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Hubris took on the law. And the law won. – politicalbetting.com
Hubris took on the law. And the law won. – politicalbetting.com
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Sam Friedman has listed his top ten books on British politics. You will have to read his substack for the list with his comments, reasons, and to see he cheats like mad with supplementary and multi-volume entries but the bare list is:-
- Gladstone by Roy Jenkins
- The Five Giants by Nick Timmins
- A Different Kind of Weather by William Waldegrave
- Tales of a New Jerusalem series by David Kynaston
- Diaries 1964-1976 by Barbara Castle
- The Anatomy of Thatcherism by Shirley Robin Letwin
- What Does Jeremy Think? by Suzanne Heywood
- Power Trip by Damian McBride
- Yes to Europe! by Robert Saunders
- The Complete Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister
https://samf.substack.com/p/the-top-ten-books-on-british-politicsThen the more sane Tories will have a problem supporting it .
And if it scrapes through the Commons the HOL tends to take a dim view of breaking international law .
At this point one wonders whether the right are willing to lose the election so that they can complete the takeover of the party .
Installing another leader before the election would be insane , absolutely no way the vast majority of the public will accept another Tory PM with no electoral mandate .
It’s not okay to say well this is our system and you vote for parties not leaders . That argument will be given short shrift by the public .
If Haley is the candidate, the Democrats have a real problem in what to do about Biden. He has, IMO, been a very good president, but he'd very likely lose to Haley now.
Why Nikki Haley polls better against Joe Biden than Donald Trump does
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/09/haley-electability-trump-biden-polls-00130926
Starmer is indeed a lucky,lucky general, but he does need to sort Labour policy out on this one.
Just let your opponents keep making mistakes. The SNP after the next election will be interesting. Very much depends on how many seats they hold.
The SNP is the only viable vehicle to Scottish Independence, so is a bit like Brexit in that it has to combine very disparate people and ideas that unite only around one idea, but agree on little else. It therefore has to choose being small and fairly united, or large and riven by internal conflict.
I think it very likely to regenerate like Doctor Who under Starmerism. The main driver has always been resentment at foreign control, mattering little how benign or autocratic that control is.
I’ve been a fan for years. Probably one of the few people on here who has actually read her book…
It can’t be larger numbers. So put them on a separate wing and house them together. Can’t be beyond the wit of man (or women*)
* that makes me feel like I’m part of the Life of Brian scene with Loretta
My thoughts exactly; how many people are there in Scottish prisons who are claiming to be what they are apparently not?
I absolutely loved him in Sex Education.
https://www.thebookseller.com/rights/pan-mac-lands-freedmans-deep-dive-into-britains-broken-institutions-in-substantial-pre-empt
And there is one he recommends about education specifically, in the article itself. And, as he says, politics is usually more interesting than policy, anyway.
Words fail me.
You worry about the new government, when it happens!
Jenkins's book on Asquith is also very good.
Revealed: the homeopath in charge of the King’s health
Michael Dixon, a champion of faith healing and herbalism with a questionable CV, has been quietly installed as head of the royal medical household
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/revealed-the-homeopath-in-charge-of-the-kings-health-tmx59q3bk
Although what bothers me is how much of the same attitude I see in many parts of our system of government. The comments Wilson made could easily be replicated about OFSTED, which spends much of its time covering up crimes by its inspectors to avoid discrediting their reports.
He has also managed to miss out the one of the vanishingly few entertaining books about British politics. Viz: Alastair Campbell’s Diaries.
Campbell the man is a cad and a bounder, but he writes well and the Dairies are compulsively readable. Unlike any of these worthy tomes
In fact, you could make a case that they were better than the TV series, and that's not to say the TV series wasn't very good as well.
I automatically mistrust anyone who likes Yes PM or who quotes it on here
As you Never Believe Anything Until It's Been Officially Denied.
There are a couple there with tangential links to it but otherwise it suggests he was making policy because he was interested in the politics of it. Which may explain why he was such an utter disaster.
https://www.twinkl.co.uk/blog/10-ways-to-make-the-most-of-ai-as-a-private-tutor
There was also this story on it earlier this week:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-67433036
I actually tended to use it for marking - if there were straightforward quizzes with fairly clear answers it could mark most of them for me, then I could just quickly check and distribute the reports electronically.
However, the DfE (despite their claims) are trying to make that more difficult by insisting on paper being retained at all times. They don't like technology in classrooms.
No, not Jacob Rees-Mogg, and anyway he's Somerset.
Pliosaur discovery: Huge sea monster emerges from Dorset cliffs
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67650247
The centrist One Nation group of Tory MPs will meet tomorrow to decide whether to back Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda bill, says Damian Green, one of its leading members.
Green says they have yet to conclude whether the bill abides by rule of law and Britain’s international obligations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Major_Major_Major
Edit: and good morning, nice to see you on here! Grey but at least dry here. but only for the moment.
The fascinating thing for me isn't what this does for gender politics (as the absolutist tide is already retreating), its what it does for nationalism. The SNP can't do what it likes. A short while ago this election was supposed to be an unofficial 2nd referendum. Now it has a tired and confused governing party in retreat unable even to pass laws in their own country.
Just like the Tories with Rwanda, you can't do what you want and impose your ideas on others.
That goes for both One Nation as well as the ERG.
Should Scotland be allowed to set laws in Scotland? Yes!
But - and its the same big but that demolishes the Rwanda crayon drawing. Sovereignty applies to the sovereign body. That sovereign body can't impose its will on other sovereign bodies. Just as the Tories can't dictate to Rwanda what Rwanda does in Rwanda, Holyrood can't dictate laws outside of Scotland. And the GRR - regardless of your views on the policy - has been found to stamp on the toes south of the wall.
