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...
Since Reform are on topic, I'm calling it tentatively that they will not do very well in the Local Elections in the Ashfield part of Notts.
There are 10 County seats in Ashfield, and I expect them probably to get one (Selston is I think the marginal vs Tories), and they will be doing well to get 2 and incredibly well to get three.
They are all held by the Ashfield Independents, and the driving factor imo is that there is only one marginal, afaics all the others have very generous majorities, and the A.I. Leader Zadrozny's visit to Crown Court on umpteen charges is now in 2026. Doing better will be very difficult I think - it will take at least two or maybe even three cycles to dig out the A.I.'s, even if their new structures are very, very effective. That last thought may be impacted by the result of the Zadrozny trial.
Subject to events, dear boy, Reform imploding, or exploding - either at the centre or voting coalition level.
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).
Checking I see that it is still owned by Lord Ashcroft.
But I did NOT know that it was now edited by Giles Dilnot, of all people. Isn't he the one that did whimsical rants about things no one had ever heard needed to think about?
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.
A very interesting point of view, actually. Certainly unregulated digital media
I certainly have direct experience of the beginning of this process of deregulation paradoxically ushering in a kind of commercial totalitarianism, not diversity of view. paradu
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).
Farage is overplaying his hand because he thinks that Reform's 25% support is a personal vote for him. I can see him getting booed at Reform events after this.
The problem is Farage is catnip to a lot of voters, but Lowe is popular with the activists
To me this looks like a potential party-ending clash, and a huge opportunity for the Tories, if they have the good sense to move sharply right and dump Kemi for a Jenrick (or someone like him, that "gets it")
Ashfield is the capital of commonsense. You need to take a weekend here - you could visit our new Observatory - and interview the Reform Chief Whip, aka the Leeanderthal Man, at his favourite eatery "Tony's Cafe", as he was promoting on his social media this week in between not mentioning The Rupert.
Farage is overplaying his hand because he thinks that Reform's 25% support is a personal vote for him. I can see him getting booed at Reform events after this.
The problem is Farage is catnip to a lot of voters, but Lowe is popular with the activists
To me this looks like a potential party-ending clash, and a huge opportunity for the Tories, if they have the good sense to move sharply right and dump Kemi for a Jenrick (or someone like him, that "gets it")
Ashfield is the capital of commonsense. You need to take a weekend here - you could visit our new Observatory - and interview the Reform Chief Whip, aka the Leeanderthal Man, at his favourite eatery "Tony's Cafe", as he was promoting on his social media this week in between not mentioning The Rupert.
Those potato-based fried products look a bit too much like french fries to me to be 'Common Sense Britain'.
Farage is overplaying his hand because he thinks that Reform's 25% support is a personal vote for him. I can see him getting booed at Reform events after this.
The problem is Farage is catnip to a lot of voters, but Lowe is popular with the activists
To me this looks like a potential party-ending clash, and a huge opportunity for the Tories, if they have the good sense to move sharply right and dump Kemi for a Jenrick (or someone like him, that "gets it")
Ashfield is the capital of commonsense. You need to take a weekend here - you could visit our new Observatory - and interview the Reform Chief Whip, aka the Leeanderthal Man, at his favourite eatery "Tony's Cafe", as he was promoting on his social media this week in between not mentioning The Rupert.
Lowe is by contrast a public school educated graduate with a net worth of £30 million. To him Anderson is basically a jumped up oik, so likely some class clash between them too
Farage is overplaying his hand because he thinks that Reform's 25% support is a personal vote for him. I can see him getting booed at Reform events after this.
The problem is Farage is catnip to a lot of voters, but Lowe is popular with the activists
To me this looks like a potential party-ending clash, and a huge opportunity for the Tories, if they have the good sense to move sharply right and dump Kemi for a Jenrick (or someone like him, that "gets it")
Ashfield is the capital of commonsense. You need to take a weekend here - you could visit our new Observatory - and interview the Reform Chief Whip, aka the Leeanderthal Man, at his favourite eatery "Tony's Cafe", as he was promoting on his social media this week in between not mentioning The Rupert.
Those potato-based fried products look a bit too much like french fries to me to be 'Common Sense Britain'.
Much as I'd love this to be the death of RefUK, this is an example of PB being PB.
Very few people in the real world know who Rupert Lowe is. Fewer care.
The Reform people and Reform-adjacent people who determine the future of Reform UK do know. IMO it will be very fissiparous, as I keep mentioning. On Lee Anderson's twatter, this guy has a picture of Yaxley-Lennon as his header image:
6h POS what you’ve all done to Rupert Lowe!!! Scumbags the lot of you, don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll be thrown under the bus soon Anderson. Or maybe not because you’ll cuck to Farage. You’ve got it written all over your face!!!
