“We see wild parties, holidays, weddings, family outings and close-knit friendship groups,” wrote one Guardian journalist in 2015. She went on: “Apart from commemorating a deceased person’s life, you’ll be hard pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed.”
Hmmm....In general I don't think that was true at all. Remember, Trump got elected in 2016, on the back of lots of people being very angry and again claims it was social media that radicalised them.
I notice even John Harris is doing "real name". There has to be some editorial guidance across all media that you must put this, even in the context you are writing about is irrelevant.
I like a lot of John Harris stuff, but I think he misses the mark here. There wasn't a golden age 10 years ago of lovely social media. Twitter and Facebook were the platforms at the time that was held up as radicalizing people over Trump and Brexit, all that has changed is the platform has changed to TikTok, Twitch and X. Tommy Ten Names was doing the same back then that he is doing now.
And you can have a nice experience on social media, you just have to stick to only feeds of people you follow and be careful about who you follow. My main X account doesn't contain any of this stuff of extreme violence, racism, etc. Its dead boring world of people talking Machine Learning.
Yes, this is one of his most feeble articles. “Social media is quite inflammatory”. Wow
Isn't it just a rehashing of the old lefty line that "false consciousness" is to blame for the disappointment or anger of anyone right of centre?
Even the Marxist Professors at Brighton Uni told us to watch out for that one
I don’t know who’s lying or fibbing or whatever in regards to the size of the Tommy March, but this an insanely large, dense crowd, which I have never personally seen the like of, in London
If we buy the line that it was a load of football hooligans looking for aggro, that means pretty much every hooligan from all ninety two clubs descended on London for a tear up, and there wasn't much trouble
We need to ban algorithmic feeds. Not the videos/tiktoks themselves, just the feeding mechanism. Algorithmic feeds based on engagement just enrage people. Moving (back) to a subscription model will break this and slow things down without violating free speech or creating content restrictions.
I don’t know who’s lying or fibbing or whatever in regards to the size of the Tommy March, but this an insanely large, dense crowd, which I have never personally seen the like of, in London
If we buy the line that it was a load of football hooligans looking for aggro, that means pretty much every hooligan from all ninety two clubs descended on London for a tear up, and there wasn't much trouble
I’m starting to believe the accounts of people claiming it reached 300k+
“We see wild parties, holidays, weddings, family outings and close-knit friendship groups,” wrote one Guardian journalist in 2015. She went on: “Apart from commemorating a deceased person’s life, you’ll be hard pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed.”
Hmmm....In general I don't think that was true at all. Remember, Trump got elected in 2016, on the back of lots of people being very angry and again claims it was social media that radicalised them.
I notice even John Harris is doing "real name". There has to be some editorial guidance across all media that you must put this, even in the context you are writing about is irrelevant.
I like a lot of John Harris stuff, but I think he misses the mark here. There wasn't a golden age 10 years ago of lovely social media. Twitter and Facebook were the platforms at the time that was held up as radicalizing people over Trump and Brexit, all that has changed is the platform has changed to TikTok, Twitch and X. Tommy Ten Names was doing the same back then that he is doing now.
And you can have a nice experience on social media, you just have to stick to only feeds of people you follow and be careful about who you follow. My main X account doesn't contain any of this stuff of extreme violence, racism, etc. Its dead boring world of people talking Machine Learning.
Yes, this is one of his most feeble articles. “Social media is quite inflammatory”. Wow
Harris's article boils down to the wrong people are saying that Britain is broken.
It was quite alright though for the right people at the right time to bewail:
The decade that broke Britain: the disastrous decisions that left millions in a cost of living crisis
Isn’t the real question of the weekend how will befriender of poor/rich waitresses Farage accommodate the new populist movement sweeping the kingdom (southern half); share or shaft?
Excellent question. Are we going to get a Party to the right of Farage? The Yaxley-Lennons? There would then be three parties swimming in the same fetid tank. Nothing much keeping them apart except for the ambitions of their leaders.
Robinson has already given his backing to Advance UK. Habib spoke at yesterday's rally
You've got to be on your toes to follow the shenanigans of the far right......,
What a time to rejoin the EU. If only we had a Labour leader with a little bit of backbone we could say goodbye to Trump and Mandy and steer a course back to civilisation
Sadly, I think that would lead to violent civil war.
Having a far right party on 25%+ in the polls is convergence with Europe - Italy, France, Germany. To name but a few.
Civilisation, eh?
As high as 56%, in Villefranche Sur Mer.
Whatever arguments there may be for rejoining the EU, marginalising the radical right is not one of them.
Otoh Brexiting doesn’t seem to have done much to marginalise the radical right either.
It was part of the same flow. The politicians sold the people on -
1) The People are Sovereign (no deference to an aristocracy) and can do as they wish - True Democracy 2) You aren’t allowed to change a growing number of parts of public life. The Process State regards you as a tomatoes to be processed into canned chopped tomato. Your part in the process is to shut up and obey. And jump in the can.
Strangely, the Sovereign People didn’t take well to (2)
Again, I would say that analysis is flawed. It's not the "Process State" that has processed people into canned chopped tomatoes: it's large corporations chasing profit. It's not a powerful state, it's a state that has ceded power to international corporations.
Yep. It isn't "the process state" that has closed down the High St in "left behind towns" it is Amazon.
It isn't "the process state" that has closed down your local butcher, greengrocer and pub, it's Asda, Tesco and Aldi.
It isn't "the process state" that has destroyed local and national newspapers, it is Social Media.
Etc etc.
And of course as consumers we have all played our part.
The process state though has massively increased turn over taxes which has absolutely hammered all those small businesses while Amazon can absorb them. I understand the thinking, turn-over taxes are hard to dodge so you get your money out of Amazon, but the level of turn over taxes is insane for small business.
There is a small business guy on YouTube who owns a wide range of successful businesses and employs over his various companies several 1000 people. A few years ago he bought an ice cream factory and the shops. He recently broke down the finances of his most successful ice cream cafe / shop location. On £1.5 million in gross turnover, once he has paid all the costs (remember he makes the ice cream himself), then the turn over taxes etc, he is down to less than £50k in profit. He had 10 shops and down to 2, because he said unless you can do over £1 million in gross turnover you will never make any money on a high street cafe. Its the turn over taxes that are the killer.
Can you define what you mean by "the process state"? Is there a header?
“We see wild parties, holidays, weddings, family outings and close-knit friendship groups,” wrote one Guardian journalist in 2015. She went on: “Apart from commemorating a deceased person’s life, you’ll be hard pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed.”
Hmmm....In general I don't think that was true at all. Remember, Trump got elected in 2016, on the back of lots of people being very angry and again claims it was social media that radicalised them.
I notice even John Harris is doing "real name". There has to be some editorial guidance across all media that you must put this, even in the context you are writing about is irrelevant.
I like a lot of John Harris stuff, but I think he misses the mark here. There wasn't a golden age 10 years ago of lovely social media. Twitter and Facebook were the platforms at the time that was held up as radicalizing people over Trump and Brexit, all that has changed is the platform has changed to TikTok, Twitch and X. Tommy Ten Names was doing the same back then that he is doing now.
And you can have a nice experience on social media, you just have to stick to only feeds of people you follow and be careful about who you follow. My main X account doesn't contain any of this stuff of extreme violence, racism, etc. Its dead boring world of people talking Machine Learning.
Yes, this is one of his most feeble articles. “Social media is quite inflammatory”. Wow
I'd also add that it seems odd to suggest this is confined to the right. The whole of 2020 was a left-wing driven everyone-is-racist-lets-riot, which was just as unhelpful.
“We see wild parties, holidays, weddings, family outings and close-knit friendship groups,” wrote one Guardian journalist in 2015. She went on: “Apart from commemorating a deceased person’s life, you’ll be hard pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed.”
Hmmm....In general I don't think that was true at all. Remember, Trump got elected in 2016, on the back of lots of people being very angry and again claims it was social media that radicalised them.
