Mr. Roger, Trump is wealthy, but he's also a political outsider.
If you've seen your factory job shift ten thousand miles east and have a worse job, or none, then being told how great globalisation is may not necessarily be a vote-winner.
Be interesting to see what Biden's response is to the BLM crocodile. Standing up to that nonsense was something Trump got right, and may explain why he got a far higher number of votes than many expected.
It's such a shame that the politics of protecting the indigenous working class in the West from the inequities of globalized capitalism seems to require a good dose of nationalistic xenophobia in order to find success at the ballot box. The upshot of this is it has been hijacked by the Right rather than remaining where it belongs - the Left.
The Left are being punished electorally for not being prepared to get down in the gutter.
The Left are being punished because they don't give a f*ck about the working classes and the latter have wised up. It's why Starmer will face such a tough job.
That's nonsense. Take Bernie Sanders. Agree with him or not, like the guy or not, it's absurd to suggest he doesn't care about the working class. His politics, his rhetoric, his platform - it's 100% about economic reform in the interests of blue collar America. What he and his ilk on the Left do NOT do is seek to combine this with an appeal to people's baser instincts by turning them against outsiders and minorities. The populist Right, the Trumps of this world, that's their USP. It's what they do. Without exception it is. Whip up the plebs with some bullshit about how foreigners and liberals are to blame for their woes and then slip in a nice fat tax break for the real elites who are laughing all the way to the bank. Sadly it often works and when it does, far from the working class "wising up" it means they have been played.
I actually like Bernie Sanders and I do think he has the working classes at heart. And I'd agree he doesn't turn people against racial minorities in his message. His problem has been aligning himself with the members of the Squad, whose are most interested in pushing the idea that white people have privilege, which is a really hard one for someone stuck in a way out town with little income and respect, and who has probably known at least one person die of suicide and / or opioid abuse to accept. If the Squad had a little bit more sympathy on that front, they might gain more traction.
I think both you and Kinabalu are correct, on that specific topic.
The underlying point that Sanders' brand of populism is morally superior to Trump's is also correct too, I think.
I agree with much of it but not the central point about "timid" Biden. We'll see what he does in office but for me Trump Out dwarfed everything in importance and he did it. For this he will always be a hero to me.
Mr. Roger, Trump is wealthy, but he's also a political outsider.
If you've seen your factory job shift ten thousand miles east and have a worse job, or none, then being told how great globalisation is may not necessarily be a vote-winner.
Be interesting to see what Biden's response is to the BLM crocodile. Standing up to that nonsense was something Trump got right, and may explain why he got a far higher number of votes than many expected.
It's such a shame that the politics of protecting the indigenous working class in the West from the inequities of globalized capitalism seems to require a good dose of nationalistic xenophobia in order to find success at the ballot box. The upshot of this is it has been hijacked by the Right rather than remaining where it belongs - the Left.
The Left are being punished electorally for not being prepared to get down in the gutter.
The Left are being punished because they don't give a f*ck about the working classes and the latter have wised up. It's why Starmer will face such a tough job.
That's nonsense. Take Bernie Sanders. Agree with him or not, like the guy or not, it's absurd to suggest he doesn't care about the working class. His politics, his rhetoric, his platform - it's 100% about economic reform in the interests of blue collar America. What he and his ilk on the Left do NOT do is seek to combine this with an appeal to people's baser instincts by turning them against outsiders and minorities. The populist Right, the Trumps of this world, that's their USP. It's what they do. Without exception it is. Whip up the plebs with some bullshit about how foreigners and liberals are to blame for their woes and then slip in a nice fat tax break for the real elites who are laughing all the way to the bank. Sadly it often works and when it does, far from the working class "wising up" it means they have been played.
I actually like Bernie Sanders and I do think he has the working classes at heart. And I'd agree he doesn't turn people against racial minorities in his message. His problem has been aligning himself with the members of the Squad, whose are most interested in pushing the idea that white people have privilege, which is a really hard one for someone stuck in a way out town with little income and respect, and who has probably known at least one person die of suicide and / or opioid abuse to accept. If the Squad had a little bit more sympathy on that front, they might gain more traction.
I think both you and Kinabalu are correct, on that specific topic.
The underlying point that Sanders' brand of populism is morally superior to Trump's is also correct too, I think.
I agree with much of it but not the central point about "timid" Biden. We'll see what he does in office but for me Trump Out dwarfed everything in importance and he did it. For this he will always be a hero to me.
Monbiot also needs to remember Biden beat Sanders for the Democratic nomination, it was his centrism American voters elected to beat Trump, not Sanders' leftwing populism
It's interesting that Dom is clearly no longer in charge. It's very obvious that Gove was the source of the lockdown leak and Cain was used by Dom and Gove to leak the information. I expect Dom gets canned as the price of Boris not being burned at the Tory stake in February, wonder whether Gove will go with him. He's not to be trusted in any position of power.
The problem is that although I cant stand Gove, he is at least competent as minister and a politician, unlike his cretinous boss
He might be competent but he's not to be trusted and putting him in a position where he has access to important information that can be used against other members of the Cabinet is just asking for trouble.
Is Give competent? He is good at identifying things that don't work, and has creative ideas for solutions. Not all those ideas work, but they are creative. But his claim for competence rests on his time at Education and in the Cabinet Office. He passed through other roles to quickly to tell. And in both cases... Mixed at best.
He created a set of exams more suited to the 1960s than the current day. Now the internet exists, it's not what you know that is important - it's how you find and apply that knowledge...
I'm willing to cut the goblin some slack there. By 2010, modular GCSEs and A Levels weren't working well. The skills often became easily coachable soundbites and the lack of knowledge was inhibiting student's thinking. (You can look everything up, but knowing some facts in a framework is helpful and empowering.) The modular structure was abused by schools, using retake after retake to grind out higher grades. But Gove went too far, too fast and too arrogantly alone, which created loads of problems. Right diagnosis, wrong and poorly managed solution.
Nope, having watched my children suffer them - he created a memory test - not something that adds value and gives me any idea how good people are when it comes to looking at CVs
Gove Levels are terrible in many ways- agree with you there. But their predecessors- especially coupled with the Deliverology culture of "Thou must get these grades for the children"- were differently but equally grim.
The R rate of the coronavirus in Britain is now 0.9 meaning the outbreak has started shrinking and the 'end is in sight' for the second wave, scientists on the Covid Symptom Study claimed today.
The chumocracy leading to the kleptocracy is alive and well with lots of close bonds highlighted, but the link of both live in Islington is exceedingly tenuous, most people in Islington dont know each other!
Cummings, Allegra and - before his divorce - Boris - live within a circle with approx 500m radius.
I think if you explore the private school/Oxbridge/wealth nexus you will probably find it more fruitful. These people all know each other, marry each other, do business with each other. Brexit has always been about the old establishment reasserting themselves, big fish in their small pond.
Not sure I’d assign Brexit as the impulse for this.
It seems to be something inherent to the modern-day Tory Party, which as Perry Anderson points out in his latest magisterial essay on “Ukania” in the NLR, is reverting to rule by Old Etonians after a long period roughing it with grammar school types.
Brexit isn't the impulse, but it is part of the reversion. Grammar school Tories like Heath took us into the EU, Thatcher understood the EU's usefulness even if she distrusted the Germans, and successfully moulded it in a meritocratic free market direction via the Single Market. A continental European colleague explains Brexit as happening when the English upper class realised they'd been priced out of the Chelsea housing market, which seems plausible to me.
Not really true, Eton educated Macmillan was the one who first asked for us to join the Common Market and Eton educated Cameron led the Leave campaign. Grammar school educated Enoch Powell was the earliest and most notable Tory Brexiteer
Sorry, should have been Eton educated Cameron led the Remain campaign.
The Tory pro-European toffs were of the old One Nation variety - the traditional order should be maintained but the upper-crust had a duty to improve the life chances of those less lucky by birth. In contrast, I get the impression that the likes of Rees-Mogg think the end of the peasantry was a decidedly retrograde step.
Lord Salisbury was an Old Etonian, as was Alan Clark, there have always been Old Etonians on the hard right not just the One Nation left of the Tory Party, Rees Mogg is no exception
Like Rees-Mogg, I always felt that Alan Clark wasn't a true aristocrat but a bit of a brash, new-money type. (That his surname suggests his ancestor was Bob Cratchit should have given him a clue.)
Neither Rees-Mogg nor Alan Clark are/were aristocrats in any sense of the term, despite the castles and posing and ludicrous airs they adopt. Clark was rather vulgar really, if a good diarist. Rees-Mogg is simply ludicrous with all his affectations.
As you say, Clark loved to pose, but he was simply living off the back of a cultured father, with almost none of the historical 'position' his pretensions aspired to. Rees-Mogg's background, disappointingly for him, I thought was a mixture of business and west country squire too, turbocharged like Boris by the atmosphere of individualist entitlement of 1980's Eton.
Rees Mogg's mother in law was the daughter of the 8th Earl Fitzwilliam
So what?
Doesn’t make him an aristocrat.
My own Italian family are genuine aristos going back to the 16th century at least. We even have a champagne named after us! We can recognise parvenus when we see them.
Not that any of this matters. People should be judged on their character, on how they behave. Kindness is much more important than some title based on what some ancestor did centuries ago.
Neither Clark nor Rees-Mogg’s behaviour - from what I know of it - passes the Cyclefree test.
Mr. Roger, Trump is wealthy, but he's also a political outsider.
If you've seen your factory job shift ten thousand miles east and have a worse job, or none, then being told how great globalisation is may not necessarily be a vote-winner.
Be interesting to see what Biden's response is to the BLM crocodile. Standing up to that nonsense was something Trump got right, and may explain why he got a far higher number of votes than many expected.
It's such a shame that the politics of protecting the indigenous working class in the West from the inequities of globalized capitalism seems to require a good dose of nationalistic xenophobia in order to find success at the ballot box. The upshot of this is it has been hijacked by the Right rather than remaining where it belongs - the Left.
The Left are being punished electorally for not being prepared to get down in the gutter.
The Left are being punished because they don't give a f*ck about the working classes and the latter have wised up. It's why Starmer will face such a tough job.
That's nonsense. Take Bernie Sanders. Agree with him or not, like the guy or not, it's absurd to suggest he doesn't care about the working class. His politics, his rhetoric, his platform - it's 100% about economic reform in the interests of blue collar America. What he and his ilk on the Left do NOT do is seek to combine this with an appeal to people's baser instincts by turning them against outsiders and minorities. The populist Right, the Trumps of this world, that's their USP. It's what they do. Without exception it is. Whip up the plebs with some bullshit about how foreigners and liberals are to blame for their woes and then slip in a nice fat tax break for the real elites who are laughing all the way to the bank. Sadly it often works and when it does, far from the working class "wising up" it means they have been played.
