As per the last thread, I must say the more I look at Vance, the more worrying the future of America looks.
Look at Thiel, Musk and Vance's seeming mentor. He says fhat "democracy and freedom are incompatible. Then you have other figures like Andreesen and Nick Land, in a cluster of techno-supremacists. Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin are perhaps the two most worrying intellectual influences on Musk and Vance of all, as explicit anti-democrats.
Yarvin makes every political nutter you ever encountered look sane. And he is weirdly influential in Washington.
As per the last thread, I must say the more I look at Vance, the more worrying the future of America looks.
Look at Thiel, Musk and Vance's seeming mentor. He says fhat "democracy and freedom are incompatible. Then you have other figures like Andreesen and Nick Land, in a cluster of techno-supremacists. Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin are perhaps the two most worrying intellectual influences on Musk and Vance of all, as explicit anti-democrats.
He means that democracy for the 99% is incompatible with freedom for the 1%.
Indeed. We really are in the age where tech billionaires think they are gods.
In much the same way autocrats in places like China probably read dystopian fiction and use it as a manual, the techbros read cautionary tales about the excesses of corporation run futures and AIs controlling human civilization and decide 'Yes, that sounds great'.
The tech bros have become successful in a sector where the winner takes all. Where the business with the deepest pockets and widest global reach becomes a monopoly, and enjoys untrammelled power. Where the logic is that a successful small enterprise must be bought and subsumed by its bigger peers, and where the American way is the only way. With an exception made for the Chinese.
Big tech is very different from most other sectors in that respect. It’s not surprising that their attitude to political power tends to the monopolistic too.
As per the last thread, I must say the more I look at Vance, the more worrying the future of America looks.
Look at Thiel, Musk and Vance's seeming mentor. He says fhat "democracy and freedom are incompatible. Then you have other figures like Andreesen and Nick Land, in a cluster of techno-supremacists. Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin are perhaps the two most worrying intellectual influences on Musk and Vance of all, as explicit anti-democrats.
He means that democracy for the 99% is incompatible with freedom for the 1%.
Indeed. We really are in the age where tech billionaires think they are gods.
In much the same way autocrats in places like China probably read dystopian fiction and use it as a manual, the techbros read cautionary tales about the excesses of corporation run futures and AIs controlling human civilization and decide 'Yes, that sounds great'.
Musk and Zuckerberg seem particular prone to this type of thing. Bezos seems more like he just wants to own as much as possible, treat people as slaves and work them to death, much more traditional, whereas they go in more for the change the world, mess with the human mind and experience kind of deal.
As per the last thread, I must say the more I look at Vance, the more worrying the future of America looks.
Look at Thiel, Musk and Vance's seeming mentor. He says fhat "democracy and freedom are incompatible. Then you have other figures like Andreesen and Nick Land, in a cluster of techno-supremacists. Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin are perhaps the two most worrying intellectual influences on Musk and Vance of all, as explicit anti-democrats.
He means that democracy for the 99% is incompatible with freedom for the 1%.
Indeed. We really are in the age where tech billionaires think they are gods.
In much the same way autocrats in places like China probably read dystopian fiction and use it as a manual, the techbros read cautionary tales about the excesses of corporation run futures and AIs controlling human civilization and decide 'Yes, that sounds great'.
The tech bros have become successful in a sector where the winner takes all. Where the business with the deepest pockets and widest global reach becomes a monopoly, and enjoys untrammelled power. Where the logic is that a successful small enterprise must be bought and subsumed by its bigger peers, and where the American way is the only way. With an exception made for the Chinese.
Big tech is very different from most other sectors in that respect. It’s not surprising that their attitude to political power tends to the monopolistic too.
They've done some great things the techbros, but I like when financebros, hunting the next big tech thing, pour money into non-tech things hoping they will be scalable in the same way.
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
As per the last thread, I must say the more I look at Vance, the more worrying the future of America looks.
Look at Thiel, Musk and Vance's seeming mentor. He says fhat "democracy and freedom are incompatible. Then you have other figures like Andreesen and Nick Land, in a cluster of techno-supremacists. Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin are perhaps the two most worrying intellectual influences on Musk and Vance of all, as explicit anti-democrats.
He means that democracy for the 99% is incompatible with freedom for the 1%.
Indeed. We really are in the age where tech billionaires think they are gods.
In much the same way autocrats in places like China probably read dystopian fiction and use it as a manual, the techbros read cautionary tales about the excesses of corporation run futures and AIs controlling human civilization and decide 'Yes, that sounds great'.
Musk and Zuckerberg seem particular prone to this type of thing. Bezos seems more like he just wants to own as much as possible, treat people as slaves and work them to death, much more traditional, whereas they go in more for the change the world, mess with the human mind and experience kind of deal.
Bezos looks like a Bond villain whereas Zuckerberg looks like Chris from Coldplay. Musk looks like, well, an Afrikaner. None is avuncular. No tech billionaire does avuncular, not even Gates.
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
That’s the problem.
So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.
It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
They’ve not learned. This article shows that even the rebels haven’t learned.
Everyone is competing to win the misery cup. It’s what did for Rachel Reeves (and consumer confidence) last year. It’s what risks doing for the Tories, and Reform now.
You want to live the same life your parents had? Well bloody cheer up. Yes we have a thug in the White House, war on our doorstep and environmental meltdown, but let’s be honest we’re a successful developed economy, with high life expectancy, high levels of education, relatively low levels of crime, passports that’ll take us to most of the world with ease, and a pretty strong brand and reputation internationally. It’s not that bad.
We need a bit of cheer and optimism and hope. The first politician that grasps this (Boris at least attempted to, and before him Blair) has a huge potential vote to harvest.
As per the last thread, I must say the more I look at Vance, the more worrying the future of America looks.
Look at Thiel, Musk and Vance's seeming mentor. He says fhat "democracy and freedom are incompatible. Then you have other figures like Andreesen and Nick Land, in a cluster of techno-supremacists. Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin are perhaps the two most worrying intellectual influences on Musk and Vance of all, as explicit anti-democrats.