I notice even John Harris is doing "real name". There has to be some editorial guidance across all media that you must put this, even in the context you are writing about is irrelevant.
Is Harris suggesting it was all wine and roses back then? He literally says there was precious little recognition of life’s more difficult aspects: social strife, inequality, disagreement. Implicit is that blithe lack of recognition may have some responsibility for where we are now.
His main point (as I see it) is that the whole discourse is now driven by all the social media platforms, and the more adept users (and in one case, an owner) want catastrophes, but if they can’t actually cause one they at least want the unhappy and disaffected to perpetually feel that we’re on the edge of the abyss. We can even see on here that the radicalised go mental at every whiff of unattributed bullshit.
“We see wild parties, holidays, weddings, family outings and close-knit friendship groups,” wrote one Guardian journalist in 2015. She went on: “Apart from commemorating a deceased person’s life, you’ll be hard pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed.”
Hmmm....In general I don't think that was true at all. Remember, Trump got elected in 2016, on the back of lots of people being very angry and again claims it was social media that radicalised them.
I notice even John Harris is doing "real name". There has to be some editorial guidance across all media that you must put this, even in the context you are writing about is irrelevant.
I like a lot of John Harris stuff, but I think he misses the mark here. There wasn't a golden age 10 years ago of lovely social media. Twitter and Facebook were the platforms at the time that was held up as radicalizing people over Trump and Brexit, all that has changed is the platform has changed to TikTok, Twitch and X. Tommy Ten Names was doing the same back then that he is doing now.
And you can have a nice experience on social media, you just have to stick to only feeds of people you follow and be careful about who you follow. My main X account doesn't contain any of this stuff of extreme violence, racism, etc. Its dead boring world of people talking Machine Learning.
Yes, this is one of his most feeble articles. “Social media is quite inflammatory”. Wow
Harris's article boils down to the wrong people are saying that Britain is broken.
It was quite alright though for the right people at the right time to bewail:
The decade that broke Britain: the disastrous decisions that left millions in a cost of living crisis
As you say: Harris himself has built an impressive career out of visiting “broken” “left behind” Britain, and talking to Britons in these places. It’s his entire narrative
So for him to now turn around and say “actually, everything’s OK, this is all far right propaganda” is seriously disappointing. He can do better
'Britain will “never surrender” to far-right protesters who use the flag as cover for violence and to instil fear, Keir Starmer has said, condemning attacks against police officers and the racist intimidation of minorities.
I have asked a few times, and no answers so far, but does anyone have an idea why Farage would choose to buy a place in Clacton rather than rent?
Someone, we assume Farage somehow, has coughed up almost £900k to buy a place outright. This was surely unnecessary for a man who has a million pound house within an hour or so's journey from the constituency anyway. Renting a flat would have been more than sufficient. It doesn't make any sense to me
“We see wild parties, holidays, weddings, family outings and close-knit friendship groups,” wrote one Guardian journalist in 2015. She went on: “Apart from commemorating a deceased person’s life, you’ll be hard pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed.”
Hmmm....In general I don't think that was true at all. Remember, Trump got elected in 2016, on the back of lots of people being very angry and again claims it was social media that radicalised them.
I notice even John Harris is doing "real name". There has to be some editorial guidance across all media that you must put this, even in the context you are writing about is irrelevant.
I like a lot of John Harris stuff, but I think he misses the mark here. There wasn't a golden age 10 years ago of lovely social media. Twitter and Facebook were the platforms at the time that was held up as radicalizing people over Trump and Brexit, all that has changed is the platform has changed to TikTok, Twitch and X. Tommy Ten Names was doing the same back then that he is doing now.
And you can have a nice experience on social media, you just have to stick to only feeds of people you follow and be careful about who you follow. My main X account doesn't contain any of this stuff of extreme violence, racism, etc. Its dead boring world of people talking Machine Learning.
Yes, this is one of his most feeble articles. “Social media is quite inflammatory”. Wow
Isn't it just a rehashing of the old lefty line that "false consciousness" is to blame for the disappointment or anger of anyone right of centre?
Even the Marxist Professors at Brighton Uni told us to watch out for that one
Harris just can't believe that people could ever be upset for any real reason. I'm not sure why - perhaps he really believes that he *is* the man of the people, and if he is generally satisfied then the people ought to be generally satisfied, and could only be unsatisfied as a result of some kind of trickery. My favourite example is this clip from 2010, which consists of him wandering around Liverpool and asking people why, after 13 years of Labour government, they aren't returning Labour MPs with larger majorities: https://youtu.be/BIHvjQKEP4A?t=66 (link is to ~66 seconds in). Admittedly this is ancient history now, but nothing much has changed - still a total failure of imagination.
I have asked a few times, and no answers so far, but does anyone have an idea why Farage would choose to buy a place in Clacton rather than rent?
Someone, we assume Farage somehow, has coughed up almost £900k to buy a place outright. This was surely unnecessary for a man who has a million pound house within an hour or so's journey from the constituency anyway. Renting a flat would have been more than sufficient. It doesn't make any sense to me
Especially since he could just expense the rent.
The innocent explanation is that's it's good old Conservative orthodoxy; but a house and you'll never lose, renting is dead money et cetera.
The less innocent joy explanation is it's only the tax aspects of the transaction that have a clean bill of health.
Or maybe he loves Frinton and wants to retire there.
Something I had not picked up on - Steve Hilton (the former Conservative ad-man then urban policy-hitty) is running for Governor of California as a Republican, having gone via 6 years working for Fox News, and is now a USA citizen.
He was on TWTW as a commentator on the Trump visit and as a friend of Charlie Kirk. Commentary on the explicit place of religion in US politics, that does not exist in the UK *.
(IMO he's not looked at Danny Krueger and friends, but TCF he has been in the USA for more than a decade and said he was out of touch when they asked him a different question. Also TBF I'm sure if Kruger and friends do the full "my personal Lord and Saviour" things, which Charlie Kirk did do in spades.)
Something I had not picked up on - Steve Hilton (the former Conservative ad-man then urban policy-hitty) is running for Governor of California as a Republican, having gone via 6 years working for Fox News, and is now a USA citizen.
He was on TWTW as a commentator on the Trump visit.
He is proper mental these days, drank the kool-aid. I can't believe its a serious prospect.
Something I had not picked up on - Steve Hilton (the former Conservative ad-man then urban policy-hitty) is running for Governor of California as a Republican, having gone via 6 years working for Fox News, and is now a USA citizen.
He was on TWTW as a commentator on the Trump visit.
He is proper mental these days, drank the kool-aid. I can't believe its a serious prospect.
Thank you for taking one for the team. So, what was it like? Any ill effects yet?
It’s… peppery. And my god you can really see the maggots
Interesting. I see it has been illegal since 1962, but enforcement has been limited.
My grandfather had a grocers shop and I used to go and "help". This was before I was 9 as we moved on my 9th birthday. My memory (or it may have been stories) were of him selling cheese with maggots. There would be a big round and a vicious looking wire cutter. I'm now wondering if this was true as we moved in 1963 so this seems a bit late for this to be allowed.
Something I had not picked up on - Steve Hilton (the former Conservative ad-man then urban policy-hitty) is running for Governor of California as a Republican, having gone via 6 years working for Fox News, and is now a USA citizen.
He was on TWTW as a commentator on the Trump visit.
He is proper mental these days, drank the kool-aid. I can't believe its a serious prospect.
This video, an impression of James O'Brien dealing with a caller who is so radicalised by flags that they turn into Robinson, is brilliant. I think the impression of TR is spot on
“We see wild parties, holidays, weddings, family outings and close-knit friendship groups,” wrote one Guardian journalist in 2015. She went on: “Apart from commemorating a deceased person’s life, you’ll be hard pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed.”
Hmmm....In general I don't think that was true at all. Remember, Trump got elected in 2016, on the back of lots of people being very angry and again claims it was social media that radicalised them.
I notice even John Harris is doing "real name". There has to be some editorial guidance across all media that you must put this, even in the context you are writing about is irrelevant.