Farage is overplaying his hand because he thinks that Reform's 25% support is a personal vote for him. I can see him getting booed at Reform events after this.
The problem is Farage is catnip to a lot of voters, but Lowe is popular with the activists
To me this looks like a potential party-ending clash, and a huge opportunity for the Tories, if they have the good sense to move sharply right and dump Kemi for a Jenrick (or someone like him, that "gets it")
Ashfield is the capital of commonsense. You need to take a weekend here - you could visit our new Observatory - and interview the Reform Chief Whip, aka the Leeanderthal Man, at his favourite eatery "Tony's Cafe", as he was promoting on his social media this week in between not mentioning The Rupert.
Lowe is by contrast a public school educated graduate with a net worth of £30 million. To him Anderson is basically a jumped up oik, so likely some class clash between them too
He's trying. Since 2014 or so he's gone from an very modest place in a street of terraces to a 500k pad next to a golf course. TBF to him he, also like Gloria and unlike Buff Hoon, still lives in the constituency near his roots - which I do respect even if I disagree with him on almost everything these days.
No revelation there; the Daily Mirror did a hit job on him.
Farage is overplaying his hand because he thinks that Reform's 25% support is a personal vote for him. I can see him getting booed at Reform events after this.
The problem is Farage is catnip to a lot of voters, but Lowe is popular with the activists
To me this looks like a potential party-ending clash, and a huge opportunity for the Tories, if they have the good sense to move sharply right and dump Kemi for a Jenrick (or someone like him, that "gets it")
Ashfield is the capital of commonsense. You need to take a weekend here - you could visit our new Observatory - and interview the Reform Chief Whip, aka the Leeanderthal Man, at his favourite eatery "Tony's Cafe", as he was promoting on his social media this week in between not mentioning The Rupert.
Lowe is by contrast a public school educated graduate with a net worth of £30 million. To him Anderson is basically a jumped up oik, so likely some class clash between them too
Much as I'd love this to be the death of RefUK, this is an example of PB being PB.
Very few people in the real world know who Rupert Lowe is. Fewer care.
The Reform people and Reform-adjacent people who determine the future of Reform UK do know. IMO it will be very fissiparous, as I keep mentioning. On Lee Anderson's twatter, this guy has a picture of Yaxley-Lennon as his header image:
6h POS what you’ve all done to Rupert Lowe!!! Scumbags the lot of you, don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll be thrown under the bus soon Anderson. Or maybe not because you’ll cuck to Farage. You’ve got it written all over your face!!!
I thought I recognised the name. Paul Harding is around the Homeland Party, and has also been association with Patriotic Alternative- interesting that he is a Rupert Lowe enthusiast over softie Farage.
The Homeland Party are ethno-nationalists, and fellow travellers with the AFD.
JWexTheSpa @jwsidders.bsky.social · Nailed it. Most of Westminster doesn’t yet realise the US everyone thought they knew - the one which believed in liberal democracy and the rule of law, which was integral to our defence and led the “free world” - has gone.
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…
It is now.
It may be what is happening. But if government "works" like this, then the system collapses.
If the rule of law has indeed collapsed, then the entire basis of the American economy, from regulation to contract law is compromised.
The result is that US Asset prices fall from AAA reserve currency levels down to A rating price levels: effectively a 40% price fall. Then there is a permanent increase in US structural inflation as a result of a drastically less efficient economy and much higher borrowing costs.
A shock to confidence on that scale ca not be hidden and it is mot hypothetical. The strong rise in the Euro this week tells you that the bond market is putting the US under notice.
Reality will collide with the witless lies of this appalling administration. In the end I could see the Americans putting the whole lot of them against the wall: Trump, Vance, Musk et al.
My my, who could have predicted this of a new jihadist Islamic regime in Damascus?
Entirely predictable for you to go straight to Islamic scaremongering.
The brutal Assad regime relied upon this small minority to staff and police its regime. As often after brutal regimes succumb to revolution, there is an understandable if unpleasant desire for revenge.
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…
It is now.
It may be what is happening. But if government "works" like this, then the system collapses.
If the rule of law has indeed collapsed, then the entire basis of the American economy, from regulation to contract law is compromised.
The result is that US Asset prices fall from AAA reserve currency levels down to A rating price levels: effectively a 40% price fall. Then there is a permanent increase in US structural inflation as a result of a drastically less efficient economy and much higher borrowing costs.
