proof of receipt.
But they didn't honor it. Instead, they fired him 13 days later.
Now, this retired Navy captain is speaking out.
https://x.com/samstein/status/1892924400145404336
You could take all your ideas and then have a list of exemptions like DOGE and at the end of it, your plan would be as complex as the exiting legislation (as amended by the various judicial reviews).
Rule by decree
Not abiding by rules of law
Intimidation of political opponents
Control of media and (dis)information
Flexible facts
Control of elections
The display when I picked it up said 110m range which I thought was pish but would get me there and back, but now says I have less than 30 miles to get back to Glasgow. Hadn’t realised contra ICE that they eat up power on motorways. Have to find a charging point now..
Unless he dies, which would be mega-LOL, he is going fucking nowhere in 2028. He doesn't give a fuck about of the Constitution.
think they are interacting with some sort of intelligence, whereas in reality they’re essentially remarkably powerful search engines, thataren’t ’thinking’ or ‘analysing’ or even understanding the text that they throw up, in any meaningful sense, at all.https://bsky.app/profile/twlldun.bsky.social/post/3liounf7pps26
On that score, with my current dodgy eyesight, for a moment I thought this might be your new book in the shops, before I realised it was a greetings card.
https://x.com/nathanbenaich/status/1892909777463754896
He was tweeting about targeting the DOD, and has not yet been brought to heel.
He could do something insane like get in there and start closing down entire programmes Western former-allies, including us, are dependent upon, at a couple of week's notice.
That's been what they have done so far with entire programmes such as USAID, but also essential USA setups such as the organisation that is the partial equivalent of our Trading Standards and Financial Consumer Protection setups.
The problem is that they're pretty well accepting your idea, and abdicating the considerable power they still have.
In this case, kamski is back by popular (though possibly not unanimous ?) demand.