I'm increasingly coming round to my wife's view, who is a Jewish person who even knows a couple of the lefr-wing Israelis protesting against Netanyahu outside the U.N., that if the Americans cannot bring him to heel, his government should be subject to international sanctions, and travel bans.
There's also the question of the ICC indictment against Netanyahu, as I recall it, and the ICC is not the "U.N. Pro-Arabists'l", as his far-right ministers like to call it. The Israeli population at large need to understand that if their nation continues on this kind of trajectory, then it's heading for South African-style, pariah status in the world
Utter rubbish, Israel has every right to defend itself and to seek to destroy Hamas and Hezbollah.
For the war to end only requires Hamas and Hezbollah to surrender and lay down their arms. If they don't, then war it is until they do. That's the nature of war, its sad but the world has wars and Hamas and Hezbollah are attacking Israel which has every right to defend itself and they need to be comprehensively and completely defeated.
What do you think about the way in which Israel is fighting this war?
In Gaza they seem not to be occupying territory and establishing an occupation authority that would have responsibility for looking after civilians and would create a sense of a positive future for Gaza being possible, but instead they go into an area, trash everything, then retreat, let Hamas come back, then repeat.
It seems to be a recipe for permanent war, rather than for a complete defeat of Hamas. We are close to one year in and Hamas still have large numbers of hostages. The Israeli strategy has failed, except insofar as it keeps Netanyahu safe from a corruption trial.
I don't agree at all with the way Netanyahu is running the country or conducting the war.
I think Israel is being far too soft with Hamas and Hezbollah under Netanyahu as I agree that I think he wants the war to be ongoing and not won. Similarly he was way too soft with Hamas before October last year leading to those tragic events.
Netanyahu is like Chamberlain, only much worse. Israel needs its Churchill who can lead them to victory and actually destroy Hamas and Hezbollah.
Netanyahu is indeed making things much too easy for Hamas and Hezbollah.
He is providing them with all the recruits and worldwide sympathy they could ask for and need to make sure the war goes on for another generation.
Indeed.
Israel needs to replace Netanyahu with a Churchill-like figure that will win the war by killing those recruits until the enemy surrenders unconditionally, just as the Nazis did after they were defeated, and then we can move on from war.
Instead Netanyahu is doing just enough to continue the violence but not enough to win. Israel needs to fight much harder than it is doing to win.
But many of those recruits won't become active for years or decades. They will hate Israel internally until then. So short of an outright genocide, Israel/Palestine will never be able to "move on" from war without the legitimate grievances of the more persuadable Palestinians being addressed, which Netanyahu has stubbornly and totally failed to do. But every bomb or civilian casualty means there are fewer of those and many more fanatics sadly.
Israel's war is totally self-defeating in the medium-long term no matter how successful it is in the short term. But tragically that's par for the course in that part of the Middle East.
And it's also where the analogy with the Nazis in 1945 breaks down. They were embodied in individuals and encircled, so it was possible, by sufficient effort, to trap and destroy them.
Th enemies of Israel are on the outside of the doughnut and far too numerous. Besides, anti-Semitism is an idea, and those are much harder to destroy. And the actions of the Netanyahu are fortifying the idea, even as they are the destroying the military leaders of the idea.
And, no matter the rightness of the cause, there is a point where fighting an impossible war in that cause becomes unjust. And it's not obvious that the Israeli state didn't cross that line some while back.
So why weren't the other side moving towards peace before that line was crossed, or before Netanyahu took power, or any other time in the last 75 years for that matter?
At one point they, and Israel were. And then Rabin was assassinated.
Except Israel continued to move towards peace, Clinton continued to move towards peace.
It was Arafat and the Palestinians that rejected Clinton's peace proposals, not Israel.
Because to the gangsters that rule Palestine, like Arafat, and like Russia's Putin, they actually enjoy the benefits from the conflict and have no desire for peace.
That applies on both sides, the settler political parties propping up Netanyahu have no interest in peace just a land grab in the occupied territories.
Israel is a democracy that has wanted peace time and again when it was an option. Democracies tend to vote for peace when its an option.
The only reason Netanyahu and the settler parties have any power is because its not an option currently, thanks to Hamas and the Palestinian extremists in power not wanting it.
Netanyahu has barely clung on in the last few elections, if there were any plausible hope of peace he would not but that requires Hamas to be defeated first - which even Netanyahu's Israeli opposition says too.
I was on a peasant wagon yesterday and two oldies were talking about how they are using Gemini for talking to their foreign relatives...I think AI might have some cut through. Don't fancy chances for all these other translation and foreign language learns apps.
My Bulgarian mother in law is here at the moment and I don't speak the language.
Andrew Neil @afneil Keir Starmer was given an additional £16,000 worth of clothes by Lord Alli, which was declared as money for his private office. The donations by the Labour peer were not previously known and included £10,000 last October and £6,000 in February this year, taking the total in clothes donated to Starmer to £32,000.
So what? Alli is a Labour politician and a Labour donor. The fact that he donates to Labour is a truism.
It seems like an extraordinary amount of money to spend on clothes, especially someone else's money?
What are we up to now, £50k for Mr Starmer, in the last year alone.
I’m not even sure that our own Mr Eagles can spend that much.
Suits, £2,500 x 5 - £12,500 Shirts, £150 x 15 = £2,250 Shoes, £400 x 5 = £2,000 Casual wear (polo shirts, slacks etc) £2,000 Grand Total £18,750.
What else does he wear? Unlike Mr Eagles he doesn’t look like he was dragged through Valentino and Gucci when he’s off-duty.
Why would anyone want 15 new shirts (for example) in a single year?
*Raises hand*
I bought 15 new shirts over the last year. Though it cost about £300 not £2250 to do so.
I've replaced my entire wardrobe in the last year as after losing 60lbs in the past year my old clothes went from fitting better, to feeling like clown clothes so they had to go.
15 shirts is a nice number in the wardrobe as it means I can spend one day in a weekend doing all my ironing and then I'm set for 3 weeks.
I was on a peasant wagon yesterday and two oldies were talking about how they are using Gemini for talking to their foreign relatives...I think AI might have some cut through. Don't fancy chances for all these other translation and foreign language learns apps.
My Bulgarian mother in law is here at the moment and I don't speak the language.
What's Gemini?
Its Google LLM, which you can use as an app on Android and via Google app on IOS.
Thoughts and prayers for Owen Jones at this most difficult of times.
This was his reaction to seeing the footage of the Grand Wizard getting bombed to his 72 virgins...
You’re looking at a terrible crime, and another pivotal moment in the fall of the West. Do you really think we are going to get away with this? I have some bad news!
I don’t believe in the “Blob” as an actual cabal of lefty wankers conspiring to thwart Liz Truss
I do believe in the “Blob” as a state of mind. A sad cocktail of Wokeness and degraded left-liberalism - unimaginative, timid, censorious, disapproving, economically soft left, generally irreligious but pious about “anti racism” and trans
It is shared by most people in charities, police, the law, education, academe, and many in government
The epitome of the mind-blob on here is @bondegezou - and, lo, turns out he was on a sub-committee of SAGE
Interestingly, the mind-blob now has its first real prime minister. Sir Kir Royale is the blob turned into one gormless human form, with one reedy disapproving voice, and a complete absence of ideas. As you’d expect
A feature of The Blob is that once you reach a senior enough level, success is rewarded, and failure is … rewarded.
If there is a scandal, then the automatic instinct is to organise the cover-up. When the cover-up gets exposed, then the strategy changes to delaying and blocking redress - whilst proclaiming that “lessons have been learned.”
In addition to 'the blob' slowing down and stopping reform, it has a habit of continuing with projects that have obvious flaws, often spotted early on, but because a decision has been made, the project must continue. Seen it in large businesses too, who create their own 'blob'. £millions wasted on things that will fail or be catastrophically flawed.
In other news, the EU (was Brexit not a fight against a blob?) seems determined to continue with the launch of it's biometric border control on 10th November, using a completely untried and untested system across the whole bloc.
What could possibly go wrong with a system that introduces new control measures that can only be completed at the point of entry?
Expect to be told to turn up at ports and airports 5 hours in advance. Expect the system to crash causing travel chaos.
December is likely to have competing headlines over 'freezing grannies' and 'Christmas travel chaos'.
You make a very good point about large businesses having their own blobs. Big systems have a certain organisational momentum. But those forces don’t have a will of their own, and they’re not confined to the public sector. Send politicians on courses in change management and tell them to stop moaning.
Thoughts and prayers for Owen Jones at this most difficult of times.
This was his reaction to seeing the footage of the Grand Wizard getting bombed to his 72 virgins...
You’re looking at a terrible crime, and another pivotal moment in the fall of the West. Do you really think we are going to get away with this? I have some bad news!
He is probably not retweeting the footage of Lebanese people rejoicing.
In fact the only people who seem to be upset are the remaining Hezbollah operatives (currently holding their AGM in a - disconnected - phonebox) and British and American students studying the liberal arts at Western universities.
I think the country is wreathed in rules and regulations that stultify growth and waste mountains of time and energy.
Some rules are important. Drive on the left. Don't steal from shops. Others are not. The money laundering rules are time consuming for the ordinary citizen and the big operators are able to get round them. The environmental rules hold up house building.
Because the rules often seem to be unnecessary they are sometimes ignored cf Grenfell where the problem was not lack of regulation but regulations ignored or, in the case of the rule of stay in place, obeyed.
The cause is that the writers of the rules are only concerned with one side of the issue - safety, preventing fraud, protecting the environment, and do not consider the other side - massive time wasting, economic costs etc. Rules here are not for the greater good but for one side of the issue. It's not the blob. It can be any pressure group.
The solution is a regulations ombudsman to whom one can appeal stultifying rules, and who can strike down unnecessary rules or refer then to parliament to reconsider if they are in primary legislation.
We are a bureaucratic superpower.
It all interweaves.
"Do you accept cookies?" is objectively stupid, since you often can't say no to access the content you need and, even if you can choose to accept some rather than all, it would take 2-3 minutes to calibrate it, whereas it causes a 2-3 second delay every time just to say 'yes' and access a website. It makes next to no difference to personal privacy, which is ethereal anyway.
But, because of GDPR, we are stuck with it, and we seemingly can't change it because to do so might impact upon trade deals.
I was on a peasant wagon yesterday and two oldies were talking about how they are using Gemini for talking to their foreign relatives...I think AI might have some cut through. Don't fancy chances for all these other translation and foreign language learns apps.
My Bulgarian mother in law is here at the moment and I don't speak the language.
What's Gemini?
Its Google LLM, which you can use as an app on Android and via Google app on IOS.
I was on a peasant wagon yesterday and two oldies were talking about how they are using Gemini for talking to their foreign relatives...I think AI might have some cut through. Don't fancy chances for all these other translation and foreign language learns apps.
My Bulgarian mother in law is here at the moment and I don't speak the language.
What's Gemini?
Its Google LLM, which you can use as an app on Android and via Google app on IOS.
Thanks. Instructions and script too long there which has put me off.
Google translate it is, for now.
The new Apple Translate app on the Apple Watch Ultra is really neat. And the fact it’s on your wrist makes it easily applicable to real-world live translation scenarios. Recommended!
You might have misread the story. HMG has made £4.8 billion on the deal, and it is only the principal which will be handed back, or £1.5 billion or about £12,600 per miner, according to your linked story.
I think the country is wreathed in rules and regulations that stultify growth and waste mountains of time and energy.
Some rules are important. Drive on the left. Don't steal from shops. Others are not. The money laundering rules are time consuming for the ordinary citizen and the big operators are able to get round them. The environmental rules hold up house building.
Because the rules often seem to be unnecessary they are sometimes ignored cf Grenfell where the problem was not lack of regulation but regulations ignored or, in the case of the rule of stay in place, obeyed.
The cause is that the writers of the rules are only concerned with one side of the issue - safety, preventing fraud, protecting the environment, and do not consider the other side - massive time wasting, economic costs etc. Rules here are not for the greater good but for one side of the issue. It's not the blob. It can be any pressure group.
The solution is a regulations ombudsman to whom one can appeal stultifying rules, and who can strike down unnecessary rules or refer then to parliament to reconsider if they are in primary legislation.
We are a bureaucratic superpower.
It all interweaves.
"Do you accept cookies?" is objectively stupid, since you often can't say no to access the content you need and, even if you can choose to accept some rather than all, it would take 2-3 minutes to calibrate it, whereas it causes a 2-3 second delay every time just to say 'yes' and access a website. It makes next to no difference to personal privacy, which is ethereal anyway.
But, because of GDPR, we are stuck with it, and we seemingly can't change it because to do so might impact upon trade deals.
There are thousands of things like that.
On the other hand, the iPad on which I type this is on the IOS Beta programme, and the latest beta includes Apple Intelligence - unless you’re in the EU or China.
One small Brexit benefit at a time…
Some of us might have said at the time, that the single biggest benefit was not having to pass whatever was next in their long line of anti-business, anti-growth, and anti-American legislation.
On Talk TV, it was amusing to see Julian Hartley-Brewer reaching for increasingly desperate straw men as she was mugged on air by someone who had come armed with some facts.
It’s interesting that JHB admits she supports it in her own neighbourhood! (Fair play to her for saying that I guess). The Welsh scheme has been, by any reasonable metric, a success. My sense is there are tens of thousands of Julias - who support 20mph in their own neighbourhoods but not in ‘WALES’.
We’ve had 20mph universally near me and I was 100% against it when they brought it in. Now I’m 100% for it. You get used to it, it makes urban driving less stressful and the streets more serene.
It is true, as ever, that you can’t shake THE DRAKE.
I think in the end very few 20mph roads will revert to 30mph in Wales because the standard required for that is too high: During reassessment, the authority must ensure that any proposed speed limit increase will not negatively impact road safety. How on earth do you prove that?