A shock to confidence on that scale ca not be hidden and it is mot hypothetical. The strong rise in the Euro this week tells you that the bond market is putting the US under notice.
Reality will collide with the witless lies of this appalling administration. In the end I could see the Americans putting the whole lot of them against the wall: Trump, Vance, Musk et al.
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
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?
As I said earlier on in the week, my son got accepted into his first-choice secondary school. Yay!
So we went online today to accept the offer. Except *two* offers for the same school appear in the list, able to be accepted. Both appear identical. If we accept one, will it be registered if the other entry is the real one? If we accept both, does that mean the system thinks there are two admittances, and another kid potentially doesn't get in? (*). Or do we just send in a paper version of the acceptance?
A minor embuggerance to start the day...
(*) I'd really hope that the system is more sane than that. But it's a system that apparently has given two offers...
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...
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?
The Montreux Treaty is basically whatever Turkiye decides it is. If they feel threatened by war they can, still within the confines of the treaty, take any decision they like with regard to the passage of warships.
Also, if they decide to ignore the treaty or withdraw from it, who is going to do anything about it?
Note that the extra funds for the German military and aid to Ukraine are not a done deal.
The Greens are pissed off because both Merz and Söder keep gratuitously insulting them, when their votes are needed to amend the constitution to make the money available. Merz also managed to piss off a lot of the SPD, and has shown that he absolutely can't be trusted. At this point some people are even doubting that he will become Chancellor.
And this week Söder also gratuitously insulted his coalition partners in the Bavarian government, the Freie Wähler, whose votes are probably needed to get any constitutional change through the Bundesrat.
Meanwhile the AfD are trying to challenge the legality of getting the old Bundestag to change the constitution. I don't think they will succeed, and at the end of the day the Greens will probably grudgingly vote for the constitutional changes despite them not including what they want. I don't know much about the FW, but suppose they can be bought off somehow.
Still there's a chance it doesn't all work out in the 2 weeks left.
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…
It is now.
It may be what is happening. But if government "works" like this, then the system collapses.
If the rule of law has indeed collapsed, then the entire basis of the American economy, from regulation to contract law is compromised.
The result is that US Asset prices fall from AAA reserve currency levels down to A rating price levels: effectively a 40% price fall. Then there is a permanent increase in US structural inflation as a result of a drastically less efficient economy and much higher borrowing costs.
A shock to confidence on that scale ca not be hidden and it is mot hypothetical. The strong rise in the Euro this week tells you that the bond market is putting the US under notice.
Reality will collide with the witless lies of this appalling administration. In the end I could see the Americans putting the whole lot of them against the wall: Trump, Vance, Musk et al.
Orwell pointed out that wars were useful for forcing leaders to engage with reality, keeping them a little bit sane. (We're seeing a little bit of that, in very slow motion, with Putin.) Nowadays, bond markets do much the same.
Even absolute political power, and Trump's political power is pretty close to absolute, isn't absolute power.
Reality will collide with the witless lies of this appalling administration. In the end I could see the Americans putting the whole lot of them against the wall: Trump, Vance, Musk et al.
A necessary condition for that to occur would be a free press, faithfully reporting what is actually happening, and trusted by the people.
As I said earlier on in the week, my son got accepted into his first-choice secondary school. Yay!
So we went online today to accept the offer. Except *two* offers for the same school appear in the list, able to be accepted. Both appear identical. If we accept one, will it be registered if the other entry is the real one? If we accept both, does that mean the system thinks there are two admittances, and another kid potentially doesn't get in? (*). Or do we just send in a paper version of the acceptance?
A minor embuggerance to start the day...
(*) I'd really hope that the system is more sane than that. But it's a system that apparently has given two offers...
Seems more likely that the data entry is the cause of the problem. A phone call in office hours would seem the wisest next step.
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…
It is now.
It may be what is happening. But if government "works" like this, then the system collapses.
If the rule of law has indeed collapsed, then the entire basis of the American economy, from regulation to contract law is compromised.
The result is that US Asset prices fall from AAA reserve currency levels down to A rating price levels: effectively a 40% price fall. Then there is a permanent increase in US structural inflation as a result of a drastically less efficient economy and much higher borrowing costs.
A shock to confidence on that scale ca not be hidden and it is mot hypothetical. The strong rise in the Euro this week tells you that the bond market is putting the US under notice.
Reality will collide with the witless lies of this appalling administration. In the end I could see the Americans putting the whole lot of them against the wall: Trump, Vance, Musk et al.
Orwell pointed out that wars were useful for forcing leaders to engage with reality, keeping them a little bit sane. (We're seeing a little bit of that, in very slow motion, with Putin.) Nowadays, bond markets do much the same.
