We are having a very productive day at work, and as the resident Grammar Nazi I have been dragged into this debate.
You’re at a bar and you want to order 3 Grey Goose drinks, do you tell the bar staff
1) I want three shots of Grey Goose
2) I want three shots of Grey Geese
3) I want a flock of Vodka
Number one would be correct. 'Grey Goose' is a mass term (as opposed to a count noun) so shouldn't really be pluralized. In the same way you shouldn't say 'I want three glasses of wines' but 'I want three glasses of wine'.
If we remove "shots of" I think it becomes less clear. "I want 3 Grey Geese" or "I want 3 Grey Goose"? Normal usage probably makes it plural - analogous to "I want 3 Stellas" or "2 Chardonnays please".
But Grey Goose is a brand name and so it would be 3 Grey Gooses just as it is 20 Rothmans not 20 Rothmen.
I was thinking that ‘Gooses’ might be acceptable here.
Can you imagine the stick someone would get if heard ordering ‘3 Grey Geese’?!?!
That’s a Fast Show sketch
"Nice!"
Can someone get Rishi his coat?
Labour leads by 23%.
Joint-lowest Conservative % since Rishi Sunak became PM.
Westminster VI (28 Jan):
Labour 45% (–) Conservative 22% (–) Reform UK 12% (–) Liberal Democrat 11% (–) Green 6% (–) SNP 3% (+1) Other 1% (-1)
I am fairly sure @148grss is an educated troll, winding up PBers
No one can be THAT wilfully stupid
Don't be ridiculous. 148 is a great addition to the site (could do with a bit of editing and some paragraphs here and there but otherwise just fine).
They are evidently smart, committed, idealistic, a touch naive and kumbaya but so what that's just my cynical old view, and also somewhat aware of the unattainability of their flavour of political goals.
Fine by me. I mean the paragraphs thing probably does need work but that's all.
I agree. A breath of fresh air from the echo chamber which this place has recently become.
I am fairly sure @148grss is an educated troll, winding up PBers
No one can be THAT wilfully stupid
Don't be ridiculous. 148 is a great addition to the site (could do with a bit of editing and some paragraphs here and there but otherwise just fine).
They are evidently smart, committed, idealistic, a touch naive and kumbaya but so what that's just my cynical old view, and also somewhat aware of the unattainability of their flavour of political goals.
Fine by me. I mean the paragraphs thing probably does need work but that's all.
I’m not disagreeing. @148grss is most welcome and a refreshing new voice
I’m just fairly sure he/she is either faking these opinions, or really “spicing them up” to get a rise out of the old geezers of PB
I am fairly sure @148grss is an educated troll, winding up PBers
No one can be THAT wilfully stupid
Don't be ridiculous. 148 is a great addition to the site (could do with a bit of editing and some paragraphs here and there but otherwise just fine).
They are evidently smart, committed, idealistic, a touch naive and kumbaya but so what that's just my cynical old view, and also somewhat aware of the unattainability of their flavour of political goals.
Fine by me. I mean the paragraphs thing probably does need work but that's all.
I’m not disagreeing. @148grss is most welcome and a refreshing new voice
I’m just fairly sure he/she is either faking these opinions, or really “spicing them up” to get a rise out of the old geezers of PB
Could be yes, could be. But also it's great because it reminds me of my uni days and late night arguments although of course I am far more sober these days as we have all documented today.
Good to know there are people out there with those views, if indeed they are genuinely held.
I'm quite torn on this. Big picture, £118k/pa is a lot of money. It's more than most people would earn in three or four years. I think that anyone with sensible lifestyle aspirations could live a very nice, very comfortable, life on that kind of money. On the other hand, there are a lot of jobs in the private sector, and even a few in the public sector, most of which are rather less demanding than being a minister, which pay more, sometimes a lot more. There must be a point where the kind of high calibre, smart, people you might want to go into politics will decide that it's not worth getting paid so much less to do such a demanding and at times thankless job. In other words, I do have some sympathy for Mr Freeman, although not a huge amount. Perhaps his two marriages is part of the story here. Divorce seems to really fuck with people's finances.
Do the rules on MPs' outside earnings change if one is no longer a minister?
Yes. You’re not allowed outside work if you’re a minister.
I was thinking about him earlier - specifically he must have been glad he didn't have the same judge Laurence Fox had that time he randomly called somebody 'pedo guy.'
I am fairly sure @148grss is an educated troll, winding up PBers
No one can be THAT wilfully stupid
Don't be ridiculous. 148 is a great addition to the site (could do with a bit of editing and some paragraphs here and there but otherwise just fine).
They are evidently smart, committed, idealistic, a touch naive and kumbaya but so what that's just my cynical old view, and also somewhat aware of the unattainability of their flavour of political goals.
Fine by me. I mean the paragraphs thing probably does need work but that's all.
Worth adding that 148 is not at all patronising, unlike some.
I am fairly sure @148grss is an educated troll, winding up PBers
No one can be THAT wilfully stupid
Don't be ridiculous. 148 is a great addition to the site (could do with a bit of editing and some paragraphs here and there but otherwise just fine).
They are evidently smart, committed, idealistic, a touch naive and kumbaya but so what that's just my cynical old view, and also somewhat aware of the unattainability of their flavour of political goals.
Fine by me. I mean the paragraphs thing probably does need work but that's all.
I’m not disagreeing. @148grss is most welcome and a refreshing new voice
I’m just fairly sure he/she is either faking these opinions, or really “spicing them up” to get a rise out of the old geezers of PB
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
(Thinking shipping costs).
Usually around 200kg or thereabouts, but it depends a lot on the platform and how it’s designed and manufactured.
Cars designed as EVs from the ground up, tend to be considerably lighter than cars that can accommodate both EV and ICE powertrains.
Cars are over-engineered, particularly EVs. Manufacturers promote vehicles that are way bigger, heavier, more powerful and more costly than they need to be because they get better margins on those vehicles.
That may be correct; but I reckon (with little evidence) that the reason the new-style Minis are so much bigger than Issigonis's original is safety. Safety standards have increased massively, and so much of that requires mass to absorb impacts.
According to Wiki, the original Mini was 580–686kg. The new Mini is around 1150-1710kg.
Perception of safety in bigger cars probably. But if you are designing a car for higher safety you wouldn't add mass for the sake of it. You would think about structure, materials etc. The trade offs are likely to be mainly cost to manufacture and looks - box structures are the strongest but make ugly cars. Weight will be a smaller factor I think.
Crumple zones require mass and space. And space itself requires more mass. If you want the box the occupants to remain as intact as possible to form a survival space, the energy of the impact needs to be absorbed outside that space. There's no way of doing that without adding a load more mass, even with good design.
I agree having protection does add weight compared with not having it, but that's not the main reason why cars now are heavier than they were twenty years ago.
Being in a heavier car than everyone else does make it more dangerous for everyone else and more dangerous overall, but that's a different point and one that would have to be tackled by legislation, if at all.
Well done on limiting your booze intake so successfully
I am belatedly doing the same but hoping to find a medium course of still drinking at times but also having half the week entirely sober etc
Question: how do you cope with the boredom? That is what vexes me, still. Booze used to agreeably fill an evening. Now the hours stretch. Yes I read and go to the gym and watch movies and that’s nice but wow there is a lot of time to fill, nonetheless
Sometimes I just want to go to bed at 10pm even if I’m not tired because unconsciousness is less boring
I haven't had a drink since NYE, this is my fourth time doing Dry January. Since doing it the first time I've found the amount I drink has dropped without any real effort on my part, largely by not drinking in the house and not going to the pub as much. I love alcohol as a social drug but I was never one for nailing a load of cans in front of the TV like mates of mine can do. But even the glass or two of wine or glass of whisky at home has dwindled to virtually nothing. I've found that in my 40s the hangovers are now so bad and long-lasting I just don't go to the pub as much as I used to either. From being 17 to late-30s it was three/four times a week, probably drinking a gallon a time. Now, thanks to using a drink tracking app I started using for my first Dry Jan, I find I average ten days drinking a month, and most of those days are only one or two units. I love a proper sesh in the pub with my mates but it takes me two or three days to get over it. I can cope with the headache, it's the two or three days of lethargy and increasingly bad hangxiety that have curbed by pub visits.
So I have a lot more sober time these past few years. I love it. I read more - and more importantly, remember what I've read. I take longer, more frequent walks, which the dog appreciates. I try and go for a run a few times a week. I play the guitar - badly. I recently got into listening to podcasts. Plus there's always YouTube. I'm also considering whether I want to do a PhD part-time while working, but that way madness may well lie so I blow hot and cold with the notion.
But I'm very rarely bored. Not like you were on a rainy Sunday afternoon in the 80s when I was growing up and there was nothing on TV. That was proper boredom.
