Categories
Donald Trump: The great unifier of Europe – politicalbetting.com
Donald Trump: The great unifier of Europe – politicalbetting.com
57% of Britons would rather have the EU as a close trading partner than the US, amid suggestion that closer alignment with Europe could endanger a trade deal with the USEU: 57% (+4 from 21 Jan)US: 16% (-5)yougov.co.uk/topics/econo…
2
Comments
I’ve worked for three very large telecoms companies and not once have I ever felt the need to put my pronouns on an email. I never have and never will as I can’t personally see the point.
But if somebody wants to, isn’t that up to them? I agree we should not force people to do it but assuming that’s the case would you still have a problem with it?
This seems no different than forcing me to wear a suit. I’m glad that’s over.
Donald Trump has become a recruiting sergeant for the Left in other countries.
In Canada his threats about making it the 51st have single-handedly revived the fortunes of the left-leaning Liberal party under Mark Carney. The right-wing alternative, who had a 20-point poll lead when Trump came to power, has seen that lead evaporate because he’s regarded as too much like Trump.
In Australia the incumbent Labour Party has been given a boost by Trump and the unimpressive Anthony Albanese now looks like being re-elected — partly because his right-wing challenger Peter Dutton is also seen as too Trumpy (even if he’s not).
Which puts Nigel Farage in an interesting position. His Reform party has become the change-maker of British politics. But if he wants to continue in that vein I suspect he’ll be distancing himself from Trump. Perhaps he already is.
https://x.com/afneil/status/1912751864140939518
Not only has Donald Trump had a piss in a bed, he's also had a shit in a lift.
Farage is moving Reform firmly to the left at the movement. With its support of nationalisation and unions.
But doesn’t it all come across a bit hollow? Why has Farage only changed his mind now?
I know the Red Wall polling was terrible for Labour but it wasn’t great for Reform either. Farage was hardly popular even apparently where Reform is doing well. To me instinctively this feels like Farage benefiting from “not Labour”. But Labour has a lot of time to turn things around.
It's just typical opportunism. Labour has a big problem though. Staking everything on deliverism means they have to deliver, and so far they are not doing so. Voters are not usually known for their patience.
But if I want to continue in that vein I suspect I’ll be distancing myself from Trump. Perhaps I already am.
Tricky things, pronouns.
Let's hope Farage doesn't crash the country like Trump has the US.
Bill Bruford, drummer in several famous bands, once suggested maybe musicians should only be allowed to make ten albums in their lives so as to focus their creativity!
The government in that case is a purchaser of last resort. In my view that isn't the same thing as being in favour of (re)nationalisation in principle.
And whilst there have been bits of delivery- stopping public sector strikes by accepting reality on pay has helped a lot in ways we underplay- it's not yet been enough.
But the polling now is just polling. Ask not-Prime Ministers Ed Milliband and Neil Kinnock. The relevant deadline is 2028/9.
The moron fodder in the US are being told to shout and scream that MAGA will MAGA (cf Brexit means Brexit). That the inferior foreigners are being brought into line and into their place - subjects of the Great America. That tariffs will bring not only manufacturing to the US but that US made goods will be global.
That the reality is so starkly opposite presents challenges. The US would need to remove Trump and publicly disown him for global former partners to trust them - and we all know that isn't about to happen.
And so we have countries seeking to understand exactly what Murica is doing. Trump then screams SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT because the Japanese are here to kiss the ring. But no ring is kissed and they depart.
A world with an isolationist America propagandising its population whilst the world gets on with business without it. Interesting times indeed.
If Casino was genuinely pressured on this (as opposed to being oversensitive to others adopting the practice), then that's a problem with his workplace, not the culture.
(FWIW, I've never bothered either, and don't care whether others do, or don't.)
https://x.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1912680089730359408
Casino wants a war on pronouns because they are "woke" - thats all. And we know what "woke" means when it is deployed in anger...
I'd much prefer us not to make any commitments at all at this stage.
(Although it might make sense as a probably doomed gambit to woo back the fruitcakes).
At the very least we need to tightly regulate them. And if that fails bring them back in house. Thames Water is the obvious candidate alongside British Steel. And yet neither have been repossessed because Treasury orthodoxy states that debt would then become public and what does that mean for our calculations?
Who cares? When we moved house the last thing I added on was nearly £3k for a new TV. A lot of money - but small compared to the move costs. Reeves calculations have already been swept away by events - twice. And they've been in office for 10 months. So what does it matter?
Key to this is secure the asset and start saving money. In the case of Thames Water because of the appalling mismanagement and lack of grasp on costs there are big savings to be made by taking over. In the case of BS it needs to be kept operational and the owner was about to shut it. A very small change in the state of the national debt to save a whole load more money later.
We all want to respect one another, and pronouns make that easier to do so in some cases. Basic courtesy.