Even absolute political power, and Trump's political power is pretty close to absolute, isn't absolute power.
Trump might cow his adminstration, the US Congress, the Supreme Court, the media.
The one man he cannot buy off, intimidate, threaten - the one man who can bring down his simpleton economic mess - is Mister Market...
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…
It is now.
It may be what is happening. But if government "works" like this, then the system collapses.
If the rule of law has indeed collapsed, then the entire basis of the American economy, from regulation to contract law is compromised.
The result is that US Asset prices fall from AAA reserve currency levels down to A rating price levels: effectively a 40% price fall. Then there is a permanent increase in US structural inflation as a result of a drastically less efficient economy and much higher borrowing costs.
A shock to confidence on that scale ca not be hidden and it is mot hypothetical. The strong rise in the Euro this week tells you that the bond market is putting the US under notice.
Reality will collide with the witless lies of this appalling administration. In the end I could see the Americans putting the whole lot of them against the wall: Trump, Vance, Musk et al.
Orwell pointed out that wars were useful for forcing leaders to engage with reality, keeping them a little bit sane. (We're seeing a little bit of that, in very slow motion, with Putin.) Nowadays, bond markets do much the same.
Even absolute political power, and Trump's political power is pretty close to absolute, isn't absolute power.
Trump might cow his adminstration, the US Congress, the Supreme Court, the media.
The one man he cannot buy off, intimidate, threaten - the one man who can bring down his simpleton economic mess - is Mister Market...
When I went to work in asset management I thought I was selling out - I had no idea that I was actually joining the fight against fascism.
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…
It is now.
It may be what is happening. But if government "works" like this, then the system collapses.
If the rule of law has indeed collapsed, then the entire basis of the American economy, from regulation to contract law is compromised.
The result is that US Asset prices fall from AAA reserve currency levels down to A rating price levels: effectively a 40% price fall. Then there is a permanent increase in US structural inflation as a result of a drastically less efficient economy and much higher borrowing costs.
A shock to confidence on that scale ca not be hidden and it is mot hypothetical. The strong rise in the Euro this week tells you that the bond market is putting the US under notice.
Reality will collide with the witless lies of this appalling administration. In the end I could see the Americans putting the whole lot of them against the wall: Trump, Vance, Musk et al.
Orwell pointed out that wars were useful for forcing leaders to engage with reality, keeping them a little bit sane. (We're seeing a little bit of that, in very slow motion, with Putin.) Nowadays, bond markets do much the same.
Even absolute political power, and Trump's political power is pretty close to absolute, isn't absolute power.
Trump might cow his adminstration, the US Congress, the Supreme Court, the media.
The one man he cannot buy off, intimidate, threaten - the one man who can bring down his simpleton economic mess - is Mister Market...
When I went to work in asset management I thought I was selling out - I had no idea that I was actually joining the fight against fascism.
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…
It is now.
It may be what is happening. But if government "works" like this, then the system collapses.
If the rule of law has indeed collapsed, then the entire basis of the American economy, from regulation to contract law is compromised.
The result is that US Asset prices fall from AAA reserve currency levels down to A rating price levels: effectively a 40% price fall. Then there is a permanent increase in US structural inflation as a result of a drastically less efficient economy and much higher borrowing costs.
A shock to confidence on that scale ca not be hidden and it is mot hypothetical. The strong rise in the Euro this week tells you that the bond market is putting the US under notice.
Reality will collide with the witless lies of this appalling administration. In the end I could see the Americans putting the whole lot of them against the wall: Trump, Vance, Musk et al.
Orwell pointed out that wars were useful for forcing leaders to engage with reality, keeping them a little bit sane. (We're seeing a little bit of that, in very slow motion, with Putin.) Nowadays, bond markets do much the same.
Even absolute political power, and Trump's political power is pretty close to absolute, isn't absolute power.
Trump might cow his adminstration, the US Congress, the Supreme Court, the media.
The one man he cannot buy off, intimidate, threaten - the one man who can bring down his simpleton economic mess - is Mister Market...
When I went to work in asset management I thought I was selling out - I had no idea that I was actually joining the fight against fascism.
Depends- is fiscally sound fascism (which I suspect is what some crave) a possibility, or a contradiction in terms?
I suspect it's the latter, at least in the long term, because an authoritarian state is too expensive to feed, but there may be a counterexample.
My my, who could have predicted this of a new jihadist Islamic regime in Damascus?
Entirely predictable for you to go straight to Islamic scaremongering.
The brutal Assad regime relied upon this small minority to staff and police its regime. As often after brutal regimes succumb to revolution, there is an understandable if unpleasant desire for revenge.