Even if a street is assessed to be safe for 30mph, it then has to go through the TRO process (more consultations with local residents). It's this kind of JHB YIMBYism that will see even Conservative councils retain their 20mph limits in order to please the people who actually live on these roads.
It does appear that the multitude support raising speed limits to 30mph in other people’s neighbourhoods.
Both of you speak about Wales as if you live there and frankly seem to have a view that is not shared by the people or politicians of Wales
Of course you are at liberty to try to force your opinion on the 20mph limit but no amount of repetitive posts will alter the fact roads across Wales are being reassessed and some will change
The nonsense of this argument is that most everyone agrees with 20mph limits in given areas such as schools and busy residential areas but not generalized especially on roads that have no children on them
And as far as Drakeford is concerned he has now said he wants income tax rates to rise in defiance of labour's stance in Westminster and like the 20mph policy his colleagues have had to slap him down
What proportion of the 20mph zones do you expect to revert to 30mph? Be interested to read your prediction - as Wales’ very own Johnny On The Spot.
On Talk TV, it was amusing to see Julian Hartley-Brewer reaching for increasingly desperate straw men as she was mugged on air by someone who had come armed with some facts.
It’s interesting that JHB admits she supports it in her own neighbourhood! (Fair play to her for saying that I guess). The Welsh scheme has been, by any reasonable metric, a success. My sense is there are tens of thousands of Julias - who support 20mph in their own neighbourhoods but not in ‘WALES’.
We’ve had 20mph universally near me and I was 100% against it when they brought it in. Now I’m 100% for it. You get used to it, it makes urban driving less stressful and the streets more serene.
It is true, as ever, that you can’t shake THE DRAKE.
I think in the end very few 20mph roads will revert to 30mph in Wales because the standard required for that is too high: During reassessment, the authority must ensure that any proposed speed limit increase will not negatively impact road safety. How on earth do you prove that?
Even if a street is assessed to be safe for 30mph, it then has to go through the TRO process (more consultations with local residents). It's this kind of JHB YIMBYism that will see even Conservative councils retain their 20mph limits in order to please the people who actually live on these roads.
It does appear that the multitude support raising speed limits to 30mph in other people’s neighbourhoods.
Both of you speak about Wales as if you live there and frankly seem to have a view that is not shared by the people or politicians of Wales
Of course you are at liberty to try to force your opinion on the 20mph limit but no amount of repetitive posts will alter the fact roads across Wales are being reassessed and some will change
The nonsense of this argument is that most everyone agrees with 20mph limits in given areas such as schools and busy residential areas but not generalized especially on roads that have no children on them
And as far as Drakeford is concerned he has now said he wants income tax rates to rise in defiance of labour's stance in Westminster and like the 20mph policy his colleagues have had to slap him down
My particular interest in Wales is as a more comprehensive model for the future in England, even though we have scores of examples of our own in local areas going back up to 30 years, with research data supporting such a change.
I expect a modest rollback, of perhaps 5-10% of road mileage that has changed. Given that the so-called "blanket" change only affected about 30-35% (without looking it up) of road mileage in Wales, that represents 2-3% of roads.
It's worth remembering that in the Senedd the policy was introduced with cross-party support, including from the Conservatives. Here is the Conservative Senedd member votes in 2020 (my photo quota): The political history of the issue in Wales can be read here: https://www.20splenty.org/w_faq04
It was also a Labour Senedd manifesto commitment in 2021.
IMO the issue has only really been weaponised by Generation Sunak in a hunt for wedge issues to try and save their backsides. It will take a bit of time to get over the poison that that has injected into the debate, but I think it will work through.
I'll be interested to see if Welsh motor insurance premiums reduce, or increase less, than English ones, in the next few years. That I think will be one clincher.
I'm not convinced by the leading article. The "evidence" of the blob is casually furnished by reference to two satirical TV programmes. It's undoubtedly true that many people believe that the blob exists and systematically resists change, and it's likely that reforms to transfer control from X to Y will be resisted by X, but the underlying issue is not a systematic block on change but a caution by elected governments against introducing change which will create opponents faster than it creates benefits.
Arguably we suffer from permanent electionitis, because of local elections happening every year in addition to the General Election at least every 5 years. But that's a somewhat different problem from an institutional barrier to change. Starmer's indifference to current opinion is unusual, and probably healthy, even though the consequences aren't always welcome to me. It's possible to effect radical change - just electorally risky.
Both 'blob' and 'change' can be unhelpful concepts. Dare I suggest that both arise out of substitution or displacement activity.
What most middling sorts want most of time out of the state is neither the abolition of civil ordering (the blob are all part of that), nor 'change'. They want competence.
By this I mean something like this. I am a state pensioner. The inauguration, implemenation and continuation of this process has been run by the state with entire, boring, simple competence (so far!!).
What I (and I think most) want is the same thing WRT the bits of state and civil ordering that I am not a continuous part of. And when I am not using them, I want an absolute trust that when I do - especially in an emergency - they are absolutely and 100% there for me because they are competently run for my benefit when I need them.
Examples. Do I trust implicitly and absolutely that if burgled the police will arrive within minutes, investigate it fully, keep me informed and be available for all my querulous and frightened questions? No.
Do I implicitly trust that if my daughter, aged 17, worked for a billionaire with close elite connections and was sexually assaulted by that person, that rapid justice would be done? No.
Do I trust the HMRC (or any civil society body) to answer the phone within two minutes during all office hours, to to be even accessible by email, or if they are to answer them? No.
Can I email my local police officers? No
As to NHS do I......? No.
Sorting this is not about the blob or about change or about legislation. This is the stuff of middling sort lives.
As a young man (and I am so much older than I was on Thursday) I remember reading the works of JK Galbraith, specifically "The Affluent Society" and "The New Industrial State". He explained in some detail how states and administrations generally accreted power to themselves and proceeded to make themselves prosperous as they exercised those powers.
He also explained how ideas of perfect competition failed to operate in the real world where large multinational organisations used regulation as barriers to entry creating oligarchies which "worked" with regulators to protect their position and showed how movement between the regulators and the regulated became a profitable option.
I am slightly dismayed to note that The New Industrial State was first published in 1967. It respectfully seems to me that this analysis, now nearly 60 years old, gives a much clearer and more sophisticated understanding of how and why our society works like it does than slightly amorphous concepts like "the blob".
Galbraith's work was specifically focused on the operation and regulation of business and it is true, as @viewcode explains in his excellent header, that we have since expanded the scope of this incestuous relationship well beyond that and into the provision of the services of the state such as education. But the problem is the same: Regulation increases bureaucracy; the principal purpose and function of a bureaucracy inevitably becomes the well being of those employed by it; any benefits supposedly gained by the general public are incidental to that central purpose.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
Ramaswamy has floated 9/11 conspiracy theories. He’s not exactly credible.
You can call him what you like, but there’s a good chance he could be in the US Cabinet next January, so he’s probably worth listening to even if you disagree with what he has to say.
I referenced something he said. I am listening to him. You would do well to actually listen to the crazy he puts out.
I listened to the podcast I linked yesterday. Don’t agree with all he says, but he does have some good ideas. I like listening to people willing to step outside the comfort zone of established political thought, whether on the left or on the right. Even people with whom I vehemently disagree on almost everything, will occasionally have a good idea in there somewhere.
Which of these Ramaswamy ideas do you think are good?
- raise the voting age to 25 - considering RFK as a running mate - that January 6 was an inside job - that the Democrats support a Great Replacement of Christian white Americans - that 9/11 was an inside job - ending US military aid to Ukraine - preventing Ukraine from ever joining NATO - letting Russia keep those parts of Ukraine it currently occupies - that the climate change agenda is a hoax
An important resource from the Open Spaces Society, about obstructions and barriers on public footpaths, what they are, whether they are lawful, and steps s strategies to address them, with examples.
They don't go quite as far as I would like, but they are a very strategic organisation, with roots in the same people who set up the National Trust - they were founded in 1865.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
Ramaswamy has floated 9/11 conspiracy theories. He’s not exactly credible.
You can call him what you like, but there’s a good chance he could be in the US Cabinet next January, so he’s probably worth listening to even if you disagree with what he has to say.
I referenced something he said. I am listening to him. You would do well to actually listen to the crazy he puts out.
I listened to the podcast I linked yesterday. Don’t agree with all he says, but he does have some good ideas. I like listening to people willing to step outside the comfort zone of established political thought, whether on the left or on the right. Even people with whom I vehemently disagree on almost everything, will occasionally have a good idea in there somewhere.
Which of these Ramaswamy ideas do you think are good?
- raise the voting age to 25 - considering RFK as a running mate - that January 6 was an inside job - that the Democrats support a Great Replacement of Christian white Americans - that 9/11 was an inside job - ending US military aid to Ukraine - preventing Ukraine from ever joining NATO - letting Russia keep those parts of Ukraine it currently occupies - that the climate change agenda is a hoax
We all know the appeal is "owning the libs". That is all that matters to too many. Even some previously very sensible types.
I remember predicting that machine translation would reach near-perfection, and replace humans, on this very site. Ten years back? Some scoffed at me
And here we are
I should remind you about your driverless lorry prediction... well over ten years and counting.
You were completely wrong about translation. And I was right
However you were right about self drive and I was wrong. It is clearly much much harder than anyone thought. And translating - it turns out - is much easier
However self driving is slowly coming. Painfully slowly. But it is
“Shenzhen to put autonomous buses on roads as China accelerates self-driving vehicle tests”
China is leading the way, which makes sense, as they are less tangled in legal issues than American companies
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
Ramaswamy has floated 9/11 conspiracy theories. He’s not exactly credible.
You can call him what you like, but there’s a good chance he could be in the US Cabinet next January, so he’s probably worth listening to even if you disagree with what he has to say.
I referenced something he said. I am listening to him. You would do well to actually listen to the crazy he puts out.
I listened to the podcast I linked yesterday. Don’t agree with all he says, but he does have some good ideas. I like listening to people willing to step outside the comfort zone of established political thought, whether on the left or on the right. Even people with whom I vehemently disagree on almost everything, will occasionally have a good idea in there somewhere.
Which of these Ramaswamy ideas do you think are good?
- raise the voting age to 25 - considering RFK as a running mate - that January 6 was an inside job - that the Democrats support a Great Replacement of Christian white Americans - that 9/11 was an inside job - ending US military aid to Ukraine - preventing Ukraine from ever joining NATO - letting Russia keep those parts of Ukraine it currently occupies - that the climate change agenda is a hoax
Sounds a perfectly good set of policies and beliefs.
Completely off topic to lighten these dark days of freebies galore undermining our previously blemish free politics, I received a message from a friend this morning that I feel is my favourite message I’ve ever received. I’ve had many messages, love, hate, anger and business but there was just something nice and straightforward to this enquiry about who wanted what from me late last night.So hope you all have a fun Saturday as off to do it all again shortly.
On Talk TV, it was amusing to see Julian Hartley-Brewer reaching for increasingly desperate straw men as she was mugged on air by someone who had come armed with some facts.
It’s interesting that JHB admits she supports it in her own neighbourhood! (Fair play to her for saying that I guess). The Welsh scheme has been, by any reasonable metric, a success. My sense is there are tens of thousands of Julias - who support 20mph in their own neighbourhoods but not in ‘WALES’.
We’ve had 20mph universally near me and I was 100% against it when they brought it in. Now I’m 100% for it. You get used to it, it makes urban driving less stressful and the streets more serene.
It is true, as ever, that you can’t shake THE DRAKE.
I think in the end very few 20mph roads will revert to 30mph in Wales because the standard required for that is too high: During reassessment, the authority must ensure that any proposed speed limit increase will not negatively impact road safety. How on earth do you prove that?
Even if a street is assessed to be safe for 30mph, it then has to go through the TRO process (more consultations with local residents). It's this kind of JHB YIMBYism that will see even Conservative councils retain their 20mph limits in order to please the people who actually live on these roads.
It does appear that the multitude support raising speed limits to 30mph in other people’s neighbourhoods.
Both of you speak about Wales as if you live there and frankly seem to have a view that is not shared by the people or politicians of Wales
Of course you are at liberty to try to force your opinion on the 20mph limit but no amount of repetitive posts will alter the fact roads across Wales are being reassessed and some will change
The nonsense of this argument is that most everyone agrees with 20mph limits in given areas such as schools and busy residential areas but not generalized especially on roads that have no children on them
And as far as Drakeford is concerned he has now said he wants income tax rates to rise in defiance of labour's stance in Westminster and like the 20mph policy his colleagues have had to slap him down
What proportion of the 20mph zones do you expect to revert to 30mph? Be interested to read your prediction - as Wales’ very own Johnny On The Spot.
Each LA is reviewing the roads in their area as the implementation has not been consistent across Wales with some LA applying it wider than others
It is certainly true that my recent time spent driving in Gwynedd showed a much more sensible application than Conwy, Denbighshire or Flintshire
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
Ramaswamy has floated 9/11 conspiracy theories. He’s not exactly credible.
You can call him what you like, but there’s a good chance he could be in the US Cabinet next January, so he’s probably worth listening to even if you disagree with what he has to say.
I referenced something he said. I am listening to him. You would do well to actually listen to the crazy he puts out.
I listened to the podcast I linked yesterday. Don’t agree with all he says, but he does have some good ideas. I like listening to people willing to step outside the comfort zone of established political thought, whether on the left or on the right. Even people with whom I vehemently disagree on almost everything, will occasionally have a good idea in there somewhere.
Which of these Ramaswamy ideas do you think are good?
- raise the voting age to 25 - considering RFK as a running mate - that January 6 was an inside job - that the Democrats support a Great Replacement of Christian white Americans - that 9/11 was an inside job - ending US military aid to Ukraine - preventing Ukraine from ever joining NATO - letting Russia keep those parts of Ukraine it currently occupies - that the climate change agenda is a hoax
Sounds a perfectly good set of policies and beliefs.
From Russia's perspective...
He is a clear and present danger to the republic as his boss, Trump.