Yarvin makes every political nutter you ever encountered look sane. And he is weirdly influential in Washington.
Yes, a thoroughbred fascist loon. He seems to be the traditionalist, "white Russian" buttressing for Thiel's anti-democratic, technofuturist vision.
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
They’ve not learned. This article shows that even the rebels haven’t learned.
Everyone is competing to win the misery cup. It’s what did for Rachel Reeves (and consumer confidence) last year. It’s what risks doing for the Tories, and Reform now.
You want to live the same life your parents had? Well bloody cheer up. Yes we have a thug in the White House, war on our doorstep and environmental meltdown, but let’s be honest we’re a successful developed economy, with high life expectancy, high levels of education, relatively low levels of crime, passports that’ll take us to most of the world with ease, and a pretty strong brand and reputation internationally. It’s not that bad.
We need a bit of cheer and optimism and hope. The first politician that grasps this (Boris at least attempted to, and before him Blair) has a huge potential vote to harvest.
I agree to a degree, but things do seem to have genuinely taken a turn - when the gloomsters were trying to unpick Boris's slightly more optimistic tone, it didn't really work as things didn't seem that bad for many people.
But now? What I've referred to as 'low grade crappiness' is pretty pervasive, and I don't think it's just imagination. We seem to pay loads but get poorly working stuff in return, and constantly in need of more money which we apparently don't have. It wears you down.
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
As per the last thread, I must say the more I look at Vance, the more worrying the future of America looks.
Look at Thiel, Musk and Vance's seeming mentor. He says fhat "democracy and freedom are incompatible. Then you have other figures like Andreesen and Nick Land, in a cluster of techno-supremacists. Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin are perhaps the two most worrying intellectual influences on Musk and Vance of all, as explicit anti-democrats.
He means that democracy for the 99% is incompatible with freedom for the 1%.
Indeed. We really are in the age where tech billionaires think they are gods.
In much the same way autocrats in places like China probably read dystopian fiction and use it as a manual, the techbros read cautionary tales about the excesses of corporation run futures and AIs controlling human civilization and decide 'Yes, that sounds great'.
Musk and Zuckerberg seem particular prone to this type of thing. Bezos seems more like he just wants to own as much as possible, treat people as slaves and work them to death, much more traditional, whereas they go in more for the change the world, mess with the human mind and experience kind of deal.
Musk is putting chips in people's brains. Musk is a fan of Iain M. Banks, the Scottish socialist and trade-union fan and science fiction author (I assume Musk didn't get Banks's political points). Banks wrote the novel "Surface Detail", which included the character of "Veppers"
Veppers is the richest person in his society. He made some of his fortune by providing the hardware to run virtual Hells. A "virtual Hell" is a virtual environment involving torture et al in which the virtual recreations of the dead are tortured indefinitely.
As per the last thread, I must say the more I look at Vance, the more worrying the future of America looks.
Look at Thiel, Musk and Vance's seeming mentor. He says fhat "democracy and freedom are incompatible. Then you have other figures like Andreesen and Nick Land, in a cluster of techno-supremacists. Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin are perhaps the two most worrying intellectual influences on Musk and Vance of all, as explicit anti-democrats.
He means that democracy for the 99% is incompatible with freedom for the 1%.
Indeed. We really are in the age where tech billionaires think they are gods.
In much the same way autocrats in places like China probably read dystopian fiction and use it as a manual, the techbros read cautionary tales about the excesses of corporation run futures and AIs controlling human civilization and decide 'Yes, that sounds great'.
The tech bros have become successful in a sector where the winner takes all. Where the business with the deepest pockets and widest global reach becomes a monopoly, and enjoys untrammelled power. Where the logic is that a successful small enterprise must be bought and subsumed by its bigger peers, and where the American way is the only way. With an exception made for the Chinese.
Big tech is very different from most other sectors in that respect. It’s not surprising that their attitude to political power tends to the monopolistic too.
Read this week, their ideological monstrosity is a terrible indictment o Of the failure to regulate monopolies in the tech sector since 2000, and ideological neoliberalism. In fact it almost reads as a history of what happens when you let extreme neoliberalism run wild
If so, good. Carbon-capture is expensive, doesn't work, and makes things worse. Over 20 billion is too much. Over 20 pence would be too much. Nuke it from orbit just to be sure.
I would be happy for the government to spend 20 pence on CCS.
It'll buy a shoebox to bury it in. Next to the budgie.
I don't think that would be classed as permanent sequestration.
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
They’ve not learned. This article shows that even the rebels haven’t learned.
Everyone is competing to win the misery cup. It’s what did for Rachel Reeves (and consumer confidence) last year. It’s what risks doing for the Tories, and Reform now.
You want to live the same life your parents had? Well bloody cheer up. Yes we have a thug in the White House, war on our doorstep and environmental meltdown, but let’s be honest we’re a successful developed economy, with high life expectancy, high levels of education, relatively low levels of crime, passports that’ll take us to most of the world with ease, and a pretty strong brand and reputation internationally. It’s not that bad.
We need a bit of cheer and optimism and hope. The first politician that grasps this (Boris at least attempted to, and before him Blair) has a huge potential vote to harvest.
I agree to a degree, but things do seem to have genuinely taken a turn - when the gloomsters were trying to unpick Boris's slightly more optimistic tone, it didn't really work as things didn't seem that bad for many people.
But now? What I've referred to as 'low grade crappiness' is pretty pervasive, and I don't think it's just imagination. We seem to pay loads but get poorly working stuff in return, and constantly in need of more money which we apparently don't have. It wears you down.
Those are practical problems though. That’s what I mean. The sort of issues politicians are there to fix. It’s not about saying everything is rosy, it’s about saying here are the things that don’t work and we have a plan to fix them.
Whereas much of the political world, particularly on the right, is well past that and into “this country is irretrievably lost”. There’s no hope there.