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…
It is now.
It may be what is happening. But if government "works" like this, then the system collapses.
If the rule of law has indeed collapsed, then the entire basis of the American economy, from regulation to contract law is compromised.
The result is that US Asset prices fall from AAA reserve currency levels down to A rating price levels: effectively a 40% price fall. Then there is a permanent increase in US structural inflation as a result of a drastically less efficient economy and much higher borrowing costs.
A shock to confidence on that scale ca not be hidden and it is mot hypothetical. The strong rise in the Euro this week tells you that the bond market is putting the US under notice.
Reality will collide with the witless lies of this appalling administration. In the end I could see the Americans putting the whole lot of them against the wall: Trump, Vance, Musk et al.
Orwell pointed out that wars were useful for forcing leaders to engage with reality, keeping them a little bit sane. (We're seeing a little bit of that, in very slow motion, with Putin.) Nowadays, bond markets do much the same.
Even absolute political power, and Trump's political power is pretty close to absolute, isn't absolute power.
Trump might cow his adminstration, the US Congress, the Supreme Court, the media.
The one man he cannot buy off, intimidate, threaten - the one man who can bring down his simpleton economic mess - is Mister Market...
When I went to work in asset management I thought I was selling out - I had no idea that I was actually joining the fight against fascism.
Depends- is fiscally sound fascism (which I suspect is what some crave) a possibility, or a contradiction in terms?
I suspect it's the latter, at least in the long term, because an authoritarian state is too expensive to feed, but there may be a counterexample.
Failing markets punish democratically elected politicians. Failing markets do not punish autocrats who own election mechanisms. Eventually they may fall, but in the meantime they collect yachts in Monte Carlo, villas in Dubai and collections of Ferraris to feather their post autocracy nests while the peasants starve. See Mugabe.
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.
I remember being scared witless by The War Game and Threads.
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…
It is now.
It may be what is happening. But if government "works" like this, then the system collapses.
If the rule of law has indeed collapsed, then the entire basis of the American economy, from regulation to contract law is compromised.
The result is that US Asset prices fall from AAA reserve currency levels down to A rating price levels: effectively a 40% price fall. Then there is a permanent increase in US structural inflation as a result of a drastically less efficient economy and much higher borrowing costs.
A shock to confidence on that scale ca not be hidden and it is mot hypothetical. The strong rise in the Euro this week tells you that the bond market is putting the US under notice.
Reality will collide with the witless lies of this appalling administration. In the end I could see the Americans putting the whole lot of them against the wall: Trump, Vance, Musk et al.
Orwell pointed out that wars were useful for forcing leaders to engage with reality, keeping them a little bit sane. (We're seeing a little bit of that, in very slow motion, with Putin.) Nowadays, bond markets do much the same.
Even absolute political power, and Trump's political power is pretty close to absolute, isn't absolute power.
Trump might cow his adminstration, the US Congress, the Supreme Court, the media.
The one man he cannot buy off, intimidate, threaten - the one man who can bring down his simpleton economic mess - is Mister Market...
When I went to work in asset management I thought I was selling out - I had no idea that I was actually joining the fight against fascism.
We thank you for your service.
Thank you. It is a tough and thankless task but somebody has to do it.
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…
It is now.
It may be what is happening. But if government "works" like this, then the system collapses.
If the rule of law has indeed collapsed, then the entire basis of the American economy, from regulation to contract law is compromised.
The result is that US Asset prices fall from AAA reserve currency levels down to A rating price levels: effectively a 40% price fall. Then there is a permanent increase in US structural inflation as a result of a drastically less efficient economy and much higher borrowing costs.
A shock to confidence on that scale ca not be hidden and it is mot hypothetical. The strong rise in the Euro this week tells you that the bond market is putting the US under notice.
Reality will collide with the witless lies of this appalling administration. In the end I could see the Americans putting the whole lot of them against the wall: Trump, Vance, Musk et al.
Orwell pointed out that wars were useful for forcing leaders to engage with reality, keeping them a little bit sane. (We're seeing a little bit of that, in very slow motion, with Putin.) Nowadays, bond markets do much the same.
Even absolute political power, and Trump's political power is pretty close to absolute, isn't absolute power.
Trump might cow his adminstration, the US Congress, the Supreme Court, the media.
The one man he cannot buy off, intimidate, threaten - the one man who can bring down his simpleton economic mess - is Mister Market...
When I went to work in asset management I thought I was selling out - I had no idea that I was actually joining the fight against fascism.
Depends- is fiscally sound fascism (which I suspect is what some crave) a possibility, or a contradiction in terms?