On Talk TV, it was amusing to see Julian Hartley-Brewer reaching for increasingly desperate straw men as she was mugged on air by someone who had come armed with some facts.
It’s interesting that JHB admits she supports it in her own neighbourhood! (Fair play to her for saying that I guess). The Welsh scheme has been, by any reasonable metric, a success. My sense is there are tens of thousands of Julias - who support 20mph in their own neighbourhoods but not in ‘WALES’.
We’ve had 20mph universally near me and I was 100% against it when they brought it in. Now I’m 100% for it. You get used to it, it makes urban driving less stressful and the streets more serene.
It is true, as ever, that you can’t shake THE DRAKE.
I think in the end very few 20mph roads will revert to 30mph in Wales because the standard required for that is too high: During reassessment, the authority must ensure that any proposed speed limit increase will not negatively impact road safety. How on earth do you prove that?
Even if a street is assessed to be safe for 30mph, it then has to go through the TRO process (more consultations with local residents). It's this kind of JHB YIMBYism that will see even Conservative councils retain their 20mph limits in order to please the people who actually live on these roads.
It does appear that the multitude support raising speed limits to 30mph in other people’s neighbourhoods.
Both of you speak about Wales as if you live there and frankly seem to have a view that is not shared by the people or politicians of Wales
Of course you are at liberty to try to force your opinion on the 20mph limit but no amount of repetitive posts will alter the fact roads across Wales are being reassessed and some will change
The nonsense of this argument is that most everyone agrees with 20mph limits in given areas such as schools and busy residential areas but not generalized especially on roads that have no children on them
And as far as Drakeford is concerned he has now said he wants income tax rates to rise in defiance of labour's stance in Westminster and like the 20mph policy his colleagues have had to slap him down
What proportion of the 20mph zones do you expect to revert to 30mph? Be interested to read your prediction - as Wales’ very own Johnny On The Spot.
20mph is only really appropriate for non-through roads.
Through roads should preferably be ideally 40mph, or 50mph. 30mph is slow and should be the slowest used on through roads.
I remember predicting that machine translation would reach near-perfection, and replace humans, on this very site. Ten years back? Some scoffed at me
And here we are
I should remind you about your driverless lorry prediction... well over ten years and counting.
You were completely wrong about translation. And I was right
However you were right about self drive and I was wrong. It is clearly much much harder than anyone thought. And translating - it turns out - is much easier
However self driving is slowly coming. Painfully slowly. But it is
“Shenzhen to put autonomous buses on roads as China accelerates self-driving vehicle tests”
China is leading the way, which makes sense, as they are less tangled in legal issues than American companies
I remember predicting that machine translation would reach near-perfection, and replace humans, on this very site. Ten years back? Some scoffed at me
And here we are
I should remind you about your driverless lorry prediction... well over ten years and counting.
You were completely wrong about translation. And I was right
However you were right about self drive and I was wrong. It is clearly much much harder than anyone thought. And translating - it turns out - is much easier
However self driving is slowly coming. Painfully slowly. But it is
“Shenzhen to put autonomous buses on roads as China accelerates self-driving vehicle tests”
China is leading the way, which makes sense, as they are less tangled in legal issues than American companies
I remember predicting that machine translation would reach near-perfection, and replace humans, on this very site. Ten years back? Some scoffed at me
And here we are
I should remind you about your driverless lorry prediction... well over ten years and counting.
You were completely wrong about translation. And I was right
However you were right about self drive and I was wrong. It is clearly much much harder than anyone thought. And translating - it turns out - is much easier
However self driving is slowly coming. Painfully slowly. But it is
“Shenzhen to put autonomous buses on roads as China accelerates self-driving vehicle tests”
China is leading the way, which makes sense, as they are less tangled in legal issues than American companies
As a young man (and I am so much older than I was on Thursday) I remember reading the works of JK Galbraith, specifically "The Affluent Society" and "The New Industrial State". He explained in some detail how states and administrations generally accreted power to themselves and proceeded to make themselves prosperous as they exercised those powers.
He also explained how ideas of perfect competition failed to operate in the real world where large multinational organisations used regulation as barriers to entry creating oligarchies which "worked" with regulators to protect their position and showed how movement between the regulators and the regulated became a profitable option.
I am slightly dismayed to note that The New Industrial State was first published in 1967. It respectfully seems to me that this analysis, now nearly 60 years old, gives a much clearer and more sophisticated understanding of how and why our society works like it does than slightly amorphous concepts like "the blob".
Galbraith's work was specifically focused on the operation and regulation of business and it is true, as @viewcode explains in his excellent header, that we have since expanded the scope of this incestuous relationship well beyond that and into the provision of the services of the state such as education. But the problem is the same: Regulation increases bureaucracy; the principal purpose and function of a bureaucracy inevitably becomes the well being of those employed by it; any benefits supposedly gained by the general public are incidental to that central purpose.
Galbraith, though hardly immune to error, was essentially a pragmatist. And believed in pragmatic analysis of, and solutions to problems, rather than dogma - of which “the Blob” is just one example.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
Ramaswamy has floated 9/11 conspiracy theories. He’s not exactly credible.
You can call him what you like, but there’s a good chance he could be in the US Cabinet next January, so he’s probably worth listening to even if you disagree with what he has to say.
I referenced something he said. I am listening to him. You would do well to actually listen to the crazy he puts out.
I listened to the podcast I linked yesterday. Don’t agree with all he says, but he does have some good ideas. I like listening to people willing to step outside the comfort zone of established political thought, whether on the left or on the right. Even people with whom I vehemently disagree on almost everything, will occasionally have a good idea in there somewhere.
Which of these Ramaswamy ideas do you think are good?
- raise the voting age to 25 - considering RFK as a running mate - that January 6 was an inside job - that the Democrats support a Great Replacement of Christian white Americans - that 9/11 was an inside job - ending US military aid to Ukraine - preventing Ukraine from ever joining NATO - letting Russia keep those parts of Ukraine it currently occupies - that the climate change agenda is a hoax
That’s clearly not an exhaustive list of his policies, as you missed off the biggest ones like significant reductions in headcount in the Federal burecracy, and the shuttering of whole departments such as Education.
Of those you mentioned, using opposition language, some of them he does have a point, while others I think are wrong.
- Raising the voting age to 25. Don’t completely disagree, and his proposals come with a much wider renewal of the concept of citizenship. - RFK, like any politician, has good and bad ideas. I agree with his ideas on food standards, which are terrible in the US, and disagree with his views on vaccines, for example. - There is a lot of evidence that there were at best a number of FBI informants around on J6, acting as agitators if not outright provocateurs. Many of those arrested have been treated terribly. - The Democrats are clearly supporting measures such as a massive increase in unskilled immigration, while simultaneously being big fans of abortions and gender transitions. I would not use such provocative language, but the evidence is there. - Obviously I’m a big fan of aid to Ukraine, but also have some sympathy with the view that others within NATO are not pulling their weight, and that there’s always money for overseas spending but little spent on disasters at home, for example the floods in Hawaii and the train derailment in East Palestine. - Ukraine joining NATO is a difficult one, but on balance I would be in favour of it. - I don’t know what a Ukranian peace deal looks like, but would prefer it be on the 1991 Ukraine boundary. If the Ukranian government and people are happy with something different, then I am in favour of their decision. - In an American context, there are a number of federal projects related to climate change, which have spent extortionate amounts of money that appears to have simply vanished, making the UK pandemic PPE scandal look like a drop in the ocean. For example, there was a $7.5bn project to install electric car chargers across the country, which after two years has yielded the grand total of eight chargers installed. https://www.autoweek.com/news/a60702457/federal-funds-yield-only-8-ev-charging-stations/ There was also a $40bn project for rural broadband that was originally awarded to Starlink, but after a lot of lobbying was given instead to the big telcos, who have installed a tiny fraction of the fibre that was promised, and almost no-one has seen new high-speed broadband as a result. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-detail-plans-42-billion-investment-us-internet-access-2023-06-26/
If Iran is ever going to attack Israel, it must be now
Israel has decapitated the entire leadership of Hizbullah, and humiliated Tehran. If they don’t respond to this, they never will
Iran is never going to attack Israel directly. They know it would be the end of the Islamic Republic as their people would take their opportunity to get rid of the mullahs and their morality police - who are absolutely loathed.
If Iran is ever going to attack Israel, it must be now
Israel has decapitated the entire leadership of Hizbullah, and humiliated Tehran. If they don’t respond to this, they never will
Iran is never going to attack Israel directly. They know it would be the end of the Islamic Republic as their people would take their opportunity to get rid of the mullahs and their morality police - who are absolutely loathed.
If Iran is ever going to attack Israel, it must be now
Israel has decapitated the entire leadership of Hizbullah, and humiliated Tehran. If they don’t respond to this, they never will
Iran is never going to attack Israel directly. They know it would be the end of the Islamic Republic as their people would take their opportunity to get rid of the mullahs and their morality police - who are absolutely loathed.
2h ago 12.31 BST William Christou William Christou has been reporting for the Guardian from Beirut
A source in a Lebanese parliamentary party opposed to Hezbollah said that while it was too early to comment on Nasrallah’s death and the effect it will have on the country, they said this moment could be seized upon to “turn a page” in Lebanon and “regroup under the rule of the state and constitution”.
“Hezbollah’s rhetoric for the last two decades has been calling for a parallel state, communication, economy and everything. Apparently, this rhetoric has proven not to be successful at all,” the source said, adding that the country needed to “grasp the momentum today, build a state” and elect a president.
Lebanon has been without a president for almost two years, as Hezbollah and opposition blocks wrestled over a preferred candidate.
“This war has been highly costly, we need to turn things around,” the source said.
2h ago 12.31 BST William Christou William Christou has been reporting for the Guardian from Beirut
A source in a Lebanese parliamentary party opposed to Hezbollah said that while it was too early to comment on Nasrallah’s death and the effect it will have on the country, they said this moment could be seized upon to “turn a page” in Lebanon and “regroup under the rule of the state and constitution”.
“Hezbollah’s rhetoric for the last two decades has been calling for a parallel state, communication, economy and everything. Apparently, this rhetoric has proven not to be successful at all,” the source said, adding that the country needed to “grasp the momentum today, build a state” and elect a president.
Lebanon has been without a president for almost two years, as Hezbollah and opposition blocks wrestled over a preferred candidate.
“This war has been highly costly, we need to turn things around,” the source said.
As a young man (and I am so much older than I was on Thursday) I remember reading the works of JK Galbraith, specifically "The Affluent Society" and "The New Industrial State". He explained in some detail how states and administrations generally accreted power to themselves and proceeded to make themselves prosperous as they exercised those powers.
He also explained how ideas of perfect competition failed to operate in the real world where large multinational organisations used regulation as barriers to entry creating oligarchies which "worked" with regulators to protect their position and showed how movement between the regulators and the regulated became a profitable option.
I am slightly dismayed to note that The New Industrial State was first published in 1967. It respectfully seems to me that this analysis, now nearly 60 years old, gives a much clearer and more sophisticated understanding of how and why our society works like it does than slightly amorphous concepts like "the blob".
Galbraith's work was specifically focused on the operation and regulation of business and it is true, as @viewcode explains in his excellent header, that we have since expanded the scope of this incestuous relationship well beyond that and into the provision of the services of the state such as education. But the problem is the same: Regulation increases bureaucracy; the principal purpose and function of a bureaucracy inevitably becomes the well being of those employed by it; any benefits supposedly gained by the general public are incidental to that central purpose.
Galbraith, though hardly immune to error, was essentially a pragmatist. And believed in pragmatic analysis of, and solutions to problems, rather than dogma - of which “the Blob” is just one example.
It is easy to use 'pragmatist' as an escape from the force of ideas. All pragmatists operate according to an account of what constitutes a 'good' outcome, and this cannot be separated from ideas - a concept labelled 'dogma' when people are wanting to assume that it is obvious what outcomes are needed.
Pragmatism as an idea in itself - especially fertile in American history - is rich and insightful, but not at all self evident or obvious in its theory of knowledge.
Thank you all for your comments about the article, both pro and con. Please keep them coming. I will address all the points you made (again both pro and con) later this afternoon/evening: I regret that I cannot do it sooner as I need to go shopping and library.
If you have time it mentions Dr Abby Innes's "Late Soviet Britain", her lecture on which is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_H_1Akaip0 . It is 23 minutes long, highly complex, and you will either love it or hate it.
I wonder if the the Grand Wizard made a strategic mistake when Israel made it clear they were going to go into Gaza to try to eliminate Hamas member and he gave the big speech and basically said hold your fire. That stopped Israel having to fight fully on two fronts and also time to be planning how to go after Hezbollah knowing they are limiting their actions to rocket fire.
The beepers were delivered since then and clear the Israelis have very good intel on all the senior Hezbollah leadership.
Well the trending hashtag on twitter are rather eye opening. Seems people have been hearing similar rumours to Leon. Means it is even more likely to be total BS.
Whilst 43 opportunities out of 100 is still way too high for comfort the post debate trend against Trump is continuing. It is, in my view, becoming increasingly difficult to see his path to 270 EC votes. He seems more likely than not to regain Georgia but is increasingly at risk of having this offset entirely by losing NC. He is more likely than not to regain AZ but progress elsewhere is limited. He can make 270 if he wins PA but the polling is edging against him there. WI and MI are both looking increasingly out of reach. Without PA he loses. Period.
I'm not convinced by the leading article. The "evidence" of the blob is casually furnished by reference to two satirical TV programmes. It's undoubtedly true that many people believe that the blob exists and systematically resists change, and it's likely that reforms to transfer control from X to Y will be resisted by X, but the underlying issue is not a systematic block on change but a caution by elected governments against introducing change which will create opponents faster than it creates benefits.
Arguably we suffer from permanent electionitis, because of local elections happening every year in addition to the General Election at least every 5 years. But that's a somewhat different problem from an institutional barrier to change. Starmer's indifference to current opinion is unusual, and probably healthy, even though the consequences aren't always welcome to me. It's possible to effect radical change - just electorally risky.