And the £22 bn won't start to be spent until 2028 or so, and then be drip fed over 10 years.
Same goes for the extra £30 billion that would be required for the rest of Track 1 and the two Track 2 clusters. Mind, I am not 100% certain that the rest of the funding will be announced any time soon.
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
I know the movement of military ships through the Bosphorus is covered by a treaty. Does that Treaty tie Turkey's hands. By which I mean could they decide to allow warships through from an allied country if they were so inclined?
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
Gene Hackman's wife died from a rare infectious disease around a week before the actor died, medical investigators have said.
Hackman had advanced Alzheimer's and died from heart disease.
I get it says they lived a private life, but as rich as they must have been no-one like a maid or carer support was scheduled to be there for over a week? Extremely private I guess.
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
Murphy: Six Weeks In, This White House Is On Its Way To Being The Most Corrupt In U.S. History
https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-six-weeks-in-this-white-house-is-on-its-way-to-being-the-most-corrupt-in-us-history … I’m a big Boston Red Sox fan. One of the most famous players in Red Sox recent history is Manny Ramirez. Manny Ramirez was a good baseball player, but he had a habit of doing some pretty ridiculous things on the field and off the field that were really detrimental to the team, some really bizarre on-field behavior – cutting off throws from other outfielders before they got to the infield – bizarre off-the-field behavior that disrupted the team. It became so regular that a phrase was adopted among the Red Sox fans: ‘That's just Manny being Manny.’ Over the years it just was accepted that every year Manny Ramirez was going to do a whole bunch of stuff that was really detrimental to the team. And over time, it just kind of became accepted, that that was a fact of life, a way of life with Manny Ramirez. And as time went on, people reacted less hostilely. It barely got noticed in some cases when he was engaged in these detrimental forms of conduct.
“And I tell that story because it stands for kind of a universal concept: when bad behavior gets normalized, it no longer feels like bad behavior. Even if that behavior is hurting people. Today, the world is littered with corrupt governments, governments where the leaders and the really rich men who surround the leaders – the oligarchs – steal from people…
“Vladimir Putin, for instance, has never had a job outside of government, but he's reportedly worth $200 billion. … They've been doing this so openly and brazenly, they're so public in their corruption in Russia, that it's just accepted. It's just mainstream, the fact that Putin and his cronies steal from the Russian people.
“That's what's happening in America today. And it's heartbreaking for me to say this, but in the first six weeks of the Trump presidency, Trump and Elon Musk and their billionaire friends have engaged in a stunning rampage of open public corruption. It's not fundamentally different than what happened in Russia. These are efforts to steal from the American people to enrich themselves. And their strategy is to do it all out in the open, to do it at such a dizzying pace that the country just gets overwhelmed or anesthetized or dulled into a sense that we just all have to accept the corruption – or, maybe more charitably, that this is just how government works, that government is just corrupt, and so the fact that it's happening out in the open instead of happening secretly, well, it's really nothing new.
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
That’s the problem.
So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.
It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.
Because your diagnosis of the uk is fucking bullshit
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
I know the movement of military ships through the Bosphorus is covered by a treaty. Does that Treaty tie Turkey's hands. By which I mean could they decide to allow warships through from an allied country if they were so inclined?
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
Gene Hackman's wife died from a rare infectious disease around a week before the actor died, medical investigators have said.
Hackman had advanced Alzheimer's and died from heart disease.
I get it says they lived a private life, but as rich as they must have been no-one like a maid or carer support was scheduled to be there for over a week? Extremely private I guess.
Or their kids???
They were found by the weekly care/help/maintenance person I think.
Utterly shocked by the Rupert Lowe allegations. Didn't expect this sort of thing to happen with Reform UK.
Serious question - why?
If the allegations are true they aren't ideological or partisan behaviours, they are the sorts of things people in authority are prone to do when abusing that authority.
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
They’ve not learned. This article shows that even the rebels haven’t learned.
Everyone is competing to win the misery cup. It’s what did for Rachel Reeves (and consumer confidence) last year. It’s what risks doing for the Tories, and Reform now.
You want to live the same life your parents had? Well bloody cheer up. Yes we have a thug in the White House, war on our doorstep and environmental meltdown, but let’s be honest we’re a successful developed economy, with high life expectancy, high levels of education, relatively low levels of crime, passports that’ll take us to most of the world with ease, and a pretty strong brand and reputation internationally. It’s not that bad.
We need a bit of cheer and optimism and hope. The first politician that grasps this (Boris at least attempted to, and before him Blair) has a huge potential vote to harvest.
"I feel in regard to this aged England, with the possessions, honors and trophies, and also with the infirmities of a thousand years gathering around her, irretrievably committed as she now is to many old customs which cannot be suddenly changed; pressed upon by the transitions of trade and new and all incalculable modes, fabrics, arts, machines and competing populations.
I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before;—indeed with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that in storm of battle and calamity she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon. I see her in her old age, not decrepit, but young and still daring to believe in her power of endurance and expansion. Seeing this, I say, All hail! mother of nations, mother of heroes, with strength still equal to the time; still wise to entertain and swift to execute the policy which the mind and heart of mankind requires in the present hour, and thus only hospitable to the foreigner and truly a home to the thoughtful and generous who are born in the soil." And that was written before the Second World War!
Murphy: Six Weeks In, This White House Is On Its Way To Being The Most Corrupt In U.S. History
https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-six-weeks-in-this-white-house-is-on-its-way-to-being-the-most-corrupt-in-us-history … I’m a big Boston Red Sox fan. One of the most famous players in Red Sox recent history is Manny Ramirez. Manny Ramirez was a good baseball player, but he had a habit of doing some pretty ridiculous things on the field and off the field that were really detrimental to the team, some really bizarre on-field behavior – cutting off throws from other outfielders before they got to the infield – bizarre off-the-field behavior that disrupted the team. It became so regular that a phrase was adopted among the Red Sox fans: ‘That's just Manny being Manny.’ Over the years it just was accepted that every year Manny Ramirez was going to do a whole bunch of stuff that was really detrimental to the team. And over time, it just kind of became accepted, that that was a fact of life, a way of life with Manny Ramirez. And as time went on, people reacted less hostilely. It barely got noticed in some cases when he was engaged in these detrimental forms of conduct.