I suspect it's the latter, at least in the long term, because an authoritarian state is too expensive to feed, but there may be a counterexample.
Fiscal soundness is not compatible with having leaders who are bound by no laws.
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…
It is now.
It may be what is happening. But if government "works" like this, then the system collapses.
If the rule of law has indeed collapsed, then the entire basis of the American economy, from regulation to contract law is compromised.
The result is that US Asset prices fall from AAA reserve currency levels down to A rating price levels: effectively a 40% price fall. Then there is a permanent increase in US structural inflation as a result of a drastically less efficient economy and much higher borrowing costs.
A shock to confidence on that scale ca not be hidden and it is mot hypothetical. The strong rise in the Euro this week tells you that the bond market is putting the US under notice.
Reality will collide with the witless lies of this appalling administration. In the end I could see the Americans putting the whole lot of them against the wall: Trump, Vance, Musk et al.
Orwell pointed out that wars were useful for forcing leaders to engage with reality, keeping them a little bit sane. (We're seeing a little bit of that, in very slow motion, with Putin.) Nowadays, bond markets do much the same.
Even absolute political power, and Trump's political power is pretty close to absolute, isn't absolute power.
Trump might cow his adminstration, the US Congress, the Supreme Court, the media.
The one man he cannot buy off, intimidate, threaten - the one man who can bring down his simpleton economic mess - is Mister Market...
When I went to work in asset management I thought I was selling out - I had no idea that I was actually joining the fight against fascism.
Depends- is fiscally sound fascism (which I suspect is what some crave) a possibility, or a contradiction in terms?
I suspect it's the latter, at least in the long term, because an authoritarian state is too expensive to feed, but there may be a counterexample.
Any form of government built on fantasy will run up big debts IMHO. Abundant natural resources help to plug the gap between rhetoric and reality, of course, but we don't have those (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.
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.
I remember being scared witless by The War Game and Threads.
@leon often accuses us of being centrist dads, but in reality he is a centrist granddad. He reminds me of those oldies who always say it was better in the good old days. It wasn't. Not by a long chalk. I grew up in a house without a bathroom and an outside loo and no central heating and where we were constantly reminded of nuclear destruction and smog and rationing was a recent memory of my parents.
The good old days were not good compared to any time since.
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?
The Montreux Treaty is basically whatever Turkiye decides it is. If they feel threatened by war they can, still within the confines of the treaty, take any decision they like with regard to the passage of warships.
Also, if they decide to ignore the treaty or withdraw from it, who is going to do anything about it?
Lots of Holds in the by-election results and Reform with a number of 2nd places. However the only Gains were from a Lib Dem and an Independent. The results seem to show drops in Con/Lab/Grn where it helps the LibDem beat Reform (Pendle) or drops in Lab/LibDem/Grn where it help Con beat Reform (Herne & Broomfield (Canterbury). So, I expect to see more anti-Reform tactical voting in the future. https://www.markpack.org.uk/174371/vivary-bridge-pendle-council-by-election/
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.
I remember being scared witless by The War Game and Threads.
@leon often accuses us of being centrist dads, but in reality he is a centrist granddad. He reminds me of those oldies who always say it was better in the good old days. It wasn't. Not by a long chalk. I grew up in a house without a bathroom and an outside loo and no central heating and where we were constantly reminded of nuclear destruction and smog and rationing was a recent memory of my parents.
The good old days were not good compared to any time since.
Suspect part of the problem has been boredom. You see hints of it in the "we need bad times to produce great men" thing. Which isn't even original;
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
Some people crave the excitement and assume that they will be one of the great men. But Switzerland was way better to live in than Italy.
They don't care about Westminster Bubble stories. If we continue to disengage with them and dismiss Reform as bust, they will win.
In the UK we can make a distinction when talking about nationality. You have a least a choice of 2 (British or English etc). Sometimes you have a choice of 3 if you are a dual national e.g. Israel. Then if you overlay ethnicity British Asian / Anglo Caribbean the choices multiply. And then add in religion to the mix, you have a mongrel nation.
So it's odd that some seem so sure there is a unified approach to such issues by adding in a label such as 'values' unless they are so unsure of themselves they have to find a reason to be angry at 'something'.
Lots of Holds in the by-election results and Reform with a number of 2nd places. However the only Gains were from a Lib Dem and an Independent. The results seem to show drops in Con/Lab/Grn where it helps the LibDem beat Reform (Pendle) or drops in Lab/LibDem/Grn where it help Con beat Reform (Herne & Broomfield (Canterbury). So, I expect to see more anti-Reform tactical voting in the future. https://www.markpack.org.uk/174371/vivary-bridge-pendle-council-by-election/
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.