My experience in the civil service was that ministers often got frustrated that they couldn't do things, but typically the reason was other ministers or laws previously passed. Back then we were in the EU which was often a blocker as well so at least that's now gone.
Whilst 43 opportunities out of 100 is still way too high for comfort the post debate trend against Trump is continuing. It is, in my view, becoming increasingly difficult to see his path to 270 EC votes. He seems more likely than not to regain Georgia but is increasingly at risk of having this offset entirely by losing NC. He is more likely than not to regain AZ but progress elsewhere is limited. He can make 270 if he wins PA but the polling is edging against him there. WI and MI are both looking increasingly out of reach. Without PA he loses. Period.
As a young man (and I am so much older than I was on Thursday) I remember reading the works of JK Galbraith, specifically "The Affluent Society" and "The New Industrial State". He explained in some detail how states and administrations generally accreted power to themselves and proceeded to make themselves prosperous as they exercised those powers.
He also explained how ideas of perfect competition failed to operate in the real world where large multinational organisations used regulation as barriers to entry creating oligarchies which "worked" with regulators to protect their position and showed how movement between the regulators and the regulated became a profitable option.
I am slightly dismayed to note that The New Industrial State was first published in 1967. It respectfully seems to me that this analysis, now nearly 60 years old, gives a much clearer and more sophisticated understanding of how and why our society works like it does than slightly amorphous concepts like "the blob".
Galbraith's work was specifically focused on the operation and regulation of business and it is true, as @viewcode explains in his excellent header, that we have since expanded the scope of this incestuous relationship well beyond that and into the provision of the services of the state such as education. But the problem is the same: Regulation increases bureaucracy; the principal purpose and function of a bureaucracy inevitably becomes the well being of those employed by it; any benefits supposedly gained by the general public are incidental to that central purpose.
Galbraith, though hardly immune to error, was essentially a pragmatist. And believed in pragmatic analysis of, and solutions to problems, rather than dogma - of which “the Blob” is just one example.
It is easy to use 'pragmatist' as an escape from the force of ideas. All pragmatists operate according to an account of what constitutes a 'good' outcome, and this cannot be separated from ideas - a concept labelled 'dogma' when people are wanting to assume that it is obvious what outcomes are needed.
Pragmatism as an idea in itself - especially fertile in American history - is rich and insightful, but not at all self evident or obvious in its theory of knowledge.
My view of pragmatism is that you should not let the good be the enemy of the excellent. If you can achieve some of your goals and improve the position you should do so, even if this involves some compromises.
The benefits of this are obvious. Firstly, things improve. Secondly, it is, as a generality (Trump is admittedly testing this proposition to its limits) wrong to think that all the wisdom or correctness is on one side. Thirdly, a compromise that both parties have signed up to is much more likely to survive for a meaningful period of time, allowing any good to be embedded.
Of course opportunism and gesture politics can all too often be dressed up as "pragmatism" and that can give it a bad name but as a generality I greatly favour pragmatic governments over those who are bound to a particular ideology, whether of the left or the right.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
Ramaswamy has floated 9/11 conspiracy theories. He’s not exactly credible.
You can call him what you like, but there’s a good chance he could be in the US Cabinet next January, so he’s probably worth listening to even if you disagree with what he has to say.
I referenced something he said. I am listening to him. You would do well to actually listen to the crazy he puts out.
I listened to the podcast I linked yesterday. Don’t agree with all he says, but he does have some good ideas. I like listening to people willing to step outside the comfort zone of established political thought, whether on the left or on the right. Even people with whom I vehemently disagree on almost everything, will occasionally have a good idea in there somewhere.
Which of these Ramaswamy ideas do you think are good?
- raise the voting age to 25 - considering RFK as a running mate - that January 6 was an inside job - that the Democrats support a Great Replacement of Christian white Americans - that 9/11 was an inside job - ending US military aid to Ukraine - preventing Ukraine from ever joining NATO - letting Russia keep those parts of Ukraine it currently occupies - that the climate change agenda is a hoax
That’s clearly not an exhaustive list of his policies, as you missed off the biggest ones like significant reductions in headcount in the Federal burecracy, and the shuttering of whole departments such as Education.
Of those you mentioned, using opposition language, some of them he does have a point, while others I think are wrong.
- Raising the voting age to 25. Don’t completely disagree, and his proposals come with a much wider renewal of the concept of citizenship. - RFK, like any politician, has good and bad ideas. I agree with his ideas on food standards, which are terrible in the US, and disagree with his views on vaccines, for example. - There is a lot of evidence that there were at best a number of FBI informants around on J6, acting as agitators if not outright provocateurs. Many of those arrested have been treated terribly. - The Democrats are clearly supporting measures such as a massive increase in unskilled immigration, while simultaneously being big fans of abortions and gender transitions. I would not use such provocative language, but the evidence is there. - Obviously I’m a big fan of aid to Ukraine, but also have some sympathy with the view that others within NATO are not pulling their weight, and that there’s always money for overseas spending but little spent on disasters at home, for example the floods in Hawaii and the train derailment in East Palestine. - Ukraine joining NATO is a difficult one, but on balance I would be in favour of it. - I don’t know what a Ukranian peace deal looks like, but would prefer it be on the 1991 Ukraine boundary. If the Ukranian government and people are happy with something different, then I am in favour of their decision. - In an American context, there are a number of federal projects related to climate change, which have spent extortionate amounts of money that appears to have simply vanished, making the UK pandemic PPE scandal look like a drop in the ocean. For example, there was a $7.5bn project to install electric car chargers across the country, which after two years has yielded the grand total of eight chargers installed. https://www.autoweek.com/news/a60702457/federal-funds-yield-only-8-ev-charging-stations/ There was also a $40bn project for rural broadband that was originally awarded to Starlink, but after a lot of lobbying was given instead to the big telcos, who have installed a tiny fraction of the fibre that was promised, and almost no-one has seen new high-speed broadband as a result. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-detail-plans-42-billion-investment-us-internet-access-2023-06-26/
Sandpit, these are lies. You are swallowing lies told to you by MAGA grifters. They are not connected with reality. You are slipping down a rabbit hole that leads to claiming that Haitian immigrants are vampires eating people (as with Roseanne Barr).
Whilst 43 opportunities out of 100 is still way too high for comfort the post debate trend against Trump is continuing. It is, in my view, becoming increasingly difficult to see his path to 270 EC votes. He seems more likely than not to regain Georgia but is increasingly at risk of having this offset entirely by losing NC. He is more likely than not to regain AZ but progress elsewhere is limited. He can make 270 if he wins PA but the polling is edging against him there. WI and MI are both looking increasingly out of reach. Without PA he loses. Period.
Whilst 43 opportunities out of 100 is still way too high for comfort the post debate trend against Trump is continuing. It is, in my view, becoming increasingly difficult to see his path to 270 EC votes. He seems more likely than not to regain Georgia but is increasingly at risk of having this offset entirely by losing NC. He is more likely than not to regain AZ but progress elsewhere is limited. He can make 270 if he wins PA but the polling is edging against him there. WI and MI are both looking increasingly out of reach. Without PA he loses. Period.
Whilst 43 opportunities out of 100 is still way too high for comfort the post debate trend against Trump is continuing. It is, in my view, becoming increasingly difficult to see his path to 270 EC votes. He seems more likely than not to regain Georgia but is increasingly at risk of having this offset entirely by losing NC. He is more likely than not to regain AZ but progress elsewhere is limited. He can make 270 if he wins PA but the polling is edging against him there. WI and MI are both looking increasingly out of reach. Without PA he loses. Period.
Still, I worry that Trump is good at getting non-voters to turn out. In 2020 the Dems were further ahead and it was pretty white knuckle on the night.
It’s awfully close, and yes there’s more evidence of Republicans embracing early voting this time around. Their postmortem from 2020 had Trump’s rhetoric about early voting and postal voting as a significant factor in the defeat, now they’ve got more boots on the ground in swing states getting voters registered and voting early.
One of the interesting polling differences between now and 2020 has a been a gender split among young (18-30) voters. Young women are more Dem than in 2020, and young men more Rep, driven by abortion and wokeness respectively.
I remain of the opinion that, unless the Dems can pull off a massive coup in Florida or Texas, al roads to the White House lead through Pennsylvania, where both camps are spending a lot of time and money. It must be pretty horrible to live there, with the constant adverts and phone calls. Even online platforms can now target certain States and identify floating and independent-registered voters.
After yesterday’s near-hurricane conditions, it’s an almost unreal and very serene start to today. Warm, sunny, no wind at all. Helene has turned west and is fizzling out over land, and I am now three hundred miles to the east. The only sign of yesterday’s turmoil is the extremely brown river here, and the occasional branch or lump of wood that slowly floats by.
Both NC and TN have been hit bad, with the worst of the flooding there likely still to come. I hear that Asheville, where I breakfasted yesterday, still has its state of emergency and now has a twelve-hour curfew over the whole city after dark.
As a young man (and I am so much older than I was on Thursday) I remember reading the works of JK Galbraith, specifically "The Affluent Society" and "The New Industrial State". He explained in some detail how states and administrations generally accreted power to themselves and proceeded to make themselves prosperous as they exercised those powers.
He also explained how ideas of perfect competition failed to operate in the real world where large multinational organisations used regulation as barriers to entry creating oligarchies which "worked" with regulators to protect their position and showed how movement between the regulators and the regulated became a profitable option.
I am slightly dismayed to note that The New Industrial State was first published in 1967. It respectfully seems to me that this analysis, now nearly 60 years old, gives a much clearer and more sophisticated understanding of how and why our society works like it does than slightly amorphous concepts like "the blob".
Galbraith's work was specifically focused on the operation and regulation of business and it is true, as @viewcode explains in his excellent header, that we have since expanded the scope of this incestuous relationship well beyond that and into the provision of the services of the state such as education. But the problem is the same: Regulation increases bureaucracy; the principal purpose and function of a bureaucracy inevitably becomes the well being of those employed by it; any benefits supposedly gained by the general public are incidental to that central purpose.
Galbraith, though hardly immune to error, was essentially a pragmatist. And believed in pragmatic analysis of, and solutions to problems, rather than dogma - of which “the Blob” is just one example.
It is easy to use 'pragmatist' as an escape from the force of ideas. All pragmatists operate according to an account of what constitutes a 'good' outcome, and this cannot be separated from ideas - a concept labelled 'dogma' when people are wanting to assume that it is obvious what outcomes are needed.
Pragmatism as an idea in itself - especially fertile in American history - is rich and insightful, but not at all self evident or obvious in its theory of knowledge.
My view of pragmatism is that you should not let the good be the enemy of the excellent. If you can achieve some of your goals and improve the position you should do so, even if this involves some compromises.
The benefits of this are obvious. Firstly, things improve. Secondly, it is, as a generality (Trump is admittedly testing this proposition to its limits) wrong to think that all the wisdom or correctness is on one side. Thirdly, a compromise that both parties have signed up to is much more likely to survive for a meaningful period of time, allowing any good to be embedded.
Of course opportunism and gesture politics can all too often be dressed up as "pragmatism" and that can give it a bad name but as a generality I greatly favour pragmatic governments over those who are bound to a particular ideology, whether of the left or the right.
Also, it's about the difference between "what's the optimal end state I want to achieve?" against "what's the next step that will improve things?"
For most of my lifetime, the first has tended to code left in the UK, leaving the second to the right. "They can dream their dreams... we have work to do" and all that.
That's changed in recent years, and not exclusively due to D. Cummings Esq. And there are times when things need radical disruption. But it's always expensive on the short term, and the odds on the high-stakes bets aren't always great.
After yesterday’s near-hurricane conditions, it’s an almost unreal and very serene start to today. Warm, sunny, no wind at all. Helene has turned west and is fizzling out over land, and I am now three hundred miles to the east. The only sign of yesterday’s turmoil is the extremely brown river here, and the occasional branch or lump of wood that slowly floats by.
Both NC and TN have been hit bad, with the worst of the flooding there likely still to come. I hear that Asheville, where I breakfasted yesterday, still has its state of emergency and now has a twelve-hour curfew over the whole city after dark.
That looks a lot better place to be than yesterday. Best of luck in avoiding the flooding to come.
A feature of The Blob is that once you reach a senior enough level, success is rewarded, and failure is … rewarded.
If there is a scandal, then the automatic instinct is to organise the cover-up. When the cover-up gets exposed, then the strategy changes to delaying and blocking redress - whilst proclaiming that “lessons have been learned.”
Whilst 43 opportunities out of 100 is still way too high for comfort the post debate trend against Trump is continuing. It is, in my view, becoming increasingly difficult to see his path to 270 EC votes. He seems more likely than not to regain Georgia but is increasingly at risk of having this offset entirely by losing NC. He is more likely than not to regain AZ but progress elsewhere is limited. He can make 270 if he wins PA but the polling is edging against him there. WI and MI are both looking increasingly out of reach. Without PA he loses. Period.
Still, I worry that Trump is good at getting non-voters to turn out. In 2020 the Dems were further ahead and it was pretty white knuckle on the night.
It’s awfully close, and yes there’s more evidence of Republicans embracing early voting this time around. Their postmortem from 2020 had Trump’s rhetoric about early voting and postal voting as a significant factor in the defeat, now they’ve got more boots on the ground in swing states getting voters registered and voting early.
One of the interesting polling differences between now and 2020 has a been a gender split among young (18-30) voters. Young women are more Dem than in 2020, and young men more Rep, driven by abortion and wokeness respectively.
I remain of the opinion that, unless the Dems can pull off a massive coup in Florida or Texas, al roads to the White House lead through Pennsylvania, where both camps are spending a lot of time and money. It must be pretty horrible to live there, with the constant adverts and phone calls. Even online platforms can now target certain States and identify floating and independent-registered voters.