I actually like Bernie Sanders and I do think he has the working classes at heart. And I'd agree he doesn't turn people against racial minorities in his message. His problem has been aligning himself with the members of the Squad, whose are most interested in pushing the idea that white people have privilege, which is a really hard one for someone stuck in a way out town with little income and respect, and who has probably known at least one person die of suicide and / or opioid abuse to accept. If the Squad had a little bit more sympathy on that front, they might gain more traction.
I think both you and Kinabalu are correct, on that specific topic.
The underlying point that Sanders' brand of populism is morally superior to Trump's is also correct too, I think.
I agree with much of it but not the central point about "timid" Biden. We'll see what he does in office but for me Trump Out dwarfed everything in importance and he did it. For this he will always be a hero to me.
Monbiot also needs to remember Biden beat Sanders for the Democratic nomination, it was his centrism American voters elected to beat Trump, not Sanders' leftwing populism
BIden only beat Sanders for the nomination, however, because Jim Clyburn, with extensive links to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry, backed him. Before that, the popular momentum was all towards Sanders. I'm not saying Biden hasn't performed reasonably well as a centrist unifier after Trump, butI think Sanders may have done pretty well in different places, too.
I'm heartened by Biden so far ; I just hope his first term is more environmentally focused programmes, as promised , and less pharmaceutical industry backslapping.
The chumocracy leading to the kleptocracy is alive and well with lots of close bonds highlighted, but the link of both live in Islington is exceedingly tenuous, most people in Islington dont know each other!
Cummings, Allegra and - before his divorce - Boris - live within a circle with approx 500m radius.
I think if you explore the private school/Oxbridge/wealth nexus you will probably find it more fruitful. These people all know each other, marry each other, do business with each other. Brexit has always been about the old establishment reasserting themselves, big fish in their small pond.
Not sure I’d assign Brexit as the impulse for this.
It seems to be something inherent to the modern-day Tory Party, which as Perry Anderson points out in his latest magisterial essay on “Ukania” in the NLR, is reverting to rule by Old Etonians after a long period roughing it with grammar school types.
Brexit isn't the impulse, but it is part of the reversion. Grammar school Tories like Heath took us into the EU, Thatcher understood the EU's usefulness even if she distrusted the Germans, and successfully moulded it in a meritocratic free market direction via the Single Market. A continental European colleague explains Brexit as happening when the English upper class realised they'd been priced out of the Chelsea housing market, which seems plausible to me.
Not really true, Eton educated Macmillan was the one who first asked for us to join the Common Market and Eton educated Cameron led the Leave campaign. Grammar school educated Enoch Powell was the earliest and most notable Tory Brexiteer
Sorry, should have been Eton educated Cameron led the Remain campaign.
The Tory pro-European toffs were of the old One Nation variety - the traditional order should be maintained but the upper-crust had a duty to improve the life chances of those less lucky by birth. In contrast, I get the impression that the likes of Rees-Mogg think the end of the peasantry was a decidedly retrograde step.
Lord Salisbury was an Old Etonian, as was Alan Clark, there have always been Old Etonians on the hard right not just the One Nation left of the Tory Party, Rees Mogg is no exception
Like Rees-Mogg, I always felt that Alan Clark wasn't a true aristocrat but a bit of a brash, new-money type. (That his surname suggests his ancestor was Bob Cratchit should have given him a clue.)
Neither Rees-Mogg nor Alan Clark are/were aristocrats in any sense of the term, despite the castles and posing and ludicrous airs they adopt. Clark was rather vulgar really, if a good diarist. Rees-Mogg is simply ludicrous with all his affectations.
As you say, Clark loved to pose, but he was simply living off the back of a cultured father, with almost none of the historical 'position' his pretensions aspired to. Rees-Mogg's background, disappointingly for him, I thought was a mixture of business and west country squire too, turbocharged like Boris by the atmosphere of individualist entitlement of 1980's Eton.
Rees Mogg's mother in law was the daughter of the 8th Earl Fitzwilliam
So what?
Doesn’t make him an aristocrat.
My own Italian family are genuine aristos going back to the 16th century at least. We even have a champagne named after us! We can recognise parvenus when we see them.
Not that any of this matters. People should be judged on their character, on how they behave. Kindness is much more important than some title based on what some ancestor did centuries ago.
Neither Clark nor Rees-Mogg’s behaviour - from what I know of it - passes the Cyclefree test.
I am also aware of the family history and can say that we were farmers and peasants. In Ireland, the aristocracy came from England and had no shortage of Rees-Mogg types. Lord Erne's land agent - Capt Boycott - was so brutal, his name became a word. Basically, no one who had a choice would have anything to do with him.
Aristocracy, is an anachronism. Time for it to go... rather like Rees-Mogg IMO.
Mr. Roger, Trump is wealthy, but he's also a political outsider.
If you've seen your factory job shift ten thousand miles east and have a worse job, or none, then being told how great globalisation is may not necessarily be a vote-winner.
Be interesting to see what Biden's response is to the BLM crocodile. Standing up to that nonsense was something Trump got right, and may explain why he got a far higher number of votes than many expected.
It's such a shame that the politics of protecting the indigenous working class in the West from the inequities of globalized capitalism seems to require a good dose of nationalistic xenophobia in order to find success at the ballot box. The upshot of this is it has been hijacked by the Right rather than remaining where it belongs - the Left.
The Left are being punished electorally for not being prepared to get down in the gutter.
The Left are being punished because they don't give a f*ck about the working classes and the latter have wised up. It's why Starmer will face such a tough job.
That's nonsense. Take Bernie Sanders. Agree with him or not, like the guy or not, it's absurd to suggest he doesn't care about the working class. His politics, his rhetoric, his platform - it's 100% about economic reform in the interests of blue collar America. What he and his ilk on the Left do NOT do is seek to combine this with an appeal to people's baser instincts by turning them against outsiders and minorities. The populist Right, the Trumps of this world, that's their USP. It's what they do. Without exception it is. Whip up the plebs with some bullshit about how foreigners and liberals are to blame for their woes and then slip in a nice fat tax break for the real elites who are laughing all the way to the bank. Sadly it often works and when it does, far from the working class "wising up" it means they have been played.
I actually like Bernie Sanders and I do think he has the working classes at heart. And I'd agree he doesn't turn people against racial minorities in his message. His problem has been aligning himself with the members of the Squad, whose are most interested in pushing the idea that white people have privilege, which is a really hard one for someone stuck in a way out town with little income and respect, and who has probably known at least one person die of suicide and / or opioid abuse to accept. If the Squad had a little bit more sympathy on that front, they might gain more traction.
I think both you and Kinabalu are correct, on that specific topic.
The underlying point that Sanders' brand of populism is morally superior to Trump's is also correct too, I think.
I agree with much of it but not the central point about "timid" Biden. We'll see what he does in office but for me Trump Out dwarfed everything in importance and he did it. For this he will always be a hero to me.
Monbiot also needs to remember Biden beat Sanders for the Democratic nomination, it was his centrism American voters elected to beat Trump, not Sanders' leftwing populism
I agree with you that Biden was the best choice for the Dems. Not so much for his centrism - his platform is not particularly centrist - but because of his Uncle Joe persona.
How would Sanders have done? Don't know. My tentative feeling is he would have been the next best choice and would have had a better chance than many think.
It's interesting that Dom is clearly no longer in charge. It's very obvious that Gove was the source of the lockdown leak and Cain was used by Dom and Gove to leak the information. I expect Dom gets canned as the price of Boris not being burned at the Tory stake in February, wonder whether Gove will go with him. He's not to be trusted in any position of power.
The problem is that although I cant stand Gove, he is at least competent as minister and a politician, unlike his cretinous boss
He might be competent but he's not to be trusted and putting him in a position where he has access to important information that can be used against other members of the Cabinet is just asking for trouble.
Is Give competent? He is good at identifying things that don't work, and has creative ideas for solutions. Not all those ideas work, but they are creative. But his claim for competence rests on his time at Education and in the Cabinet Office. He passed through other roles to quickly to tell. And in both cases... Mixed at best.
He created a set of exams more suited to the 1960s than the current day. Now the internet exists, it's not what you know that is important - it's how you find and apply that knowledge...
I'm willing to cut the goblin some slack there. By 2010, modular GCSEs and A Levels weren't working well. The skills often became easily coachable soundbites and the lack of knowledge was inhibiting student's thinking. (You can look everything up, but knowing some facts in a framework is helpful and empowering.) The modular structure was abused by schools, using retake after retake to grind out higher grades. But Gove went too far, too fast and too arrogantly alone, which created loads of problems. Right diagnosis, wrong and poorly managed solution.
Nope, having watched my children suffer them - he created a memory test - not something that adds value and gives me any idea how good people are when it comes to looking at CVs
Gove Levels are terrible in many ways- agree with you there. But their predecessors- especially coupled with the Deliverology culture of "Thou must get these grades for the children"- were differently but equally grim.
I sat those, they were a joke. You were literally given the answers to the questions in advance of doing the exams and because they were days apart it made getting good grades a piece of piss.
Exams should be difficult and they should test the understanding of the concept, not the ability to memorise a bunch of answers 48h before the exam.
As things stand if 23,126 Biden voters in 3 states had voted for Trump the latter would probably be heading for another 4 year term in the White House, assuming a 269-269 tie would have led to that outcome.
Mr. Roger, Trump is wealthy, but he's also a political outsider.
If you've seen your factory job shift ten thousand miles east and have a worse job, or none, then being told how great globalisation is may not necessarily be a vote-winner.
Be interesting to see what Biden's response is to the BLM crocodile. Standing up to that nonsense was something Trump got right, and may explain why he got a far higher number of votes than many expected.
It's such a shame that the politics of protecting the indigenous working class in the West from the inequities of globalized capitalism seems to require a good dose of nationalistic xenophobia in order to find success at the ballot box. The upshot of this is it has been hijacked by the Right rather than remaining where it belongs - the Left.
The Left are being punished electorally for not being prepared to get down in the gutter.
The Left are being punished because they don't give a f*ck about the working classes and the latter have wised up. It's why Starmer will face such a tough job.
That's nonsense. Take Bernie Sanders. Agree with him or not, like the guy or not, it's absurd to suggest he doesn't care about the working class. His politics, his rhetoric, his platform - it's 100% about economic reform in the interests of blue collar America. What he and his ilk on the Left do NOT do is seek to combine this with an appeal to people's baser instincts by turning them against outsiders and minorities. The populist Right, the Trumps of this world, that's their USP. It's what they do. Without exception it is. Whip up the plebs with some bullshit about how foreigners and liberals are to blame for their woes and then slip in a nice fat tax break for the real elites who are laughing all the way to the bank. Sadly it often works and when it does, far from the working class "wising up" it means they have been played.