I go to bed when I'm tired, usually about 11 but two nights last week it was half 9. If that's boring, so be it - FOMO isn't a thing for me anymore!
I've also cut down on caffeine - I have two builders teas first thing them that's me. As I've hit middle age my body just can't deal with alcohol and caffeine like it did when I was younger. I hit it hard when I was young, I shovelled everything into me I could get my hands on, but I'm glad those days are behind me. I just can't do it now. Nor do I want to.
I wish I could go out on a Friday for a gallon without it wiping out my weekend, but sometimes you just wanna get pissed and talk rubbish with your mates, don't you? So I take the hit and the missus moaning at me for wasting my weekend...
That's a long-winded way of saying I enjoyed getting hammered when I was young, but I prefer a clear head now, and I always manage to keep myself amused.
Re the PhD. If it's on something you love doing then go for it, just choose your supervisors carefully. If you think one might be an arsehole, run a mile.* If you don't really really want to do it (just want everyone to call you Dr ) then just buy one online
If you do a PhD, it will be hell at some point, so you have to really want to do it. Probably more so part time as the hell bit will last longer - it will all last longer - and the "Oh shit I don't have time to get this wrapped up in time" feeling will be even more acute. But the sense of achievement from getting it finished is quite something.
*One of my supervisors was a complete Jeremy Hunt, so that spoiled things a bit. I wasn't sure about him in my interview; should have listened to my instincts. I'd still have done a PhD, just done it somewhere else with different people.
Thanks for that. I spoke to one of my old undergrad tutors before Xmas who's now a Prof and he said they'd be happy to have me back and he'd be happy to supervise, so that's all good. And he'll help me get a proposal together. I just don't know whether I want six years of it with, as you say, extended periods of hell. I am one of the world's greatest procrastinators so I know I would be doing everything last minute. I wrote the last 3000 words of my MA dissertation the day it had to be handed in, so I have form this area. I'm trying to be realistic about my faults!
It's the logistics too - a lot of the archives I'd need to bury myself in are down south and I'm up north.
I have supervised part-time PhDs that have gone well, and others that have not. The most important consideration is probably how much time you can devote to it. Part-time doesn't mean a few hours here and there. Part-time is meant to mean ~15 hours a week (or more). Perhaps the most important skill you need for a PhD is stubbornness. You're the one who has to keep at it all those years.
There are other ways than a part-time PhD of contributing to research. You could consider whether those may fit you better.
Thank you.
I don’t have kids and could go down to a 4 day work week so 15 hours a week isn’t unrealistic at all.
When I spoke to my old tutor before Xmas he mentioned that an MPhil might be a nice way in for me initially, with the option of continuing beyond that if I want to.
Once I decide I want something I am very stubborn and determined and generally get what I want. My problem has always been on deciding what exactly it is I want! I love the idea of doing a PhD. I love being in archives, I enjoy writing. But I am not convinced I want to devote six years to one. So an MPhil is not a bad compromise perhaps.
When I did my PhD we were formally registered on to an MPhil and then 'upgraded' at some point after the first year to the PhD registration. There was an option for those fed up/underperforming to leave with an MPhil. Might be something worth discussing, particularly if you could design a study where, say, you could focus the first two years on something that would be worth an MPhil but could also be incorporated into a PhD (and for the first two years of six) and still tell a coherent story.
Yes. Usually, the MPhil registration is a stepping stone until the university has seen enough to trust you will compete the PhD, and thus only taken by people not making it to a full PhD. However, you can just choose to do an MPhil from the start, or have that conversation with your supervisors that you are initially aiming for an MPhil, but if everyone thinks it's going well, you'll later upgrade.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
That is utter bullshit. Standards of living declined dramatically in Russia immediately after the revolution. In fact, they didn't seriously improve and go past Tsarism until the 1950s. People didn't resort to cannibalism under the Tsars. They did under Lenin and Stalin. Meanwhile, consumer goods became even scarcer and rationing of necessaries was ruthless.
China was just as bad. Again, significant improvements in living standards weren't really a thing until Deng in the 1980s.
To give an entertaining example. Yields in parts of Ukraine agriculture only returned to pre-WWI levels after the fall of Communism.
That was the genius of the USSR - fucking up growing stuff in the Black Soil lands.
I'm quite torn on this. Big picture, £118k/pa is a lot of money. It's more than most people would earn in three or four years. I think that anyone with sensible lifestyle aspirations could live a very nice, very comfortable, life on that kind of money. On the other hand, there are a lot of jobs in the private sector, and even a few in the public sector, most of which are rather less demanding than being a minister, which pay more, sometimes a lot more. There must be a point where the kind of high calibre, smart, people you might want to go into politics will decide that it's not worth getting paid so much less to do such a demanding and at times thankless job. In other words, I do have some sympathy for Mr Freeman, although not a huge amount. Perhaps his two marriages is part of the story here. Divorce seems to really fuck with people's finances.
Do the rules on MPs' outside earnings change if one is no longer a minister?
Yes. You’re not allowed outside work if you’re a minister.
Are you allowed some sorts of additional income, like writing? Johnson was writing a book while PM.
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
As I understand it, that is already happening.
There is enough domestic demand (at the moment) to absorb pretty much any increase in Chinese EV battery manufacture.
This is because EV adoption is high and increasing faster than battery production, in China.
Exports are rising in price because of scarcity.
Western manufacturers are facing the terrifying prospect of having to invest in their own battery production.
The U.S. has something like 1000GWh of battery production capacity in the works for the end of the decade. I think the pessimists are being a bit too pessimistic.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
I'm not sure anarchism qualifies as a form of "governance".
Although I've heard it said that at least it's better than no governance at all.
Anarchism is no governement at all though. Its a situation where those willing to be violent rule and everyone else obeys
You don't vote, though, do you? You think every party we've got, and every politician representing them, are a waste of space. Isn't that right?
Which is not the same as believing that there should be no laws or governments. I just disagree with out current political institution
You just said (in defending capitalism) that relative merit is what counts. In particular it's better than the left's alternative of communism. I think that's right btw.
Surely the same applies to this matter of voting. You think none of them are much cop. Fine. But how come you don't weigh them against each other and choose the least bad?
Because I think voting under our current system doesn't change anything, doesn't matter who gets in frankly. Why would I bother when I think it makes no difference. My belief is we need root and branch reform of out politics if we are going to move away from it. I already posted a header on a way I think would be better even if not all of the proposals were accepted and I don't believe it favoured left or right so wasn't politically biassed.
I know you have ideas on reforming the system. Me too - I'm a PR convert. But recognizing the drawbacks of the current system doesn't mean it makes no difference who is in government. Of course it does. Imagine if Labour had won rather than coming close in 2017 for example. Things would be just as they are today? C'mon. No way. For better or worse it'd be a bit different.
That would be an interesting question for a poll. I now believe that had Corbyn won we would have a more compassionate government than we now have and for that alone it would have been a good move for the country. Just listen to some of the Rwanda arguments in the Lords to see how far we have fallen from the decent place we once were.
Unless you happened to be jewish or were unhappy about being ruled from the kremlin as a puppet state
Russia was buying shares in the Conservative Party, not Labour. The trouble with Corbyn was his obsession with the Middle East and Central America, not Moscow. Indeed he called for stricter sanctions against Russia.
Big takeaway it doesn’t look good for the real level of Tory support - other polling firms seem rather generous when you factor in Yougov’s additional information
I'm quite torn on this. Big picture, £118k/pa is a lot of money. It's more than most people would earn in three or four years. I think that anyone with sensible lifestyle aspirations could live a very nice, very comfortable, life on that kind of money. On the other hand, there are a lot of jobs in the private sector, and even a few in the public sector, most of which are rather less demanding than being a minister, which pay more, sometimes a lot more. There must be a point where the kind of high calibre, smart, people you might want to go into politics will decide that it's not worth getting paid so much less to do such a demanding and at times thankless job. In other words, I do have some sympathy for Mr Freeman, although not a huge amount. Perhaps his two marriages is part of the story here. Divorce seems to really fuck with people's finances.
Do the rules on MPs' outside earnings change if one is no longer a minister?
Yes. You’re not allowed outside work if you’re a minister.
Are you allowed some sorts of additional income, like writing? Johnson was writing a book while PM.
IIRC he’s allowed to write a book, but not allowed to either accept an advance nor a publishing fee whist a minister. I think in Johnson’s case he’d already been paid an advance for the book some time before he became a minister.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
That is utter bullshit. Standards of living declined dramatically in Russia immediately after the revolution. In fact, they didn't seriously improve and go past Tsarism until the 1950s. People didn't resort to cannibalism under the Tsars. They did under Lenin and Stalin. Meanwhile, consumer goods became even scarcer and rationing of necessaries was ruthless.
China was just as bad. Again, significant improvements in living standards weren't really a thing until Deng in the 1980s.