I remember being scared witless by The War Game and Threads.
@leon often accuses us of being centrist dads, but in reality he is a centrist granddad. He reminds me of those oldies who always say it was better in the good old days. It wasn't. Not by a long chalk. I grew up in a house without a bathroom and an outside loo and no central heating and where we were constantly reminded of nuclear destruction and smog and rationing was a recent memory of my parents.
The good old days were not good compared to any time since.
Plus it had shitty telly like The Good Old Days...
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.
PJ O'Rourke would have had a field day as well. All greatly missed.
They don't care about Westminster Bubble stories. If we continue to disengage with them and dismiss Reform as bust, they will win.
The young men angle is interesting but there must be a question mark over whether these rottmaxing scum will actually turn out to vote for the Fukkers on the day though. Even if doing it ironically.
I wonder if Kemi can take advantage of the crisis in Reform.
Obviously not. The tories were fucking idiotic with their virtue signalling choice of somebody who cannot appeal to Red Wall Racists that have gone Fukker.
Number and type of missiles being fired at Ukraine since Trump was elected. Significant increase in the more damaging missiles since technical help withdrawn.
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.
I remember being scared witless by The War Game and Threads.
@leon often accuses us of being centrist dads, but in reality he is a centrist granddad. He reminds me of those oldies who always say it was better in the good old days. It wasn't. Not by a long chalk. I grew up in a house without a bathroom and an outside loo and no central heating and where we were constantly reminded of nuclear destruction and smog and rationing was a recent memory of my parents.
The good old days were not good compared to any time since.
Suspect part of the problem has been boredom. You see hints of it in the "we need bad times to produce great men" thing. Which isn't even original;
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
Some people crave the excitement and assume that they will be one of the great men. But Switzerland was way better to live in than Italy.
Doesn't mean we can't/shouldn't try to do better.
It’s probably true, that times of hardship and terror do drive artistic creativity.
Much Greek tragedy was written in the closing years of the Peloponnesian War; early medieval monastic Ireland was an intellectual powerhouse; the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries combined utter barbarism with great works of art, music, and literature.
But, most of us would prefer not to live in such worlds.
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.
I remember being scared witless by The War Game and Threads.
@leon often accuses us of being centrist dads, but in reality he is a centrist granddad. He reminds me of those oldies who always say it was better in the good old days. It wasn't. Not by a long chalk. I grew up in a house without a bathroom and an outside loo and no central heating and where we were constantly reminded of nuclear destruction and smog and rationing was a recent memory of my parents.
The good old days were not good compared to any time since.
Suspect part of the problem has been boredom. You see hints of it in the "we need bad times to produce great men" thing. Which isn't even original;
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
Some people crave the excitement and assume that they will be one of the great men. But Switzerland was way better to live in than Italy.
Doesn't mean we can't/shouldn't try to do better.
It’s probably true, that times of hardship and terror do drive artistic creativity.
Comments
There are 10 County seats in Ashfield, and I expect them probably to get one (Selston is I think the marginal vs Tories), and they will be doing well to get 2 and incredibly well to get three.
They are all held by the Ashfield Independents, and the driving factor imo is that there is only one marginal, afaics all the others have very generous majorities, and the A.I. Leader Zadrozny's visit to Crown Court on umpteen charges is now in 2026. Doing better will be very difficult I think - it will take at least two or maybe even three cycles to dig out the A.I.'s, even if their new structures are very, very effective. That last thought may be impacted by the result of the Zadrozny trial.
Subject to events, dear boy, Reform imploding, or exploding - either at the centre or voting coalition level.
They should do better in Derbyshire.
But I did NOT know that it was now edited by Giles Dilnot, of all people. Isn't he the one that did whimsical rants about things no one had ever heard needed to think about?
I certainly have direct experience of
the beginning of this process of deregulation paradoxically ushering in a kind of commercial totalitarianism, not diversity of view.
paradu
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czxnwrqey4go
Laurence Fox
@LozzaFox
The @reformparty_uk party is a political Ponzi scheme.
Subscribers are now paying to investigate @RupertLowe10 because he’s more popular than the king of cancel culture.
They are the exact thing they rail against.
Anti free speech.
Pro cancel culture.
Woker than woke.
https://x.com/LozzaFox/status/1898084401117823048
Paul Harding 🏴 Enough Is Enough @Paul_Patriot12
6h POS what you’ve all done to Rupert Lowe!!! Scumbags the lot of you, don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll be thrown under the bus soon Anderson. Or maybe not because you’ll cuck to Farage. You’ve got it written all over your face!!!