I actually like Bernie Sanders and I do think he has the working classes at heart. And I'd agree he doesn't turn people against racial minorities in his message. His problem has been aligning himself with the members of the Squad, whose are most interested in pushing the idea that white people have privilege, which is a really hard one for someone stuck in a way out town with little income and respect, and who has probably known at least one person die of suicide and / or opioid abuse to accept. If the Squad had a little bit more sympathy on that front, they might gain more traction.
I think both you and Kinabalu are correct, on that specific topic.
The underlying point that Sanders' brand of populism is morally superior to Trump's is also correct too, I think.
I agree with much of it but not the central point about "timid" Biden. We'll see what he does in office but for me Trump Out dwarfed everything in importance and he did it. For this he will always be a hero to me.
Monbiot also needs to remember Biden beat Sanders for the Democratic nomination, it was his centrism American voters elected to beat Trump, not Sanders' leftwing populism
I agree with you that Biden was the best choice for the Dems. Not so much for his centrism - his platform is not particularly centrist - but because of his Uncle Joe persona.
How would Sanders have done? Don't know. My tentative feeling is he would have been the next best choice and would have had a better chance than many think.
Had Sanders won the nomination I think Trump would have won the popular vote and Arizona and Georgia and probably Pennsylvania too and been narrowly re elected instead of narrowly defeated, though Sanders would likely have won Michigan like Biden and maybe Wisconsin too
Mr. Roger, Trump is wealthy, but he's also a political outsider.
If you've seen your factory job shift ten thousand miles east and have a worse job, or none, then being told how great globalisation is may not necessarily be a vote-winner.
Be interesting to see what Biden's response is to the BLM crocodile. Standing up to that nonsense was something Trump got right, and may explain why he got a far higher number of votes than many expected.
It's such a shame that the politics of protecting the indigenous working class in the West from the inequities of globalized capitalism seems to require a good dose of nationalistic xenophobia in order to find success at the ballot box. The upshot of this is it has been hijacked by the Right rather than remaining where it belongs - the Left.
The Left are being punished electorally for not being prepared to get down in the gutter.
The Left are being punished because they don't give a f*ck about the working classes and the latter have wised up. It's why Starmer will face such a tough job.
That's nonsense. Take Bernie Sanders. Agree with him or not, like the guy or not, it's absurd to suggest he doesn't care about the working class. His politics, his rhetoric, his platform - it's 100% about economic reform in the interests of blue collar America. What he and his ilk on the Left do NOT do is seek to combine this with an appeal to people's baser instincts by turning them against outsiders and minorities. The populist Right, the Trumps of this world, that's their USP. It's what they do. Without exception it is. Whip up the plebs with some bullshit about how foreigners and liberals are to blame for their woes and then slip in a nice fat tax break for the real elites who are laughing all the way to the bank. Sadly it often works and when it does, far from the working class "wising up" it means they have been played.
I actually like Bernie Sanders and I do think he has the working classes at heart. And I'd agree he doesn't turn people against racial minorities in his message. His problem has been aligning himself with the members of the Squad, whose are most interested in pushing the idea that white people have privilege, which is a really hard one for someone stuck in a way out town with little income and respect, and who has probably known at least one person die of suicide and / or opioid abuse to accept. If the Squad had a little bit more sympathy on that front, they might gain more traction.
I think both you and Kinabalu are correct, on that specific topic.
The underlying point that Sanders' brand of populism is morally superior to Trump's is also correct too, I think.
I agree with much of it but not the central point about "timid" Biden. We'll see what he does in office but for me Trump Out dwarfed everything in importance and he did it. For this he will always be a hero to me.
Monbiot also needs to remember Biden beat Sanders for the Democratic nomination, it was his centrism American voters elected to beat Trump, not Sanders' leftwing populism
I agree with you that Biden was the best choice for the Dems. Not so much for his centrism - his platform is not particularly centrist - but because of his Uncle Joe persona.
How would Sanders have done? Don't know. My tentative feeling is he would have been the next best choice and would have had a better chance than many think.
That's because you're a far left extremist who is self-absorbed in his own world and refuses to recognise other viewpoints because they're not valid in your eyes.
Sanders would have lost. Joe won because he got Democrat votes, independent votes and even many Republicans voted for him split ticket. Sanders would never have been able to get that coalition together.
The chumocracy leading to the kleptocracy is alive and well with lots of close bonds highlighted, but the link of both live in Islington is exceedingly tenuous, most people in Islington dont know each other!
Cummings, Allegra and - before his divorce - Boris - live within a circle with approx 500m radius.
I think if you explore the private school/Oxbridge/wealth nexus you will probably find it more fruitful. These people all know each other, marry each other, do business with each other. Brexit has always been about the old establishment reasserting themselves, big fish in their small pond.
Not sure I’d assign Brexit as the impulse for this.
It seems to be something inherent to the modern-day Tory Party, which as Perry Anderson points out in his latest magisterial essay on “Ukania” in the NLR, is reverting to rule by Old Etonians after a long period roughing it with grammar school types.
Brexit isn't the impulse, but it is part of the reversion. Grammar school Tories like Heath took us into the EU, Thatcher understood the EU's usefulness even if she distrusted the Germans, and successfully moulded it in a meritocratic free market direction via the Single Market. A continental European colleague explains Brexit as happening when the English upper class realised they'd been priced out of the Chelsea housing market, which seems plausible to me.
Not really true, Eton educated Macmillan was the one who first asked for us to join the Common Market and Eton educated Cameron led the Leave campaign. Grammar school educated Enoch Powell was the earliest and most notable Tory Brexiteer
Sorry, should have been Eton educated Cameron led the Remain campaign.
The Tory pro-European toffs were of the old One Nation variety - the traditional order should be maintained but the upper-crust had a duty to improve the life chances of those less lucky by birth. In contrast, I get the impression that the likes of Rees-Mogg think the end of the peasantry was a decidedly retrograde step.
Lord Salisbury was an Old Etonian, as was Alan Clark, there have always been Old Etonians on the hard right not just the One Nation left of the Tory Party, Rees Mogg is no exception
Like Rees-Mogg, I always felt that Alan Clark wasn't a true aristocrat but a bit of a brash, new-money type. (That his surname suggests his ancestor was Bob Cratchit should have given him a clue.)
Neither Rees-Mogg nor Alan Clark are/were aristocrats in any sense of the term, despite the castles and posing and ludicrous airs they adopt. Clark was rather vulgar really, if a good diarist. Rees-Mogg is simply ludicrous with all his affectations.
As you say, Clark loved to pose, but he was simply living off the back of a cultured father, with almost none of the historical 'position' his pretensions aspired to. Rees-Mogg's background, disappointingly for him, I thought was a mixture of business and west country squire too, turbocharged like Boris by the atmosphere of individualist entitlement of 1980's Eton.
Rees Mogg's mother in law was the daughter of the 8th Earl Fitzwilliam
So what?
Doesn’t make him an aristocrat.
My own Italian family are genuine aristos going back to the 16th century at least. We even have a champagne named after us! We can recognise parvenus when we see them.
Not that any of this matters. People should be judged on their character, on how they behave. Kindness is much more important than some title based on what some ancestor did centuries ago.
Neither Clark nor Rees-Mogg’s behaviour - from what I know of it - passes the Cyclefree test.
Rees Mogg's wife has a net worth of £45 million via inheritance so he married money as well as class (once she gets her inheritance they will have a combined net worth of over £100 million putting them firmly in the class of the super rich)
As things stand if 23,126 Biden voters in 3 states had voted for Trump the latter would probably be heading for another 4 year term in the White House, assuming a 269-269 tie would have led to that outcome.
Mr. Roger, Trump is wealthy, but he's also a political outsider.
If you've seen your factory job shift ten thousand miles east and have a worse job, or none, then being told how great globalisation is may not necessarily be a vote-winner.
Be interesting to see what Biden's response is to the BLM crocodile. Standing up to that nonsense was something Trump got right, and may explain why he got a far higher number of votes than many expected.
It's such a shame that the politics of protecting the indigenous working class in the West from the inequities of globalized capitalism seems to require a good dose of nationalistic xenophobia in order to find success at the ballot box. The upshot of this is it has been hijacked by the Right rather than remaining where it belongs - the Left.
The Left are being punished electorally for not being prepared to get down in the gutter.
The Left are being punished because they don't give a f*ck about the working classes and the latter have wised up. It's why Starmer will face such a tough job.
That's nonsense. Take Bernie Sanders. Agree with him or not, like the guy or not, it's absurd to suggest he doesn't care about the working class. His politics, his rhetoric, his platform - it's 100% about economic reform in the interests of blue collar America. What he and his ilk on the Left do NOT do is seek to combine this with an appeal to people's baser instincts by turning them against outsiders and minorities. The populist Right, the Trumps of this world, that's their USP. It's what they do. Without exception it is. Whip up the plebs with some bullshit about how foreigners and liberals are to blame for their woes and then slip in a nice fat tax break for the real elites who are laughing all the way to the bank. Sadly it often works and when it does, far from the working class "wising up" it means they have been played.
I actually like Bernie Sanders and I do think he has the working classes at heart. And I'd agree he doesn't turn people against racial minorities in his message. His problem has been aligning himself with the members of the Squad, whose are most interested in pushing the idea that white people have privilege, which is a really hard one for someone stuck in a way out town with little income and respect, and who has probably known at least one person die of suicide and / or opioid abuse to accept. If the Squad had a little bit more sympathy on that front, they might gain more traction.
I think both you and Kinabalu are correct, on that specific topic.
The underlying point that Sanders' brand of populism is morally superior to Trump's is also correct too, I think.
I agree with much of it but not the central point about "timid" Biden. We'll see what he does in office but for me Trump Out dwarfed everything in importance and he did it. For this he will always be a hero to me.
Monbiot also needs to remember Biden beat Sanders for the Democratic nomination, it was his centrism American voters elected to beat Trump, not Sanders' leftwing populism
I agree with you that Biden was the best choice for the Dems. Not so much for his centrism - his platform is not particularly centrist - but because of his Uncle Joe persona.
How would Sanders have done? Don't know. My tentative feeling is he would have been the next best choice and would have had a better chance than many think.
That's because you're a far left extremist who is self-absorbed in his own world and refuses to recognise other viewpoints because they're not valid in your eyes.