Firstly, as @Cyclefree has persuasively argued, the judgement is a significant milestone in recognising sex-based rights in the UK as a distinct group. That's a good thing and the mission creep of the SNP towards self-identification changing the impact of both yours and others' sex-based rights has backfired on them.
Equally, ordinary trans people themselves deserve to be respected and included in society as their chosen gender to the extent possible while respecting areas where sex-based rights take precedent. The law recognises this with sex discrimination needing to be proportionate, and the separate protection for trans people under the equality act.
Where I'd like to strongly object to others in the previous thread was the idea that trans people should be considered to have a mental illness:
People have various beliefs that are not based in scientific fact, with all religions being the most obvious example through history.
It would be offensive for me to call all religious people mentally ill because I believe God is a social construct.
It would be equally offensive for me to call all transgender people mentally ill because I believe gender is a social construct.
We should live and let live. It was only the conflict between completing claims for women's sex-based and trans rights that made this a political issue. That has hopefully been resolved (absent new legislation). We can now let people dress how they want, call themselves what they want, have surgery as they wish, without it being a political issue to fight over for the foreseeable future in the UK.
From memory I can only recall one use of a pronoun in the past in an email and that was from Daisy Cooper (she/her).
Bizarrely it can be useful with unusual names. Even not so unusual names. My wife has a Scottish name that seems obviously female to me, but seems to confuse some and also being a Doctor her prefix of Dr does not help. So many assume she is male. So it could help. Not that she or I use pronouns.
Worth noting that all the ‘a US trade deal is close’ news is coming (afaics) from US sources.
https://bsky.app/profile/columnist.bsky.social/post/3lmyimmgiz22u
It's not obvious that there's much of a landing space for much of a mutually acceptable deal. Neither side is likely to concede its position on agriculture.
But DJT is desperate to talk about deals, because he makes the best deals and it's the only way out of his self-dug hole.
And the UK can't say no to a deal because it undermines the country's stated policy in a way that opens many cans of worms to do with you-know-what.
So the talk continues with remarkably little action.
On Tuesday I met with a major American retailer who operates at scale in the UK. Despite their business being very US based in their outlook and philosophy, their UK buying managers are quite open that they cannot and will not look to just directly import foods from the US because "nobody buys them". They now want UKised versions made edible, something that even their "buy global" strategy has learned to accept.
There will be no trade deal where we get weevil-infested rice and Chlorinated chicken and ADHD-inducing additives rammed down our throats. Not only would that imperil any prospects we have of securing our trade with our major partner over the channel, British consumers simply won't buy that shit.
And this is what baffles and annoys America. The Greatest Country In The World. Period. So why don't people want to eat our food and buy our trucks? Why? Because they're shit, that's why.
Nobody has ever forced me to put my preferred pronouns on emails either, although TBF I am my own boss now so it seems unlikely anyone ever would.
In a way that's disappointing, because I would ask to be called 'Lord High Executioner.'
Sounds much better than 'Chief Executive' and goes with a very catchy G+S number.
UK officials label trade documents ‘secret’ to shield from US eyes amid Trump tariff war
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/apr/16/uk-officials-trade-documents-secret-trump-tariff-security
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-N_RZJUAQY4
You are a pedant.
Yours
kjh (thing)
PS What is a G+S number?
Its true. You're in denial. Everyone has to do it. Even on here.
Ian
(He/Him)
https://youtu.be/ivY2HK777Zg?si=EyoKGckapeThWSsD
The UK already has a Free Trade Agreement with the EU too unlike with the USA
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Telegraph
Even if you found a way to get past the ingredients deck which is both illegal and off putting to even a Farm Foods shopper, there was a basic problem - price.
US food is expensive. Bizarrely so when its high processed and full of good old boy additives. Then you have to ship it across the Atlantic. Then you need to repack or relabel because US food packaging is no good here.
By the time you've done all that the food would need to retail for £no.
https://x.com/oeogovuk/status/1912525975750852646?s=61
A few months ago, we asked our son if he wanted to watch "The Good Place" with us. We explained what it was about, and he was not keen. We 'encouraged' him to watch the first episode, after which he was hooked and we binge watched the entire thing.
I'm unsure if he's learnt any moral philosophy from it, but he learnt enough to laugh at that video...
https://www.instagram.com/p/DIgkBUboZqH/?igsh=MWZrYjI5cWx6MzBtMA==
Yours kjh (it)
https://persephonebooks.co.uk/products/crooked-cross
Government is hiding behind the SC by saying it clarifies the law - thank you very much. Almost as if it wants someone else to decide the rights and wrongs of a mostly incomprehensible row between two branches of liberal and high minded feminists. Surely not!
Footnote: In the SC case Amnesty International made themselves an intervening party. This is a sad decline from their traditional role as the one outfit that keeps on taking an interest in folks like North Koreans rotting away their enslaved lives in obscure tortured imprisonment.
But any party that can stop that sort of taking-the-piss haggling gets my vote.
Even the Liberal Democrats.
Cars were number 1 as recently as 2019.