I like a lot of John Harris stuff, but I think he misses the mark here. There wasn't a golden age 10 years ago of lovely social media. Twitter and Facebook were the platforms at the time that was held up as radicalizing people over Trump and Brexit, all that has changed is the platform has changed to TikTok, Twitch and X. Tommy Ten Names was doing the same back then that he is doing now.
And you can have a nice experience on social media, you just have to stick to only feeds of people you follow and be careful about who you follow. My main X account doesn't contain any of this stuff of extreme violence, racism, etc. Its dead boring world of people talking Machine Learning.
Yes, this is one of his most feeble articles. “Social media is quite inflammatory”. Wow
Harris's article boils down to the wrong people are saying that Britain is broken.
It was quite alright though for the right people at the right time to bewail:
The decade that broke Britain: the disastrous decisions that left millions in a cost of living crisis
As you say: Harris himself has built an impressive career out of visiting “broken” “left behind” Britain, and talking to Britons in these places. It’s his entire narrative
So for him to now turn around and say “actually, everything’s OK, this is all far right propaganda” is seriously disappointing. He can do better
That's not what he's saying, on my reading of it. He's saying that people believe things that are simply untrue, based not on their personal experience but on lies that are getting fed to them drip drip constantly. The stuff people who never come to London believe about life in London is a case in point. I mean, I live in London, in the kind of area that is exactly the kind that people are being told is a hell scape of violent crime and chaos, and in reality it's actually a nice place full of friendly people that I am overjoyed to raise my family in. This stuff people are being fed is complete nonsense, but it's part of a narrative that has a clear goal.
This video, an impression of James O'Brien dealing with a caller who is so radicalised by flags that they turn into Robinson, is brilliant. I think the impression of TR is spot on
Isn’t the real question of the weekend how will befriender of poor/rich waitresses Farage accommodate the new populist movement sweeping the kingdom (southern half); share or shaft?
Excellent question. Are we going to get a Party to the right of Farage? The Yaxley-Lennons? There would then be three parties swimming in the same fetid tank. Nothing much keeping them apart except for the ambitions of their leaders.
Robinson has already given his backing to Advance UK. Habib spoke at yesterday's rally
You've got to be on your toes to follow the shenanigans of the far right......,
What a time to rejoin the EU. If only we had a Labour leader with a little bit of backbone we could say goodbye to Trump and Mandy and steer a course back to civilisation
Sadly, I think that would lead to violent civil war.
Having a far right party on 25%+ in the polls is convergence with Europe - Italy, France, Germany. To name but a few.
Civilisation, eh?
As high as 56%, in Villefranche Sur Mer.
Whatever arguments there may be for rejoining the EU, marginalising the radical right is not one of them.
Otoh Brexiting doesn’t seem to have done much to marginalise the radical right either.
It was part of the same flow. The politicians sold the people on -
1) The People are Sovereign (no deference to an aristocracy) and can do as they wish - True Democracy 2) You aren’t allowed to change a growing number of parts of public life. The Process State regards you as a tomatoes to be processed into canned chopped tomato. Your part in the process is to shut up and obey. And jump in the can.
Strangely, the Sovereign People didn’t take well to (2)
Again, I would say that analysis is flawed. It's not the "Process State" that has processed people into canned chopped tomatoes: it's large corporations chasing profit. It's not a powerful state, it's a state that has ceded power to international corporations.
Yep. It isn't "the process state" that has closed down the High St in "left behind towns" it is Amazon.
It isn't "the process state" that has closed down your local butcher, greengrocer and pub, it's Asda, Tesco and Aldi.
It isn't "the process state" that has destroyed local and national newspapers, it is Social Media.
Etc etc.
And of course as consumers we have all played our part.
The process state though has massively increased turn over taxes which has absolutely hammered all those small businesses while Amazon can absorb them. I understand the thinking, turn-over taxes are hard to dodge so you get your money out of Amazon, but the level of turn over taxes is insane for small business.
There is a small business guy on YouTube who owns a wide range of successful businesses and employs over his various companies several 1000 people. A few years ago he bought an ice cream factory and the shops. He recently broke down the finances of his most successful ice cream cafe / shop location. On £1.5 million in gross turnover, once he has paid all the costs (remember he makes the ice cream himself), then the turn over taxes etc, he is down to less than £50k in profit. He had 10 shops and down to 2, because he said unless you can do over £1 million in gross turnover you will never make any money on a high street cafe. Its the turn over taxes that are the killer.
Can you define what you mean by "the process state"? Is there a header?
I have asked a few times, and no answers so far, but does anyone have an idea why Farage would choose to buy a place in Clacton rather than rent?
Someone, we assume Farage somehow, has coughed up almost £900k to buy a place outright. This was surely unnecessary for a man who has a million pound house within an hour or so's journey from the constituency anyway. Renting a flat would have been more than sufficient. It doesn't make any sense to me
@isam I did cover this the other day, although not in response to yourself. Prospective MPs get a lot of flack for not being local and they like selling the fact they are local on their literature and placards ("Your local candidate"). Farage was getting it even more than most beforehand.
Now the easy option is to rent a place, or buy a cheap flat and pretend you are local (I referenced Gove who did this in Surrey Heath [rented], then promptly buggered off and the previous Tory MP for Guildford who bought a flat, when her actual home was elsewhere [actually only about 20 miles away]). So even if they do this and even if relatively local they still get some flack unless they are fully embedded.
So Farage, who was under even more scrutiny about being an absent MP, did the right thing (almost) to cover off those complaints. Of course the 'almost' bit is coming back to bite him, but there are plenty of other MPs who haven't gone as far as him to show local credentials and are getting no flack.
Isn’t the real question of the weekend how will befriender of poor/rich waitresses Farage accommodate the new populist movement sweeping the kingdom (southern half); share or shaft?
Excellent question. Are we going to get a Party to the right of Farage? The Yaxley-Lennons? There would then be three parties swimming in the same fetid tank. Nothing much keeping them apart except for the ambitions of their leaders.
Robinson has already given his backing to Advance UK. Habib spoke at yesterday's rally
You've got to be on your toes to follow the shenanigans of the far right......,
What a time to rejoin the EU. If only we had a Labour leader with a little bit of backbone we could say goodbye to Trump and Mandy and steer a course back to civilisation
Sadly, I think that would lead to violent civil war.
Having a far right party on 25%+ in the polls is convergence with Europe - Italy, France, Germany. To name but a few.
Civilisation, eh?
As high as 56%, in Villefranche Sur Mer.
Whatever arguments there may be for rejoining the EU, marginalising the radical right is not one of them.
Otoh Brexiting doesn’t seem to have done much to marginalise the radical right either.
It was part of the same flow. The politicians sold the people on -
1) The People are Sovereign (no deference to an aristocracy) and can do as they wish - True Democracy 2) You aren’t allowed to change a growing number of parts of public life. The Process State regards you as a tomatoes to be processed into canned chopped tomato. Your part in the process is to shut up and obey. And jump in the can.
Strangely, the Sovereign People didn’t take well to (2)
Again, I would say that analysis is flawed. It's not the "Process State" that has processed people into canned chopped tomatoes: it's large corporations chasing profit. It's not a powerful state, it's a state that has ceded power to international corporations.
Yep. It isn't "the process state" that has closed down the High St in "left behind towns" it is Amazon.
It isn't "the process state" that has closed down your local butcher, greengrocer and pub, it's Asda, Tesco and Aldi.
It isn't "the process state" that has destroyed local and national newspapers, it is Social Media.
Etc etc.
And of course as consumers we have all played our part.
The process state though has massively increased turn over taxes which has absolutely hammered all those small businesses while Amazon can absorb them. I understand the thinking, turn-over taxes are hard to dodge so you get your money out of Amazon, but the level of turn over taxes is insane for small business.