As Cyclefree rightly labels it - hubris.
The utter incoherence of the Scottish government's position arguing completely contradictory positions in respect of the same legislation simply highlights the dishonesty and evasion that underlies this legislation. Given the substantial effect that a GRC has (Lady Haldane held that it meant the person was a woman "for all purposes", as per the 2004 Act) safeguards are essential. You simply cannot sweep them away.
All in all, this seems to be an example to progressives of the dangers of treating a very complex and nuanced issue without clear immediate answers as a simple 'liberation one' which wasn't up for debate.
There are complexities and trade-offs, and science is far from settled, thanks to the difficulty in studying a small number of people who often have to self-refer. Even what you are talking about - is it those seeking full reassignment, those wanting to live as the other sex but not, those who do so for sexual reasons, or just those who just reject gender norms - adds to complexities before you even get on to how policies or even rhetoric should work, nor how it intersects with rights or protections previously accorded to women on the basis of sex.
Ignoring that has got progressives into a mess, and actually divided one's own side and often allowed the right to exploit that by pitching their own answers as more practical. When if it had been viewed as a subject to be approached with both compassion but realism and nuanced, policies with better outcomes for everyone might have been achieved without the ugliness that has torn lots of people apart.
The SNP have perhaps provided the worst example thanks to their own hubris. They've not only tied it to their big issue (independence) but sleepwalked into a position whose popularity and credibility are receding as even those who instinctively supported as on 'the right side' acknowledge there are complexities knee-jerk reactions had not fully considered.
Or Morris...
If the Major brothers went into the Army one may have been Major Major Major, and if the Minor brothers decided to follow a gold rush one of them may have been Miner Minor Minor!
I don't really agree with your second paragraph. I think the SG case on Section 35 is coherent even if it fails legally. UKG haven't been particularly coherent either. They certainly haven't acted in good faith, which is the key point I'm making here.
A high-IQ Aspie personality might be seen as ideal for creating and pushing techie companies like SpaceX and Tesla. Less so - to put it mildly - for owning a social media company. Indeed it is hard to think of a worse mix than Social Media plus Asperger's
Musk should set some free speech ground rules for TwiX, then let someone else run the show, and let someone else audit his tweets first. I do believe he has good intentions, he's just incredibly clumsy and prone to tantrums
I'll get my coat..
Responding to the book Hundred Authors Against Einstein
That doesn't likely hold. Almost every carmaker is now producing or on the verge of producing EVs that frankly, are much better and more tailored to individual tastes than Tesla. Tesla is going all in on the crazy Cybertruck when soon you'll be able to buy a fully electric Land Rover. Or numerous high-performance EVs from upstarts. Or if your budget is more modest, all kinds of Toyotas, Hondas.
Worryingly for Tesla too, the Chinese firm BYD is also hot on its heels and it looks inevitable it will overtake it. Others will surely supersede or match its battery tech with investment, while Biden is investing $7.5bn in charging infrastructure in the US that will remove its advantage there.
All this while Musk has quite obviously taken his eye off the ball with his other ventures and when he is focused on Tesla seems to be focused on his own obsessions with what he and his fanboys think are cool rather than where the market might be going.
It's surely a matter of time before one of its competitors finds its iPhone.
Otherwise I agree. The strongest point that the Lord Advocate made was that there was no attempt to engage with this legislation during its passage which, at the least, raises question marks about the motivation for the use of s35.
- Steve Richard's The Prime Ministers/The Prime Ministers We Never Had/Turning Points
- Tim Shipman's "Out" series (third one published in Mar 2024)
- Pogrund and Maguire's "Left Out" and Owen Jones's "This Land"
- King and Crewe's "The Blunders of our Governments"
- Marquand's "Britain Since 1918: The Strange Career Of British Democracy"
- Edgerton's "The Rise and Fall of the British Nation"
- Goodwin's "Values, Voice and Virtue"
The list is limited to the ones I have read, explaining the absence of (say) Thatcher's "Statecraft" which is on my TBR list. No doubt others can recommend othersAlister Jack seems to be the only Scottish Secretary since the introduction of the Scottish Parliament that would prefer to see it abolished, and the 2019-2024 Conservative government the first UK government that would legislate to abolish it. Maybe abolition of the Scottish and Welsh parliaments will be in their GE manifesto.
It said that Treasury North is bringing 1,500 well paid civil service jobs to Darlington. Given many of the jobs pay well below the market rate for the skills required (1 example I've seen is a job where the going rate is £60,000 (and that's hard to recruit at) and it's paying max £35,000) can I complain to Advertising Standards?
Did we ever see the Elon that ran Tesla or SpaceX? No, apart from a few Rogan interviews
It's also very difficult for both to work together 'to resolve the specific issues' when the Tory (and therefore Westminster for now) position is that Self-ID is a terrible, rights-destroying, dangerous policy, and the SNP/Hollyrood position is that it's a necessary extension of important rights.
The only work around I think would be to rewrite to ensure English orgs. didn't have to accept a Scottish GRC as evidence of their sex when applying equalities law. But that would still be fairly laborious and lead to weird situations whereby for several purposes whether you were a man or a woman changed as you crossed Hadrian's Wall.
It is a measure of Rishi Sunak’s weakness that the contest to replace him is in full swing, writes John Rentoul"
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/kemi-badenoch-tory-leadership-election-sunak-b2461313.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SBF_120?wprov=sfti1#
Perfectly legit, although I guess FTX was considered the same…
Wonder how the math nerd offspring of Stanford professors developed such an interest in the arcane minutiae of post-war British politics? Surprised he had the time. It’s like finding out Elon Musk wanted to be the TMS statistician