I think that there is a general consensus in the US media that Harris's GOTV operations are on a completely different scale to Trump's. She has more full time employees in PA than Trump has everywhere. She has a much larger set of offices from which to administer that effort. The massive new registration efforts should help them too and the demographics of those registrations greatly favour Harris.
Of course, that doesn't measure the self motivated non voter and this is where polling in previous elections has tended to underestimate Trump. Will this happen again or have the serious pollsters corrected that imbalance already? On that, and of course PA, the whole race turns. Harris is starting to cascade her wall of money into down ballot races across the US. It is unlikely that these efforts will turn pink states blue but it is stretching the Trump organisation which still seems more focused on selling trinkets for the personal gain of Trump family members.
According to Ukrainian figures, yesterday Russia broached 650,000 KIA/WIA.
What a hideous waste of money, people and opportunity Putin's fascist and imperialist war has been for his country. An absolute disaster for the Russian people.
After yesterday’s near-hurricane conditions, it’s an almost unreal and very serene start to today. Warm, sunny, no wind at all. Helene has turned west and is fizzling out over land, and I am now three hundred miles to the east. The only sign of yesterday’s turmoil is the extremely brown river here, and the occasional branch or lump of wood that slowly floats by.
Both NC and TN have been hit bad, with the worst of the flooding there likely still to come. I hear that Asheville, where I breakfasted yesterday, still has its state of emergency and now has a twelve-hour curfew over the whole city after dark.
"Austria's far right eyes unprecedented election win
Austrians vote on Sunday in a general election that could see the far-right opposition Freedom Party (FPÖ) top the polls for the first time. Five years ago, the party crashed out of a coalition government with the conservative People’s Party because of a corruption scandal dubbed Ibiza-gate. But now, led by Herbert Kickl, the FPÖ is within reach of a historic victory. It narrowly leads the ruling conservatives in the opinion polls, and the opposition Social Democrats are in third place."
Another thoughtful and well-researched article from Viewcode.
What I find interesting is the article begins in the post-war era of recovery and reconstruction. Which forces us to ask what the blob was like before WWII? Did it exist? In what form, and what size?
Think of Sir Peregrine Craddock in A Very British Coup, who gives a speech near the end that his lot - i.e. the establishment - have been running the country since the beginning of time. This is possibly - indeed, probably - true. But until WWII, did we have a relatively small, non-interventionist state? Or did the long arm of the blob reach out even in Victorian, even in Georgian times?
The alternative view is that the blob is a postwar construction. Malmesbury's "NU10k" displaced the old, aristocratic establishment - a kind of revolution, in a sense. But one that was only possible because of the extraordinary events of WWII which broke down the old order and forced us to rebuild from scratch.
Arguably, therefore, it would take a revolutionary event (note, not necessarily a revolution, but an event on an enormous magnitude, such as another world war) to displace the current order. Covid wasn't radical enough to displace the blob, in fact, it strengthened it. Ditto Brexit. Would a great depression leading to a post-Farage fascist government (or post-Corbyn Marxist government) be the sort of revolution that finally displaces the blob? Or would it take something greater? What does a 'revolution' against the blob look like?
Sci fi fans will be reminded of the eternal battle between the Vorlons and the Shadows. The Vorlons believing in gradual evolution, while the Shadows pop out ever few years or so to 'kick over all the anthills' and force a complete re-think by every major civilization. Without an occasional kicking over of the anthills, the blob will continue to evolve.
Who or what is big enough to take on the blob, kick over the anthills, and displace the NU10k?
Excellent comment and love the B5 analogies. On your question of the origins I would again reference the semi autonomous Indian Office and what happened to all those civil servants and administrators post 1947
After yesterday’s near-hurricane conditions, it’s an almost unreal and very serene start to today. Warm, sunny, no wind at all. Helene has turned west and is fizzling out over land, and I am now three hundred miles to the east. The only sign of yesterday’s turmoil is the extremely brown river here, and the occasional branch or lump of wood that slowly floats by.
Both NC and TN have been hit bad, with the worst of the flooding there likely still to come. I hear that Asheville, where I breakfasted yesterday, still has its state of emergency and now has a twelve-hour curfew over the whole city after dark.
That looks a lot better place to be than yesterday. Best of luck in avoiding the flooding to come.
High ground would be better, had I factored the hurricane into my travel plans, but I am probably alright here. It’s tidal so unlikely to flood due to water coming down from the mountains.
The guy who owns the boat claims that the drinking water is pumped from a spring used by some of the very first British settlers in the early 1600s. Whether that makes the water safe to drink is another matter…
After yesterday’s near-hurricane conditions, it’s an almost unreal and very serene start to today. Warm, sunny, no wind at all. Helene has turned west and is fizzling out over land, and I am now three hundred miles to the east. The only sign of yesterday’s turmoil is the extremely brown river here, and the occasional branch or lump of wood that slowly floats by.
Both NC and TN have been hit bad, with the worst of the flooding there likely still to come. I hear that Asheville, where I breakfasted yesterday, still has its state of emergency and now has a twelve-hour curfew over the whole city after dark.
That looks a lot better place to be than yesterday. Best of luck in avoiding the flooding to come.
High ground would be better, had I factored the hurricane into my travel plans, but I am probably alright here. It’s tidal so unlikely to flood due to water coming down from the mountains.
The guy who owns the boat claims that the drinking water is pumped from a spring used by some of the very first British settlers in the early 1600s. Whether that makes the water safe to drink is another matter…
All those people are dead. I wouldn't chance it if I were you...
After yesterday’s near-hurricane conditions, it’s an almost unreal and very serene start to today. Warm, sunny, no wind at all. Helene has turned west and is fizzling out over land, and I am now three hundred miles to the east. The only sign of yesterday’s turmoil is the extremely brown river here, and the occasional branch or lump of wood that slowly floats by.
Both NC and TN have been hit bad, with the worst of the flooding there likely still to come. I hear that Asheville, where I breakfasted yesterday, still has its state of emergency and now has a twelve-hour curfew over the whole city after dark.
That looks a lot better place to be than yesterday. Best of luck in avoiding the flooding to come.
High ground would be better, had I factored the hurricane into my travel plans, but I am probably alright here. It’s tidal so unlikely to flood due to water coming down from the mountains.
The guy who owns the boat claims that the drinking water is pumped from a spring used by some of the very first British settlers in the early 1600s. Whether that makes the water safe to drink is another matter…
All those people are dead. I wouldn't chance it if I were you...
Another thoughtful and well-researched article from Viewcode.
What I find interesting is the article begins in the post-war era of recovery and reconstruction. Which forces us to ask what the blob was like before WWII? Did it exist? In what form, and what size?
Think of Sir Peregrine Craddock in A Very British Coup, who gives a speech near the end that his lot - i.e. the establishment - have been running the country since the beginning of time. This is possibly - indeed, probably - true. But until WWII, did we have a relatively small, non-interventionist state? Or did the long arm of the blob reach out even in Victorian, even in Georgian times?
The alternative view is that the blob is a postwar construction. Malmesbury's "NU10k" displaced the old, aristocratic establishment - a kind of revolution, in a sense. But one that was only possible because of the extraordinary events of WWII which broke down the old order and forced us to rebuild from scratch.
Arguably, therefore, it would take a revolutionary event (note, not necessarily a revolution, but an event on an enormous magnitude, such as another world war) to displace the current order. Covid wasn't radical enough to displace the blob, in fact, it strengthened it. Ditto Brexit. Would a great depression leading to a post-Farage fascist government (or post-Corbyn Marxist government) be the sort of revolution that finally displaces the blob? Or would it take something greater? What does a 'revolution' against the blob look like?
Sci fi fans will be reminded of the eternal battle between the Vorlons and the Shadows. The Vorlons believing in gradual evolution, while the Shadows pop out ever few years or so to 'kick over all the anthills' and force a complete re-think by every major civilization. Without an occasional kicking over of the anthills, the blob will continue to evolve.
Who or what is big enough to take on the blob, kick over the anthills, and displace the NU10k?
Excellent comment and love the B5 analogies. On your question of the origins I would again reference the semi autonomous Indian Office and what happened to all those civil servants and administrators post 1947
What power does the establishment have over the United Kingdom ? When did they come to power ? Good Cambridge History Entrance Exam Question.
My own answer, probably about 1727 to 1730. And then they never lost a vote until the referendum in 2016. Discuss
Whilst 43 opportunities out of 100 is still way too high for comfort the post debate trend against Trump is continuing. It is, in my view, becoming increasingly difficult to see his path to 270 EC votes. He seems more likely than not to regain Georgia but is increasingly at risk of having this offset entirely by losing NC. He is more likely than not to regain AZ but progress elsewhere is limited. He can make 270 if he wins PA but the polling is edging against him there. WI and MI are both looking increasingly out of reach. Without PA he loses. Period.
Still, I worry that Trump is good at getting non-voters to turn out. In 2020 the Dems were further ahead and it was pretty white knuckle on the night.
It’s awfully close, and yes there’s more evidence of Republicans embracing early voting this time around. Their postmortem from 2020 had Trump’s rhetoric about early voting and postal voting as a significant factor in the defeat, now they’ve got more boots on the ground in swing states getting voters registered and voting early.
One of the interesting polling differences between now and 2020 has a been a gender split among young (18-30) voters. Young women are more Dem than in 2020, and young men more Rep, driven by abortion and wokeness respectively.
I remain of the opinion that, unless the Dems can pull off a massive coup in Florida or Texas, al roads to the White House lead through Pennsylvania, where both camps are spending a lot of time and money. It must be pretty horrible to live there, with the constant adverts and phone calls. Even online platforms can now target certain States and identify floating and independent-registered voters.
I think that there is a general consensus in the US media that Harris's GOTV operations are on a completely different scale to Trump's. She has more full time employees in PA than Trump has everywhere. She has a much larger set of offices from which to administer that effort. The massive new registration efforts should help them too and the demographics of those registrations greatly favour Harris.
Of course, that doesn't measure the self motivated non voter and this is where polling in previous elections has tended to underestimate Trump. Will this happen again or have the serious pollsters corrected that imbalance already? On that, and of course PA, the whole race turns. Harris is starting to cascade her wall of money into down ballot races across the US. It is unlikely that these efforts will turn pink states blue but it is stretching the Trump organisation which still seems more focused on selling trinkets for the personal gain of Trump family members.
The Harris campaign has more money at this point, which they’re putting into TV ads in the swing states. But how many people in swing states watch linear TV any more? Especially since they know they’ll be bombarded with political ads for the next five weeks.
I think that the Trump campaign is being smarter with the money they have, such as releasing ads on Twitter or Facebook which go viral. The problem is to work out which mediums are being seen by the floating voters. Twitter is notorious for forming echo chambers, and there’s no point preaching to the choir in an election campaign.
Hillary outspent Trump almost 2/1 in 2016.
Yes everything runs through PA, whoever wins that State is in the White House. Fingers crossed it’s not a repeat of Florida 2000, and there’s a clear winner.
A feature of The Blob is that once you reach a senior enough level, success is rewarded, and failure is … rewarded.
If there is a scandal, then the automatic instinct is to organise the cover-up. When the cover-up gets exposed, then the strategy changes to delaying and blocking redress - whilst proclaiming that “lessons have been learned.”
Also true, with knobs on, in the private sector.
Indeed. But "The Blob" is rarely used in that context. I think because it's an insult and the person deploying it usually has the public sector in their sights.
A long stretch of the I40 I drove yesterday is now closed due to rockslides. And part of the same road in the opposite direction has been washed away altogether. Leaving was the right thing to do.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
Ramaswamy has floated 9/11 conspiracy theories. He’s not exactly credible.
You can call him what you like, but there’s a good chance he could be in the US Cabinet next January, so he’s probably worth listening to even if you disagree with what he has to say.
I referenced something he said. I am listening to him. You would do well to actually listen to the crazy he puts out.
I listened to the podcast I linked yesterday. Don’t agree with all he says, but he does have some good ideas. I like listening to people willing to step outside the comfort zone of established political thought, whether on the left or on the right. Even people with whom I vehemently disagree on almost everything, will occasionally have a good idea in there somewhere.
Which of these Ramaswamy ideas do you think are good?
- raise the voting age to 25 - considering RFK as a running mate - that January 6 was an inside job - that the Democrats support a Great Replacement of Christian white Americans - that 9/11 was an inside job - ending US military aid to Ukraine - preventing Ukraine from ever joining NATO - letting Russia keep those parts of Ukraine it currently occupies - that the climate change agenda is a hoax
That’s clearly not an exhaustive list of his policies, as you missed off the biggest ones like significant reductions in headcount in the Federal burecracy, and the shuttering of whole departments such as Education.
Of those you mentioned, using opposition language, some of them he does have a point, while others I think are wrong.
- Raising the voting age to 25. Don’t completely disagree, and his proposals come with a much wider renewal of the concept of citizenship. - RFK, like any politician, has good and bad ideas. I agree with his ideas on food standards, which are terrible in the US, and disagree with his views on vaccines, for example. - There is a lot of evidence that there were at best a number of FBI informants around on J6, acting as agitators if not outright provocateurs. Many of those arrested have been treated terribly. - The Democrats are clearly supporting measures such as a massive increase in unskilled immigration, while simultaneously being big fans of abortions and gender transitions. I would not use such provocative language, but the evidence is there. - Obviously I’m a big fan of aid to Ukraine, but also have some sympathy with the view that others within NATO are not pulling their weight, and that there’s always money for overseas spending but little spent on disasters at home, for example the floods in Hawaii and the train derailment in East Palestine. - Ukraine joining NATO is a difficult one, but on balance I would be in favour of it. - I don’t know what a Ukranian peace deal looks like, but would prefer it be on the 1991 Ukraine boundary. If the Ukranian government and people are happy with something different, then I am in favour of their decision. - In an American context, there are a number of federal projects related to climate change, which have spent extortionate amounts of money that appears to have simply vanished, making the UK pandemic PPE scandal look like a drop in the ocean. For example, there was a $7.5bn project to install electric car chargers across the country, which after two years has yielded the grand total of eight chargers installed. https://www.autoweek.com/news/a60702457/federal-funds-yield-only-8-ev-charging-stations/ There was also a $40bn project for rural broadband that was originally awarded to Starlink, but after a lot of lobbying was given instead to the big telcos, who have installed a tiny fraction of the fibre that was promised, and almost no-one has seen new high-speed broadband as a result. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-detail-plans-42-billion-investment-us-internet-access-2023-06-26/
Sandpit, these are lies. You are swallowing lies told to you by MAGA grifters. They are not connected with reality. You are slipping down a rabbit hole that leads to claiming that Haitian immigrants are vampires eating people (as with Roseanne Barr).