“And I tell that story because it stands for kind of a universal concept: when bad behavior gets normalized, it no longer feels like bad behavior. Even if that behavior is hurting people. Today, the world is littered with corrupt governments, governments where the leaders and the really rich men who surround the leaders – the oligarchs – steal from people…
“Vladimir Putin, for instance, has never had a job outside of government, but he's reportedly worth $200 billion. … They've been doing this so openly and brazenly, they're so public in their corruption in Russia, that it's just accepted. It's just mainstream, the fact that Putin and his cronies steal from the Russian people.
“That's what's happening in America today. And it's heartbreaking for me to say this, but in the first six weeks of the Trump presidency, Trump and Elon Musk and their billionaire friends have engaged in a stunning rampage of open public corruption. It's not fundamentally different than what happened in Russia. These are efforts to steal from the American people to enrich themselves. And their strategy is to do it all out in the open, to do it at such a dizzying pace that the country just gets overwhelmed or anesthetized or dulled into a sense that we just all have to accept the corruption – or, maybe more charitably, that this is just how government works, that government is just corrupt, and so the fact that it's happening out in the open instead of happening secretly, well, it's really nothing new.
Utterly shocked by the Rupert Lowe allegations. Didn't expect this sort of thing to happen with Reform UK.
Serious question - why?
If the allegations are true they aren't ideological or partisan behaviours, they are the sorts of things people in authority are prone to do when abusing that authority.
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
That’s the problem.
So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.
It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.
Because your diagnosis of the uk is fucking bullshit
You’re a paranoid rich man, who’s persuaded himself he lives in the worst of times.
My grandparents faced much worse, with a lot more fortitude.
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
That’s the problem.
So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.
It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.
Because your diagnosis of the uk is fucking bullshit
You’re a paranoid rich man, who’s persuaded himself he lives in the worst of times.
My grandparents faced much worse, with a lot more fortitude.
Unfortunately, Leon is “very online”. It’s simply not mentally healthy.
Gene Hackman's wife died from a rare infectious disease around a week before the actor died, medical investigators have said.
Hackman had advanced Alzheimer's and died from heart disease.
I get it says they lived a private life, but as rich as they must have been no-one like a maid or carer support was scheduled to be there for over a week? Extremely private I guess.
Or their kids???
They were found by the weekly care/help/maintenance person I think.
I know but you'd think the children would check up on them every so often?
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
Andrew Pierce @toryboypierce · 4h Suspending @RupertLowe10 from @reformparty_uk will create a potentially fatal civil war in the party from which they might not recover
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
That’s the problem.
So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.
It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.
Because your diagnosis of the uk is fucking bullshit
You’re a paranoid rich man, who’s persuaded himself he lives in the worst of times.
My grandparents faced much worse, with a lot more fortitude.
Upper lips are not very stiff these days. Mine isn't, and like any ageing grouch my opinion of Gen Z is they are even worse.
Andrew Pierce @toryboypierce · 4h Suspending @RupertLowe10 from @reformparty_uk will create a potentially fatal civil war in the party from which they might not recover
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
That’s the problem.
So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.
It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.
Because your diagnosis of the uk is fucking bullshit
You’re a paranoid rich man, who’s persuaded himself he lives in the worst of times.
My grandparents faced much worse, with a lot more fortitude.
Unfortunately, Leon is “very online”. It’s simply not mentally healthy.
Whilst I agree, it's a charge few of us could defend ourselves from.
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
That’s the problem.
So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.
It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.
Because your diagnosis of the uk is fucking bullshit
You’re a paranoid rich man, who’s persuaded himself he lives in the worst of times.
My grandparents faced much worse, with a lot more fortitude.
Unfortunately, Leon is “very online”. It’s simply not mentally healthy.
Whilst I agree, it's a charge few of us could defend ourselves from.
Yes, but we all need to heed Plato and the many, many other loons we have seen lose their intellectual bearings.
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
That’s the problem.
So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.
It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.
Because your diagnosis of the uk is fucking bullshit
You’re a paranoid rich man, who’s persuaded himself he lives in the worst of times.
My grandparents faced much worse, with a lot more fortitude.
Unfortunately, Leon is “very online”. It’s simply not mentally healthy.
Whilst I agree, it's a charge few of us could defend ourselves from.
Yes, but we all need to heed Plato and the many, many other loons we have seen lose their intellectual bearings.
I'm just waiting for the day I crack.
Or I did long ago and passed into the gentle valleys of insanity on the other side.
The problem with suspending Rupert Lowe from Reforn is that Rupert had quite a fan base among what passes as the “Reform intelligentsia.”
And since the suspension looks like ab underhand move to punish Lowe for his comments yesterday, it makes Farage look like a fraudulent despot.
Whether the man sat in front of GB “News” cares is less obvious, but I think there will be trickle-down damage.
Not a good few weeks for Reform.
Entirely unrelated - but last weekend I rewatched the Adam Curtis documentary 'The Mayfair Set'. The episode entitled 'Entrepreneur Spelt S.P.I.V.' quite struck me.
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
That’s the problem.
So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.
It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.
Because your diagnosis of the uk is fucking bullshit
You’re a paranoid rich man, who’s persuaded himself he lives in the worst of times.
My grandparents faced much worse, with a lot more fortitude.
I've faced much worse. My 10 year old daughter came home from school the other day concerned because people had been telling her Putin was going to drop a bomb on Britain. Which he might. But is struck me that for my childhood, the threat of annihilation was the constant background noise. As was discussed earlier, the USSR's plans for the destruction of the world were so comprehensive they even made time to wipe out New Zealand. Objectively, today is a far better time to be alive than the early 80s.