While it's obviously skewed by name recognition, it doesn't say much for the chances of centrist pragmatists like Shapiro for the nomination in 2028.
https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1912639526985691206
Among Dems - Net Favorables:
Obama: +84%
Harris: +79%
Sanders: +76%
Walz: +72%
Booker: +71%
AOC: +69%
Warren: +68%
Buttigieg: +68%
Biden: +66%
Clinton: +60%
Klobuchar: +60%
Stewart: +60%
Whitmer: +51%
Crockett: +50%
Warnock: +49%
Cuban: +47%
Newsom: +45%
Beshear: +34%
Murphy: +32%
Shapiro: +29%
Pritzker: +27%
Moore: +23%
Fain: +5%
Fetterman: +3%
A. Smith: -3%
Data For Progress / Apr 14, 2025 / n=745
- The majority of people in my organisation have pronouns in their email signatures. However, the incidence of people not using pronouns is probably higher than I'd imagined.
- Interestingly, a similar scan through a random sample (this week, three years ago) seems to suggest fewer pronouns than a few years ago.
- That said, this is difficult to evaluate fully because, also possibly interestingly, there are far more emails without signatures at all
- It's hard to tell objectively to what extent we have been 'pressured' - certainly I remember emails from HR asking us to add pronouns to signatures, though this is hard to dig out with a simple search of the word 'pronoun' because the word 'pronoun' features in the signature of so many emails - but clearly many people such as me haven't: this isn't necessarily a principled objection, but could equally well be reluctance to do a very low-priority admin task
- external emails from other public sector organisations are also majoritavely pronouned
- external emails from people trying to sell things to the public sector through spam are almost entirely pronouned
- external emails from consultants (and - while I don't know who @Casino_Royale is in real life, I think I know what industry he works in - and particularly from consultants his industry) are almost entirely pronouned.
- external emails from the general public almost entirely unpronouned.
However, I'm perfectly willing to believe e.g. Foxy that he rarely sees pronouns. Maybe we're all telling the truth and it varies from industry to industry.
They also seem to come in official pairs, so what's the point of quoting an entire pair? Is there some objection to she/him? If it absolutely must be she/her, he/him, or they/them, why not just specify the nominative (or "subjective" for pedants)?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c39jj9vkr34o
It's only seven hundred trillion miles away from us.
Trump: "So you mean we can see if they will hold our prisoners there instead of El Salvador? Supreme Court ain't ever getting them back from THERE..."
Steel is a widely different matter. It is (like water) a vital national resource, but it will struggle to be run profitably with our ridiculous disordered economy. I think the Government needs to guarantee its future for the time being until it can be run commercially, and probably thereafter ensure it remains in British hands. They also need to get that coal mine built, probably by bypassing the planning process for reasons of national security. We cannot keep the process of making virgin steel in the UK as a security measure, yet have the fuel we need to keep it burning coming from overseas. That makes zero sense - the Japanese coal can only ever be a stop-gap.
Thatcher worked very hard to bring various foreign car manufacturers to the U.K.
Where they found they could produce excellent cars, at reasonable prices, with little industrial strife.
Very often the people (labour and management) were the same individuals who had worked in the slow motion crash that was the British car industry.
Once an organisation has got that toxic, a new start is often better.
As far as prior to that I can't be sure obviously, but it struck me when I had an email from Daisy Cooper (generic, not just to me) where she did use (she/her) and because of that I noticed it, which sort of implies if someone else had done so I would have noticed that also. It struck me because it was the first time I had seen it, rather than hearing about it.
1) Doesn't have a medical degree
2) Ran experiments where he injected autistic children with a puberty-blocking drug
3) Was fined $10,000 by the state of Maryland for doing all this without a medical license
https://x.com/ZaidJilani/status/1912600367805993081
I never had an issue with it at all - it's often a point of clarity and clarification to know how to refer to the person with whom you are dealing. Companies on the phone often ask me how I wish to be addressed and that's fine as well.
If people wish to be referred to as "they/them" that's their right and I respect it. I can't know it in advance but if they tell me I know and it's something of which I have to be aware.
When they don't show patience is when the government is clearly out of its depth, has no credible plan and in fact devotes most of its attention to making matters worse. See the current farrago of incompetence and cluelessness.
A piece from Zoe Williams in the Guardian this morning which made me laugh. Unkind, perhaps, but it did
"Liz Truss has unveiled her new chapter, and if you can think of a better place for the madcap-economist former prime minister to do so than a cryptocurrency conference in Bedford, it would at the very least have to involve pirates or chimpanzees."
That's just the way it rolls down here in Devon.
It will be the record of the Trump Vance administration that decides the 2028 election anyway not who the Democratic candidate is
The idea of it just being us was always Humanoid Exceptionalism taken to the nth degree.
When I was a callow 17 year old visiting the West Country for the first time getting called ‘my lover’ was a eye/ear opener, thank Allah my mother wasn’t there, the shock would have killed her.