LOL. There’s a very long history of FBI agents being involved in infiltrating protest groups, dating back to the Civil Rights movement.
Whilst 43 opportunities out of 100 is still way too high for comfort the post debate trend against Trump is continuing. It is, in my view, becoming increasingly difficult to see his path to 270 EC votes. He seems more likely than not to regain Georgia but is increasingly at risk of having this offset entirely by losing NC. He is more likely than not to regain AZ but progress elsewhere is limited. He can make 270 if he wins PA but the polling is edging against him there. WI and MI are both looking increasingly out of reach. Without PA he loses. Period.
Still, I worry that Trump is good at getting non-voters to turn out. In 2020 the Dems were further ahead and it was pretty white knuckle on the night.
It’s awfully close, and yes there’s more evidence of Republicans embracing early voting this time around. Their postmortem from 2020 had Trump’s rhetoric about early voting and postal voting as a significant factor in the defeat, now they’ve got more boots on the ground in swing states getting voters registered and voting early.
One of the interesting polling differences between now and 2020 has a been a gender split among young (18-30) voters. Young women are more Dem than in 2020, and young men more Rep, driven by abortion and wokeness respectively.
I remain of the opinion that, unless the Dems can pull off a massive coup in Florida or Texas, al roads to the White House lead through Pennsylvania, where both camps are spending a lot of time and money. It must be pretty horrible to live there, with the constant adverts and phone calls. Even online platforms can now target certain States and identify floating and independent-registered voters.
I think that there is a general consensus in the US media that Harris's GOTV operations are on a completely different scale to Trump's. She has more full time employees in PA than Trump has everywhere. She has a much larger set of offices from which to administer that effort. The massive new registration efforts should help them too and the demographics of those registrations greatly favour Harris.
Of course, that doesn't measure the self motivated non voter and this is where polling in previous elections has tended to underestimate Trump. Will this happen again or have the serious pollsters corrected that imbalance already? On that, and of course PA, the whole race turns. Harris is starting to cascade her wall of money into down ballot races across the US. It is unlikely that these efforts will turn pink states blue but it is stretching the Trump organisation which still seems more focused on selling trinkets for the personal gain of Trump family members.
The Harris campaign has more money at this point, which they’re putting into TV ads in the swing states. But how many people in swing states watch linear TV any more? Especially since they know they’ll be bombarded with political ads for the next five weeks.
I think that the Trump campaign is being smarter with the money they have, such as releasing ads on Twitter or Facebook which go viral. The problem is to work out which mediums are being seen by the floating voters. Twitter is notorious for forming echo chambers, and there’s no point preaching to the choir in an election campaign.
Hillary outspent Trump almost 2/1 in 2016.
Yes everything runs through PA, whoever wins that State is in the White House. Fingers crossed it’s not a repeat of Florida 2000, and there’s a clear winner.
I’ve been getting a lot of quality Harris stuff online in some of the states I’ve been in, so the Dems are using online and social media ads a lot as well. I’ve had personal appeals from everyone from Obama to Bernie Sanders, as well as a lot of locally focused stuff
I turned down the chance to review this piece before it was published, and I've never submitted an article myself, so I can't criticise it very strongly.
However, there are some quite big omissions. Yes Minister is a great programme that most of us are very fond of and that observes what most of us think are some truths, but as Foxy points out, it isn't evidence of anything.
It might have been good to explore the non-political role of the civil service - the system whereby Governments come and go with very few changes in personnell, as opposed to a system like America, where each new administration brings in thousands of its own political appointees. What worked about our system when it came into being? What might not work now that certain ethics, standards and behaviours within the civil service might have slipped away?
There is then a fair bit of what seems to be uncritical nostalgia for the era of post-war consensus, which sets the background for a fairly waspish section on Thatcherism, neither of which are wholly justified in my view. Posting on PB, I learned of the post-war civil service attack on Birmingham, banning it from opening new factories. When the dynamic business-people of Birmingham decided they would then create service businesses in offices, the civil service banned them from opening new offices. That is the blob writ large.
The post-war period was a period of massive growth in the power and role of the state, and a failure (directly attributable in my opinion) of the economy to regain its pre-war footing.
Moving forward, the European Union/EEC gets barely a mention. That institution ushered in hundreds of new laws, and structures to enforce them, including overseas courts. Those laws are still waiting to be repealed, after the blob fought tooth and nail, including issuing utterly unacceptable public statements, to keep them in place. Why were/are those laws embraced, gold-plated and officiously enforced to the degree that they were in the UK, when in France and Italy they were often cheerfully ignored? Why were the blob so desperate not to be parted from them?
I don’t believe in the “Blob” as an actual cabal of lefty wankers conspiring to thwart Liz Truss
I do believe in the “Blob” as a state of mind. A sad cocktail of Wokeness and degraded left-liberalism - unimaginative, timid, censorious, disapproving, economically soft left, generally irreligious but pious about “anti racism” and trans
It is shared by most people in charities, police, the law, education, academe, and many in government
The epitome of the mind-blob on here is @bondegezou - and, lo, turns out he was on a sub-committee of SAGE
Interestingly, the mind-blob now has its first real prime minister. Sir Kir Royale is the blob turned into one gormless human form, with one reedy disapproving voice, and a complete absence of ideas. As you’d expect
I prefer the term "Establishment". It has become a modus vivendi. It grew out of the Restoration. If Charles I and the Interregnum had been unacceptable - as they were then there was a need to begin to define what was not unacceptable. Somewhere the Rule of Law became Rule by Law. Then the Rule by Law was able to define who could be Ruler, King, without military intervention.
Of course the King supposedly the most powerful person in the Land is actually a rabbit in a cage and the weakest person in the land. He can do nothing except choose to leave the cage. Until 1936 even that was debateable.
Hitler would have kept a monarchy, would he have kept a Prime Minister ? I don't think so.
I'm part of the blob that viewcode describes. And I largely agree with his thesis. The advantageof blobbery is that the blob, largely, has a fair degree of expertise in its subject. Government is very, very complex and you can't just wade in inexpertly. BUT - if you did want to suggest an alternative course of action to what the blob suggests - it's almost impossible. You can go against the experts, but the legal arm will envelop you. You can fight off the legal arm, and the third sector will suck you in. The democratic levers don't work. Virtually the only thing you can do is choose to spend more or less money in one area or another.
It's worth noting that the blob isn't uniform in intent, and much of its energy is spent fighting other bits of the blob.
That's "Blob" with a capital "B"!
Show some respect . . . or pay the consequence(s)?
I'm part of the blob that viewcode describes. And I largely agree with his thesis. The advantageof blobbery is that the blob, largely, has a fair degree of expertise in its subject. Government is very, very complex and you can't just wade in inexpertly. BUT - if you did want to suggest an alternative course of action to what the blob suggests - it's almost impossible. You can go against the experts, but the legal arm will envelop you. You can fight off the legal arm, and the third sector will suck you in. The democratic levers don't work. Virtually the only thing you can do is choose to spend more or less money in one area or another.
It's worth noting that the blob isn't uniform in intent, and much of its energy is spent fighting other bits of the blob.
This is the most interesting part of the discussion - how does it change, because it must. That's a lot harder than diagnosing the problem.
How it must change, I think, is by behaviourism. Reward good behaviour, and punish undesirable behaviour. An elected Government must legislate to claw back the power to enforce the will of Ministers on the administration, including:
*The power to hire, promote and fire *The power to approve or disapprove all training received by civil servants *The power to decide who gets honours and titles
I turned down the chance to review this piece before it was published, and I've never submitted an article myself, so I can't criticise it very strongly.
However, there are some quite big omissions. Yes Minister is a great programme that most of us are very fond of and that observes what most of us think are some truths, but as Foxy points out, it isn't evidence of anything.
It might have been good to explore the non-political role of the civil service - the system whereby Governments come and go with very few changes in personnell, as opposed to a system like America, where each new administration brings in thousands of its own political appointees. What worked about our system when it came into being? What might not work now that certain ethics, standards and behaviours within the civil service might have slipped away?
There is then a fair bit of what seems to be uncritical nostalgia for the era of post-war consensus, which sets the background for a fairly waspish section on Thatcherism, neither of which are wholly justified in my view. Posting on PB, I learned of the post-war civil service attack on Birmingham, banning it from opening new factories. When the dynamic business-people of Birmingham decided they would then create service businesses in offices, the civil service banned them from opening new offices. That is the blob writ large.
The post-war period was a period of massive growth in the power and role of the state, and a failure (directly attributable in my opinion) of the economy to regain its pre-war footing.
Moving forward, the European Union/EEC gets barely a mention. That institution ushered in hundreds of new laws, and structures to enforce them, including overseas courts. Those laws are still waiting to be repealed, after the blob fought tooth and nail, including issuing utterly unacceptable public statements, to keep them in place. Why were/are those laws embraced, gold-plated and officiously enforced to the degree that they were in the UK, when in France and Italy they were often cheerfully ignored? Why were the blob so desperate not to be parted from them?
These are a few points that occurred to me.
The EU is an enormous version of The Blob. In many ways it works better than our Blob, but in some significant aspects, it is even worse
Whilst 43 opportunities out of 100 is still way too high for comfort the post debate trend against Trump is continuing. It is, in my view, becoming increasingly difficult to see his path to 270 EC votes. He seems more likely than not to regain Georgia but is increasingly at risk of having this offset entirely by losing NC. He is more likely than not to regain AZ but progress elsewhere is limited. He can make 270 if he wins PA but the polling is edging against him there. WI and MI are both looking increasingly out of reach. Without PA he loses. Period.
Still, I worry that Trump is good at getting non-voters to turn out. In 2020 the Dems were further ahead and it was pretty white knuckle on the night.
It’s awfully close, and yes there’s more evidence of Republicans embracing early voting this time around. Their postmortem from 2020 had Trump’s rhetoric about early voting and postal voting as a significant factor in the defeat, now they’ve got more boots on the ground in swing states getting voters registered and voting early.
One of the interesting polling differences between now and 2020 has a been a gender split among young (18-30) voters. Young women are more Dem than in 2020, and young men more Rep, driven by abortion and wokeness respectively.
I remain of the opinion that, unless the Dems can pull off a massive coup in Florida or Texas, al roads to the White House lead through Pennsylvania, where both camps are spending a lot of time and money. It must be pretty horrible to live there, with the constant adverts and phone calls. Even online platforms can now target certain States and identify floating and independent-registered voters.
I think that there is a general consensus in the US media that Harris's GOTV operations are on a completely different scale to Trump's. She has more full time employees in PA than Trump has everywhere. She has a much larger set of offices from which to administer that effort. The massive new registration efforts should help them too and the demographics of those registrations greatly favour Harris.
Of course, that doesn't measure the self motivated non voter and this is where polling in previous elections has tended to underestimate Trump. Will this happen again or have the serious pollsters corrected that imbalance already? On that, and of course PA, the whole race turns. Harris is starting to cascade her wall of money into down ballot races across the US. It is unlikely that these efforts will turn pink states blue but it is stretching the Trump organisation which still seems more focused on selling trinkets for the personal gain of Trump family members.
The Harris campaign has more money at this point, which they’re putting into TV ads in the swing states. But how many people in swing states watch linear TV any more? Especially since they know they’ll be bombarded with political ads for the next five weeks.
I think that the Trump campaign is being smarter with the money they have, such as releasing ads on Twitter or Facebook which go viral. The problem is to work out which mediums are being seen by the floating voters. Twitter is notorious for forming echo chambers, and there’s no point preaching to the choir in an election campaign.
Hillary outspent Trump almost 2/1 in 2016.
Yes everything runs through PA, whoever wins that State is in the White House. Fingers crossed it’s not a repeat of Florida 2000, and there’s a clear winner.
I’ve been getting a lot of quality Harris stuff online in some of the states I’ve been in, so the Dems are using online and social media ads a lot as well. I’ve had personal appeals from everyone from Obama to Bernie Sanders, as well as a lot of locally focused stuff
I trust you're doing your bit over there, Ian, working on those undecideds.
In some ways, one of the main unwritten roles of The Blob is bureaucratic (*) inertia. Someone high-up has a plan they want implemented immediately, and the Blob slows it down.
Much of the time, that slowdown is necessary to ensure things are done better, if not perfectly. Much of the time it is self-serving to the Blob. But sometimes, it utterly gets in the way when things really do need to get done.
As such, the Blob might be better off if it occasionally loosened the reins a little. I think this happened during Covid to a small extent, and my impression is that it hated it.
(*) I can never spell bureaucratic . despite knowing how to spell 'bureau' and 'cratic'. When I put the two together, I always get it wrong. Spellcheckers can be useful...
I turned down the chance to review this piece before it was published, and I've never submitted an article myself, so I can't criticise it very strongly.
However, there are some quite big omissions. Yes Minister is a great programme that most of us are very fond of and that observes what most of us think are some truths, but as Foxy points out, it isn't evidence of anything.
It might have been good to explore the non-political role of the civil service - the system whereby Governments come and go with very few changes in personnell, as opposed to a system like America, where each new administration brings in thousands of its own political appointees. What worked about our system when it came into being? What might not work now that certain ethics, standards and behaviours within the civil service might have slipped away?