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
So many parts moving now as Trump turns the entire post-war table or at least post-89 table up on its arse without a coherent thought.
Who knows where the pieces now will fall.
Trump has sown the wind.
Now, let him reap the whirlwind.
Sadly, not sure he will be the one reaping it.
Trump will live out his days immensely powerful, rich, and adored by tens of millions.
Only in his own head at the very secure care home.
I wish it were so. But given his age, that he is essentially immune for life from any criminal prosecution now and length of time it would take even if he wasn't, the fervour of support he has, and his ability to grift from his base, neither his freedom or wealth look like being affected in his lifetime.
Maybe he's not really happy inside or something, as he seems to be consumed with bitterness and rage, but that's probably just a coping mechanism for me that he cannot really have everything he wants as it seems.
Politicians settle scores, but has anyone ever tried it so brazenly and so intensely, without a care for other matters, as Trump?
There appears to be no real opposition, either. The Democrats are feeble, if not invisible.
Even the media is kind of demoralised. I saw that EO come in and throught, “WTF”, but even the NYT just tut-tuts rather than recognises it for what it is (ie an attempted Act of Attainder) and why that it is an abomination,
The only safeguard in the system is the legal system, but I feel like Americans have sub-contracted out politics to various anonymous judges.
Murphy: Six Weeks In, This White House Is On Its Way To Being The Most Corrupt In U.S. History
https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-six-weeks-in-this-white-house-is-on-its-way-to-being-the-most-corrupt-in-us-history … I’m a big Boston Red Sox fan. One of the most famous players in Red Sox recent history is Manny Ramirez. Manny Ramirez was a good baseball player, but he had a habit of doing some pretty ridiculous things on the field and off the field that were really detrimental to the team, some really bizarre on-field behavior – cutting off throws from other outfielders before they got to the infield – bizarre off-the-field behavior that disrupted the team. It became so regular that a phrase was adopted among the Red Sox fans: ‘That's just Manny being Manny.’ Over the years it just was accepted that every year Manny Ramirez was going to do a whole bunch of stuff that was really detrimental to the team. And over time, it just kind of became accepted, that that was a fact of life, a way of life with Manny Ramirez. And as time went on, people reacted less hostilely. It barely got noticed in some cases when he was engaged in these detrimental forms of conduct.
“And I tell that story because it stands for kind of a universal concept: when bad behavior gets normalized, it no longer feels like bad behavior. Even if that behavior is hurting people. Today, the world is littered with corrupt governments, governments where the leaders and the really rich men who surround the leaders – the oligarchs – steal from people…
“Vladimir Putin, for instance, has never had a job outside of government, but he's reportedly worth $200 billion. … They've been doing this so openly and brazenly, they're so public in their corruption in Russia, that it's just accepted. It's just mainstream, the fact that Putin and his cronies steal from the Russian people.
“That's what's happening in America today. And it's heartbreaking for me to say this, but in the first six weeks of the Trump presidency, Trump and Elon Musk and their billionaire friends have engaged in a stunning rampage of open public corruption. It's not fundamentally different than what happened in Russia. These are efforts to steal from the American people to enrich themselves. And their strategy is to do it all out in the open, to do it at such a dizzying pace that the country just gets overwhelmed or anesthetized or dulled into a sense that we just all have to accept the corruption – or, maybe more charitably, that this is just how government works, that government is just corrupt, and so the fact that it's happening out in the open instead of happening secretly, well, it's really nothing new.
“But this is not how government works…
I keep thinking that Hunter S. Thompson and William Burroughs could both have made a fortune writing about the current goings on. Thompson in particular I can imagine being in his glory wading into this new swamp.
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
That’s the problem.
So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.
It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.
Because your diagnosis of the uk is fucking bullshit
You’re a paranoid rich man, who’s persuaded himself he lives in the worst of times.
My grandparents faced much worse, with a lot more fortitude.
Unfortunately, Leon is “very online”. It’s simply not mentally healthy.
Leon's life experience is varied but very non-standard.
Posh hotels and restaurants at one end together with druggie squats and being on remand for rape on the other.
Very top 10% and bottom 10% but not much of the 80% in the middle.
Its what made him for many years an interesting PBer but it does detach him from the ordinariness of the average life.
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
That’s the problem.
So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.
It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.
Because your diagnosis of the uk is fucking bullshit
You’re a paranoid rich man, who’s persuaded himself he lives in the worst of times.
My grandparents faced much worse, with a lot more fortitude.
I've faced much worse. My 10 year old daughter came home from school the other day concerned because people had been telling her Putin was going to drop a bomb on Britain. Which he might. But is struck me that for my childhood, the threat of annihilation was the constant background noise. As was discussed earlier, the USSR's plans for the destruction of the world were so comprehensive they even made time to wipe out New Zealand. Objectively, today is a far better time to be alive than the early 80s.
And 2000 was a better time to be alive than either, though you wouldn't have known it by reading the media of the day.
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
That’s the problem.
So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.
It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.
Because your diagnosis of the uk is fucking bullshit
You’re a paranoid rich man, who’s persuaded himself he lives in the worst of times.
My grandparents faced much worse, with a lot more fortitude.
Unfortunately, Leon is “very online”. It’s simply not mentally healthy.
Leon's life experience is varied but very non-standard.
Posh hotels and restaurants at one end together with druggie squats and being on remand for rape on the other.
Very top 10% and bottom 10% but not much of the 80% in the middle.
Its what made him for many years an interesting PBer but it does detach him from the ordinariness of the average life.
There's not much NOOM in the 9 to 5.
We need "Leon in Suburbia". Send him to Solihull for a year.
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
That’s the problem.
So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.
It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.
Because your diagnosis of the uk is fucking bullshit
You’re a paranoid rich man, who’s persuaded himself he lives in the worst of times.
My grandparents faced much worse, with a lot more fortitude.