And note that the industrialisation of the USSR before the Second World War was almost entirely done by western capitalists.
I am fairly sure @148grss is an educated troll, winding up PBers
No one can be THAT wilfully stupid
Don't be ridiculous. 148 is a great addition to the site (could do with a bit of editing and some paragraphs here and there but otherwise just fine).
They are evidently smart, committed, idealistic, a touch naive and kumbaya but so what that's just my cynical old view, and also somewhat aware of the unattainability of their flavour of political goals.
Fine by me. I mean the paragraphs thing probably does need work but that's all.
I’m not disagreeing. @148grss is most welcome and a refreshing new voice
I’m just fairly sure he/she is either faking these opinions, or really “spicing them up” to get a rise out of the old geezers of PB
That would be terrible if he's doing that.
Leon doth protest too much.
You don't think...no surely not...
The old 'projection' thing. Eg Donald Trump accusing Nikki Haley of pretending a loss was a win. That just took the biscuit. There's no further you can go with the concept, really, short of ... well no I can't think of anything. We're at the limit.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
That is utter bullshit. Standards of living declined dramatically in Russia immediately after the revolution. In fact, they didn't seriously improve and go past Tsarism until the 1950s. People didn't resort to cannibalism under the Tsars. They did under Lenin and Stalin. Meanwhile, consumer goods became even scarcer and rationing of necessaries was ruthless.
China was just as bad. Again, significant improvements in living standards weren't really a thing until Deng in the 1980s.
And note that the industrialisation of the USSR before the Second World War was almost entirely done by western capitalists.
Also Tsarist Russia was industrialising at a very rapid pace. The Donetsk steel plant dates back to the 19th century.
Alzheimer's can apparently be transmitted in a manner similar to BSE.
Iatrogenic Alzheimer’s disease in recipients of cadaveric pituitary-derived growth hormone https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02729-2 We previously reported human transmission of Aβ pathology and CAA in relatively young adults who had died of iatrogenic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (iCJD) after childhood treatment with cadaver-derived pituitary growth hormone (c-hGH) contaminated with both CJD prions and Aβ seeds. This raised the possibility that c-hGH recipients who did not die from iCJD may eventually develop AD. Here we describe recipients who developed dementia and biomarker changes within the phenotypic spectrum of AD, suggesting that AD, like CJD, has environmentally acquired (iatrogenic) forms as well as late-onset sporadic and early-onset inherited forms. Although iatrogenic AD may be rare, and there is no suggestion that Aβ can be transmitted between individuals in activities of daily life, its recognition emphasizes the need to review measures to prevent accidental transmissions via other medical and surgical procedures. As propagating Aβ assemblies may exhibit structural diversity akin to conventional prions, it is possible that therapeutic strategies targeting disease-related assemblies may lead to selection of minor components and development of resistance...
Tatjana Zdanoka, a Latvian member of the European Parliament, has been an agent of Russian intelligence for at least twenty years, @the_ins_ru can reveal, based on emails we obtained between Zdanoka and two of her FSB handlers. https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1751834974100054211
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
That is utter bullshit. Standards of living declined dramatically in Russia immediately after the revolution. In fact, they didn't seriously improve and go past Tsarism until the 1950s. People didn't resort to cannibalism under the Tsars. They did under Lenin and Stalin. Meanwhile, consumer goods became even scarcer and rationing of necessaries was ruthless.
China was just as bad. Again, significant improvements in living standards weren't really a thing until Deng in the 1980s.
And note that the industrialisation of the USSR before the Second World War was almost entirely done by western capitalists.
Also Tsarist Russia was industrialising at a very rapid pace. The Donetsk steel plant dates back to the 19th century.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
That is utter bullshit. Standards of living declined dramatically in Russia immediately after the revolution. In fact, they didn't seriously improve and go past Tsarism until the 1950s. People didn't resort to cannibalism under the Tsars. They did under Lenin and Stalin. Meanwhile, consumer goods became even scarcer and rationing of necessaries was ruthless.
China was just as bad. Again, significant improvements in living standards weren't really a thing until Deng in the 1980s.
And note that the industrialisation of the USSR before the Second World War was almost entirely done by western capitalists.
Also Tsarist Russia was industrialising at a very rapid pace. The Donetsk steel plant dates back to the 19th century.
John James Hughes (1814 – 17 June 1889)[1] was a Welsh engineer, businessman and founder of the city of Donetsk. The village was originally named Yuzovka (Hughesovka, Russian: Юзoвка) after Hughes, ("Yuz" being a Russian approximation of Hughes), formally becoming a town in May 1917 and later, in 1924, being renamed to Stalino (Ukrainian: Сталіно); in 1961, the name was changed to Donetsk. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hughes_(businessman)
We are having a very productive day at work, and as the resident Grammar Nazi I have been dragged into this debate.
You’re at a bar and you want to order 3 Grey Goose drinks, do you tell the bar staff
1) I want three shots of Grey Goose
2) I want three shots of Grey Geese
3) I want a flock of Vodka
Number one would be correct. 'Grey Goose' is a mass term (as opposed to a count noun) so shouldn't really be pluralized. In the same way you shouldn't say 'I want three glasses of wines' but 'I want three glasses of wine'.
If we remove "shots of" I think it becomes less clear. "I want 3 Grey Geese" or "I want 3 Grey Goose"? Normal usage probably makes it plural - analogous to "I want 3 Stellas" or "2 Chardonnays please".
But Grey Goose is a brand name and so it would be 3 Grey Gooses just as it is 20 Rothmans not 20 Rothmen.
I was thinking that ‘Gooses’ might be acceptable here.
Can you imagine the stick someone would get if heard ordering ‘3 Grey Geese’?!?!
That’s a Fast Show sketch
"Nice!"
Can someone get Rishi his coat?
Labour leads by 23%.
Joint-lowest Conservative % since Rishi Sunak became PM.
Westminster VI (28 Jan):
Labour 45% (–) Conservative 22% (–) Reform UK 12% (–) Liberal Democrat 11% (–) Green 6% (–) SNP 3% (+1) Other 1% (-1)
We are having a very productive day at work, and as the resident Grammar Nazi I have been dragged into this debate.
You’re at a bar and you want to order 3 Grey Goose drinks, do you tell the bar staff
1) I want three shots of Grey Goose
2) I want three shots of Grey Geese
3) I want a flock of Vodka
Number one would be correct. 'Grey Goose' is a mass term (as opposed to a count noun) so shouldn't really be pluralized. In the same way you shouldn't say 'I want three glasses of wines' but 'I want three glasses of wine'.
If we remove "shots of" I think it becomes less clear. "I want 3 Grey Geese" or "I want 3 Grey Goose"? Normal usage probably makes it plural - analogous to "I want 3 Stellas" or "2 Chardonnays please".
But Grey Goose is a brand name and so it would be 3 Grey Gooses just as it is 20 Rothmans not 20 Rothmen.
I was thinking that ‘Gooses’ might be acceptable here.
Can you imagine the stick someone would get if heard ordering ‘3 Grey Geese’?!?!
That’s a Fast Show sketch
"Nice!"
Can someone get Rishi his coat?
Labour leads by 23%.
Joint-lowest Conservative % since Rishi Sunak became PM.
Westminster VI (28 Jan):
Labour 45% (–) Conservative 22% (–) Reform UK 12% (–) Liberal Democrat 11% (–) Green 6% (–) SNP 3% (+1) Other 1% (-1)
And much of Russian industry - including their arms manufacturing - still relies on western machine tools. If these were effectively sanctioned, which they are currently not, their arms production would drop off a cliff within a few months.
We are having a very productive day at work, and as the resident Grammar Nazi I have been dragged into this debate.
You’re at a bar and you want to order 3 Grey Goose drinks, do you tell the bar staff
1) I want three shots of Grey Goose
2) I want three shots of Grey Geese
3) I want a flock of Vodka
Number one would be correct. 'Grey Goose' is a mass term (as opposed to a count noun) so shouldn't really be pluralized. In the same way you shouldn't say 'I want three glasses of wines' but 'I want three glasses of wine'.
If we remove "shots of" I think it becomes less clear. "I want 3 Grey Geese" or "I want 3 Grey Goose"? Normal usage probably makes it plural - analogous to "I want 3 Stellas" or "2 Chardonnays please".
But Grey Goose is a brand name and so it would be 3 Grey Gooses just as it is 20 Rothmans not 20 Rothmen.
I was thinking that ‘Gooses’ might be acceptable here.
Can you imagine the stick someone would get if heard ordering ‘3 Grey Geese’?!?!
That’s a Fast Show sketch
"Nice!"
Can someone get Rishi his coat?
Labour leads by 23%.
Joint-lowest Conservative % since Rishi Sunak became PM.