Sanders would have lost. Joe won because he got Democrat votes, independent votes and even many Republicans voted for him split ticket. Sanders would never have been able to get that coalition together.
I would have voted for Trump over Sanders but Biden over Trump had I been American indeed
The chumocracy leading to the kleptocracy is alive and well with lots of close bonds highlighted, but the link of both live in Islington is exceedingly tenuous, most people in Islington dont know each other!
Cummings, Allegra and - before his divorce - Boris - live within a circle with approx 500m radius.
I think if you explore the private school/Oxbridge/wealth nexus you will probably find it more fruitful. These people all know each other, marry each other, do business with each other. Brexit has always been about the old establishment reasserting themselves, big fish in their small pond.
Not sure I’d assign Brexit as the impulse for this.
It seems to be something inherent to the modern-day Tory Party, which as Perry Anderson points out in his latest magisterial essay on “Ukania” in the NLR, is reverting to rule by Old Etonians after a long period roughing it with grammar school types.
Brexit isn't the impulse, but it is part of the reversion. Grammar school Tories like Heath took us into the EU, Thatcher understood the EU's usefulness even if she distrusted the Germans, and successfully moulded it in a meritocratic free market direction via the Single Market. A continental European colleague explains Brexit as happening when the English upper class realised they'd been priced out of the Chelsea housing market, which seems plausible to me.
Not really true, Eton educated Macmillan was the one who first asked for us to join the Common Market and Eton educated Cameron led the Leave campaign. Grammar school educated Enoch Powell was the earliest and most notable Tory Brexiteer
Sorry, should have been Eton educated Cameron led the Remain campaign.
The Tory pro-European toffs were of the old One Nation variety - the traditional order should be maintained but the upper-crust had a duty to improve the life chances of those less lucky by birth. In contrast, I get the impression that the likes of Rees-Mogg think the end of the peasantry was a decidedly retrograde step.
Lord Salisbury was an Old Etonian, as was Alan Clark, there have always been Old Etonians on the hard right not just the One Nation left of the Tory Party, Rees Mogg is no exception
Like Rees-Mogg, I always felt that Alan Clark wasn't a true aristocrat but a bit of a brash, new-money type. (That his surname suggests his ancestor was Bob Cratchit should have given him a clue.)
Neither Rees-Mogg nor Alan Clark are/were aristocrats in any sense of the term, despite the castles and posing and ludicrous airs they adopt. Clark was rather vulgar really, if a good diarist. Rees-Mogg is simply ludicrous with all his affectations.
As you say, Clark loved to pose, but he was simply living off the back of a cultured father, with almost none of the historical 'position' his pretensions aspired to. Rees-Mogg's background, disappointingly for him, I thought was a mixture of business and west country squire too, turbocharged like Boris by the atmosphere of individualist entitlement of 1980's Eton.
Rees Mogg's mother in law was the daughter of the 8th Earl Fitzwilliam
So what?
Doesn’t make him an aristocrat.
My own Italian family are genuine aristos going back to the 16th century at least. We even have a champagne named after us! We can recognise parvenus when we see them.
Not that any of this matters. People should be judged on their character, on how they behave. Kindness is much more important than some title based on what some ancestor did centuries ago.
Neither Clark nor Rees-Mogg’s behaviour - from what I know of it - passes the Cyclefree test.
I am also aware of the family history and can say that we were farmers and peasants. In Ireland, the aristocracy came from England and had no shortage of Rees-Mogg types. Lord Erne's land agent - Capt Boycott - was so brutal, his name became a word. Basically, no one who had a choice would have anything to do with him.
Aristocracy, is an anachronism. Time for it to go... rather like Rees-Mogg IMO.
I know. On the Irish side we were farmers too and had no love for the English aristocracy.
And on the Jewish side we started out as tinkers on the street ......
The chumocracy leading to the kleptocracy is alive and well with lots of close bonds highlighted, but the link of both live in Islington is exceedingly tenuous, most people in Islington dont know each other!
Cummings, Allegra and - before his divorce - Boris - live within a circle with approx 500m radius.
I think if you explore the private school/Oxbridge/wealth nexus you will probably find it more fruitful. These people all know each other, marry each other, do business with each other. Brexit has always been about the old establishment reasserting themselves, big fish in their small pond.
Not sure I’d assign Brexit as the impulse for this.
It seems to be something inherent to the modern-day Tory Party, which as Perry Anderson points out in his latest magisterial essay on “Ukania” in the NLR, is reverting to rule by Old Etonians after a long period roughing it with grammar school types.
Brexit isn't the impulse, but it is part of the reversion. Grammar school Tories like Heath took us into the EU, Thatcher understood the EU's usefulness even if she distrusted the Germans, and successfully moulded it in a meritocratic free market direction via the Single Market. A continental European colleague explains Brexit as happening when the English upper class realised they'd been priced out of the Chelsea housing market, which seems plausible to me.
Not really true, Eton educated Macmillan was the one who first asked for us to join the Common Market and Eton educated Cameron led the Leave campaign. Grammar school educated Enoch Powell was the earliest and most notable Tory Brexiteer
Sorry, should have been Eton educated Cameron led the Remain campaign.
The Tory pro-European toffs were of the old One Nation variety - the traditional order should be maintained but the upper-crust had a duty to improve the life chances of those less lucky by birth. In contrast, I get the impression that the likes of Rees-Mogg think the end of the peasantry was a decidedly retrograde step.
Lord Salisbury was an Old Etonian, as was Alan Clark, there have always been Old Etonians on the hard right not just the One Nation left of the Tory Party, Rees Mogg is no exception
Like Rees-Mogg, I always felt that Alan Clark wasn't a true aristocrat but a bit of a brash, new-money type. (That his surname suggests his ancestor was Bob Cratchit should have given him a clue.)
Neither Rees-Mogg nor Alan Clark are/were aristocrats in any sense of the term, despite the castles and posing and ludicrous airs they adopt. Clark was rather vulgar really, if a good diarist. Rees-Mogg is simply ludicrous with all his affectations.
As you say, Clark loved to pose, but he was simply living off the back of a cultured father, with almost none of the historical 'position' his pretensions aspired to. Rees-Mogg's background, disappointingly for him, I thought was a mixture of business and west country squire too, turbocharged like Boris by the atmosphere of individualist entitlement of 1980's Eton.
Rees Mogg's mother in law was the daughter of the 8th Earl Fitzwilliam
So what?
Doesn’t make him an aristocrat.
My own Italian family are genuine aristos going back to the 16th century at least. We even have a champagne named after us! We can recognise parvenus when we see them.
Not that any of this matters. People should be judged on their character, on how they behave. Kindness is much more important than some title based on what some ancestor did centuries ago.
Neither Clark nor Rees-Mogg’s behaviour - from what I know of it - passes the Cyclefree test.
Rees Mogg's wife has a net worth of £45 million via inheritance so he married money as well as class (once she gets her inheritance they will have a combined net worth of over £100 million putting them firmly in the class of the super rich)
As things stand if 23,126 Biden voters in 3 states had voted for Trump the latter would probably be heading for another 4 year term in the White House, assuming a 269-269 tie would have led to that outcome.
You sound like a Corbynite explaining how close their man was to election in 2017!
As things stand if 23,126 Biden voters in 3 states had voted for Trump the latter would probably be heading for another 4 year term in the White House, assuming a 269-269 tie would have led to that outcome.
But they didn't
"If there were as few as 23,126 dodgy Biden votes in 3 states the latter has stolen the White House" will be the Trumpster refrain for another 4 years.....
The chumocracy leading to the kleptocracy is alive and well with lots of close bonds highlighted, but the link of both live in Islington is exceedingly tenuous, most people in Islington dont know each other!
Cummings, Allegra and - before his divorce - Boris - live within a circle with approx 500m radius.
I think if you explore the private school/Oxbridge/wealth nexus you will probably find it more fruitful. These people all know each other, marry each other, do business with each other. Brexit has always been about the old establishment reasserting themselves, big fish in their small pond.
Not sure I’d assign Brexit as the impulse for this.
It seems to be something inherent to the modern-day Tory Party, which as Perry Anderson points out in his latest magisterial essay on “Ukania” in the NLR, is reverting to rule by Old Etonians after a long period roughing it with grammar school types.
Brexit isn't the impulse, but it is part of the reversion. Grammar school Tories like Heath took us into the EU, Thatcher understood the EU's usefulness even if she distrusted the Germans, and successfully moulded it in a meritocratic free market direction via the Single Market. A continental European colleague explains Brexit as happening when the English upper class realised they'd been priced out of the Chelsea housing market, which seems plausible to me.
Not really true, Eton educated Macmillan was the one who first asked for us to join the Common Market and Eton educated Cameron led the Leave campaign. Grammar school educated Enoch Powell was the earliest and most notable Tory Brexiteer
Sorry, should have been Eton educated Cameron led the Remain campaign.
The Tory pro-European toffs were of the old One Nation variety - the traditional order should be maintained but the upper-crust had a duty to improve the life chances of those less lucky by birth. In contrast, I get the impression that the likes of Rees-Mogg think the end of the peasantry was a decidedly retrograde step.
Lord Salisbury was an Old Etonian, as was Alan Clark, there have always been Old Etonians on the hard right not just the One Nation left of the Tory Party, Rees Mogg is no exception
Like Rees-Mogg, I always felt that Alan Clark wasn't a true aristocrat but a bit of a brash, new-money type. (That his surname suggests his ancestor was Bob Cratchit should have given him a clue.)
Neither Rees-Mogg nor Alan Clark are/were aristocrats in any sense of the term, despite the castles and posing and ludicrous airs they adopt. Clark was rather vulgar really, if a good diarist. Rees-Mogg is simply ludicrous with all his affectations.
As you say, Clark loved to pose, but he was simply living off the back of a cultured father, with almost none of the historical 'position' his pretensions aspired to. Rees-Mogg's background, disappointingly for him, I thought was a mixture of business and west country squire too, turbocharged like Boris by the atmosphere of individualist entitlement of 1980's Eton.
Rees Mogg's mother in law was the daughter of the 8th Earl Fitzwilliam
So what?
Doesn’t make him an aristocrat.
My own Italian family are genuine aristos going back to the 16th century at least. We even have a champagne named after us! We can recognise parvenus when we see them.
Not that any of this matters. People should be judged on their character, on how they behave. Kindness is much more important than some title based on what some ancestor did centuries ago.
Neither Clark nor Rees-Mogg’s behaviour - from what I know of it - passes the Cyclefree test.
I am also aware of the family history and can say that we were farmers and peasants. In Ireland, the aristocracy came from England and had no shortage of Rees-Mogg types. Lord Erne's land agent - Capt Boycott - was so brutal, his name became a word. Basically, no one who had a choice would have anything to do with him.