There is a small business guy on YouTube who owns a wide range of successful businesses and employs over his various companies several 1000 people. A few years ago he bought an ice cream factory and the shops. He recently broke down the finances of his most successful ice cream cafe / shop location. On £1.5 million in gross turnover, once he has paid all the costs (remember he makes the ice cream himself), then the turn over taxes etc, he is down to less than £50k in profit. He had 10 shops and down to 2, because he said unless you can do over £1 million in gross turnover you will never make any money on a high street cafe. Its the turn over taxes that are the killer.
A massive problem that is hardly talked about in the UK (that isn't true in Germany), we have a small number of very large employers and a massive number of tiny employers. Now yes medium sized companies since the war have merged and been bought out, but the process system makes it incredible difficult to grow new small companies in the UK. We have hardly any that employ in the 1000s range.
That sounds like James Sinclair - watching him go from being very careful to be politically neutral to basically "this government is insane, why do they want to destroy small businesses" over the past year has been quite amusing.
He's right of course - loads of exemptions for the smallest businesses, as soon as you get to about 5 employees, or you want to move into a premises that over £12k a year in rent, or you somehow manage to make over £50k profit (on paper!) all of a sudden you get the full weight of all the taxation the government can throw at you. As someone who currently employs 5 people, and who would like to grow my business with some better premises etc etc, it feels like everything is pretty much designed to stop me.
Making it really easy to scale 3-5 person businesses into 10-20 businesses would probably do more for economic growth than almost anything else the government could do - even it was only achieved by some sorts of tax holidays that temporarily gave you some respite when you grow past a certain size.
Rebating business rates per FTE person employed might be an interesting thing to try which would help and incentivise business scaling.
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
Isn’t the real question of the weekend how will befriender of poor/rich waitresses Farage accommodate the new populist movement sweeping the kingdom (southern half); share or shaft?
Excellent question. Are we going to get a Party to the right of Farage? The Yaxley-Lennons? There would then be three parties swimming in the same fetid tank. Nothing much keeping them apart except for the ambitions of their leaders.
Robinson has already given his backing to Advance UK. Habib spoke at yesterday's rally
You've got to be on your toes to follow the shenanigans of the far right......,
What a time to rejoin the EU. If only we had a Labour leader with a little bit of backbone we could say goodbye to Trump and Mandy and steer a course back to civilisation
Sadly, I think that would lead to violent civil war.
Having a far right party on 25%+ in the polls is convergence with Europe - Italy, France, Germany. To name but a few.
Civilisation, eh?
As high as 56%, in Villefranche Sur Mer.
Whatever arguments there may be for rejoining the EU, marginalising the radical right is not one of them.
Otoh Brexiting doesn’t seem to have done much to marginalise the radical right either.
It was part of the same flow. The politicians sold the people on -
1) The People are Sovereign (no deference to an aristocracy) and can do as they wish - True Democracy 2) You aren’t allowed to change a growing number of parts of public life. The Process State regards you as a tomatoes to be processed into canned chopped tomato. Your part in the process is to shut up and obey. And jump in the can.
Strangely, the Sovereign People didn’t take well to (2)
Again, I would say that analysis is flawed. It's not the "Process State" that has processed people into canned chopped tomatoes: it's large corporations chasing profit. It's not a powerful state, it's a state that has ceded power to international corporations.
Yep. It isn't "the process state" that has closed down the High St in "left behind towns" it is Amazon.
It isn't "the process state" that has closed down your local butcher, greengrocer and pub, it's Asda, Tesco and Aldi.
It isn't "the process state" that has destroyed local and national newspapers, it is Social Media.
Etc etc.
And of course as consumers we have all played our part.
The process state though has massively increased turn over taxes which has absolutely hammered all those small businesses while Amazon can absorb them. I understand the thinking, turn-over taxes are hard to dodge so you get your money out of Amazon, but the level of turn over taxes is insane for small business.
There is a small business guy on YouTube who owns a wide range of successful businesses and employs over his various companies several 1000 people. A few years ago he bought an ice cream factory and the shops. He recently broke down the finances of his most successful ice cream cafe / shop location. On £1.5 million in gross turnover, once he has paid all the costs (remember he makes the ice cream himself), then the turn over taxes etc, he is down to less than £50k in profit. He had 10 shops and down to 2, because he said unless you can do over £1 million in gross turnover you will never make any money on a high street cafe. Its the turn over taxes that are the killer.
A massive problem that is hardly talked about in the UK (that isn't true in Germany), we have a small number of very large employers and a massive number of tiny employers. Now yes medium sized companies since the war have merged and been bought out, but the process system makes it incredible difficult to grow new small companies in the UK. We have hardly any that employ in the 1000s range.
That sounds like James Sinclair - watching him go from being very careful to be politically neutral to basically "this government is insane, why do they want to destroy small businesses" over the past year has been quite amusing.
He's right of course - loads of exemptions for the smallest businesses, as soon as you get to about 5 employees, or you want to move into a premises that over £12k a year in rent, or you somehow manage to make over £50k profit (on paper!) all of a sudden you get the full weight of all the taxation the government can throw at you. As someone who currently employs 5 people, and who would like to grow my business with some better premises etc etc, it feels like everything is pretty much designed to stop me.
Making it really easy to scale 3-5 person businesses into 10-20 businesses would probably do more for economic growth than almost anything else the government could do - even it was only achieved by some sorts of tax holidays that temporarily gave you some respite when you grow past a certain size.
Rebating business rates per FTE person employed might be an interesting thing to try which would help and incentivise business scaling.
It is him. His complaint over turn over taxes has been long held though. As long as I have watched his content he has brought up examples of the giant cost that is placed on businesses like his, and he isn't anti-regulation, in fact he credits strong regulation as giving him the ability to scale his child care business.
Politically, I reckon he probably didn't mind a bit of Tony Blair or David Cameron. Its since then that has had him increasingly struggling to stay "neutral".
All the changes in Reeves first budget will have hit him in particular really hard. He has businesses that requires lots of staff in child care and leisure industries, so higher minimum wage, higher employee NI, absolutely smash him. So not surprising ain't happy about the government.
“We see wild parties, holidays, weddings, family outings and close-knit friendship groups,” wrote one Guardian journalist in 2015. She went on: “Apart from commemorating a deceased person’s life, you’ll be hard pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed.”
Hmmm....In general I don't think that was true at all. Remember, Trump got elected in 2016, on the back of lots of people being very angry and again claims it was social media that radicalised them.
I notice even John Harris is doing "real name". There has to be some editorial guidance across all media that you must put this, even in the context you are writing about is irrelevant.
I like a lot of John Harris stuff, but I think he misses the mark here. There wasn't a golden age 10 years ago of lovely social media. Twitter and Facebook were the platforms at the time that was held up as radicalizing people over Trump and Brexit, all that has changed is the platform has changed to TikTok, Twitch and X. Tommy Ten Names was doing the same back then that he is doing now.
And you can have a nice experience on social media, you just have to stick to only feeds of people you follow and be careful about who you follow. My main X account doesn't contain any of this stuff of extreme violence, racism, etc. Its dead boring world of people talking Machine Learning.
Yes, this is one of his most feeble articles. “Social media is quite inflammatory”. Wow
I'd also add that it seems odd to suggest this is confined to the right. The whole of 2020 was a left-wing driven everyone-is-racist-lets-riot, which was just as unhelpful.
I think that was the worst year of my life.
The whole world went mad. It led to me making a decision to leave my employer at the time as it went Turbo-Woke and started launching events about White Privilege.
“We see wild parties, holidays, weddings, family outings and close-knit friendship groups,” wrote one Guardian journalist in 2015. She went on: “Apart from commemorating a deceased person’s life, you’ll be hard pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed.”
Hmmm....In general I don't think that was true at all. Remember, Trump got elected in 2016, on the back of lots of people being very angry and again claims it was social media that radicalised them.
I notice even John Harris is doing "real name". There has to be some editorial guidance across all media that you must put this, even in the context you are writing about is irrelevant.