Just riding the gravy train for a while arnt you!!!
https://x.com/Paul_Patriot12/status/1898074373170303260
No revelation there; the Daily Mirror did a hit job on him.
The have used the word 'obligated' instead of obliged.
The Homeland Party are ethno-nationalists, and fellow travellers with the AFD.
🤭
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-aerospace-firm-maxar-disables-satellite-photos-ukraine-2025-03-07/
·
Nailed it. Most of Westminster doesn’t yet realise the US everyone thought they knew - the one which believed in liberal democracy and the rule of law, which was integral to our defence and led the “free world” - has gone.
https://bsky.app/profile/jwsidders.bsky.social/post/3ljpob4hgxc2d
If the rule of law has indeed collapsed, then the entire basis of the American economy, from regulation to contract law is compromised.
The result is that US Asset prices fall from AAA reserve currency levels down to A rating price levels: effectively a 40% price fall. Then there is a permanent increase in US structural inflation as a result of a drastically less efficient economy and much higher borrowing costs.
A shock to confidence on that scale ca not be hidden and it is mot hypothetical. The strong rise in the Euro this week tells you that the bond market is putting the US under notice.
Reality will collide with the witless lies of this appalling administration. In the end I could see the Americans putting the whole lot of them against the wall: Trump, Vance, Musk et al.
The brutal Assad regime relied upon this small minority to staff and police its regime. As often after brutal regimes succumb to revolution, there is an understandable if unpleasant desire for revenge.
As I said earlier on in the week, my son got accepted into his first-choice secondary school. Yay!
So we went online today to accept the offer. Except *two* offers for the same school appear in the list, able to be accepted. Both appear identical. If we accept one, will it be registered if the other entry is the real one? If we accept both, does that mean the system thinks there are two admittances, and another kid potentially doesn't get in? (*). Or do we just send in a paper version of the acceptance?
A minor embuggerance to start the day...
(*) I'd really hope that the system is more sane than that. But it's a system that apparently has given two offers...
If they can do it now why not previously?
Also, if they decide to ignore the treaty or withdraw from it, who is going to do anything about it?
The Greens are pissed off because both Merz and Söder keep gratuitously insulting them, when their votes are needed to amend the constitution to make the money available. Merz also managed to piss off a lot of the SPD, and has shown that he absolutely can't be trusted. At this point some people are even doubting that he will become Chancellor.
And this week Söder also gratuitously insulted his coalition partners in the Bavarian government, the Freie Wähler, whose votes are probably needed to get any constitutional change through the Bundesrat.
Meanwhile the AfD are trying to challenge the legality of getting the old Bundestag to change the constitution. I don't think they will succeed, and at the end of the day the Greens will probably grudgingly vote for the constitutional changes despite them not including what they want. I don't know much about the FW, but suppose they can be bought off somehow.
Still there's a chance it doesn't all work out in the 2 weeks left.
Even absolute political power, and Trump's political power is pretty close to absolute, isn't absolute power.
None of that is currently in place
The one man he cannot buy off, intimidate, threaten - the one man who can bring down his simpleton economic mess - is Mister Market...
I suspect it's the latter, at least in the long term, because an authoritarian state is too expensive to feed, but there may be a counterexample.
Great piece in The Guardian this morning about young people and Reform https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/mar/08/nigel-farage-feels-real-why-young-british-men-are-drawn-to-reform
They don't care about Westminster Bubble stories. If we continue to disengage with them and dismiss Reform as bust, they will win.
The good old days were not good compared to any time since.
The results seem to show drops in Con/Lab/Grn where it helps the LibDem beat Reform (Pendle) or drops in Lab/LibDem/Grn where it help Con beat Reform (Herne & Broomfield (Canterbury).
So, I expect to see more anti-Reform tactical voting in the future.
https://www.markpack.org.uk/174371/vivary-bridge-pendle-council-by-election/
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
Some people crave the excitement and assume that they will be one of the great men. But Switzerland was way better to live in than Italy.
Doesn't mean we can't/shouldn't try to do better.
So it's odd that some seem so sure there is a unified approach to such issues by adding in a label such as 'values' unless they are so unsure of themselves they have to find a reason to be angry at 'something'.
NEW THREAD
This makes it even more difficult for them to defend themselves. We have a US President actively helping Russia slaughter Ukrainians.
Despicable doesn’t do it justice .
Much Greek tragedy was written in the closing years of the Peloponnesian War; early medieval monastic Ireland was an intellectual powerhouse; the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries combined utter barbarism with great works of art, music, and literature.
But, most of us would prefer not to live in such worlds.