Aristocracy, is an anachronism. Time for it to go... rather like Rees-Mogg IMO.
Except many genuine aristos recognise that their status is a fortunate accident of birth and comes with responsibilities. Whereas those who see themselves more as self-made sovereign individuals run the risk of worshipping their own assumed creator.
As things stand if 23,126 Biden voters in 3 states had voted for Trump the latter would probably be heading for another 4 year term in the White House, assuming a 269-269 tie would have led to that outcome.
But they didn't
"If there were as few as 23,126 dodgy Biden votes in 3 states the latter has stolen the White House" will be the Trumpster refrain for another 4 years.....
You'd need to double that, unless you're talking about Trump votes that were changed to Biden. Not that it matters, because it didn't happen. Biden won, Trump was dreadful.
But for the benefit of HYUFD who misuses the term: It would be treason if you try to ensure she does not make it.
The date of HMQ's coronation but the year of her ascension to the throne. Seems like a nice compromise. Of course, Her Majesty will be at Epsom watching the Derby!
TBH I can't see what they're waiting for. Biden is still 11,635 ahead. The last update I saw from the elections board said that there were only 24,000 ballots estimated to be outstanding with over 40% in Pima (Biden's best county) and 30% in Maricopa (which is 50/50). The tracking website has 22,456 outstanding currently, and the 17,000 results added in the past day have narrowed Biden's lead by little more than 1,000. That suggests that the final margin is going to be around the 10,000 mark. As Arizona can only have a recount for a margin within 200, it's surely nailed on for Biden.
I would genuinely hate to be a politician...imagine you give a perfectly sensible answer including very clear caveats and within 2hrs, a number of media outlets are running a headline that says something you absolutely didn't say.
Only a few weeks ago there was all that nonsense about actors should retrain as ...., Again Sunak didn't say what was being reported, but everybody was in the outrage bus by the evening.
That was a ludicrous resonse from a lot of people, mainly arty types. There is nothing wrong with telling people to consider retraining and a different career. It doesn't matter what your vocation is, the world changes too fast nowadays to set your sight on one thing to the exclusion of all other options.
I suspect though that there would have been no outrage if the person in the picture had been a carpenter, plumber, or electrician; even though those are probably better careers long-term than being a dancer.
I would genuinely hate to be a politician...imagine you give a perfectly sensible answer including very clear caveats and within 2hrs, a number of media outlets are running a headline that says something you absolutely didn't say.
Only a few weeks ago there was all that nonsense about actors should retrain as ...., Again Sunak didn't say what was being reported, but everybody was in the outrage bus by the evening.
That was a ludicrous resonse from a lot of people, mainly arty types. There is nothing wrong with telling people to consider retraining and a different career. It doesn't matter what your vocation is, the world changes too fast nowadays to set your sight on one thing to the exclusion of all other options.
I suspect though that there would have been no outrage if the person in the picture had been a carpenter, plumber, or electrician; even though those are probably better careers long-term than being a dancer.
I would genuinely hate to be a politician...imagine you give a perfectly sensible answer including very clear caveats and within 2hrs, a number of media outlets are running a headline that says something you absolutely didn't say.
Only a few weeks ago there was all that nonsense about actors should retrain as ...., Again Sunak didn't say what was being reported, but everybody was in the outrage bus by the evening.
That was a ludicrous resonse from a lot of people, mainly arty types. There is nothing wrong with telling people to consider retraining and a different career. It doesn't matter what your vocation is, the world changes too fast nowadays to set your sight on one thing to the exclusion of all other options.
I suspect though that there would have been no outrage if the person in the picture had been a carpenter, plumber, or electrician; even though those are probably better careers long-term than being a dancer.
Is there anyone in almost the entire current governing class who doesn't have some connection to journalism ?
It's remarkable isn't it. We all knew that print journalism was dying, but who knew that the unemployed hacks would use running the country as their preferred exit from the sinking ship?
I would genuinely hate to be a politician...imagine you give a perfectly sensible answer including very clear caveats and within 2hrs, a number of media outlets are running a headline that says something you absolutely didn't say.
Only a few weeks ago there was all that nonsense about actors should retrain as ...., Again Sunak didn't say what was being reported, but everybody was in the outrage bus by the evening.
I'm a teacher: I get to see how people have misinterpreted what I say every time I mark a homework.
Mr. Roger, Trump is wealthy, but he's also a political outsider.
If you've seen your factory job shift ten thousand miles east and have a worse job, or none, then being told how great globalisation is may not necessarily be a vote-winner.
Be interesting to see what Biden's response is to the BLM crocodile. Standing up to that nonsense was something Trump got right, and may explain why he got a far higher number of votes than many expected.
It's such a shame that the politics of protecting the indigenous working class in the West from the inequities of globalized capitalism seems to require a good dose of nationalistic xenophobia in order to find success at the ballot box. The upshot of this is it has been hijacked by the Right rather than remaining where it belongs - the Left.
The Left are being punished electorally for not being prepared to get down in the gutter.
The Left are being punished because they don't give a f*ck about the working classes and the latter have wised up. It's why Starmer will face such a tough job.
That's nonsense. Take Bernie Sanders. Agree with him or not, like the guy or not, it's absurd to suggest he doesn't care about the working class. His politics, his rhetoric, his platform - it's 100% about economic reform in the interests of blue collar America. What he and his ilk on the Left do NOT do is seek to combine this with an appeal to people's baser instincts by turning them against outsiders and minorities. The populist Right, the Trumps of this world, that's their USP. It's what they do. Without exception it is. Whip up the plebs with some bullshit about how foreigners and liberals are to blame for their woes and then slip in a nice fat tax break for the real elites who are laughing all the way to the bank. Sadly it often works and when it does, far from the working class "wising up" it means they have been played.
I actually like Bernie Sanders and I do think he has the working classes at heart. And I'd agree he doesn't turn people against racial minorities in his message. His problem has been aligning himself with the members of the Squad, whose are most interested in pushing the idea that white people have privilege, which is a really hard one for someone stuck in a way out town with little income and respect, and who has probably known at least one person die of suicide and / or opioid abuse to accept. If the Squad had a little bit more sympathy on that front, they might gain more traction.
I think both you and Kinabalu are correct, on that specific topic.
The underlying point that Sanders' brand of populism is morally superior to Trump's is also correct too, I think.
I agree with much of it but not the central point about "timid" Biden. We'll see what he does in office but for me Trump Out dwarfed everything in importance and he did it. For this he will always be a hero to me.
Monbiot also needs to remember Biden beat Sanders for the Democratic nomination, it was his centrism American voters elected to beat Trump, not Sanders' leftwing populism
I agree with you that Biden was the best choice for the Dems. Not so much for his centrism - his platform is not particularly centrist - but because of his Uncle Joe persona.
How would Sanders have done? Don't know. My tentative feeling is he would have been the next best choice and would have had a better chance than many think.
That's because you're a far left extremist who is self-absorbed in his own world and refuses to recognise other viewpoints because they're not valid in your eyes.
Sanders would have lost. Joe won because he got Democrat votes, independent votes and even many Republicans voted for him split ticket. Sanders would never have been able to get that coalition together.
Far Left extremists don't tend to say (like I've just done) that Biden is their hero and the Dems were right to go for him. They say that Bernie would have beaten Trump in a landslide and that not choosing him was a golden opportunity to transform America passed up.
Mr. Roger, Trump is wealthy, but he's also a political outsider.
If you've seen your factory job shift ten thousand miles east and have a worse job, or none, then being told how great globalisation is may not necessarily be a vote-winner.
Be interesting to see what Biden's response is to the BLM crocodile. Standing up to that nonsense was something Trump got right, and may explain why he got a far higher number of votes than many expected.
It's such a shame that the politics of protecting the indigenous working class in the West from the inequities of globalized capitalism seems to require a good dose of nationalistic xenophobia in order to find success at the ballot box. The upshot of this is it has been hijacked by the Right rather than remaining where it belongs - the Left.
The Left are being punished electorally for not being prepared to get down in the gutter.
The Left are being punished because they don't give a f*ck about the working classes and the latter have wised up. It's why Starmer will face such a tough job.
That's nonsense. Take Bernie Sanders. Agree with him or not, like the guy or not, it's absurd to suggest he doesn't care about the working class. His politics, his rhetoric, his platform - it's 100% about economic reform in the interests of blue collar America. What he and his ilk on the Left do NOT do is seek to combine this with an appeal to people's baser instincts by turning them against outsiders and minorities. The populist Right, the Trumps of this world, that's their USP. It's what they do. Without exception it is. Whip up the plebs with some bullshit about how foreigners and liberals are to blame for their woes and then slip in a nice fat tax break for the real elites who are laughing all the way to the bank. Sadly it often works and when it does, far from the working class "wising up" it means they have been played.
I actually like Bernie Sanders and I do think he has the working classes at heart. And I'd agree he doesn't turn people against racial minorities in his message. His problem has been aligning himself with the members of the Squad, whose are most interested in pushing the idea that white people have privilege, which is a really hard one for someone stuck in a way out town with little income and respect, and who has probably known at least one person die of suicide and / or opioid abuse to accept. If the Squad had a little bit more sympathy on that front, they might gain more traction.
I think both you and Kinabalu are correct, on that specific topic.
The underlying point that Sanders' brand of populism is morally superior to Trump's is also correct too, I think.
I agree with much of it but not the central point about "timid" Biden. We'll see what he does in office but for me Trump Out dwarfed everything in importance and he did it. For this he will always be a hero to me.
Just imagine how you'd feel about him if he'd utterly humiliated Trump, set Republican representation back a hundred years, and discredited Trumpism for a generation...
The chumocracy leading to the kleptocracy is alive and well with lots of close bonds highlighted, but the link of both live in Islington is exceedingly tenuous, most people in Islington dont know each other!
Cummings, Allegra and - before his divorce - Boris - live within a circle with approx 500m radius.
I think if you explore the private school/Oxbridge/wealth nexus you will probably find it more fruitful. These people all know each other, marry each other, do business with each other. Brexit has always been about the old establishment reasserting themselves, big fish in their small pond.
Not sure I’d assign Brexit as the impulse for this.
It seems to be something inherent to the modern-day Tory Party, which as Perry Anderson points out in his latest magisterial essay on “Ukania” in the NLR, is reverting to rule by Old Etonians after a long period roughing it with grammar school types.
Brexit isn't the impulse, but it is part of the reversion. Grammar school Tories like Heath took us into the EU, Thatcher understood the EU's usefulness even if she distrusted the Germans, and successfully moulded it in a meritocratic free market direction via the Single Market. A continental European colleague explains Brexit as happening when the English upper class realised they'd been priced out of the Chelsea housing market, which seems plausible to me.