I like a lot of John Harris stuff, but I think he misses the mark here. There wasn't a golden age 10 years ago of lovely social media. Twitter and Facebook were the platforms at the time that was held up as radicalizing people over Trump and Brexit, all that has changed is the platform has changed to TikTok, Twitch and X. Tommy Ten Names was doing the same back then that he is doing now.
And you can have a nice experience on social media, you just have to stick to only feeds of people you follow and be careful about who you follow. My main X account doesn't contain any of this stuff of extreme violence, racism, etc. Its dead boring world of people talking Machine Learning.
Yes, this is one of his most feeble articles. “Social media is quite inflammatory”. Wow
Harris's article boils down to the wrong people are saying that Britain is broken.
It was quite alright though for the right people at the right time to bewail:
The decade that broke Britain: the disastrous decisions that left millions in a cost of living crisis
As you say: Harris himself has built an impressive career out of visiting “broken” “left behind” Britain, and talking to Britons in these places. It’s his entire narrative
So for him to now turn around and say “actually, everything’s OK, this is all far right propaganda” is seriously disappointing. He can do better
That's not what he's saying, on my reading of it. He's saying that people believe things that are simply untrue, based not on their personal experience but on lies that are getting fed to them drip drip constantly. The stuff people who never come to London believe about life in London is a case in point. I mean, I live in London, in the kind of area that is exactly the kind that people are being told is a hell scape of violent crime and chaos, and in reality it's actually a nice place full of friendly people that I am overjoyed to raise my family in. This stuff people are being fed is complete nonsense, but it's part of a narrative that has a clear goal.
A lot of this seems very new, and very directly the result of social media.
There’s always been a tension between city and country of course, and always a dual view of the big city that it’s both a privileged enclave whose out of touch inhabitants do awful things like take their children to Yo! Sushi, and a rotten hellhole that no one in their right mind would venture into, but the propaganda has been relentless since about 4 or 5 years ago, and really taken off after Musk took control of Twitter.
Still, I was planning on heading out into your Telegraph Hill hellscape this afternoon but then it started raining.
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
He isn't just some kind of illiterate thug, I am pretty confident he did reasonably well at school and had a decent job before he got into his activism
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
He isn't just some kind of illiterate thug, I am pretty confident he did reasonably well at school and had a decent job before he got into his activism
I think he was a plane engineer at Luton airport but lost his job over his football hooligan convictions. Since then, his personal finance situation is rather colourful to say the least with a tanning business and property development, combined with mortgage fraud. Even before he learned to leverage social media to make money it appears he had built quite a fortune, how he did it, never seems totally clear.
Isn’t the real question of the weekend how will befriender of poor/rich waitresses Farage accommodate the new populist movement sweeping the kingdom (southern half); share or shaft?
Excellent question. Are we going to get a Party to the right of Farage? The Yaxley-Lennons? There would then be three parties swimming in the same fetid tank. Nothing much keeping them apart except for the ambitions of their leaders.
Robinson has already given his backing to Advance UK. Habib spoke at yesterday's rally
You've got to be on your toes to follow the shenanigans of the far right......,
What a time to rejoin the EU. If only we had a Labour leader with a little bit of backbone we could say goodbye to Trump and Mandy and steer a course back to civilisation
Sadly, I think that would lead to violent civil war.
Having a far right party on 25%+ in the polls is convergence with Europe - Italy, France, Germany. To name but a few.
Civilisation, eh?
As high as 56%, in Villefranche Sur Mer.
Whatever arguments there may be for rejoining the EU, marginalising the radical right is not one of them.
Otoh Brexiting doesn’t seem to have done much to marginalise the radical right either.
It was part of the same flow. The politicians sold the people on -
1) The People are Sovereign (no deference to an aristocracy) and can do as they wish - True Democracy 2) You aren’t allowed to change a growing number of parts of public life. The Process State regards you as a tomatoes to be processed into canned chopped tomato. Your part in the process is to shut up and obey. And jump in the can.
Strangely, the Sovereign People didn’t take well to (2)
Again, I would say that analysis is flawed. It's not the "Process State" that has processed people into canned chopped tomatoes: it's large corporations chasing profit. It's not a powerful state, it's a state that has ceded power to international corporations.
Yep. It isn't "the process state" that has closed down the High St in "left behind towns" it is Amazon.
It isn't "the process state" that has closed down your local butcher, greengrocer and pub, it's Asda, Tesco and Aldi.
It isn't "the process state" that has destroyed local and national newspapers, it is Social Media.
Etc etc.
And of course as consumers we have all played our part.
The process state though has massively increased turn over taxes which has absolutely hammered all those small businesses while Amazon can absorb them. I understand the thinking, turn-over taxes are hard to dodge so you get your money out of Amazon, but the level of turn over taxes is insane for small business.
There is a small business guy on YouTube who owns a wide range of successful businesses and employs over his various companies several 1000 people. A few years ago he bought an ice cream factory and the shops. He recently broke down the finances of his most successful ice cream cafe / shop location. On £1.5 million in gross turnover, once he has paid all the costs (remember he makes the ice cream himself), then the turn over taxes etc, he is down to less than £50k in profit. He had 10 shops and down to 2, because he said unless you can do over £1 million in gross turnover you will never make any money on a high street cafe. Its the turn over taxes that are the killer.
A massive problem that is hardly talked about in the UK (that isn't true in Germany), we have a small number of very large employers and a massive number of tiny employers. Now yes medium sized companies since the war have merged and been bought out, but the process system makes it incredible difficult to grow new small companies in the UK. We have hardly any that employ in the 1000s range.
That sounds like James Sinclair - watching him go from being very careful to be politically neutral to basically "this government is insane, why do they want to destroy small businesses" over the past year has been quite amusing.
He's right of course - loads of exemptions for the smallest businesses, as soon as you get to about 5 employees, or you want to move into a premises that over £12k a year in rent, or you somehow manage to make over £50k profit (on paper!) all of a sudden you get the full weight of all the taxation the government can throw at you. As someone who currently employs 5 people, and who would like to grow my business with some better premises etc etc, it feels like everything is pretty much designed to stop me.
Making it really easy to scale 3-5 person businesses into 10-20 businesses would probably do more for economic growth than almost anything else the government could do - even it was only achieved by some sorts of tax holidays that temporarily gave you some respite when you grow past a certain size.
Rebating business rates per FTE person employed might be an interesting thing to try which would help and incentivise business scaling.
It is him. His complaint over turn over taxes has been long held though. As long as I have watched his content he has brought up examples of the giant cost that is placed on businesses like his, and he isn't anti-regulation, in fact he credits strong regulation as giving him the ability to scale his child care business.
Politically, I reckon he probably didn't mind a bit of Tony Blair or David Cameron. Its since then that has had him increasingly struggling to stay "neutral".
All the changes in Reeves first budget will have hit him in particular really hard. He has businesses that requires lots of staff in child care and leisure industries, so higher minimum wage, higher employee NI, absolutely smash him. So not surprising ain't happy about the government.
What does he mean by turnover taxes? We have VAT, which is sort of (though not strictly) a turnover tax but has the highest registration threshold in Europe, and we have business rates which are a major headache and need reform, but are not turnover taxes in any sense.
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
He isn't just some kind of illiterate thug, I am pretty confident he did reasonably well at school and had a decent job before he got into his activism
Yes, I’ve never bought the idea he’s a moron, but equally I’ve never entertained the idea he might be very genuinely gifted with demagoguic skills - until now
He’s becoming a potent player in British politics. At some point he might get too powerful for the state to continue persecuting him
“We see wild parties, holidays, weddings, family outings and close-knit friendship groups,” wrote one Guardian journalist in 2015. She went on: “Apart from commemorating a deceased person’s life, you’ll be hard pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed.”
Hmmm....In general I don't think that was true at all. Remember, Trump got elected in 2016, on the back of lots of people being very angry and again claims it was social media that radicalised them.
I notice even John Harris is doing "real name". There has to be some editorial guidance across all media that you must put this, even in the context you are writing about is irrelevant.