Unfortunately, Leon is “very online”. It’s simply not mentally healthy.
Leon's life experience is varied but very non-standard.
Posh hotels and restaurants at one end together with druggie squats and being on remand for rape on the other.
Very top 10% and bottom 10% but not much of the 80% in the middle.
Its what made him for many years an interesting PBer but it does detach him from the ordinariness of the average life.
There's not much NOOM in the 9 to 5.
We need "Leon in Suburbia". Send him to Solihull for a year.
I did once suggest he travel around the country meeting other PBers.
I feel sad that Stuart Pearce is 62. Do you remember when a bin lorry fell on his car? His response was to get out of the car and look a bit cross. They don't make footballers like that any more.
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
That’s the problem.
So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.
It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.
Because your diagnosis of the uk is fucking bullshit
You’re a paranoid rich man, who’s persuaded himself he lives in the worst of times.
My grandparents faced much worse, with a lot more fortitude.
Unfortunately, Leon is “very online”. It’s simply not mentally healthy.
Leon's life experience is varied but very non-standard.
Posh hotels and restaurants at one end together with druggie squats and being on remand for rape on the other.
Very top 10% and bottom 10% but not much of the 80% in the middle.
Its what made him for many years an interesting PBer but it does detach him from the ordinariness of the average life.
There's not much NOOM in the 9 to 5.
The most interesting people tend to be found in the richest 10% and the poorest 10%, everyone else is just muddling along
Murphy: Six Weeks In, This White House Is On Its Way To Being The Most Corrupt In U.S. History
https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-six-weeks-in-this-white-house-is-on-its-way-to-being-the-most-corrupt-in-us-history … I’m a big Boston Red Sox fan. One of the most famous players in Red Sox recent history is Manny Ramirez. Manny Ramirez was a good baseball player, but he had a habit of doing some pretty ridiculous things on the field and off the field that were really detrimental to the team, some really bizarre on-field behavior – cutting off throws from other outfielders before they got to the infield – bizarre off-the-field behavior that disrupted the team. It became so regular that a phrase was adopted among the Red Sox fans: ‘That's just Manny being Manny.’ Over the years it just was accepted that every year Manny Ramirez was going to do a whole bunch of stuff that was really detrimental to the team. And over time, it just kind of became accepted, that that was a fact of life, a way of life with Manny Ramirez. And as time went on, people reacted less hostilely. It barely got noticed in some cases when he was engaged in these detrimental forms of conduct.
“And I tell that story because it stands for kind of a universal concept: when bad behavior gets normalized, it no longer feels like bad behavior. Even if that behavior is hurting people. Today, the world is littered with corrupt governments, governments where the leaders and the really rich men who surround the leaders – the oligarchs – steal from people…
“Vladimir Putin, for instance, has never had a job outside of government, but he's reportedly worth $200 billion. … They've been doing this so openly and brazenly, they're so public in their corruption in Russia, that it's just accepted. It's just mainstream, the fact that Putin and his cronies steal from the Russian people.
“That's what's happening in America today. And it's heartbreaking for me to say this, but in the first six weeks of the Trump presidency, Trump and Elon Musk and their billionaire friends have engaged in a stunning rampage of open public corruption. It's not fundamentally different than what happened in Russia. These are efforts to steal from the American people to enrich themselves. And their strategy is to do it all out in the open, to do it at such a dizzying pace that the country just gets overwhelmed or anesthetized or dulled into a sense that we just all have to accept the corruption – or, maybe more charitably, that this is just how government works, that government is just corrupt, and so the fact that it's happening out in the open instead of happening secretly, well, it's really nothing new.
“But this is not how government works…
I keep thinking that Hunter S. Thompson and William Burroughs could both have made a fortune writing about the current goings on. Thompson in particular I can imagine being in his glory wading into this new swamp.
I remember in the first days of Biden's adninistration, there was a lot of talk of a big crackdown on monopoly capitalism, in the shape of big tech. But Sanders ideas on this were soon shelved, as bad for the economy.
Looking at monstrous trajectory of Thiel, Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg, that might have been a disastrous decision for American democracy, and the reason seems to be the same ideological capture by extreme neoliberal ideas about regulation.
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
That’s the problem.
So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.
It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.
Because your diagnosis of the uk is fucking bullshit
You’re a paranoid rich man, who’s persuaded himself he lives in the worst of times.
My grandparents faced much worse, with a lot more fortitude.
Unfortunately, Leon is “very online”. It’s simply not mentally healthy.
Leon's life experience is varied but very non-standard.
Posh hotels and restaurants at one end together with druggie squats and being on remand for rape on the other.
Very top 10% and bottom 10% but not much of the 80% in the middle.
Its what made him for many years an interesting PBer but it does detach him from the ordinariness of the average life.
There's not much NOOM in the 9 to 5.
We need "Leon in Suburbia". Send him to Solihull for a year.
"After a week of this death, I started breaking up laurel hedges and setting fire to them and then breathing in deeply in a desperate attempt to get some kind of high; anything, something, to lift me out of this grey fog of hopeless, trudging, pointless defined-benefit pension land ubiquity.
Then I found out that hot suburban wives and mothers would occasionally meet for a cup of tea at the tennis courts with their young, gauchely made-up, slightly perspiring daughters in tight white skirts and I found a kind of hope..." [That's enough ed.]
Details of Labour’s cuts to welfare have been leaked.
Will go down badly with the faithful but I suspect but will be more popular with the country at large.
If your main priority is cutting welfare you will be voting Tory or Reform anyway. Could see some leakage to the Greens from Labour even if fiscally may be necessary.