Not really true, Eton educated Macmillan was the one who first asked for us to join the Common Market and Eton educated Cameron led the Leave campaign. Grammar school educated Enoch Powell was the earliest and most notable Tory Brexiteer
Sorry, should have been Eton educated Cameron led the Remain campaign.
The Tory pro-European toffs were of the old One Nation variety - the traditional order should be maintained but the upper-crust had a duty to improve the life chances of those less lucky by birth. In contrast, I get the impression that the likes of Rees-Mogg think the end of the peasantry was a decidedly retrograde step.
Lord Salisbury was an Old Etonian, as was Alan Clark, there have always been Old Etonians on the hard right not just the One Nation left of the Tory Party, Rees Mogg is no exception
Like Rees-Mogg, I always felt that Alan Clark wasn't a true aristocrat but a bit of a brash, new-money type. (That his surname suggests his ancestor was Bob Cratchit should have given him a clue.)
Neither Rees-Mogg nor Alan Clark are/were aristocrats in any sense of the term, despite the castles and posing and ludicrous airs they adopt. Clark was rather vulgar really, if a good diarist. Rees-Mogg is simply ludicrous with all his affectations.
As you say, Clark loved to pose, but he was simply living off the back of a cultured father, with almost none of the historical 'position' his pretensions aspired to. Rees-Mogg's background, disappointingly for him, I thought was a mixture of business and west country squire too, turbocharged like Boris by the atmosphere of individualist entitlement of 1980's Eton.
Rees Mogg's mother in law was the daughter of the 8th Earl Fitzwilliam
But his own ancestors were just minor local squires, as I understand it.
I would genuinely hate to be a politician...imagine you give a perfectly sensible answer including very clear caveats and within 2hrs, a number of media outlets are running a headline that says something you absolutely didn't say.
Only a few weeks ago there was all that nonsense about actors should retrain as ...., Again Sunak didn't say what was being reported, but everybody was in the outrage bus by the evening.
That was a ludicrous resonse from a lot of people, mainly arty types. There is nothing wrong with telling people to consider retraining and a different career. It doesn't matter what your vocation is, the world changes too fast nowadays to set your sight on one thing to the exclusion of all other options.
I suspect though that there would have been no outrage if the person in the picture had been a carpenter, plumber, or electrician; even though those are probably better careers long-term than being a dancer.
You can argue about what they might do next, but the point that coal is on its way out is broadly correct. Even the US will eventually shift away from fossil fuels. Biden has also pointed out that a lot of engineering, transport, and infrastructure will be needed by renewables energy generation. So there are going to be news jobs where the skills are quite closely aligned with current energy jobs.
That aside, I think that it is people sat at a desk that should worry most about the future. Automating mental work is easier than automating physical work, for a host of reasons.
Lord Sumption tears into the Government over its handling of people in care homes and what it tells us about the disproportionate responses of ministers on covid.
"Ministers care more about deaths from Covid-19 because they have a bigger media profile and the Government is more likely to be blamed for them. That is the level to which we have sunk."
Edge case. High treason is " compassing *or imagining* the death of the monarch," but that probably means planning rather than idly speculating.
Imagine the court case. "Yes your honour, I imagined it. I couldn't help it. Someone said to me 'imagine the queen dying', and there it was in my head. Now it's in your head too, isn't it, your honour?" Judge bangs her gavel*, and sentences everyone within earshot to life imprisonment, herself included.
I would genuinely hate to be a politician...imagine you give a perfectly sensible answer including very clear caveats and within 2hrs, a number of media outlets are running a headline that says something you absolutely didn't say.
Only a few weeks ago there was all that nonsense about actors should retrain as ...., Again Sunak didn't say what was being reported, but everybody was in the outrage bus by the evening.
That was a ludicrous resonse from a lot of people, mainly arty types. There is nothing wrong with telling people to consider retraining and a different career. It doesn't matter what your vocation is, the world changes too fast nowadays to set your sight on one thing to the exclusion of all other options.
I suspect though that there would have been no outrage if the person in the picture had been a carpenter, plumber, or electrician; even though those are probably better careers long-term than being a dancer.
You can argue about what they might do next, but the point that coal is on its way out is broadly correct. Even the US will eventually shift away from fossil fuels. Biden has also pointed out that a lot of engineering, transport, and infrastructure will be needed by renewables energy generation. So there are going to be news jobs where the skills are quite closely aligned with current energy jobs.
That asise, I think that it is people sat at a desk that should worry most about the future. Automating mental work is easier than automating physical work, for a host of reasons.
I wasn't criticizing Biden. Just pointing out the huge coverage and outrage as somebody spinning Sunak's words, to dare to suggest somebody who works in the Arts and out of work might consider getting a job in a different field, while it is totally standard to say to people in some other fields you need to retrain.
As you say, there are a lot of middle class "skilled" desk jobs that are massively under-threat from ML / AI and most of those people have little to no idea. Few politicians want to talk about it, let alone start to think about how to create policy with this fact in mind.
The robots aren't coming for the plumbers and carpenters, they are coming for the accountants.
The chumocracy leading to the kleptocracy is alive and well with lots of close bonds highlighted, but the link of both live in Islington is exceedingly tenuous, most people in Islington dont know each other!
Cummings, Allegra and - before his divorce - Boris - live within a circle with approx 500m radius.
I think if you explore the private school/Oxbridge/wealth nexus you will probably find it more fruitful. These people all know each other, marry each other, do business with each other. Brexit has always been about the old establishment reasserting themselves, big fish in their small pond.
Not sure I’d assign Brexit as the impulse for this.
It seems to be something inherent to the modern-day Tory Party, which as Perry Anderson points out in his latest magisterial essay on “Ukania” in the NLR, is reverting to rule by Old Etonians after a long period roughing it with grammar school types.
Brexit isn't the impulse, but it is part of the reversion. Grammar school Tories like Heath took us into the EU, Thatcher understood the EU's usefulness even if she distrusted the Germans, and successfully moulded it in a meritocratic free market direction via the Single Market. A continental European colleague explains Brexit as happening when the English upper class realised they'd been priced out of the Chelsea housing market, which seems plausible to me.
Not really true, Eton educated Macmillan was the one who first asked for us to join the Common Market and Eton educated Cameron led the Leave campaign. Grammar school educated Enoch Powell was the earliest and most notable Tory Brexiteer
Sorry, should have been Eton educated Cameron led the Remain campaign.
The Tory pro-European toffs were of the old One Nation variety - the traditional order should be maintained but the upper-crust had a duty to improve the life chances of those less lucky by birth. In contrast, I get the impression that the likes of Rees-Mogg think the end of the peasantry was a decidedly retrograde step.
Lord Salisbury was an Old Etonian, as was Alan Clark, there have always been Old Etonians on the hard right not just the One Nation left of the Tory Party, Rees Mogg is no exception
Like Rees-Mogg, I always felt that Alan Clark wasn't a true aristocrat but a bit of a brash, new-money type. (That his surname suggests his ancestor was Bob Cratchit should have given him a clue.)
Neither Rees-Mogg nor Alan Clark are/were aristocrats in any sense of the term, despite the castles and posing and ludicrous airs they adopt. Clark was rather vulgar really, if a good diarist. Rees-Mogg is simply ludicrous with all his affectations.
As you say, Clark loved to pose, but he was simply living off the back of a cultured father, with almost none of the historical 'position' his pretensions aspired to. Rees-Mogg's background, disappointingly for him, I thought was a mixture of business and west country squire too, turbocharged like Boris by the atmosphere of individualist entitlement of 1980's Eton.
Rees Mogg's mother in law was the daughter of the 8th Earl Fitzwilliam
But his own ancestors were just minor local squires, as I understand it.
Yes, although the Mogg family has owned Cholwell House, a manor house in Cameley, Somerset since 1726
I see his granddad was in the Army in the Great War, as a lieutenant - but in the RASC, not a posh regiment. A very necessary job, above all in that war as in others, but it does rather suggest the minor squirearchy rather than anything truly aristocratic.
I would have voted for Trump over Sanders but Biden over Trump had I been American indeed
I see that you're commenting in the past tense. In the light of what you now know about the nefarious efforts of Trump to subvert every democratic norm in seeking to overthrow the election result, would you have done the same now?
The Republican Party stooges going along with Trump's bidding at least have the excuse that their careers depend on it. You don't.
The chumocracy leading to the kleptocracy is alive and well with lots of close bonds highlighted, but the link of both live in Islington is exceedingly tenuous, most people in Islington dont know each other!
Cummings, Allegra and - before his divorce - Boris - live within a circle with approx 500m radius.
I think if you explore the private school/Oxbridge/wealth nexus you will probably find it more fruitful. These people all know each other, marry each other, do business with each other. Brexit has always been about the old establishment reasserting themselves, big fish in their small pond.
Not sure I’d assign Brexit as the impulse for this.
It seems to be something inherent to the modern-day Tory Party, which as Perry Anderson points out in his latest magisterial essay on “Ukania” in the NLR, is reverting to rule by Old Etonians after a long period roughing it with grammar school types.
Brexit isn't the impulse, but it is part of the reversion. Grammar school Tories like Heath took us into the EU, Thatcher understood the EU's usefulness even if she distrusted the Germans, and successfully moulded it in a meritocratic free market direction via the Single Market. A continental European colleague explains Brexit as happening when the English upper class realised they'd been priced out of the Chelsea housing market, which seems plausible to me.
Not really true, Eton educated Macmillan was the one who first asked for us to join the Common Market and Eton educated Cameron led the Leave campaign. Grammar school educated Enoch Powell was the earliest and most notable Tory Brexiteer
Sorry, should have been Eton educated Cameron led the Remain campaign.
The Tory pro-European toffs were of the old One Nation variety - the traditional order should be maintained but the upper-crust had a duty to improve the life chances of those less lucky by birth. In contrast, I get the impression that the likes of Rees-Mogg think the end of the peasantry was a decidedly retrograde step.
Lord Salisbury was an Old Etonian, as was Alan Clark, there have always been Old Etonians on the hard right not just the One Nation left of the Tory Party, Rees Mogg is no exception
Like Rees-Mogg, I always felt that Alan Clark wasn't a true aristocrat but a bit of a brash, new-money type. (That his surname suggests his ancestor was Bob Cratchit should have given him a clue.)
Neither Rees-Mogg nor Alan Clark are/were aristocrats in any sense of the term, despite the castles and posing and ludicrous airs they adopt. Clark was rather vulgar really, if a good diarist. Rees-Mogg is simply ludicrous with all his affectations.