I like a lot of John Harris stuff, but I think he misses the mark here. There wasn't a golden age 10 years ago of lovely social media. Twitter and Facebook were the platforms at the time that was held up as radicalizing people over Trump and Brexit, all that has changed is the platform has changed to TikTok, Twitch and X. Tommy Ten Names was doing the same back then that he is doing now.
And you can have a nice experience on social media, you just have to stick to only feeds of people you follow and be careful about who you follow. My main X account doesn't contain any of this stuff of extreme violence, racism, etc. Its dead boring world of people talking Machine Learning.
Yes, this is one of his most feeble articles. “Social media is quite inflammatory”. Wow
I'd also add that it seems odd to suggest this is confined to the right. The whole of 2020 was a left-wing driven everyone-is-racist-lets-riot, which was just as unhelpful.
I think that was the worst year of my life.
The whole world went mad. It led to me making a decision to leave my employer at the time as it went Turbo-Woke and started launching events about White Privilege.
And, then, the endless lockdowns.
Worst year of mine, as well. So at least we’re not, either of us, alone
Probably the worst year for tens of millions of people, in fact
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
He isn't just some kind of illiterate thug, I am pretty confident he did reasonably well at school and had a decent job before he got into his activism
I think he was a plane engineer at Luton airport but lost his job over his football hooligan convictions. Since then, his personal finance situation is rather colourful to say the least with a tanning business and property development, combined with mortgage fraud.
Quite funny he had a business based on giving people darker skins.
The Sunday Rawnsley, brought to you via the warm foothills of the Black Forest:
Sir Keir Starmer cannot think that his embattled premiership is going to gain lustre from bringing this guest [Trump] to our shores. The ideal state visit is an occasion to celebrate and nurture the ties that bind two countries. Other times, they are endured as a necessary price of realpolitik.
This visit is the most cynically conceived I can remember. It is best thought of as the apotheosis of Operation Ingratiate: the obsequious strategy that Sir Keir started pursuing even before Trump returned to the Oval Office. Starmer aides contend that laying on a splash of regal pageantry and catering is a price worth paying to swerve the most punishing of the Trumpian tariffs. Signatories on UK-US tech partnerships will be hyped as another fruit of the relationship.
Playing nice with The Donald turns the stomachs of the median Labour MP who would much prefer to enjoy Sir Ed Davey’s freedom to declare that he is boycotting the state banquet at Windsor Castle in protest at the horrifying carnage in Gaza. Donald Trump will regard his visit to our shores as a success if he comes away with an ego-gratifying photo album of happy snaps with the royals and the Household Cavalry. Sir Keir has a contrasting need – to show his domestic audience at least glimmers of progress on Gaza and the security of Europe.
There is a distinction between the necessities of realpolitik and obeisance so slavish that you make yourself look like a vassal, meekly compliant to the capricious and authoritarian White House. The prime minister won’t do his reputation or our national dignity any favours if he loses sight of the difference this week.
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
He isn't just some kind of illiterate thug, I am pretty confident he did reasonably well at school and had a decent job before he got into his activism
The name he has adopted is v clever. Not only is "Tommy" (or "Tommeh" if you prefer) the name he is now universally known as (as per Boris, and Ken) which is a great branding asset, but it is a particularly appealing one. Who could think ill of a Tommy? And then, of course, at the back of the mind, there are are the WW1 resonances of that name which is deeply embedded in our collective psyche. That really is clever (and monstrously cynical), sad to say.
Its been doing the rounds of social media for days now. Its even done the rounds on here....in this thread.
I had a day off yesterday !
It was a members day for celebration of the 160th Anniversary of the Open Spaces Society, and the 40th Anniversary of their current General Secretary being in post. We were in Kenilworth.
The best quote:
"We decided the best way to protect land was to own it; so we set up the National Trust in 1895."
I learnt about a thing called a "Side Road Order", which are what are created to cut through all the side roads when building a motorway or trunk road, and that - plus a legal precedent - may well mean that my unregistered-as-a--PROW footbridge across the M1 that the bigger-roundabout demanders are ignoring, may actually be protected as it runs between Carter Lane West and Carter Lane East and so can be shown to be an existing Right of Way.
I have asked a few times, and no answers so far, but does anyone have an idea why Farage would choose to buy a place in Clacton rather than rent?
Someone, we assume Farage somehow, has coughed up almost £900k to buy a place outright. This was surely unnecessary for a man who has a million pound house within an hour or so's journey from the constituency anyway. Renting a flat would have been more than sufficient. It doesn't make any sense to me
@isam I did cover this the other day, although not in response to yourself. Prospective MPs get a lot of flack for not being local and they like selling the fact they are local on their literature and placards ("Your local candidate"). Farage was getting it even more than most beforehand.
Now the easy option is to rent a place, or buy a cheap flat and pretend you are local (I referenced Gove who did this in Surrey Heath [rented], then promptly buggered off and the previous Tory MP for Guildford who bought a flat, when her actual home was elsewhere [actually only about 20 miles away]). So even if they do this and even if relatively local they still get some flack unless they are fully embedded.
So Farage, who was under even more scrutiny about being an absent MP, did the right thing (almost) to cover off those complaints. Of course the 'almost' bit is coming back to bite him, but there are plenty of other MPs who haven't gone as far as him to show local credentials and are getting no flack.
Indeed. Seely, back when he was the island's MP, and despite his family connections with various ancestors having represented the island in olden times, struggled to explain why he only rented on the island, and was rumoured to spend much of his time in the east midlands somewhere. Possibly a reason why he lost his seat while the Tories held the east.
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
The big crowds didn't turn up for Tommeh, they turned up because they feel as though their (our) culture is under attack from the establishment and protesting is the only way to show that they won't be silenced by Starmer and his band of human rights lawyers. What started with a few people putting up flags and councils trying to take them down turned into a new nationalist/patriotic movement. I don't see that Robinson had very much to do with it.
If anything it's Nige that's the political genius, not Robinson. He's successfully harnessed these disparate movements into 34% of voting intention.
I think what's really done it recently is all of the free speech censorship, dismissal of rape and sexual abuse by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants by the state until they were forced to address it by protestors, the hotels and continued boat arrivals. But really, the first I think it what has really turned this from an anti-immigration movement into a much wider one, it's captured a lot more middle of the road people who are fed up of the censorship and being told that what they think is wrong by people who are now cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk.
As always, it's hypocrisy that voters really hate more than anything else. I don't think Robinson has really done anything on that front, the left and hard left who have lectured the world about how "being kind" is important are now dancing on the grave of a political opponent and using wokeness to censor speech is backfiring on them. Robinson just happens to be one of the more visible people on the other side. I'd say Nige has been much more important in bringing together the alliance that has added up to 34% of VI than Robinson.
Yes, pretty much. Similar to Hitler. Working the streets, proper demagoguery for the internet age
I don’t believe tommeh is a Nazi. But Hitler is an apt comparison in terms of what he does and how it succeeds
You don't believe Tommy is a Nazi? Would you like to identify some differences? And I don't mean he has no plans to invade Poland.
Oh don’t be daft
I'm not being daft. Go on show how he is not a Nazi. The overlap of his views and fascism seem pretty obvious to most. I don't even think he would disagree. Just look at the groups he has been a member of.
Yes, pretty much. Similar to Hitler. Working the streets, proper demagoguery for the internet age
I don’t believe tommeh is a Nazi. But Hitler is an apt comparison in terms of what he does and how it succeeds
You don't believe Tommy is a Nazi? Would you like to identify some differences? And I don't mean he has no plans to invade Poland.
Oh don’t be daft
I'm not being daft. Go on show how he is not a Nazi. The overlap of his views and fascism seem pretty obvious to most. I don't even think he would disagree. Just look at the groups he has been a member of.
It’s a level of discourse which is so obviously infantile it bores me shitless. You do you, however
“We see wild parties, holidays, weddings, family outings and close-knit friendship groups,” wrote one Guardian journalist in 2015. She went on: “Apart from commemorating a deceased person’s life, you’ll be hard pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed.”