Westminster VI (28 Jan):
Labour 45% (–) Conservative 22% (–) Reform UK 12% (–) Liberal Democrat 11% (–) Green 6% (–) SNP 3% (+1) Other 1% (-1)
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
(Thinking shipping costs).
Usually around 200kg or thereabouts, but it depends a lot on the platform and how it’s designed and manufactured.
Cars designed as EVs from the ground up, tend to be considerably lighter than cars that can accommodate both EV and ICE powertrains.
Cars are over-engineered, particularly EVs. Manufacturers promote vehicles that are way bigger, heavier, more powerful and more costly than they need to be because they get better margins on those vehicles.
That may be correct; but I reckon (with little evidence) that the reason the new-style Minis are so much bigger than Issigonis's original is safety. Safety standards have increased massively, and so much of that requires mass to absorb impacts.
According to Wiki, the original Mini was 580–686kg. The new Mini is around 1150-1710kg.
Perception of safety in bigger cars probably. But if you are designing a car for higher safety you wouldn't add mass for the sake of it. You would think about structure, materials etc. The trade offs are likely to be mainly cost to manufacture and looks - box structures are the strongest but make ugly cars. Weight will be a smaller factor I think.
The problem with that is that it is safety for people inside that particular car, not outside or in other cars.
For me the most interesting bit of the judgment is the news that Fox is paid £250,000 a year to lead the Reclaim Party? Does this make him pound for pound the most useless party leader in the UK?
I'm quite torn on this. Big picture, £118k/pa is a lot of money. It's more than most people would earn in three or four years. I think that anyone with sensible lifestyle aspirations could live a very nice, very comfortable, life on that kind of money. On the other hand, there are a lot of jobs in the private sector, and even a few in the public sector, most of which are rather less demanding than being a minister, which pay more, sometimes a lot more. There must be a point where the kind of high calibre, smart, people you might want to go into politics will decide that it's not worth getting paid so much less to do such a demanding and at times thankless job. In other words, I do have some sympathy for Mr Freeman, although not a huge amount. Perhaps his two marriages is part of the story here. Divorce seems to really fuck with people's finances.
Even then, it's a big jump in your bills- £1200 a month, getting on for £15000 a year, which needs about £25000ish pre-tax income.
Mr Freeman is fortunate to have contacts and options available to him that others don't have, of course. But whilst lots of people haven't and won't experience a big jump in mortgage payments, it's horrible for those who do. And that swamps any fiddling about with taxes that Jeremy Hunt can pull out of his hat.
It's a strange call given that interest rates are about to start falling aiui.
Is he standing down as an MP to get his new position in place before the market is flooded with ex-Tory MPs and Ministers?
Built in the U.S.S.R. (by Detroit) https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/news-events/all-news/search-news/built-in-the-u-s-s-r---by-detroit-.html When “the architect of Ford,” Albert Kahn, designed the River Rouge complex outside Detroit in 1917, Calder was one of the field engineers, but he had never worked on a project on the Soviet scale before. Everything from steel to skylights was coming from the U.S. by boat, special-built train, trucks, and, yes, camels. In barely a year’s time the factory would begin pumping out 50,000 tractors per year, operated by workers who lived across a strip of lawn in government apartment blocks that Calder was also building. Close to 400 U.S. workers were supervising the job, mostly from Detroit. Though their families shivered through the Russian winter in underheated homes, Calder and the rest of Kahn’s experts thrilled at the challenge. And there were 500 more factories to go.
Though the collaboration has been all but forgotten, evidence suggests that more than 1,200 U.S.-based architects, engineers, designers, and foremen seeded the Soviet industrial revolution. In just three years, they built upwards of 500 factories, trained more than 3,000 Soviet staff, and brought lessons back home that have yet to be fully understood...
Nothing wrong with that, of course (except for example for the millions starved in Ukraine as the USSR exported its grain to help pay for the continued industrialisation) - but to claim that the USSR industrialised independently of the capitalist world is nonsense.
Laurence Fox has lost a High Court libel case with two people he called paedophiles on social media.
He's talking about an Appeal. Pricey.
He countersued, but the ruling was slightly damning - tweets accusing him of racism 'will not seriously damage his reputation.' Ouch.
The Reclaim Party founder, who said at the time that he would boycott the supermarket, counter-sued Mr Blake and the former RuPaul's Drag Race contestant, whose real name is Colin Seymour, over tweets accusing him of racism.
Mr Fox also attempted to sue broadcaster Nicola Thorp for the same reason.
However, the judge did not make a ruling on whether describing Mr Fox as "a racist" was "substantially true", after finding the three tweets in his counter-claim were unlikely to cause serious harm to his reputation.
For me the most interesting bit of the judgment is the news that Fox is paid £250,000 a year to lead the Reclaim Party? Does this make him pound for pound the most useless party leader in the UK?
For those who don't fancy reading all 169 paragraphs of the Lozza judgement, the most, but not the only, important bit is in these short lines:
Mr Fox's labelling of Mr Blake and Mr Seymour as paedophiles was, on the evidence, probabilities and facts of this case, seriously harmful, defamatory and baseless. The law affords few defences to defamation of this sort. Mr Fox did not attempt to show these allegations were true,
Laurence Fox has lost a High Court libel case with two people he called paedophiles on social media.
He's talking about an Appeal. Pricey.
He countersued, but the ruling was slightly damning - tweets accusing him of racism 'will not seriously damage his reputation.' Ouch.
The Reclaim Party founder, who said at the time that he would boycott the supermarket, counter-sued Mr Blake and the former RuPaul's Drag Race contestant, whose real name is Colin Seymour, over tweets accusing him of racism.
Mr Fox also attempted to sue broadcaster Nicola Thorp for the same reason.
However, the judge did not make a ruling on whether describing Mr Fox as "a racist" was "substantially true", after finding the three tweets in his counter-claim were unlikely to cause serious harm to his reputation.
Laurence Fox has lost a High Court libel case with two people he called paedophiles on social media.
He's talking about an Appeal. Pricey.
He countersued, but the ruling was slightly damning - tweets accusing him of racism 'will not seriously damage his reputation.' Ouch.
The Reclaim Party founder, who said at the time that he would boycott the supermarket, counter-sued Mr Blake and the former RuPaul's Drag Race contestant, whose real name is Colin Seymour, over tweets accusing him of racism.
Mr Fox also attempted to sue broadcaster Nicola Thorp for the same reason.
However, the judge did not make a ruling on whether describing Mr Fox as "a racist" was "substantially true", after finding the three tweets in his counter-claim were unlikely to cause serious harm to his reputation.
And much of Russian industry - including their arms manufacturing - still relies on western machine tools. If these were effectively sanctioned, which they are currently not, their arms production would drop off a cliff within a few months.
An excruciating attempt by Harriet Harman to downplay the 3-0 lead the Tories have over Labour on female leaders. Shouldn’t the Labour men be championing feminism by virtue of being left wing politicians, so the women aren’t considered a subversive force?
For me the most interesting bit of the judgment is the news that Fox is paid £250,000 a year to lead the Reclaim Party? Does this make him pound for pound the most useless party leader in the UK?
For those who don't fancy reading all 169 paragraphs of the Lozza judgement, the most, but not the only, important bit is in these short lines:
Mr Fox's labelling of Mr Blake and Mr Seymour as paedophiles was, on the evidence, probabilities and facts of this case, seriously harmful, defamatory and baseless. The law affords few defences to defamation of this sort. Mr Fox did not attempt to show these allegations were true,
Para 166
His cause in this regard was hopeless.
He's got a multi-millionaire backer; he probably feels he can libel people as much as he pleases.
For me the most interesting bit of the judgment is the news that Fox is paid £250,000 a year to lead the Reclaim Party? Does this make him pound for pound the most useless party leader in the UK?
In fairness, his only failure in his leadership is to raise the Reform vote. Sunak, on the other hand, has radically reduced his party's vote. Even Fox is not that bad.
Another Monday evening, another tale of two very different polls.
I've been told on another site not all pollsters prompt for Green or Reform - do we know which do and which don't because I think that would be informative.
I'm told Savanta doesn't - I suspect Deltapoll doesn't either which might explain the disparity between the Conservative and Reform numbers on the one hand and the Labour/Green numbers on the other.
Taking the trite but slightly helpful Con/Ref vs Lab/LD/Green - Deltapoll comes out 38-59 while R&W comes out 34-62 so quite a difference making me think it's more than that.
Deltapoll provide very little free data - they simply publish the final VI numbers which exclude both DKs and WVs so we have no clue how these numbers have been re-allocated and on what basis.
R&W do publish more comprehensive data tables - for example including the DKs and weighting on likelihood to vote (basically excluding the WVs), it's Labour 40%, Conservative 20%, Reform 11%, Don't Know 11% and Liberal Democrat 10%.
The DKs also contain a significant percentage unlikely to vote so it seems improbable they will be riding over the horizon to save the Conservatives.