As you say, Clark loved to pose, but he was simply living off the back of a cultured father, with almost none of the historical 'position' his pretensions aspired to. Rees-Mogg's background, disappointingly for him, I thought was a mixture of business and west country squire too, turbocharged like Boris by the atmosphere of individualist entitlement of 1980's Eton.
Rees Mogg's mother in law was the daughter of the 8th Earl Fitzwilliam
What has his mother-in-law got to do with it? I give you Mike Tyndall.
I doubt he considers himself posh. In fact I doubt anybody considers him posh.
I would genuinely hate to be a politician...imagine you give a perfectly sensible answer including very clear caveats and within 2hrs, a number of media outlets are running a headline that says something you absolutely didn't say.
Only a few weeks ago there was all that nonsense about actors should retrain as ...., Again Sunak didn't say what was being reported, but everybody was in the outrage bus by the evening.
That was a ludicrous resonse from a lot of people, mainly arty types. There is nothing wrong with telling people to consider retraining and a different career. It doesn't matter what your vocation is, the world changes too fast nowadays to set your sight on one thing to the exclusion of all other options.
I suspect though that there would have been no outrage if the person in the picture had been a carpenter, plumber, or electrician; even though those are probably better careers long-term than being a dancer.
You can argue about what they might do next, but the point that coal is on its way out is broadly correct. Even the US will eventually shift away from fossil fuels. Biden has also pointed out that a lot of engineering, transport, and infrastructure will be needed by renewables energy generation. So there are going to be news jobs where the skills are quite closely aligned with current energy jobs.
That aside, I think that it is people sat at a desk that should worry most about the future. Automating mental work is easier than automating physical work, for a host of reasons.
Coal is going to go very rapidly. The economics are just brutal, with cheap fracking, and even cheaper renewables.
Mr. Roger, Trump is wealthy, but he's also a political outsider.
If you've seen your factory job shift ten thousand miles east and have a worse job, or none, then being told how great globalisation is may not necessarily be a vote-winner.
Be interesting to see what Biden's response is to the BLM crocodile. Standing up to that nonsense was something Trump got right, and may explain why he got a far higher number of votes than many expected.
It's such a shame that the politics of protecting the indigenous working class in the West from the inequities of globalized capitalism seems to require a good dose of nationalistic xenophobia in order to find success at the ballot box. The upshot of this is it has been hijacked by the Right rather than remaining where it belongs - the Left.
The Left are being punished electorally for not being prepared to get down in the gutter.
The Left are being punished because they don't give a f*ck about the working classes and the latter have wised up. It's why Starmer will face such a tough job.
That's nonsense. Take Bernie Sanders. Agree with him or not, like the guy or not, it's absurd to suggest he doesn't care about the working class. His politics, his rhetoric, his platform - it's 100% about economic reform in the interests of blue collar America. What he and his ilk on the Left do NOT do is seek to combine this with an appeal to people's baser instincts by turning them against outsiders and minorities. The populist Right, the Trumps of this world, that's their USP. It's what they do. Without exception it is. Whip up the plebs with some bullshit about how foreigners and liberals are to blame for their woes and then slip in a nice fat tax break for the real elites who are laughing all the way to the bank. Sadly it often works and when it does, far from the working class "wising up" it means they have been played.
I actually like Bernie Sanders and I do think he has the working classes at heart. And I'd agree he doesn't turn people against racial minorities in his message. His problem has been aligning himself with the members of the Squad, whose are most interested in pushing the idea that white people have privilege, which is a really hard one for someone stuck in a way out town with little income and respect, and who has probably known at least one person die of suicide and / or opioid abuse to accept. If the Squad had a little bit more sympathy on that front, they might gain more traction.
I think both you and Kinabalu are correct, on that specific topic.
The underlying point that Sanders' brand of populism is morally superior to Trump's is also correct too, I think.
I agree with much of it but not the central point about "timid" Biden. We'll see what he does in office but for me Trump Out dwarfed everything in importance and he did it. For this he will always be a hero to me.
Just imagine how you'd feel about him if he'd utterly humiliated Trump, set Republican representation back a hundred years, and discredited Trumpism for a generation...
Which was what I was both hoping for and expecting. But I've found in the last few days that my relief at just the de minimus success of removing the ghastly man from office is sufficient to overwhelm any disappointment. And I'm not as pessimistic as others about what happens post 20/1. Without the trappings of the presidency I see Trump becoming a much diminished figure. Ditto his clan. That plus all the legal and financial problems, I think Trump and Trumpism as a serious political force is on its way out.
Fox News is leading on the news that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders – who ran to be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate – has confirmed he would be open to the possibility of taking the job of labour secretary under Biden, a move that’s been suggested but not confirmed in recent days.
Really? If that were true, sounds a terrible move by Biden. It will be all union only jobs, back to the 80s.
I would genuinely hate to be a politician...imagine you give a perfectly sensible answer including very clear caveats and within 2hrs, a number of media outlets are running a headline that says something you absolutely didn't say.
Only a few weeks ago there was all that nonsense about actors should retrain as ...., Again Sunak didn't say what was being reported, but everybody was in the outrage bus by the evening.
That was a ludicrous resonse from a lot of people, mainly arty types. There is nothing wrong with telling people to consider retraining and a different career. It doesn't matter what your vocation is, the world changes too fast nowadays to set your sight on one thing to the exclusion of all other options.
I suspect though that there would have been no outrage if the person in the picture had been a carpenter, plumber, or electrician; even though those are probably better careers long-term than being a dancer.
A stack of messages from foreign leaders to President-elect Joe Biden are sitting at the State Department but the Trump administration is preventing him from accessing them, according to State Department officials familiar with the messages.
I would genuinely hate to be a politician...imagine you give a perfectly sensible answer including very clear caveats and within 2hrs, a number of media outlets are running a headline that says something you absolutely didn't say.
Only a few weeks ago there was all that nonsense about actors should retrain as ...., Again Sunak didn't say what was being reported, but everybody was in the outrage bus by the evening.
That was a ludicrous resonse from a lot of people, mainly arty types. There is nothing wrong with telling people to consider retraining and a different career. It doesn't matter what your vocation is, the world changes too fast nowadays to set your sight on one thing to the exclusion of all other options.
I suspect though that there would have been no outrage if the person in the picture had been a carpenter, plumber, or electrician; even though those are probably better careers long-term than being a dancer.
You can argue about what they might do next, but the point that coal is on its way out is broadly correct. Even the US will eventually shift away from fossil fuels. Biden has also pointed out that a lot of engineering, transport, and infrastructure will be needed by renewables energy generation. So there are going to be news jobs where the skills are quite closely aligned with current energy jobs.
That aside, I think that it is people sat at a desk that should worry most about the future. Automating mental work is easier than automating physical work, for a host of reasons.
Which is why we still have 90% of the population doing agricultural labour I suppose...
I wasn't criticizing Biden. Just pointing out the huge coverage and outrage as somebody spinning Sunak's words, to dare to suggest somebody who works in the Arts and out of work might consider getting a job in a different field, while it is totally standard to say to people in some other fields you need to retrain.
As you say, there are a lot of middle class "skilled" desk jobs that are massively under-threat from ML / AI and most of those people have little to no idea. Few politicians want to talk about it, let alone start to think about how to create policy with this fact in mind.
The robots aren't coming for the plumbers and carpenters, they are coming for the accountants.
If you job is mostly doing paperwork at a computer, that's potentially automatable, and almost certainly easier to automate than physical jobs where interacting with people and the environment throws up a whole load of technical challenges, as well as issues with safety and liability.
Now that the US election and Trump are finished, and a coronavirus vaccine or two may be coming down the pike, I see the East-Atlantics on here are back to arguing about who really counts as aristocratic. I would sneer, but frankly I think it's nice to see a glint of normality in the darkness.
Edge case. High treason is " compassing *or imagining* the death of the monarch," but that probably means planning rather than idly speculating.
Imagine the court case. "Yes your honour, I imagined it. I couldn't help it. Someone said to me 'imagine the queen dying', and there it was in my head. Now it's in your head too, isn't it, your honour?" Judge bangs her gavel*, and sentences everyone within earshot to life imprisonment, herself included.
*yes yes, I know.
Like that old joke:
Employee to boss: what would you do if I said you were an idiot. Boss: sack you. Employee: is there anything you can do about my thoughts? Boss: no of course not, I can't react to what you are thinking. Employee: OK then, I think you're an idiot.
"Chaos in No10 as Dominic Cummings 'looks for a way to leave without losing face' as his Vote Leave empire 'starts to fall apart' after Carrie and her squad see off Boris aide Lee Cain in brutal civil war"
Mr. Roger, Trump is wealthy, but he's also a political outsider.
If you've seen your factory job shift ten thousand miles east and have a worse job, or none, then being told how great globalisation is may not necessarily be a vote-winner.
Be interesting to see what Biden's response is to the BLM crocodile. Standing up to that nonsense was something Trump got right, and may explain why he got a far higher number of votes than many expected.
It's such a shame that the politics of protecting the indigenous working class in the West from the inequities of globalized capitalism seems to require a good dose of nationalistic xenophobia in order to find success at the ballot box. The upshot of this is it has been hijacked by the Right rather than remaining where it belongs - the Left.
The Left are being punished electorally for not being prepared to get down in the gutter.
The Left are being punished because they don't give a f*ck about the working classes and the latter have wised up. It's why Starmer will face such a tough job.
That's nonsense. Take Bernie Sanders. Agree with him or not, like the guy or not, it's absurd to suggest he doesn't care about the working class. His politics, his rhetoric, his platform - it's 100% about economic reform in the interests of blue collar America. What he and his ilk on the Left do NOT do is seek to combine this with an appeal to people's baser instincts by turning them against outsiders and minorities. The populist Right, the Trumps of this world, that's their USP. It's what they do. Without exception it is. Whip up the plebs with some bullshit about how foreigners and liberals are to blame for their woes and then slip in a nice fat tax break for the real elites who are laughing all the way to the bank. Sadly it often works and when it does, far from the working class "wising up" it means they have been played.
I actually like Bernie Sanders and I do think he has the working classes at heart. And I'd agree he doesn't turn people against racial minorities in his message. His problem has been aligning himself with the members of the Squad, whose are most interested in pushing the idea that white people have privilege, which is a really hard one for someone stuck in a way out town with little income and respect, and who has probably known at least one person die of suicide and / or opioid abuse to accept. If the Squad had a little bit more sympathy on that front, they might gain more traction.
I think both you and Kinabalu are correct, on that specific topic.