Hmmm....In general I don't think that was true at all. Remember, Trump got elected in 2016, on the back of lots of people being very angry and again claims it was social media that radicalised them.
I notice even John Harris is doing "real name". There has to be some editorial guidance across all media that you must put this, even in the context you are writing about is irrelevant.
I like a lot of John Harris stuff, but I think he misses the mark here. There wasn't a golden age 10 years ago of lovely social media. Twitter and Facebook were the platforms at the time that was held up as radicalizing people over Trump and Brexit, all that has changed is the platform has changed to TikTok, Twitch and X. Tommy Ten Names was doing the same back then that he is doing now.
And you can have a nice experience on social media, you just have to stick to only feeds of people you follow and be careful about who you follow. My main X account doesn't contain any of this stuff of extreme violence, racism, etc. Its dead boring world of people talking Machine Learning.
Yes, this is one of his most feeble articles. “Social media is quite inflammatory”. Wow
I'd also add that it seems odd to suggest this is confined to the right. The whole of 2020 was a left-wing driven everyone-is-racist-lets-riot, which was just as unhelpful.
I think that was the worst year of my life.
The whole world went mad. It led to me making a decision to leave my employer at the time as it went Turbo-Woke and started launching events about White Privilege.
And, then, the endless lockdowns.
Worst year of mine, as well. So at least we’re not, either of us, alone
Probably the worst year for tens of millions of people, in fact
“We see wild parties, holidays, weddings, family outings and close-knit friendship groups,” wrote one Guardian journalist in 2015. She went on: “Apart from commemorating a deceased person’s life, you’ll be hard pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed.”
Hmmm....In general I don't think that was true at all. Remember, Trump got elected in 2016, on the back of lots of people being very angry and again claims it was social media that radicalised them.
I notice even John Harris is doing "real name". There has to be some editorial guidance across all media that you must put this, even in the context you are writing about is irrelevant.
I like a lot of John Harris stuff, but I think he misses the mark here. There wasn't a golden age 10 years ago of lovely social media. Twitter and Facebook were the platforms at the time that was held up as radicalizing people over Trump and Brexit, all that has changed is the platform has changed to TikTok, Twitch and X. Tommy Ten Names was doing the same back then that he is doing now.
And you can have a nice experience on social media, you just have to stick to only feeds of people you follow and be careful about who you follow. My main X account doesn't contain any of this stuff of extreme violence, racism, etc. Its dead boring world of people talking Machine Learning.
Yes, this is one of his most feeble articles. “Social media is quite inflammatory”. Wow
I'd also add that it seems odd to suggest this is confined to the right. The whole of 2020 was a left-wing driven everyone-is-racist-lets-riot, which was just as unhelpful.
I think that was the worst year of my life.
The whole world went mad. It led to me making a decision to leave my employer at the time as it went Turbo-Woke and started launching events about White Privilege.
And, then, the endless lockdowns.
I have to say working for a Japanese company at the time very much protected us from turbo-woke and being unit director also allowed me to resist any pressure from London based C-suite who attempted to push this nonsense for a while. I also think not being white and telling them to get fucked really helped me, I have no liberal white guilt and I'm not afraid to use my position as someone who isn't white to tell those white liberals to fuck off and watch them splutter and get cross but ultimately do nothing.
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
The big crowds didn't turn up for Tommeh, they turned up because they feel as though their (our) culture is under attack from the establishment and protesting is the only way to show that they won't be silenced by Starmer and his band of human rights lawyers. What started with a few people putting up flags and councils trying to take them down turned into a new nationalist/patriotic movement. I don't see that Robinson had very much to do with it.
If anything it's Nige that's the political genius, not Robinson. He's successfully harnessed these disparate movements into 34% of voting intention.
I think what's really done it recently is all of the free speech censorship, dismissal of rape and sexual abuse by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants by the state until they were forced to address it by protestors, the hotels and continued boat arrivals. But really, the first I think it what has really turned this from an anti-immigration movement into a much wider one, it's captured a lot more middle of the road people who are fed up of the censorship and being told that what they think is wrong by people who are now cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk.
As always, it's hypocrisy that voters really hate more than anything else. I don't think Robinson has really done anything on that front, the left and hard left who have lectured the world about how "being kind" is important are now dancing on the grave of a political opponent and using wokeness to censor speech is backfiring on them. Robinson just happens to be one of the more visible people on the other side. I'd say Nige has been much more important in bringing together the alliance that has added up to 34% of VI than Robinson.
I disagree. Tommy R organised this and was the driving force. I bet there were tens of thousands in the march, as you say, who actively dislike him. Yet he’s managed to harness them, as well
He is an absolute classic demagogue of the old school European tradition, right down to the history of street fighting and the criminal record. I can’t think of an equivalent in British history, all the comparisons are continental European. There are elements of Mussolini, elements of Hitler, a bit of Jean Marie Le Pen
Yes, pretty much. Similar to Hitler. Working the streets, proper demagoguery for the internet age
I don’t believe tommeh is a Nazi. But Hitler is an apt comparison in terms of what he does and how it succeeds
You don't believe Tommy is a Nazi? Would you like to identify some differences? And I don't mean he has no plans to invade Poland.
Oh don’t be daft
I'm not being daft. Go on show how he is not a Nazi. The overlap of his views and fascism seem pretty obvious to most. I don't even think he would disagree. Just look at the groups he has been a member of.
It’s a level of discourse which is so obviously infantile it bores me shitless. You do you, however
Hopeless.
You even said yourself 'I don't believe tommeh is a Nazi', so you are not even sure yourself. Then when someone challenges you on why you are 'not sure' you just give up and throw insults.
I mean talk about illogical nonsense. You have gone, in a matter of a couple of posts, from not being sure to being absolutely so sure that any discussion is infantile and not worth considering.
Isn’t the real question of the weekend how will befriender of poor/rich waitresses Farage accommodate the new populist movement sweeping the kingdom (southern half); share or shaft?
Excellent question. Are we going to get a Party to the right of Farage? The Yaxley-Lennons? There would then be three parties swimming in the same fetid tank. Nothing much keeping them apart except for the ambitions of their leaders.
Robinson has already given his backing to Advance UK. Habib spoke at yesterday's rally
You've got to be on your toes to follow the shenanigans of the far right......,
What a time to rejoin the EU. If only we had a Labour leader with a little bit of backbone we could say goodbye to Trump and Mandy and steer a course back to civilisation
Sadly, I think that would lead to violent civil war.
Having a far right party on 25%+ in the polls is convergence with Europe - Italy, France, Germany. To name but a few.
Civilisation, eh?
As high as 56%, in Villefranche Sur Mer.
Whatever arguments there may be for rejoining the EU, marginalising the radical right is not one of them.
Otoh Brexiting doesn’t seem to have done much to marginalise the radical right either.
It was part of the same flow. The politicians sold the people on -
1) The People are Sovereign (no deference to an aristocracy) and can do as they wish - True Democracy 2) You aren’t allowed to change a growing number of parts of public life. The Process State regards you as a tomatoes to be processed into canned chopped tomato. Your part in the process is to shut up and obey. And jump in the can.
Strangely, the Sovereign People didn’t take well to (2)
Again, I would say that analysis is flawed. It's not the "Process State" that has processed people into canned chopped tomatoes: it's large corporations chasing profit. It's not a powerful state, it's a state that has ceded power to international corporations.
Yep. It isn't "the process state" that has closed down the High St in "left behind towns" it is Amazon.
It isn't "the process state" that has closed down your local butcher, greengrocer and pub, it's Asda, Tesco and Aldi.
It isn't "the process state" that has destroyed local and national newspapers, it is Social Media.
Etc etc.
And of course as consumers we have all played our part.
The process state though has massively increased turn over taxes which has absolutely hammered all those small businesses while Amazon can absorb them. I understand the thinking, turn-over taxes are hard to dodge so you get your money out of Amazon, but the level of turn over taxes is insane for small business.