Murphy: Six Weeks In, This White House Is On Its Way To Being The Most Corrupt In U.S. History
https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-six-weeks-in-this-white-house-is-on-its-way-to-being-the-most-corrupt-in-us-history … I’m a big Boston Red Sox fan. One of the most famous players in Red Sox recent history is Manny Ramirez. Manny Ramirez was a good baseball player, but he had a habit of doing some pretty ridiculous things on the field and off the field that were really detrimental to the team, some really bizarre on-field behavior – cutting off throws from other outfielders before they got to the infield – bizarre off-the-field behavior that disrupted the team. It became so regular that a phrase was adopted among the Red Sox fans: ‘That's just Manny being Manny.’ Over the years it just was accepted that every year Manny Ramirez was going to do a whole bunch of stuff that was really detrimental to the team. And over time, it just kind of became accepted, that that was a fact of life, a way of life with Manny Ramirez. And as time went on, people reacted less hostilely. It barely got noticed in some cases when he was engaged in these detrimental forms of conduct.
“And I tell that story because it stands for kind of a universal concept: when bad behavior gets normalized, it no longer feels like bad behavior. Even if that behavior is hurting people. Today, the world is littered with corrupt governments, governments where the leaders and the really rich men who surround the leaders – the oligarchs – steal from people…
“Vladimir Putin, for instance, has never had a job outside of government, but he's reportedly worth $200 billion. … They've been doing this so openly and brazenly, they're so public in their corruption in Russia, that it's just accepted. It's just mainstream, the fact that Putin and his cronies steal from the Russian people.
“That's what's happening in America today. And it's heartbreaking for me to say this, but in the first six weeks of the Trump presidency, Trump and Elon Musk and their billionaire friends have engaged in a stunning rampage of open public corruption. It's not fundamentally different than what happened in Russia. These are efforts to steal from the American people to enrich themselves. And their strategy is to do it all out in the open, to do it at such a dizzying pace that the country just gets overwhelmed or anesthetized or dulled into a sense that we just all have to accept the corruption – or, maybe more charitably, that this is just how government works, that government is just corrupt, and so the fact that it's happening out in the open instead of happening secretly, well, it's really nothing new.
“But this is not how government works…
I keep thinking that Hunter S. Thompson and William Burroughs could both have made a fortune writing about the current goings on. Thompson in particular I can imagine being in his glory wading into this new swamp.
I remember in the first days of Biden's adninistration, there was a lot of talk of a big crackdown on monopoly capitalism, in the shape of big tech. But Sanders ideas on this were soon shelved, as bad for the economy.
Looking at monstrous trajectory of Thiel, Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg, that might have been a disastrous decision for American democracy, and the reason seems to be the same ideological capture by extreme neoliberal ideas about regulation.
The capture you talk about has been a clear risk for fifteen years or more.
And we have been on this journey since the deregulation of media that took place in the 80s and 90s.
It may be that digital media is not actually compatible with democracy.
Is there a market on next cabinet resignation? At the right odds wouldn't mind a punt on Miliband. One or more of his schemes is on the chopping block...
Comments
And he is weirdly influential in Washington.
Big tech is very different from most other sectors in that respect. It’s not surprising that their attitude to political power tends to the monopolistic too.
https://conservativehome.com/2025/03/04/living-on-a-thin-line/
He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet.
So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.
It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.
People will moan, but history will view it kindly.
Everyone is competing to win the misery cup. It’s what did for Rachel Reeves (and consumer confidence) last year. It’s what risks doing for the Tories, and Reform now.
You want to live the same life your parents had? Well bloody cheer up. Yes we have a thug in the White House, war on our doorstep and environmental meltdown, but let’s be honest we’re a successful developed economy, with high life expectancy, high levels of education, relatively low levels of crime, passports that’ll take us to most of the world with ease, and a pretty strong brand and reputation internationally. It’s not that bad.
We need a bit of cheer and optimism and hope. The first politician that grasps this (Boris at least attempted to, and before him Blair) has a huge potential vote to harvest.
But now? What I've referred to as 'low grade crappiness' is pretty pervasive, and I don't think it's just imagination. We seem to pay loads but get poorly working stuff in return, and constantly in need of more money which we apparently don't have. It wears you down.
In a stunning twist, Turkey is reportedly open to deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine—but only if Ankara gets a seat at the table in all major security discussions (which it will).
Believe me, this is only the beginning.
https://x.com/zriboua/status/1895151906072469872
Veppers is the richest person in his society. He made some of his fortune by providing the hardware to run virtual Hells. A "virtual Hell" is a virtual environment involving torture et al in which the virtual recreations of the dead are tortured indefinitely.
We don't worry enough about Musk.
Of the failure to regulate monopolies in the tech sector since 2000, and ideological neoliberalism. In fact it almost reads as a history of what happens when you let extreme neoliberalism run wild
Whereas much of the political world, particularly on the right, is well past that and into “this country is irretrievably lost”. There’s no hope there.
Same goes for the extra £30 billion that would be required for the rest of Track 1 and the two Track 2 clusters. Mind, I am not 100% certain that the rest of the funding will be announced any time soon.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/06/britain-us-uk-assets-economic-disaster-labour
This is what you get when you have a trade deficit for a generation.
So many parts moving now as Trump turns the entire post-war table or at least post-89 table up on its arse without a coherent thought.
Who knows where the pieces now will fall.
Now, let him reap the whirlwind.
Putin has been occupying the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions of Georgia since 2008.
Douglas Carswell🇬🇧🇺🇸
@DouglasCarswell
·
1h
Rupert Lowe has lost the party whip. Why am I not surprised?
Murphy: Six Weeks In, This White House Is On Its Way To Being The Most Corrupt In U.S. History
https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-six-weeks-in-this-white-house-is-on-its-way-to-being-the-most-corrupt-in-us-history
… I’m a big Boston Red Sox fan. One of the most famous players in Red Sox recent history is Manny Ramirez. Manny Ramirez was a good baseball player, but he had a habit of doing some pretty ridiculous things on the field and off the field that were really detrimental to the team, some really bizarre on-field behavior – cutting off throws from other outfielders before they got to the infield – bizarre off-the-field behavior that disrupted the team. It became so regular that a phrase was adopted among the Red Sox fans: ‘That's just Manny being Manny.’ Over the years it just was accepted that every year Manny Ramirez was going to do a whole bunch of stuff that was really detrimental to the team. And over time, it just kind of became accepted, that that was a fact of life, a way of life with Manny Ramirez. And as time went on, people reacted less hostilely. It barely got noticed in some cases when he was engaged in these detrimental forms of conduct.