As we have some contributors who are on polling panels, perhaps they will know if the likes of Savanta, Deltapoll and Opinium prompt for other minor parties apart from the LDs (and presumably the SNP and PC).
Alzheimer's can apparently be transmitted in a manner similar to BSE.
Iatrogenic Alzheimer’s disease in recipients of cadaveric pituitary-derived growth hormone https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02729-2 We previously reported human transmission of Aβ pathology and CAA in relatively young adults who had died of iatrogenic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (iCJD) after childhood treatment with cadaver-derived pituitary growth hormone (c-hGH) contaminated with both CJD prions and Aβ seeds. This raised the possibility that c-hGH recipients who did not die from iCJD may eventually develop AD. Here we describe recipients who developed dementia and biomarker changes within the phenotypic spectrum of AD, suggesting that AD, like CJD, has environmentally acquired (iatrogenic) forms as well as late-onset sporadic and early-onset inherited forms. Although iatrogenic AD may be rare, and there is no suggestion that Aβ can be transmitted between individuals in activities of daily life, its recognition emphasizes the need to review measures to prevent accidental transmissions via other medical and surgical procedures. As propagating Aβ assemblies may exhibit structural diversity akin to conventional prions, it is possible that therapeutic strategies targeting disease-related assemblies may lead to selection of minor components and development of resistance...
For me the most interesting bit of the judgment is the news that Fox is paid £250,000 a year to lead the Reclaim Party? Does this make him pound for pound the most useless party leader in the UK?
For those who don't fancy reading all 169 paragraphs of the Lozza judgement, the most, but not the only, important bit is in these short lines:
Mr Fox's labelling of Mr Blake and Mr Seymour as paedophiles was, on the evidence, probabilities and facts of this case, seriously harmful, defamatory and baseless. The law affords few defences to defamation of this sort. Mr Fox did not attempt to show these allegations were true,
Para 166
His cause in this regard was hopeless.
He's got a multi-millionaire backer; he probably feels he can libel people as much as he pleases.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
I'm not sure anarchism qualifies as a form of "governance".
Although I've heard it said that at least it's better than no governance at all.
Anarchism is no governement at all though. Its a situation where those willing to be violent rule and everyone else obeys
You don't vote, though, do you? You think every party we've got, and every politician representing them, are a waste of space. Isn't that right?
Which is not the same as believing that there should be no laws or governments. I just disagree with out current political institution
You just said (in defending capitalism) that relative merit is what counts. In particular it's better than the left's alternative of communism. I think that's right btw.
Surely the same applies to this matter of voting. You think none of them are much cop. Fine. But how come you don't weigh them against each other and choose the least bad?
Because I think voting under our current system doesn't change anything, doesn't matter who gets in frankly. Why would I bother when I think it makes no difference. My belief is we need root and branch reform of out politics if we are going to move away from it. I already posted a header on a way I think would be better even if not all of the proposals were accepted and I don't believe it favoured left or right so wasn't politically biassed.
I know you have ideas on reforming the system. Me too - I'm a PR convert. But recognizing the drawbacks of the current system doesn't mean it makes no difference who is in government. Of course it does. Imagine if Labour had won rather than coming close in 2017 for example. Things would be just as they are today? C'mon. No way. For better or worse it'd be a bit different.
You misunderstand I think, you mistake different for better. I have no doubt things under corbyn would have been different. I don't want different I want better. All our current parties offer is slight different with life continuing to get worse for most. Doesn't matter if is sunak, starmer, davey etc.....we need to rip up what we have and start again to make things work for the majority is my view.....therefore why would I bother in a system which I don't think is going to turn anything round for the majority.
The make an analogy its like you saying its different if the population is whipped or caned and thats the choice vote for one or the other....personally I want to change the system so most people get puppies instead.
All is relative and different implies better or worse. A change for the better means it was worse before the change. A change for the worse means things used to be better. Or if you like, getting a puppy is better than being caned, being caned is better than (insert gory detail here). Of course personal opinion is relevant. Eg for me the upcoming Starmer government will be like getting a puppy, whereas you'll probably think you're being caned.
Starmer will do absolutely nothing to make the lives of most people in this country better
Gosh you're a tough gig. The future's not ours to see. At least give the man a chance to disappoint you.
It's really not needed.
Pig in a poke.
Labour will be "as bad as the Tories" - looking for a new leader after 18 months.
Random thought, spurred by seeing an advert about the need for voter ID in the May elections. Anyone seen anything about the impact on London? Presumably a lot fewer driving licences in central London, but maybe more passports? On the other hand driving licences may be common in the outer ring?
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
That is utter bullshit. Standards of living declined dramatically in Russia immediately after the revolution. In fact, they didn't seriously improve and go past Tsarism until the 1950s. People didn't resort to cannibalism under the Tsars. They did under Lenin and Stalin. Meanwhile, consumer goods became even scarcer and rationing of necessaries was ruthless.
China was just as bad. Again, significant improvements in living standards weren't really a thing until Deng in the 1980s.
And note that the industrialisation of the USSR before the Second World War was almost entirely done by western capitalists.
Also Tsarist Russia was industrialising at a very rapid pace. The Donetsk steel plant dates back to the 19th century.
A Welsh bloke called Hughes!
One reason that WWI went ahead was that the Germans thought that in a decade or so, they would be hopelessly overmatched by the Russians. The plans for the Russian navy by 1918 are quite startling. The army was similar.
Savanta Opinium Techne Delta Poll and More in Common
Highest Labour leads
You Gov We Think
In the middle
Redfield and Wilton Strategies Ipsos
Do we know why we are consistently getting mid teen leads from 1st group and Mid to high 20s from 2nd group?
It would appear R&W are joining the YG group
Group 1 have either swing back built into them or a spiral of silence filter which reallocates some Don’t Knows back to the party they voted for in 2019. 2019 Tories have a high DK figure.
Group 2 have different methodologies, for example reallocating some Tory voters who say they will vote Tory but prefer Starmer over Sunak/Labour policies in the supplementary questions.
Alzheimer's can apparently be transmitted in a manner similar to BSE.
Iatrogenic Alzheimer’s disease in recipients of cadaveric pituitary-derived growth hormone https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02729-2 We previously reported human transmission of Aβ pathology and CAA in relatively young adults who had died of iatrogenic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (iCJD) after childhood treatment with cadaver-derived pituitary growth hormone (c-hGH) contaminated with both CJD prions and Aβ seeds. This raised the possibility that c-hGH recipients who did not die from iCJD may eventually develop AD. Here we describe recipients who developed dementia and biomarker changes within the phenotypic spectrum of AD, suggesting that AD, like CJD, has environmentally acquired (iatrogenic) forms as well as late-onset sporadic and early-onset inherited forms. Although iatrogenic AD may be rare, and there is no suggestion that Aβ can be transmitted between individuals in activities of daily life, its recognition emphasizes the need to review measures to prevent accidental transmissions via other medical and surgical procedures. As propagating Aβ assemblies may exhibit structural diversity akin to conventional prions, it is possible that therapeutic strategies targeting disease-related assemblies may lead to selection of minor components and development of resistance...
Do I need to stop eating old people?
The precautionary principle suggests that they should not be eaten raw; anyway old people (including me) need to be cooked long and slow for obvious reasons. No doubt there are decent online recipes.
Alzheimer's can apparently be transmitted in a manner similar to BSE.
Iatrogenic Alzheimer’s disease in recipients of cadaveric pituitary-derived growth hormone https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02729-2 We previously reported human transmission of Aβ pathology and CAA in relatively young adults who had died of iatrogenic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (iCJD) after childhood treatment with cadaver-derived pituitary growth hormone (c-hGH) contaminated with both CJD prions and Aβ seeds. This raised the possibility that c-hGH recipients who did not die from iCJD may eventually develop AD. Here we describe recipients who developed dementia and biomarker changes within the phenotypic spectrum of AD, suggesting that AD, like CJD, has environmentally acquired (iatrogenic) forms as well as late-onset sporadic and early-onset inherited forms. Although iatrogenic AD may be rare, and there is no suggestion that Aβ can be transmitted between individuals in activities of daily life, its recognition emphasizes the need to review measures to prevent accidental transmissions via other medical and surgical procedures. As propagating Aβ assemblies may exhibit structural diversity akin to conventional prions, it is possible that therapeutic strategies targeting disease-related assemblies may lead to selection of minor components and development of resistance...
Do I need to stop eating old people?
No, this is the key bit:
"Although iatrogenic AD may be rare, and there is no suggestion that Aβ can be transmitted between individuals in activities of daily life, its recognition emphasizes the need to review measures to prevent accidental transmissions via other medical and surgical procedures"
Prions and similar are not killed* by conventional sterilisation.
*it is a philosophical question whether you can kill something that isn't alive.