The underlying point that Sanders' brand of populism is morally superior to Trump's is also correct too, I think.
I agree with much of it but not the central point about "timid" Biden. We'll see what he does in office but for me Trump Out dwarfed everything in importance and he did it. For this he will always be a hero to me.
Just imagine how you'd feel about him if he'd utterly humiliated Trump, set Republican representation back a hundred years, and discredited Trumpism for a generation...
Which was what I was both hoping for and expecting. But I've found in the last few days that my relief at just the de minimus success of removing the ghastly man from office is sufficient to overwhelm any disappointment. And I'm not as pessimistic as others about what happens post 20/1. Without the trappings of the presidency I see Trump becoming a much diminished figure. Ditto his clan. That plus all the legal and financial problems, I think Trump and Trumpism as a serious political force is on its way out.
I shared your hope and disappointemnt, but am now extracting much pleasure from watching the bloated body twisting in the wind as life and power seeps from it.
If it infects the body of the GoP so much the better. It is as culpable as any.
I wasn't criticizing Biden. Just pointing out the huge coverage and outrage as somebody spinning Sunak's words, to dare to suggest somebody who works in the Arts and out of work might consider getting a job in a different field, while it is totally standard to say to people in some other fields you need to retrain.
As you say, there are a lot of middle class "skilled" desk jobs that are massively under-threat from ML / AI and most of those people have little to no idea. Few politicians want to talk about it, let alone start to think about how to create policy with this fact in mind.
The robots aren't coming for the plumbers and carpenters, they are coming for the accountants.
If you job is mostly doing paperwork at a computer, that's potentially automatable, and almost certainly easier to automate than physical jobs where interacting with people and the environment throws up a whole load of technical challenges, as well as issues with safety and liability.
In many fields, it won't be about total elimination of jobs, more that you won't need as many bodies, as the computer automates and speeds up lots of tasks. Even in creative world, I have friends who have produced tech that automates a number of very time consuming tasks to do with video production. As a result, you don't need some grunt going through doing a load of tweaking.
If that's the level of analysis that DB are producing no wonder they are in the shit.
How about also adding taxes to business which are saving on property and energy costs by not having workers in the office?
Anything from DB on that one? Thought not.
the article does say:
Alternatively, the report suggests the tax could be paid by employers who do not provide their workforce with a permanent desk.
but it doesn't sound it's like their preferred option.
Deutsche Bank should propose a new tax on employees who want to carry on WFH but only the ones who simultaneously whine about their student offspring paying £9k for a weekly zoom call.
I would genuinely hate to be a politician...imagine you give a perfectly sensible answer including very clear caveats and within 2hrs, a number of media outlets are running a headline that says something you absolutely didn't say.
Only a few weeks ago there was all that nonsense about actors should retrain as ...., Again Sunak didn't say what was being reported, but everybody was in the outrage bus by the evening.
That was a ludicrous resonse from a lot of people, mainly arty types. There is nothing wrong with telling people to consider retraining and a different career. It doesn't matter what your vocation is, the world changes too fast nowadays to set your sight on one thing to the exclusion of all other options.
I suspect though that there would have been no outrage if the person in the picture had been a carpenter, plumber, or electrician; even though those are probably better careers long-term than being a dancer.
You can argue about what they might do next, but the point that coal is on its way out is broadly correct. Even the US will eventually shift away from fossil fuels. Biden has also pointed out that a lot of engineering, transport, and infrastructure will be needed by renewables energy generation. So there are going to be news jobs where the skills are quite closely aligned with current energy jobs.
That aside, I think that it is people sat at a desk that should worry most about the future. Automating mental work is easier than automating physical work, for a host of reasons.
The reaction by journalists to messages saying "learn to code" when *their* jobs were threatened was interesting. Apparently "learn to code" is sincere career advice for coal miners and a savage, gloating attack when applied to the illustrious members of the 4th estate...
The next generation of AI/automation is already destroying physical jobs, not just spreadsheet jockey jobs. Amazon is planning on entirely automated warehouses - from reception to inventory to package and despatch.
Fox News is leading on the news that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders – who ran to be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate – has confirmed he would be open to the possibility of taking the job of labour secretary under Biden, a move that’s been suggested but not confirmed in recent days.
Really? If that were true, sounds a terrible move by Biden. It will be all union only jobs, back to the 80s.
Fox News is leading on the news that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders – who ran to be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate – has confirmed he would be open to the possibility of taking the job of labour secretary under Biden, a move that’s been suggested but not confirmed in recent days.
Really? If that were true, sounds a terrible move by Biden. It will be all union only jobs, back to the 80s.
As opposed to ZHC ones
Go Bernie
Bernie's backward thinking, all it will do is speed up automation and deployment of more ML / AI solution. $15/hr union jobs for all....beep beep bot beep is what you will hear instead.
Edge case. High treason is " compassing *or imagining* the death of the monarch," but that probably means planning rather than idly speculating.
Imagine the court case. "Yes your honour, I imagined it. I couldn't help it. Someone said to me 'imagine the queen dying', and there it was in my head. Now it's in your head too, isn't it, your honour?" Judge bangs her gavel*, and sentences everyone within earshot to life imprisonment, herself included.
Ruining Stonehenge is treason and anyone backing the proposals should be deported to Russia.
But you too have imagined the tunnel, so it's off to Yakutsk for you too
The real issue depends on the length of the tunnel - if it is long enough, there won't be damage and there won't be a visible road at Stonehenge. Which would be an improvement. The question is "How long does the tunnel need to be?"
Comments
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/11/us-trump-biden-president-elect
I agree with much of it but not the central point about "timid" Biden. We'll see what he does in office but for me Trump Out dwarfed everything in importance and he did it. For this he will always be a hero to me.
But their predecessors- especially coupled with the Deliverology culture of "Thou must get these grades for the children"- were differently but equally grim.
So what?
Doesn’t make him an aristocrat.
My own Italian family are genuine aristos going back to the 16th century at least. We even have a champagne named after us! We can recognise parvenus when we see them.
Not that any of this matters. People should be judged on their character, on how they behave. Kindness is much more important than some title based on what some ancestor did centuries ago.
Neither Clark nor Rees-Mogg’s behaviour - from what I know of it - passes the Cyclefree test.
I'm heartened by Biden so far ; I just hope his first term is more environmentally focused programmes, as promised , and less pharmaceutical industry backslapping.
Aristocracy, is an anachronism. Time for it to go... rather like Rees-Mogg IMO.
He is expected to be joined by a scientist or doctor, who will be confirmed nearer the time.
How would Sanders have done? Don't know. My tentative feeling is he would have been the next best choice and would have had a better chance than many think.
Exams should be difficult and they should test the understanding of the concept, not the ability to memorise a bunch of answers 48h before the exam.
Sanders would have lost. Joe won because he got Democrat votes, independent votes and even many Republicans voted for him split ticket. Sanders would never have been able to get that coalition together.
5/6 Yes
5/6 No
I have no idea of the protocol at these things. from the pricing I presume the outgoing president usually always attends?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/nov/12/post-brexit-lorry-queues-could-make-kent-toilet-of-england
And on the Jewish side we started out as tinkers on the street ......
Whereas those who see themselves more as self-made sovereign individuals run the risk of worshipping their own assumed creator.
Not that it matters, because it didn't happen. Biden won, Trump was dreadful.
https://twitter.com/alexmassie/status/1326869555625549827
TBH I can't see what they're waiting for. Biden is still 11,635 ahead. The last update I saw from the elections board said that there were only 24,000 ballots estimated to be outstanding with over 40% in Pima (Biden's best county) and 30% in Maricopa (which is 50/50). The tracking website has 22,456 outstanding currently, and the 17,000 results added in the past day have narrowed Biden's lead by little more than 1,000. That suggests that the final margin is going to be around the 10,000 mark. As Arizona can only have a recount for a margin within 200, it's surely nailed on for Biden.
I suspect though that there would have been no outrage if the person in the picture had been a carpenter, plumber, or electrician; even though those are probably better careers long-term than being a dancer.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/476391-biden-tells-coal-miners-to-learn-to-code
https://twitter.com/BenDinnery/status/1326874275119247360
That aside, I think that it is people sat at a desk that should worry most about the future. Automating mental work is easier than automating physical work, for a host of reasons.
Later peeps!
"Ministers care more about deaths from Covid-19 because they have a bigger media profile and the Government is more likely to be blamed for them. That is the level to which we have sunk."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/11/lockdown-laws-leave-forno-place-common-sense-individual-judgment/
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1326874996120166403
"Yes your honour, I imagined it. I couldn't help it. Someone said to me 'imagine the queen dying', and there it was in my head. Now it's in your head too, isn't it, your honour?"
Judge bangs her gavel*, and sentences everyone within earshot to life imprisonment, herself included.
*yes yes, I know.
As you say, there are a lot of middle class "skilled" desk jobs that are massively under-threat from ML / AI and most of those people have little to no idea. Few politicians want to talk about it, let alone start to think about how to create policy with this fact in mind.
The robots aren't coming for the plumbers and carpenters, they are coming for the accountants.
https://twitter.com/holland_tom/status/1326875620077342721
The Republican Party stooges going along with Trump's bidding at least have the excuse that their careers depend on it. You don't.
I doubt he considers himself posh. In fact I doubt anybody considers him posh.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54886286
Try not to need an operation for the next 10 years, while the backlog is cleared.
Really? If that were true, sounds a terrible move by Biden. It will be all union only jobs, back to the 80s.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/11/politics/state-department-biden-messages/index.html
Michelle Yeoh filmed most of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon just after undergoing ACL surgery.
However, the story here might be that the new chap is a Civil Servant and not another member of the Cummings Spadocracy.
I would sneer, but frankly I think it's nice to see a glint of normality in the darkness.
Employee to boss: what would you do if I said you were an idiot.
Boss: sack you.
Employee: is there anything you can do about my thoughts?
Boss: no of course not, I can't react to what you are thinking.
Employee: OK then, I think you're an idiot.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8941997/Dominic-Cummings-Vote-Leave-empire-starts-fall-apart-Carrie-row.html
If it infects the body of the GoP so much the better. It is as culpable as any.
In this case I’d go with “no”
Ruining Stonehenge is treason and anyone backing the proposals should be deported to Russia.
The next generation of AI/automation is already destroying physical jobs, not just spreadsheet jockey jobs. Amazon is planning on entirely automated warehouses - from reception to inventory to package and despatch.
Go Bernie
https://twitter.com/Gammons4London/status/1325464774310813697
https://twitter.com/Gammons4London/status/1326541256827183106
I don't like, respect, read or trust the Sun: do you have a problem with that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge_road_tunnel