“And I tell that story because it stands for kind of a universal concept: when bad behavior gets normalized, it no longer feels like bad behavior. Even if that behavior is hurting people. Today, the world is littered with corrupt governments, governments where the leaders and the really rich men who surround the leaders – the oligarchs – steal from people…
“Vladimir Putin, for instance, has never had a job outside of government, but he's reportedly worth $200 billion. … They've been doing this so openly and brazenly, they're so public in their corruption in Russia, that it's just accepted. It's just mainstream, the fact that Putin and his cronies steal from the Russian people.
“That's what's happening in America today. And it's heartbreaking for me to say this, but in the first six weeks of the Trump presidency, Trump and Elon Musk and their billionaire friends have engaged in a stunning rampage of open public corruption. It's not fundamentally different than what happened in Russia. These are efforts to steal from the American people to enrich themselves. And their strategy is to do it all out in the open, to do it at such a dizzying pace that the country just gets overwhelmed or anesthetized or dulled into a sense that we just all have to accept the corruption – or, maybe more charitably, that this is just how government works, that government is just corrupt, and so the fact that it's happening out in the open instead of happening secretly, well, it's really nothing new.
“But this is not how government works…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_the_Regime_of_the_Straits
And, as with Britain, Turkey should hope for privileged access to the single market, too.
If the allegations are true they aren't ideological or partisan behaviours, they are the sorts of things people in authority are prone to do when abusing that authority.
I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before;—indeed with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that in storm of battle and calamity she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon. I see her in her old age, not decrepit, but young and still daring to believe in her power of endurance and expansion. Seeing this, I say, All hail! mother of nations, mother of heroes, with strength still equal to the time; still wise to entertain and swift to execute the policy which the mind and heart of mankind requires in the present hour, and thus only hospitable to the foreigner and truly a home to the thoughtful and generous who are born in the soil."
And that was written before the Second World War!
Apparently it is about "stability"
“Stunning twist” is hyperbole, but it’s still significant news that they want direct involvement.
He was always a loon.
However, Farage is a loon AND a lazy sociopath.
What could go wrong?
But it would make sense to curtail what can be curtailed.
My grandparents faced much worse, with a lot more fortitude.
It’s simply not mentally healthy.
But what I meant was that I think he's now more radical and raving. Your standard permanently online escalation.
Farage, for all I think some of his views (eg on Russia) are loony, I don't think generally comes across like one on most matters.
Andrew Pierce
@toryboypierce
·
4h
Suspending @RupertLowe10 from @reformparty_uk
will create a potentially fatal civil war in the party from which they might not recover
https://x.com/toryboypierce/status/1898080165583782087
Larry the Cat
@Number10cat
It's a risk we'll just have to take
Not so much.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/addressing-risks-from-perkins-coie-llp/
Trump finds another low to plumb.
And since the suspension looks like ab underhand move to punish Lowe for his comments yesterday, it makes Farage look like a fraudulent despot.
Whether the man sat in front of GB “News” cares is less obvious, but I think there will be trickle-down damage.
Not a good few weeks for Reform.
Or I did long ago and passed into the gentle valleys of insanity on the other side.
Again, hard to disagree with this.
This is the most absurd and appalling document to issue from an official government body in the United States in modern American history.
We are losing our country.
https://x.com/HeathMayo/status/1897845053269168335
My 10 year old daughter came home from school the other day concerned because people had been telling her Putin was going to drop a bomb on Britain. Which he might. But is struck me that for my childhood, the threat of annihilation was the constant background noise. As was discussed earlier, the USSR's plans for the destruction of the world were so comprehensive they even made time to wipe out New Zealand.
Objectively, today is a far better time to be alive than the early 80s.
No country is immune to problems . We are very lucky to live in a relatively peaceful country and a functioning democracy .
Indeed recent events have made me a lot more appreciative of the UK especially looking across the Atlantic .
And looking to Ukraine who are fighting and dieing for something we simply take for granted every day.
Maybe he's not really happy inside or something, as he seems to be consumed with bitterness and rage, but that's probably just a coping mechanism for me that he cannot really have everything he wants as it seems.
The Democrats are feeble, if not invisible.
Even the media is kind of demoralised.
I saw that EO come in and throught, “WTF”, but even the NYT just tut-tuts rather than recognises it for what it is (ie an attempted Act of Attainder) and why that it is an abomination,
The only safeguard in the system is the legal system, but I feel like Americans have sub-contracted out politics to various anonymous judges.
Posh hotels and restaurants at one end together with druggie squats and being on remand for rape on the other.
Very top 10% and bottom 10% but not much of the 80% in the middle.
Its what made him for many years an interesting PBer but it does detach him from the ordinariness of the average life.
There's not much NOOM in the 9 to 5.
Do you remember when a bin lorry fell on his car? His response was to get out of the car and look a bit cross.
They don't make footballers like that any more.
But Sanders ideas on this were soon shelved, as bad for the economy.
Looking at monstrous trajectory of Thiel, Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg, that might have been a disastrous decision for American democracy, and the reason seems to be the same ideological capture by extreme neoliberal ideas about regulation.
Then I found out that hot suburban wives and mothers would occasionally meet for a cup of tea at the tennis courts with their young, gauchely made-up, slightly perspiring daughters in tight white skirts and I found a kind of hope..." [That's enough ed.]
The left will want more tax rises to fill the gap
And we have been on this journey since the deregulation of media that took place in the 80s and 90s.
It may be that digital media is not actually compatible with democracy.
John Bolton is tonight saying EU moves to kind of replace NATO are a mistake as it gives Trump a good way to say 'there you go, you don't need us'