Wine worth more than €1.5m (£1.3m) has vanished from La Tour d'Argent, one of Paris' most famous restaurants and the inspiration for the film Ratatouille.
Labour: Wokeness doesn’t exist. There is no culture war
The BBC: “Current BBC hiring guidelines:
All candidates are asked to "explain what diversity and inclusion means to you and, should you be successful, what opportunities do you see for you to promote, celebrate or encourage diversity and inclusion in your role?”
Managers are told "don't hire" if applicants display a “Lack of indication of positive intent regarding diversity and inclusion and surrounding topics”, a “Lack of interest in learning more where no evidence of education and understanding of diversity and inclusion was given” and if a “Candidate's conduct in interview did not reflect expected evidence or behaviours described above”.
Candidates who “will elevate our culture from outset” are those who are “an advocate or ally”, take “an active rather than passive role in improving things”, “challenge exclusive behaviour”, “enabling and supporting others to be successful”, and help “everyone feel included and that they have a voice in work”.
Candidates are described as “suitable” if they understand “that diversity is not always visible to the eye”, are aware “of [their] own language and behaviour”, and educate “oneself and [share] knowledge with others”.”
YOU MUST BELIEVE IN WOKE. ONLY ONE OPINION IS ALLOWED. THE PARTY IS NEVER WRONG. DO NOT QUESTION ANGKAR!!
Just realised I haven't been out on my balcony since the morning
I'm going to go and "stand on the balcony" to "take in the air". That should use up 7 minutes
This may be my new hobby. "Taking in the air"
I'll keep you posted
"Take the air" is the correct expression if you want to be the English expat on the Riviera at Mentone or wherever you are.
"Take in the air" is as in "how long does my Findus crispy pancake take in the air fryer?".
You’re quite right. Of course
It is “take the air” - what was I thinking
And I am now in fact Taking the air. My new hobby
Not a bad view from the balcony
Each to their own. I prefer the view from my place.
Leon clearly likes looking out at blocks of flats, which must remind him of his Camden bedsit.
Each to his own.
Much as I love Camden, in January-February I do prefer Indochina, despite the blocks of flats
I can see how that has appeal, but it still makes me shudder. I'd never stay somewhere like that out of choice.
I just don't like being hemmed in. Spent three days in Birmingham late last year (ok, so not the best of cities) but I couldn't wait to get out. Just felt so oppressive with the tall buildings and not seeing (that much of) the sky. I can function fine on visits to cities - I enjoy London for a visit and frequently go to Leeds etc - but if I'm missing a big open sky for more than a few days I really start to feel it.
Still, life would be boring if we were all the same, wouldn't it? Many, you probably included, would go stir crazy pretty quickly in the middle of nowhere. I would not.
Alzheimer's can apparently be transmitted in a manner similar to BSE.
Iatrogenic Alzheimer’s disease in recipients of cadaveric pituitary-derived growth hormone https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02729-2 We previously reported human transmission of Aβ pathology and CAA in relatively young adults who had died of iatrogenic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (iCJD) after childhood treatment with cadaver-derived pituitary growth hormone (c-hGH) contaminated with both CJD prions and Aβ seeds. This raised the possibility that c-hGH recipients who did not die from iCJD may eventually develop AD. Here we describe recipients who developed dementia and biomarker changes within the phenotypic spectrum of AD, suggesting that AD, like CJD, has environmentally acquired (iatrogenic) forms as well as late-onset sporadic and early-onset inherited forms. Although iatrogenic AD may be rare, and there is no suggestion that Aβ can be transmitted between individuals in activities of daily life, its recognition emphasizes the need to review measures to prevent accidental transmissions via other medical and surgical procedures. As propagating Aβ assemblies may exhibit structural diversity akin to conventional prions, it is possible that therapeutic strategies targeting disease-related assemblies may lead to selection of minor components and development of resistance...
Do I need to stop eating old people?
The precautionary principle suggests that they should not be eaten raw; anyway old people (including me) need to be cooked long and slow for obvious reasons. No doubt there are decent online recipes.
You can buy the cannibals cookbook from amazon I am sure that it has suggestions for pre aged long pig
Alzheimer's can apparently be transmitted in a manner similar to BSE.
Iatrogenic Alzheimer’s disease in recipients of cadaveric pituitary-derived growth hormone https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02729-2 We previously reported human transmission of Aβ pathology and CAA in relatively young adults who had died of iatrogenic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (iCJD) after childhood treatment with cadaver-derived pituitary growth hormone (c-hGH) contaminated with both CJD prions and Aβ seeds. This raised the possibility that c-hGH recipients who did not die from iCJD may eventually develop AD. Here we describe recipients who developed dementia and biomarker changes within the phenotypic spectrum of AD, suggesting that AD, like CJD, has environmentally acquired (iatrogenic) forms as well as late-onset sporadic and early-onset inherited forms. Although iatrogenic AD may be rare, and there is no suggestion that Aβ can be transmitted between individuals in activities of daily life, its recognition emphasizes the need to review measures to prevent accidental transmissions via other medical and surgical procedures. As propagating Aβ assemblies may exhibit structural diversity akin to conventional prions, it is possible that therapeutic strategies targeting disease-related assemblies may lead to selection of minor components and development of resistance...
Do I need to stop eating old people?
Heavens no, we have far too many of them. Just be careful on how much wine you have with the meal.
Kemi Badenoch is a member of a Conservative WhatsApp group called “Evil Plotters” despite telling party rebels to “stop messing around” and get behind Rishi Sunak, the Guardian can reveal.
The business secretary, who consistently comes out as the favourite cabinet minister in polls of Tory members, has criticised party colleagues for “stirring” up suggestions that she could replace the prime minister.
In a round of broadcast interviews on Sunday, she dismissed speculation over the plot to topple Sunak as “Westminster tittle-tattle” and said colleagues who put her name forward as an alternative were “not my friends”.
However, the Guardian has been told that Badenoch and Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, who is regarded as a key backer, are members of a WhatsApp group of similarly minded Tory MPs who are rallying round the business secretary’s longer-term ambitions.
I'm quite torn on this. Big picture, £118k/pa is a lot of money. It's more than most people would earn in three or four years. I think that anyone with sensible lifestyle aspirations could live a very nice, very comfortable, life on that kind of money. On the other hand, there are a lot of jobs in the private sector, and even a few in the public sector, most of which are rather less demanding than being a minister, which pay more, sometimes a lot more. There must be a point where the kind of high calibre, smart, people you might want to go into politics will decide that it's not worth getting paid so much less to do such a demanding and at times thankless job. In other words, I do have some sympathy for Mr Freeman, although not a huge amount. Perhaps his two marriages is part of the story here. Divorce seems to really fuck with people's finances.
Even then, it's a big jump in your bills- £1200 a month, getting on for £15000 a year, which needs about £25000ish pre-tax income.
Mr Freeman is fortunate to have contacts and options available to him that others don't have, of course. But whilst lots of people haven't and won't experience a big jump in mortgage payments, it's horrible for those who do. And that swamps any fiddling about with taxes that Jeremy Hunt can pull out of his hat.
It's tough shit, really. Everyone coming to the end of their mortgage deal is facing a steep hike in payments. Now, 118 grand is far more than most of his constituents are earning, and governments live to take the credit for when the economy is booming, so they have to take the rao for when it's not do hood. Freeman is part of that government. Welcome to the Real world, Mr Freeman.
Kemi Badenoch is a member of a Conservative WhatsApp group called “Evil Plotters” despite telling party rebels to “stop messing around” and get behind Rishi Sunak, the Guardian can reveal.
The business secretary, who consistently comes out as the favourite cabinet minister in polls of Tory members, has criticised party colleagues for “stirring” up suggestions that she could replace the prime minister.
In a round of broadcast interviews on Sunday, she dismissed speculation over the plot to topple Sunak as “Westminster tittle-tattle” and said colleagues who put her name forward as an alternative were “not my friends”.
However, the Guardian has been told that Badenoch and Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, who is regarded as a key backer, are members of a WhatsApp group of similarly minded Tory MPs who are rallying round the business secretary’s longer-term ambitions.
I’m still completely lost about how she is considered a favourite by party members. I really cannot think of anything memorable about her so far except some rumblings about he being anti-woke.
The party is truly embuggered if that’s all that’s needed to be next leader instead of any substance or high level experience.
An excruciating attempt by Harriet Harman to downplay the 3-0 lead the Tories have over Labour on female leaders. Shouldn’t the Labour men be championing feminism by virtue of being left wing politicians, so the women aren’t considered a subversive force?
Kemi Badenoch is a member of a Conservative WhatsApp group called “Evil Plotters” despite telling party rebels to “stop messing around” and get behind Rishi Sunak, the Guardian can reveal.
The business secretary, who consistently comes out as the favourite cabinet minister in polls of Tory members, has criticised party colleagues for “stirring” up suggestions that she could replace the prime minister.