There is then a fair bit of what seems to be uncritical nostalgia for the era of post-war consensus, which sets the background for a fairly waspish section on Thatcherism, neither of which are wholly justified in my view. Posting on PB, I learned of the post-war civil service attack on Birmingham, banning it from opening new factories. When the dynamic business-people of Birmingham decided they would then create service businesses in offices, the civil service banned them from opening new offices. That is the blob writ large.
The post-war period was a period of massive growth in the power and role of the state, and a failure (directly attributable in my opinion) of the economy to regain its pre-war footing.
Moving forward, the European Union/EEC gets barely a mention. That institution ushered in hundreds of new laws, and structures to enforce them, including overseas courts. Those laws are still waiting to be repealed, after the blob fought tooth and nail, including issuing utterly unacceptable public statements, to keep them in place. Why were/are those laws embraced, gold-plated and officiously enforced to the degree that they were in the UK, when in France and Italy they were often cheerfully ignored? Why were the blob so desperate not to be parted from them?
These are a few points that occurred to me.
The EU is an enormous version of The Blob. In many ways it works better than our Blob, but in some significant aspects, it is even worse
Our blob worships the EU. Severing that umbilical cord by leaving seems to have traumatised senior civil servants and it seems obvious to me that they have been desperate to get us back in ever since. They will fail, especially because their tool (hehe) is Starmer. He hasn't got the political capital now to sign up for a library card, let alone get us back in to the single market.
So they'll end up having to contend with Jenrick, possibly with Farage in tow.
I turned down the chance to review this piece before it was published, and I've never submitted an article myself, so I can't criticise it very strongly.
However, there are some quite big omissions. Yes Minister is a great programme that most of us are very fond of and that observes what most of us think are some truths, but as Foxy points out, it isn't evidence of anything.
It might have been good to explore the non-political role of the civil service - the system whereby Governments come and go with very few changes in personnell, as opposed to a system like America, where each new administration brings in thousands of its own political appointees. What worked about our system when it came into being? What might not work now that certain ethics, standards and behaviours within the civil service might have slipped away?
There is then a fair bit of what seems to be uncritical nostalgia for the era of post-war consensus, which sets the background for a fairly waspish section on Thatcherism, neither of which are wholly justified in my view. Posting on PB, I learned of the post-war civil service attack on Birmingham, banning it from opening new factories. When the dynamic business-people of Birmingham decided they would then create service businesses in offices, the civil service banned them from opening new offices. That is the blob writ large.
The post-war period was a period of massive growth in the power and role of the state, and a failure (directly attributable in my opinion) of the economy to regain its pre-war footing.
Moving forward, the European Union/EEC gets barely a mention. That institution ushered in hundreds of new laws, and structures to enforce them, including overseas courts. Those laws are still waiting to be repealed, after the blob fought tooth and nail, including issuing utterly unacceptable public statements, to keep them in place. Why were/are those laws embraced, gold-plated and officiously enforced to the degree that they were in the UK, when in France and Italy they were often cheerfully ignored? Why were the blob so desperate not to be parted from them?
These are a few points that occurred to me.
The EU is an enormous version of The Blob. In many ways it works better than our Blob, but in some significant aspects, it is even worse
Whenever I hear talk of The Blob I assume it's about Boris Johnson.
I turned down the chance to review this piece before it was published, and I've never submitted an article myself, so I can't criticise it very strongly.
However, there are some quite big omissions. Yes Minister is a great programme that most of us are very fond of and that observes what most of us think are some truths, but as Foxy points out, it isn't evidence of anything.
It might have been good to explore the non-political role of the civil service - the system whereby Governments come and go with very few changes in personnell, as opposed to a system like America, where each new administration brings in thousands of its own political appointees. What worked about our system when it came into being? What might not work now that certain ethics, standards and behaviours within the civil service might have slipped away?
There is then a fair bit of what seems to be uncritical nostalgia for the era of post-war consensus, which sets the background for a fairly waspish section on Thatcherism, neither of which are wholly justified in my view. Posting on PB, I learned of the post-war civil service attack on Birmingham, banning it from opening new factories. When the dynamic business-people of Birmingham decided they would then create service businesses in offices, the civil service banned them from opening new offices. That is the blob writ large.
The post-war period was a period of massive growth in the power and role of the state, and a failure (directly attributable in my opinion) of the economy to regain its pre-war footing.
Moving forward, the European Union/EEC gets barely a mention. That institution ushered in hundreds of new laws, and structures to enforce them, including overseas courts. Those laws are still waiting to be repealed, after the blob fought tooth and nail, including issuing utterly unacceptable public statements, to keep them in place. Why were/are those laws embraced, gold-plated and officiously enforced to the degree that they were in the UK, when in France and Italy they were often cheerfully ignored? Why were the blob so desperate not to be parted from them?
These are a few points that occurred to me.
The EU is an enormous version of The Blob. In many ways it works better than our Blob, but in some significant aspects, it is even worse
Whenever I hear talk of The Blob I assume it's about Boris Johnson.
The leadership of the IRA can count themselves fortunate that they were up against Britain rather than Israel.
If the IRA had launched 9,300 rockets in a year into British towns and cities displacing around 1% of our population as Hezbollah has with Israel I doubt we'd have put up with them to the extent that we did.
I think even Corbyn and McDonnell might have thought twice about backing them then.
Another thoughtful and well-researched article from Viewcode.
What I find interesting is the article begins in the post-war era of recovery and reconstruction. Which forces us to ask what the blob was like before WWII? Did it exist? In what form, and what size?
Think of Sir Peregrine Craddock in A Very British Coup, who gives a speech near the end that his lot - i.e. the establishment - have been running the country since the beginning of time. This is possibly - indeed, probably - true. But until WWII, did we have a relatively small, non-interventionist state? Or did the long arm of the blob reach out even in Victorian, even in Georgian times?
The alternative view is that the blob is a postwar construction. Malmesbury's "NU10k" displaced the old, aristocratic establishment - a kind of revolution, in a sense. But one that was only possible because of the extraordinary events of WWII which broke down the old order and forced us to rebuild from scratch.
Arguably, therefore, it would take a revolutionary event (note, not necessarily a revolution, but an event on an enormous magnitude, such as another world war) to displace the current order. Covid wasn't radical enough to displace the blob, in fact, it strengthened it. Ditto Brexit. Would a great depression leading to a post-Farage fascist government (or post-Corbyn Marxist government) be the sort of revolution that finally displaces the blob? Or would it take something greater? What does a 'revolution' against the blob look like?
Sci fi fans will be reminded of the eternal battle between the Vorlons and the Shadows. The Vorlons believing in gradual evolution, while the Shadows pop out ever few years or so to 'kick over all the anthills' and force a complete re-think by every major civilization. Without an occasional kicking over of the anthills, the blob will continue to evolve.
Who or what is big enough to take on the blob, kick over the anthills, and displace the NU10k?
Excellent comment and love the B5 analogies. On your question of the origins I would again reference the semi autonomous Indian Office and what happened to all those civil servants and administrators post 1947
Thanks!
I know there are a few B5 fans on here so hoped my analogy would not go unnoticed.
The older I get, the more I sympathise with the Shadows. At least, in the sense that, to effect change sometimes you need to kick over a few anthills and start over from scratch, rather than make iterative change. That doesn't necessarily involve bloodthirsty, 1917-style revolutions, although the anthill does need a big enough kick that the whole way of doing things is upended and everything starts anew.
Post WWII seems like one of those inflection points, leading to the transition of power from the old aristocracy to the NU10k. Maybe the Great Reform Act of 1832 was another one of those points. But they are few and far between and seem to happen only once a century or so. Shades of Ray Dallio's idea of empires rising and falling every 200 years.
I reckon the blob will continue to grow more or less until all inertia in the economy is gone. Until we are a nation of administrators, bureaucrats, taxes, and red tape. See also comments downthread about our nuclear plants costing five times those of other countries to build, HS2 etc. The blob keeps growing until it either consumes all, or until something big enough comes along to kick over the whole damn anthill.
That might look like a peeved electorate voting in a fascist or communist government who sets fire to it all. Or it might look like a great depression spurred by AI gutting the middle classes and leaving us in a state of quasi techno-feudalism. I honestly don't know.
But to come back to my original analogy, the older I get, the more I appreciate the point of view of the Shadows. Sometimes, the anthill has to be kicked.
Comments
The only reason Netanyahu and the settler parties have any power is because its not an option currently, thanks to Hamas and the Palestinian extremists in power not wanting it.
Netanyahu has barely clung on in the last few elections, if there were any plausible hope of peace he would not but that requires Hamas to be defeated first - which even Netanyahu's Israeli opposition says too.
What's Gemini?
I bought 15 new shirts over the last year. Though it cost about £300 not £2250 to do so.
I've replaced my entire wardrobe in the last year as after losing 60lbs in the past year my old clothes went from fitting better, to feeling like clown clothes so they had to go.
15 shirts is a nice number in the wardrobe as it means I can spend one day in a weekend doing all my ironing and then I'm set for 3 weeks.
https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/14554984?co=GENIE.Platform=iOS&oco=0
ChatGPT have their own equivalent.
You’re looking at a terrible crime, and another pivotal moment in the fall of the West. Do you really think we are going to get away with this? I have some bad news!
https://x.com/owenjonesjourno/status/1839710219691008188
I do believe in the “Blob” as a state of mind. A sad cocktail of Wokeness and degraded left-liberalism - unimaginative, timid, censorious, disapproving, economically soft left, generally irreligious but pious about “anti racism” and trans
It is shared by most people in charities, police, the law, education, academe, and many in government
The epitome of the mind-blob on here is @bondegezou - and, lo, turns out he was on a sub-committee of SAGE
Interestingly, the mind-blob now has its first real prime minister. Sir Kir Royale is the blob turned into one gormless human form, with one reedy disapproving voice, and a complete absence of ideas. As you’d expect
In fact the only people who seem to be upset are the remaining Hezbollah operatives (currently holding their AGM in a - disconnected - phonebox) and British and American students studying the liberal arts at Western universities.
"Do you accept cookies?" is objectively stupid, since you often can't say no to access the content you need and, even if you can choose to accept some rather than all, it would take 2-3 minutes to calibrate it, whereas it causes a 2-3 second delay every time just to say 'yes' and access a website. It makes next to no difference to personal privacy, which is ethereal anyway.
But, because of GDPR, we are stuck with it, and we seemingly can't change it because to do so might impact upon trade deals.
There are thousands of things like that.
Google translate it is, for now.
If it is as Andrew Neill claims?
One small Brexit benefit at a time…
Some of us might have said at the time, that the single biggest benefit was not having to pass whatever was next in their long line of anti-business, anti-growth, and anti-American legislation.
https://x.com/rustyrockets/status/1839748565356126717?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
And here we are
I expect a modest rollback, of perhaps 5-10% of road mileage that has changed. Given that the so-called "blanket" change only affected about 30-35% (without looking it up) of road mileage in Wales, that represents 2-3% of roads.
It's worth remembering that in the Senedd the policy was introduced with cross-party support, including from the Conservatives. Here is the Conservative Senedd member votes in 2020 (my photo quota):
The political history of the issue in Wales can be read here:
https://www.20splenty.org/w_faq04
It was also a Labour Senedd manifesto commitment in 2021.
IMO the issue has only really been weaponised by Generation Sunak in a hunt for wedge issues to try and save their backsides. It will take a bit of time to get over the poison that that has injected into the debate, but I think it will work through.
I'll be interested to see if Welsh motor insurance premiums reduce, or increase less, than English ones, in the next few years. That I think will be one clincher.
What most middling sorts want most of time out of the state is neither the abolition of civil ordering (the blob are all part of that), nor 'change'. They want competence.
By this I mean something like this. I am a state pensioner. The inauguration, implemenation and continuation of this process has been run by the state with entire, boring, simple competence (so far!!).
What I (and I think most) want is the same thing WRT the bits of state and civil ordering that I am not a continuous part of. And when I am not using them, I want an absolute trust that when I do - especially in an emergency - they are absolutely and 100% there for me because they are competently run for my benefit when I need them.
Examples. Do I trust implicitly and absolutely that if burgled the police will arrive within minutes, investigate it fully, keep me informed and be available for all my querulous and frightened questions? No.
Do I implicitly trust that if my daughter, aged 17, worked for a billionaire with close elite connections and was sexually assaulted by that person, that rapid justice would be done? No.
Do I trust the HMRC (or any civil society body) to answer the phone within two minutes during all office hours, to to be even accessible by email, or if they are to answer them? No.
Can I email my local police officers? No
As to NHS do I......? No.
Sorting this is not about the blob or about change or about legislation. This is the stuff of middling sort lives.
He also explained how ideas of perfect competition failed to operate in the real world where large multinational organisations used regulation as barriers to entry creating oligarchies which "worked" with regulators to protect their position and showed how movement between the regulators and the regulated became a profitable option.
I am slightly dismayed to note that The New Industrial State was first published in 1967. It respectfully seems to me that this analysis, now nearly 60 years old, gives a much clearer and more sophisticated understanding of how and why our society works like it does than slightly amorphous concepts like "the blob".
Galbraith's work was specifically focused on the operation and regulation of business and it is true, as @viewcode explains in his excellent header, that we have since expanded the scope of this incestuous relationship well beyond that and into the provision of the services of the state such as education. But the problem is the same: Regulation increases bureaucracy; the principal purpose and function of a bureaucracy inevitably becomes the well being of those employed by it; any benefits supposedly gained by the general public are incidental to that central purpose.
- raise the voting age to 25
- considering RFK as a running mate
- that January 6 was an inside job
- that the Democrats support a Great Replacement of Christian white Americans
- that 9/11 was an inside job
- ending US military aid to Ukraine
- preventing Ukraine from ever joining NATO
- letting Russia keep those parts of Ukraine it currently occupies
- that the climate change agenda is a hoax
They don't go quite as far as I would like, but they are a very strategic organisation, with roots in the same people who set up the National Trust - they were founded in 1865.