In a round of broadcast interviews on Sunday, she dismissed speculation over the plot to topple Sunak as “Westminster tittle-tattle” and said colleagues who put her name forward as an alternative were “not my friends”.
However, the Guardian has been told that Badenoch and Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, who is regarded as a key backer, are members of a WhatsApp group of similarly minded Tory MPs who are rallying round the business secretary’s longer-term ambitions.
I’m still completely lost about how she is considered a favourite by party members. I really cannot think of anything memorable about her so far except some rumblings about he being anti-woke.
The party is truly embuggered if that’s all that’s needed to be next leader instead of any substance or high level experience.
I am intrigued who is polling Conservative Party members about this, and how?
“This is to notify you formally pursuant to rule 8 of the rules of the House of Representatives that the office of the sergeant at arms for the House of Representatives has been served with a grand jury subpoena for documents issued by the U.S. Department of Justice”
Labour: Wokeness doesn’t exist. There is no culture war
The BBC: “Current BBC hiring guidelines:
All candidates are asked to "explain what diversity and inclusion means to you and, should you be successful, what opportunities do you see for you to promote, celebrate or encourage diversity and inclusion in your role?”
Managers are told "don't hire" if applicants display a “Lack of indication of positive intent regarding diversity and inclusion and surrounding topics”, a “Lack of interest in learning more where no evidence of education and understanding of diversity and inclusion was given” and if a “Candidate's conduct in interview did not reflect expected evidence or behaviours described above”.
Candidates who “will elevate our culture from outset” are those who are “an advocate or ally”, take “an active rather than passive role in improving things”, “challenge exclusive behaviour”, “enabling and supporting others to be successful”, and help “everyone feel included and that they have a voice in work”.
Candidates are described as “suitable” if they understand “that diversity is not always visible to the eye”, are aware “of [their] own language and behaviour”, and educate “oneself and [share] knowledge with others”.”
YOU MUST BELIEVE IN WOKE. ONLY ONE OPINION IS ALLOWED. THE PARTY IS NEVER WRONG. DO NOT QUESTION ANGKAR!!
For me the most interesting bit of the judgment is the news that Fox is paid £250,000 a year to lead the Reclaim Party? Does this make him pound for pound the most useless party leader in the UK?
WTF is paying him £2.50 a year to lead Reclaim party???
I'm not sure I ever see someone winning from resorting to the courts - it's very easy to bankrupt yourself doing it, and the other side often try to do it as tactics.
It would be nice if justice was swift and wasn't based on who had the deepest pockets.
Kemi Badenoch is a member of a Conservative WhatsApp group called “Evil Plotters” despite telling party rebels to “stop messing around” and get behind Rishi Sunak, the Guardian can reveal.
The business secretary, who consistently comes out as the favourite cabinet minister in polls of Tory members, has criticised party colleagues for “stirring” up suggestions that she could replace the prime minister.
In a round of broadcast interviews on Sunday, she dismissed speculation over the plot to topple Sunak as “Westminster tittle-tattle” and said colleagues who put her name forward as an alternative were “not my friends”.
However, the Guardian has been told that Badenoch and Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, who is regarded as a key backer, are members of a WhatsApp group of similarly minded Tory MPs who are rallying round the business secretary’s longer-term ambitions.
An excruciating attempt by Harriet Harman to downplay the 3-0 lead the Tories have over Labour on female leaders. Shouldn’t the Labour men be championing feminism by virtue of being left wing politicians, so the women aren’t considered a subversive force?
I'm not sure I ever see someone winning from resorting to the courts - it's very easy to bankrupt yourself doing it, and the other side often try to do it as tactics.
It would be nice if justice was swift and wasn't based on who had the deepest pockets.
See David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt.
An excruciating attempt by Harriet Harman to downplay the 3-0 lead the Tories have over Labour on female leaders. Shouldn’t the Labour men be championing feminism by virtue of being left wing politicians, so the women aren’t considered a subversive force?
There's a real problem between Arley and Bridgnorth with people driving down a narrow path to get on a ferry across the Severn - without realising it's a foot ferry only and there's nowhere to turn below the car park...
An excruciating attempt by Harriet Harman to downplay the 3-0 lead the Tories have over Labour on female leaders. Shouldn’t the Labour men be championing feminism by virtue of being left wing politicians, so the women aren’t considered a subversive force?
An excruciating attempt by Harriet Harman to downplay the 3-0 lead the Tories have over Labour on female leaders. Shouldn’t the Labour men be championing feminism by virtue of being left wing politicians, so the women aren’t considered a subversive force?
An excruciating attempt by Harriet Harman to downplay the 3-0 lead the Tories have over Labour on female leaders. Shouldn’t the Labour men be championing feminism by virtue of being left wing politicians, so the women aren’t considered a subversive force?
An excruciating attempt by Harriet Harman to downplay the 3-0 lead the Tories have over Labour on female leaders. Shouldn’t the Labour men be championing feminism by virtue of being left wing politicians, so the women aren’t considered a subversive force?
An excruciating attempt by Harriet Harman to downplay the 3-0 lead the Tories have over Labour on female leaders. Shouldn’t the Labour men be championing feminism by virtue of being left wing politicians, so the women aren’t considered a subversive force?
An excruciating attempt by Harriet Harman to downplay the 3-0 lead the Tories have over Labour on female leaders. Shouldn’t the Labour men be championing feminism by virtue of being left wing politicians, so the women aren’t considered a subversive force?
Kemi Badenoch is a member of a Conservative WhatsApp group called “Evil Plotters” despite telling party rebels to “stop messing around” and get behind Rishi Sunak, the Guardian can reveal.
The business secretary, who consistently comes out as the favourite cabinet minister in polls of Tory members, has criticised party colleagues for “stirring” up suggestions that she could replace the prime minister.
In a round of broadcast interviews on Sunday, she dismissed speculation over the plot to topple Sunak as “Westminster tittle-tattle” and said colleagues who put her name forward as an alternative were “not my friends”.
However, the Guardian has been told that Badenoch and Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, who is regarded as a key backer, are members of a WhatsApp group of similarly minded Tory MPs who are rallying round the business secretary’s longer-term ambitions.
I’m still completely lost about how she is considered a favourite by party members. I really cannot think of anything memorable about her so far except some rumblings about he being anti-woke.
The party is truly embuggered if that’s all that’s needed to be next leader instead of any substance or high level experience.
She is wooden at best, mostly invisible. No idea what the point of her is.
An excruciating attempt by Harriet Harman to downplay the 3-0 lead the Tories have over Labour on female leaders. Shouldn’t the Labour men be championing feminism by virtue of being left wing politicians, so the women aren’t considered a subversive force?
An excruciating attempt by Harriet Harman to downplay the 3-0 lead the Tories have over Labour on female leaders. Shouldn’t the Labour men be championing feminism by virtue of being left wing politicians, so the women aren’t considered a subversive force?
An excruciating attempt by Harriet Harman to downplay the 3-0 lead the Tories have over Labour on female leaders. Shouldn’t the Labour men be championing feminism by virtue of being left wing politicians, so the women aren’t considered a subversive force?
An excruciating attempt by Harriet Harman to downplay the 3-0 lead the Tories have over Labour on female leaders. Shouldn’t the Labour men be championing feminism by virtue of being left wing politicians, so the women aren’t considered a subversive force?
Comments
Good to know there are people out there with those views, if indeed they are genuinely held.
Lowest Labour leads
Savanta
Opinium
Techne
Delta Poll
and More in Common
Highest Labour leads
You Gov
We Think
In the middle
Redfield and Wilton Strategies
Ipsos
Do we know why we are consistently getting mid teen leads from 1st group and Mid to high 20s from 2nd group?
It would appear R&W are joining the YG group
https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/12/02/sweet-swingbacks-baadasssss-song/
Ipsos are the only telephone pollster now.
Though if 14% behind is considered a good poll for the Tories in an election year, it is going to be tough election for them.
You don't think...no surely not...
Being in a heavier car than everyone else does make it more dangerous for everyone else and more dangerous overall, but that's a different point and one that would have to be tackled by legislation, if at all.
That was the genius of the USSR - fucking up growing stuff in the Black Soil lands.
I think the pessimists are being a bit too pessimistic.
https://twitter.com/Beyond_Topline/status/1751969612218909162
Big takeaway it doesn’t look good for the real level of Tory support - other polling firms seem rather generous when you factor in Yougov’s additional information
Iatrogenic Alzheimer’s disease in recipients of cadaveric pituitary-derived growth hormone
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02729-2
We previously reported human transmission of Aβ pathology and CAA in relatively young adults who had died of iatrogenic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (iCJD) after childhood treatment with cadaver-derived pituitary growth hormone (c-hGH) contaminated with both CJD prions and Aβ seeds. This raised the possibility that c-hGH recipients who did not die from iCJD may eventually develop AD. Here we describe recipients who developed dementia and biomarker changes within the phenotypic spectrum of AD, suggesting that AD, like CJD, has environmentally acquired (iatrogenic) forms as well as late-onset sporadic and early-onset inherited forms. Although iatrogenic AD may be rare, and there is no suggestion that Aβ can be transmitted between individuals in activities of daily life, its recognition emphasizes the need to review measures to prevent accidental transmissions via other medical and surgical procedures. As propagating Aβ assemblies may exhibit structural diversity akin to conventional prions, it is possible that therapeutic strategies targeting disease-related assemblies may lead to selection of minor components and development of resistance...
@the_ins_ru can reveal, based on emails we obtained between Zdanoka and two of her FSB handlers.
https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1751834974100054211
https://x.com/coldwarsteve/status/1751669903650591202?s=20
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hughes_(businessman)
https://youtu.be/E9ReQ4Nd-JI?si=WYFUqnyeT56uK4B2
If these were effectively sanctioned, which they are currently not, their arms production would drop off a cliff within a few months.
Is he standing down as an MP to get his new position in place before the market is flooded with ex-Tory MPs and Ministers?
https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/news-events/all-news/search-news/built-in-the-u-s-s-r---by-detroit-.html
When “the architect of Ford,” Albert Kahn, designed the River Rouge complex outside Detroit in 1917, Calder was one of the field engineers, but he had never worked on a project on the Soviet scale before. Everything from steel to skylights was coming from the U.S. by boat, special-built train, trucks, and, yes, camels. In barely a year’s time the factory would begin pumping out 50,000 tractors per year, operated by workers who lived across a strip of lawn in government apartment blocks that Calder was also building. Close to 400 U.S. workers were supervising the job, mostly from Detroit. Though their families shivered through the Russian winter in underheated homes, Calder and the rest of Kahn’s experts thrilled at the challenge. And there were 500 more factories to go.
Though the collaboration has been all but forgotten, evidence suggests that more than 1,200 U.S.-based architects, engineers, designers, and foremen seeded the Soviet industrial revolution. In just three years, they built upwards of 500 factories, trained more than 3,000 Soviet staff, and brought lessons back home that have yet to be fully understood...
Nothing wrong with that, of course (except for example for the millions starved in Ukraine as the USSR exported its grain to help pay for the continued industrialisation) - but to claim that the USSR industrialised independently of the capitalist world is nonsense.
Laurence Fox has lost a High Court libel case with two people he called paedophiles on social media.
He's talking about an Appeal. Pricey.
He countersued, but the ruling was slightly damning - tweets accusing him of racism 'will not seriously damage his reputation.' Ouch.
The Reclaim Party founder, who said at the time that he would boycott the supermarket, counter-sued Mr Blake and the former RuPaul's Drag Race contestant, whose real name is Colin Seymour, over tweets accusing him of racism.
Mr Fox also attempted to sue broadcaster Nicola Thorp for the same reason.
However, the judge did not make a ruling on whether describing Mr Fox as "a racist" was "substantially true", after finding the three tweets in his counter-claim were unlikely to cause serious harm to his reputation.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-68132377
Mr Fox's labelling of Mr Blake and Mr Seymour as paedophiles was, on the evidence, probabilities and facts of this case, seriously harmful, defamatory and baseless. The law affords few defences to defamation of this sort. Mr Fox did not attempt to show these allegations were true,
Para 166
His cause in this regard was hopeless.
Says the majority of Russia's CNC machine tool imports are now from China, and the total is now way more than before the invasion
https://x.com/timesradio/status/1751925771935859060?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Another Monday evening, another tale of two very different polls.
I've been told on another site not all pollsters prompt for Green or Reform - do we know which do and which don't because I think that would be informative.
I'm told Savanta doesn't - I suspect Deltapoll doesn't either which might explain the disparity between the Conservative and Reform numbers on the one hand and the Labour/Green numbers on the other.
Taking the trite but slightly helpful Con/Ref vs Lab/LD/Green - Deltapoll comes out 38-59 while R&W comes out 34-62 so quite a difference making me think it's more than that.
Deltapoll provide very little free data - they simply publish the final VI numbers which exclude both DKs and WVs so we have no clue how these numbers have been re-allocated and on what basis.
R&W do publish more comprehensive data tables - for example including the DKs and weighting on likelihood to vote (basically excluding the WVs), it's Labour 40%, Conservative 20%, Reform 11%, Don't Know 11% and Liberal Democrat 10%.
The DKs also contain a significant percentage unlikely to vote so it seems improbable they will be riding over the horizon to save the Conservatives.
As we have some contributors who are on polling panels, perhaps they will know if the likes of Savanta, Deltapoll and Opinium prompt for other minor parties apart from the LDs (and presumably the SNP and PC).
Pig in a poke.
Labour will be "as bad as the Tories" - looking for a new leader after 18 months.
Might not be close enough to matter of course.
Group 2 have different methodologies, for example reallocating some Tory voters who say they will vote Tory but prefer Starmer over Sunak/Labour policies in the supplementary questions.
Another factor is how they treat Reform.
"Although iatrogenic AD may be rare, and there is no suggestion that Aβ can be transmitted between individuals in activities of daily life, its recognition emphasizes the need to review measures to prevent accidental transmissions via other medical and surgical procedures"
Prions and similar are not killed* by conventional sterilisation.
*it is a philosophical question whether you can kill something that isn't alive.
A French Restaurant run by the British Museum?
Wine worth more than €1.5m (£1.3m) has vanished from La Tour d'Argent, one of Paris' most famous restaurants and the inspiration for the film Ratatouille.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68130127
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/snp-finances-police-signatures-forged-investigation-hpb8ljh88
The BBC: “Current BBC hiring guidelines:
All candidates are asked to "explain what diversity and inclusion means to you and, should you be successful, what opportunities do you see for you to promote, celebrate or encourage diversity and inclusion in your role?”
Managers are told "don't hire" if applicants display a “Lack of indication of positive intent regarding diversity and inclusion and surrounding topics”, a “Lack of interest in learning more where no evidence of education and understanding of diversity and inclusion was given” and if a “Candidate's conduct in interview did not reflect expected evidence or behaviours described above”.
Candidates who “will elevate our culture from outset” are those who are “an advocate or ally”, take “an active rather than passive role in improving things”, “challenge exclusive behaviour”, “enabling and supporting others to be successful”, and help “everyone feel included and that they have a voice in work”.
Candidates are described as “suitable” if they understand “that diversity is not always visible to the eye”, are aware “of [their] own language and behaviour”, and educate “oneself and [share] knowledge with others”.”
YOU MUST BELIEVE IN WOKE. ONLY ONE OPINION IS ALLOWED. THE PARTY IS NEVER WRONG. DO NOT QUESTION ANGKAR!!
https://x.com/stevenedginton/status/1752033002228514897?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
The business secretary, who consistently comes out as the favourite cabinet minister in polls of Tory members, has criticised party colleagues for “stirring” up suggestions that she could replace the prime minister.
In a round of broadcast interviews on Sunday, she dismissed speculation over the plot to topple Sunak as “Westminster tittle-tattle” and said colleagues who put her name forward as an alternative were “not my friends”.
However, the Guardian has been told that Badenoch and Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, who is regarded as a key backer, are members of a WhatsApp group of similarly minded Tory MPs who are rallying round the business secretary’s longer-term ambitions.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/29/kemi-badenoch-member-evil-plotters-tory-whatsapp-group?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
The party is truly embuggered if that’s all that’s needed to be next leader instead of any substance or high level experience.
“This is to notify you formally pursuant to rule 8 of the rules of the House of Representatives that the office of the sergeant at arms for the House of Representatives has been served with a grand jury subpoena for documents issued by the U.S. Department of Justice”
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1752047801695891880
It's a performance: they have to ask, and you have to answer.
You just come up with some vaguely inclusive response, and then move on.
It would be nice if justice was swift and wasn't based on who had the deepest pockets.
https://twitter.com/lkchdschh/status/1751622632984707130
You mustn't be the one who toppled the previous leader.
BoJo is, I think, the only real exception to this. (Maggie gets a pass because people only voted for her as a stalking horse )
AfD ascent is stalled in German election defeat
Voters were rattled by rallies over reported discussions by the hard-right party about deporting large numbers of foreigners
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/germany-afd-party-election-defeat-far-right-europe-nwcnlvm99
2) Sunak is probably the least worst options
Any news on that YouGov from The Times on Saturday? I can’t find the tables. Do they have to publish them?
Every PM since 1970 has been defeated at least once in the Commons. Except for Liz Truss.
https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/12/05/the-truss-premiership-gets-more-impressive-with-each-passing-day/
R
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THE INVINCIBLE LADY