"Removing and improving path paraphernalia"
https://www.oss.org.uk/removing-improving-path-paraphernalia/
However you were right about self drive and I was wrong. It is clearly much much harder than anyone thought. And translating - it turns out - is much easier
However self driving is slowly coming. Painfully slowly. But it is
“Shenzhen to put autonomous buses on roads as China accelerates self-driving vehicle tests”
China is leading the way, which makes sense, as they are less tangled in legal issues than American companies
https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3270804/shenzhen-put-autonomous-buses-roads-china-accelerates-self-driving-vehicle-tests
From Russia's perspective...
Completely off topic to lighten these dark days of freebies galore undermining our previously blemish free politics, I received a message from a friend this morning that I feel is my favourite message I’ve ever received. I’ve had many messages, love, hate, anger and business but there was just something nice and straightforward to this enquiry about who wanted what from me late last night.So hope you all have a fun Saturday as off to do it all again shortly.
It is certainly true that my recent time spent driving in Gwynedd showed a much more sensible application than Conwy, Denbighshire or Flintshire
This article may provide an insight to the issue
https://www.roadsafetywales.org.uk/news/posts/2024/may/20mph-review-team-final-report/?Language=undefined
Through roads should preferably be ideally 40mph, or 50mph. 30mph is slow and should be the slowest used on through roads.
He has a long history here, but only when it suits him.
Israel has decapitated the entire leadership of Hizbullah, and humiliated Tehran. If they don’t respond to this, they never will
It will happen in time.
And believed in pragmatic analysis of, and solutions to problems, rather than dogma - of which “the Blob” is just one example.
Of those you mentioned, using opposition language, some of them he does have a point, while others I think are wrong.
- Raising the voting age to 25. Don’t completely disagree, and his proposals come with a much wider renewal of the concept of citizenship.
- RFK, like any politician, has good and bad ideas. I agree with his ideas on food standards, which are terrible in the US, and disagree with his views on vaccines, for example.
- There is a lot of evidence that there were at best a number of FBI informants around on J6, acting as agitators if not outright provocateurs. Many of those arrested have been treated terribly.
- The Democrats are clearly supporting measures such as a massive increase in unskilled immigration, while simultaneously being big fans of abortions and gender transitions. I would not use such provocative language, but the evidence is there.
- Obviously I’m a big fan of aid to Ukraine, but also have some sympathy with the view that others within NATO are not pulling their weight, and that there’s always money for overseas spending but little spent on disasters at home, for example the floods in Hawaii and the train derailment in East Palestine.
- Ukraine joining NATO is a difficult one, but on balance I would be in favour of it.
- I don’t know what a Ukranian peace deal looks like, but would prefer it be on the 1991 Ukraine boundary. If the Ukranian government and people are happy with something different, then I am in favour of their decision.
- In an American context, there are a number of federal projects related to climate change, which have spent extortionate amounts of money that appears to have simply vanished, making the UK pandemic PPE scandal look like a drop in the ocean. For example, there was a $7.5bn project to install electric car chargers across the country, which after two years has yielded the grand total of eight chargers installed. https://www.autoweek.com/news/a60702457/federal-funds-yield-only-8-ev-charging-stations/ There was also a $40bn project for rural broadband that was originally awarded to Starlink, but after a lot of lobbying was given instead to the big telcos, who have installed a tiny fraction of the fibre that was promised, and almost no-one has seen new high-speed broadband as a result. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-detail-plans-42-billion-investment-us-internet-access-2023-06-26/
Sleepy no more: Fischer-Osborn U.S. Senate race in Nebraska wakes up
Outside groups spending significant sums to influence red-state race
https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2024/09/27/sleepy-no-more-fischer-osborn-u-s-senate-race-in-nebraska-wakes-up/
The polling in the (Democratic) second congressional district looks promising, too.
As I previously suggested, laying a GOP Senate majority is the best way to play this. A Democratic majority is far less likely than NOC.
I would highly recommend it, if you get the chance to see it.
12.31 BST
William Christou
William Christou has been reporting for the Guardian from Beirut
A source in a Lebanese parliamentary party opposed to Hezbollah said that while it was too early to comment on Nasrallah’s death and the effect it will have on the country, they said this moment could be seized upon to “turn a page” in Lebanon and “regroup under the rule of the state and constitution”.
“Hezbollah’s rhetoric for the last two decades has been calling for a parallel state, communication, economy and everything. Apparently, this rhetoric has proven not to be successful at all,” the source said, adding that the country needed to “grasp the momentum today, build a state” and elect a president.
Lebanon has been without a president for almost two years, as Hezbollah and opposition blocks wrestled over a preferred candidate.
“This war has been highly costly, we need to turn things around,” the source said.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/28/middle-east-crisis-live-israel-steps-up-attacks-on-hezbollah-targets-in-lebanon-amid-rising-fears-of-wider-war
I count a number of Lebanese as friends, and none of them want a war.
Pragmatism as an idea in itself - especially fertile in American history - is rich and insightful, but not at all self evident or obvious in its theory of knowledge.
In the meantime you may want to look at the list of references. They are given as a link at the bottom of the article (thank you @TSE) or you can access it here: https://www1.politicalbetting.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/BLOB4references-Copy.docx . They contain many links for your delight or despair, depending.
If you have time it mentions Dr Abby Innes's "Late Soviet Britain", her lecture on which is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_H_1Akaip0 . It is 23 minutes long, highly complex, and you will either love it or hate it.
Laters, alligators.
The beepers were delivered since then and clear the Israelis have very good intel on all the senior Hezbollah leadership.
They have the hardest of hard jobs.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/
Whilst 43 opportunities out of 100 is still way too high for comfort the post debate trend against Trump is continuing. It is, in my view, becoming increasingly difficult to see his path to 270 EC votes. He seems more likely than not to regain Georgia but is increasingly at risk of having this offset entirely by losing NC. He is more likely than not to regain AZ but progress elsewhere is limited. He can make 270 if he wins PA but the polling is edging against him there. WI and MI are both looking increasingly out of reach. Without PA he loses. Period.
Someone had daubed "Free the Sausages" on the side of one of those green BT cabinets.
Still, I worry that Trump is good at getting non-voters to turn out. In 2020 the Dems were further ahead and it was pretty white knuckle on the night.
The benefits of this are obvious. Firstly, things improve. Secondly, it is, as a generality (Trump is admittedly testing this proposition to its limits) wrong to think that all the wisdom or correctness is on one side. Thirdly, a compromise that both parties have signed up to is much more likely to survive for a meaningful period of time, allowing any good to be embedded.
Of course opportunism and gesture politics can all too often be dressed up as "pragmatism" and that can give it a bad name but as a generality I greatly favour pragmatic governments over those who are bound to a particular ideology, whether of the left or the right.
Sandpit, these are lies. You are swallowing lies told to you by MAGA grifters. They are not connected with reality. You are slipping down a rabbit hole that leads to claiming that Haitian immigrants are vampires eating people (as with Roseanne Barr).
https://electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Pres/ec_graph-2024.html
One of the interesting polling differences between now and 2020 has a been a gender split among young (18-30) voters. Young women are more Dem than in 2020, and young men more Rep, driven by abortion and wokeness respectively.
I remain of the opinion that, unless the Dems can pull off a massive coup in Florida or Texas, al roads to the White House lead through Pennsylvania, where both camps are spending a lot of time and money. It must be pretty horrible to live there, with the constant adverts and phone calls. Even online platforms can now target certain States and identify floating and independent-registered voters.
Both NC and TN have been hit bad, with the worst of the flooding there likely still to come. I hear that Asheville, where I breakfasted yesterday, still has its state of emergency and now has a twelve-hour curfew over the whole city after dark.
For most of my lifetime, the first has tended to code left in the UK, leaving the second to the right. "They can dream their dreams... we have work to do" and all that.
That's changed in recent years, and not exclusively due to D. Cummings Esq. And there are times when things need radical disruption. But it's always expensive on the short term, and the odds on the high-stakes bets aren't always great.
Of course, that doesn't measure the self motivated non voter and this is where polling in previous elections has tended to underestimate Trump. Will this happen again or have the serious pollsters corrected that imbalance already? On that, and of course PA, the whole race turns. Harris is starting to cascade her wall of money into down ballot races across the US. It is unlikely that these efforts will turn pink states blue but it is stretching the Trump organisation which still seems more focused on selling trinkets for the personal gain of Trump family members.
What a hideous waste of money, people and opportunity Putin's fascist and imperialist war has been for his country. An absolute disaster for the Russian people.
Austrians vote on Sunday in a general election that could see the far-right opposition Freedom Party (FPÖ) top the polls for the first time. Five years ago, the party crashed out of a coalition government with the conservative People’s Party because of a corruption scandal dubbed Ibiza-gate. But now, led by Herbert Kickl, the FPÖ is within reach of a historic victory. It narrowly leads the ruling conservatives in the opinion polls, and the opposition Social Democrats are in third place."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr4xz013zx7o
The guy who owns the boat claims that the drinking water is pumped from a spring used by some of the very first British settlers in the early 1600s. Whether that makes the water safe to drink is another matter…
My own answer, probably about 1727 to 1730. And then they never lost a vote until the referendum in 2016. Discuss
I think that the Trump campaign is being smarter with the money they have, such as releasing ads on Twitter or Facebook which go viral. The problem is to work out which mediums are being seen by the floating voters. Twitter is notorious for forming echo chambers, and there’s no point preaching to the choir in an election campaign.
Hillary outspent Trump almost 2/1 in 2016.
Yes everything runs through PA, whoever wins that State is in the White House. Fingers crossed it’s not a repeat of Florida 2000, and there’s a clear winner.
Here’s the LA Times celebrating that record numbers of new citizens can now vote. The url tells the story. https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2024-09-26/with-an-election-looming-the-u-s-is-approving-citizenship-applications-at-the-fastest-speed-in-years
I turned down the chance to review this piece before it was published, and I've never submitted an article myself, so I can't criticise it very strongly.
However, there are some quite big omissions. Yes Minister is a great programme that most of us are very fond of and that observes what most of us think are some truths, but as Foxy points out, it isn't evidence of anything.
It might have been good to explore the non-political role of the civil service - the system whereby Governments come and go with very few changes in personnell, as opposed to a system like America, where each new administration brings in thousands of its own political appointees. What worked about our system when it came into being? What might not work now that certain ethics, standards and behaviours within the civil service might have slipped away?
There is then a fair bit of what seems to be uncritical nostalgia for the era of post-war consensus, which sets the background for a fairly waspish section on Thatcherism, neither of which are wholly justified in my view. Posting on PB, I learned of the post-war civil service attack on Birmingham, banning it from opening new factories. When the dynamic business-people of Birmingham decided they would then create service businesses in offices, the civil service banned them from opening new offices. That is the blob writ large.
The post-war period was a period of massive growth in the power and role of the state, and a failure (directly attributable in my opinion) of the economy to regain its pre-war footing.
Moving forward, the European Union/EEC gets barely a mention. That institution ushered in hundreds of new laws, and structures to enforce them, including overseas courts. Those laws are still waiting to be repealed, after the blob fought tooth and nail, including issuing utterly unacceptable public statements, to keep them in place. Why were/are those laws embraced, gold-plated and officiously enforced to the degree that they were in the UK, when in France and Italy they were often cheerfully ignored? Why were the blob so desperate not to be parted from them?
These are a few points that occurred to me.
Of course the King supposedly the most powerful person in the Land is actually a rabbit in a cage and the weakest person in the land. He can do nothing except choose to leave the cage. Until 1936 even that was debateable.
Hitler would have kept a monarchy, would he have kept a Prime Minister ? I don't think so.
Show some respect . . . or pay the consequence(s)?
How it must change, I think, is by behaviourism. Reward good behaviour, and punish undesirable behaviour. An elected Government must legislate to claw back the power to enforce the will of Ministers on the administration, including:
*The power to hire, promote and fire
*The power to approve or disapprove all training received by civil servants
*The power to decide who gets honours and titles
As a bare minimum.
Much of the time, that slowdown is necessary to ensure things are done better, if not perfectly. Much of the time it is self-serving to the Blob. But sometimes, it utterly gets in the way when things really do need to get done.
As such, the Blob might be better off if it occasionally loosened the reins a little. I think this happened during Covid to a small extent, and my impression is that it hated it.
(*) I can never spell bureaucratic . despite knowing how to spell 'bureau' and 'cratic'. When I put the two together, I always get it wrong. Spellcheckers can be useful...
So they'll end up having to contend with Jenrick, possibly with Farage in tow.
I think even Corbyn and McDonnell might have thought twice about backing them then.
I know there are a few B5 fans on here so hoped my analogy would not go unnoticed.
The older I get, the more I sympathise with the Shadows. At least, in the sense that, to effect change sometimes you need to kick over a few anthills and start over from scratch, rather than make iterative change. That doesn't necessarily involve bloodthirsty, 1917-style revolutions, although the anthill does need a big enough kick that the whole way of doing things is upended and everything starts anew.
Post WWII seems like one of those inflection points, leading to the transition of power from the old aristocracy to the NU10k. Maybe the Great Reform Act of 1832 was another one of those points. But they are few and far between and seem to happen only once a century or so. Shades of Ray Dallio's idea of empires rising and falling every 200 years.
I reckon the blob will continue to grow more or less until all inertia in the economy is gone. Until we are a nation of administrators, bureaucrats, taxes, and red tape. See also comments downthread about our nuclear plants costing five times those of other countries to build, HS2 etc. The blob keeps growing until it either consumes all, or until something big enough comes along to kick over the whole damn anthill.
That might look like a peeved electorate voting in a fascist or communist government who sets fire to it all. Or it might look like a great depression spurred by AI gutting the middle classes and leaving us in a state of quasi techno-feudalism. I honestly don't know.
But to come back to my original analogy, the older I get, the more I appreciate the point of view of the Shadows. Sometimes, the anthill has to be kicked.