There is a small business guy on YouTube who owns a wide range of successful businesses and employs over his various companies several 1000 people. A few years ago he bought an ice cream factory and the shops. He recently broke down the finances of his most successful ice cream cafe / shop location. On £1.5 million in gross turnover, once he has paid all the costs (remember he makes the ice cream himself), then the turn over taxes etc, he is down to less than £50k in profit. He had 10 shops and down to 2, because he said unless you can do over £1 million in gross turnover you will never make any money on a high street cafe. Its the turn over taxes that are the killer.
A massive problem that is hardly talked about in the UK (that isn't true in Germany), we have a small number of very large employers and a massive number of tiny employers. Now yes medium sized companies since the war have merged and been bought out, but the process system makes it incredible difficult to grow new small companies in the UK. We have hardly any that employ in the 1000s range.
That sounds like James Sinclair - watching him go from being very careful to be politically neutral to basically "this government is insane, why do they want to destroy small businesses" over the past year has been quite amusing.
He's right of course - loads of exemptions for the smallest businesses, as soon as you get to about 5 employees, or you want to move into a premises that over £12k a year in rent, or you somehow manage to make over £50k profit (on paper!) all of a sudden you get the full weight of all the taxation the government can throw at you. As someone who currently employs 5 people, and who would like to grow my business with some better premises etc etc, it feels like everything is pretty much designed to stop me.
Making it really easy to scale 3-5 person businesses into 10-20 businesses would probably do more for economic growth than almost anything else the government could do - even it was only achieved by some sorts of tax holidays that temporarily gave you some respite when you grow past a certain size.
Rebating business rates per FTE person employed might be an interesting thing to try which would help and incentivise business scaling.
It is him. His complaint over turn over taxes has been long held though. As long as I have watched his content he has brought up examples of the giant cost that is placed on businesses like his, and he isn't anti-regulation, in fact he credits strong regulation as giving him the ability to scale his child care business.
Politically, I reckon he probably didn't mind a bit of Tony Blair or David Cameron. Its since then that has had him increasingly struggling to stay "neutral".
All the changes in Reeves first budget will have hit him in particular really hard. He has businesses that requires lots of staff in child care and leisure industries, so higher minimum wage, higher employee NI, absolutely smash him. So not surprising ain't happy about the government.
What does he mean by turnover taxes? We have VAT, which is sort of (though not strictly) a turnover tax but has the highest registration threshold in Europe, and we have business rates which are a major headache and need reform, but are not turnover taxes in any sense.
Business rates and employers NI mainly. Also the steady ramping of the minimum wage to a point significantly higher than inflation.
I'm not sure there is a stupider form of taxation than taxing the provision of employment. Far better to abolish employers NI and raise corp/dividend tax rates to recover the lost revenue.
If you want to encourage business investment (which is where this mystical "growth" thing comes from) the idea tax regime is one where businesses are taxed very lightly (including on profits), but getting that profit out into the owners grubby little mitts is fairly heavily taxed (via dividends/income tax). But what do I know - I just run a small business that is struggling to grow because the system is so heavily stacked against it.
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
The big crowds didn't turn up for Tommeh, they turned up because they feel as though their (our) culture is under attack from the establishment and protesting is the only way to show that they won't be silenced by Starmer and his band of human rights lawyers. What started with a few people putting up flags and councils trying to take them down turned into a new nationalist/patriotic movement. I don't see that Robinson had very much to do with it.
If anything it's Nige that's the political genius, not Robinson. He's successfully harnessed these disparate movements into 34% of voting intention.
I think what's really done it recently is all of the free speech censorship, dismissal of rape and sexual abuse by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants by the state until they were forced to address it by protestors, the hotels and continued boat arrivals. But really, the first I think it what has really turned this from an anti-immigration movement into a much wider one, it's captured a lot more middle of the road people who are fed up of the censorship and being told that what they think is wrong by people who are now cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk.
As always, it's hypocrisy that voters really hate more than anything else. I don't think Robinson has really done anything on that front, the left and hard left who have lectured the world about how "being kind" is important are now dancing on the grave of a political opponent and using wokeness to censor speech is backfiring on them. Robinson just happens to be one of the more visible people on the other side. I'd say Nige has been much more important in bringing together the alliance that has added up to 34% of VI than Robinson.
I disagree. Tommy R organised this and was the driving force. I bet there were tens of thousands in the march, as you say, who actively dislike him. Yet he’s managed to harness them, as well
He is an absolute classic demagogue of the old school European tradition, right down to the history of street fighting and the criminal record. I can’t think of an equivalent in British history, all the comparisons are continental European. There are elements of Mussolini, elements of Hitler, a bit of Jean Marie Le Pen
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
The big crowds didn't turn up for Tommeh, they turned up because they feel as though their (our) culture is under attack from the establishment and protesting is the only way to show that they won't be silenced by Starmer and his band of human rights lawyers. What started with a few people putting up flags and councils trying to take them down turned into a new nationalist/patriotic movement. I don't see that Robinson had very much to do with it.
If anything it's Nige that's the political genius, not Robinson. He's successfully harnessed these disparate movements into 34% of voting intention.
I think what's really done it recently is all of the free speech censorship, dismissal of rape and sexual abuse by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants by the state until they were forced to address it by protestors, the hotels and continued boat arrivals. But really, the first I think it what has really turned this from an anti-immigration movement into a much wider one, it's captured a lot more middle of the road people who are fed up of the censorship and being told that what they think is wrong by people who are now cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk.
As always, it's hypocrisy that voters really hate more than anything else. I don't think Robinson has really done anything on that front, the left and hard left who have lectured the world about how "being kind" is important are now dancing on the grave of a political opponent and using wokeness to censor speech is backfiring on them. Robinson just happens to be one of the more visible people on the other side. I'd say Nige has been much more important in bringing together the alliance that has added up to 34% of VI than Robinson.
I disagree. Tommy R organised this and was the driving force. I bet there were tens of thousands in the march, as you say, who actively dislike him. Yet he’s managed to harness them, as well
He is an absolute classic demagogue of the old school European tradition, right down to the history of street fighting and the criminal record. I can’t think of an equivalent in British history, all the comparisons are continental European. There are elements of Mussolini, elements of Hitler, a bit of Jean Marie Le Pen
Farage is gifted in a different way
Oswald Mosley...
Whom I am sure @leon will tell us wasn't a Nazi. Oh no.
For those doubting the importance of Tommy, consider this. Could anyone else in British politics have summoned Elon Musk - world’s wealthiest man, and one of the most powerful - to speak live, and passionately, to 300,000 British people marching through London?
Sir Ed Davey, perhaps? lol
No, only Tommy can do this. He is becoming pivotal
Isn’t the real question of the weekend how will befriender of poor/rich waitresses Farage accommodate the new populist movement sweeping the kingdom (southern half); share or shaft?
Excellent question. Are we going to get a Party to the right of Farage? The Yaxley-Lennons? There would then be three parties swimming in the same fetid tank. Nothing much keeping them apart except for the ambitions of their leaders.
Robinson has already given his backing to Advance UK. Habib spoke at yesterday's rally
You've got to be on your toes to follow the shenanigans of the far right......,
What a time to rejoin the EU. If only we had a Labour leader with a little bit of backbone we could say goodbye to Trump and Mandy and steer a course back to civilisation
Sadly, I think that would lead to violent civil war.
Having a far right party on 25%+ in the polls is convergence with Europe - Italy, France, Germany. To name but a few.
Civilisation, eh?
As high as 56%, in Villefranche Sur Mer.
Whatever arguments there may be for rejoining the EU, marginalising the radical right is not one of them.
Otoh Brexiting doesn’t seem to have done much to marginalise the radical right either.
It was part of the same flow. The politicians sold the people on -
1) The People are Sovereign (no deference to an aristocracy) and can do as they wish - True Democracy 2) You aren’t allowed to change a growing number of parts of public life. The Process State regards you as a tomatoes to be processed into canned chopped tomato. Your part in the process is to shut up and obey. And jump in the can.
Strangely, the Sovereign People didn’t take well to (2)
Again, I would say that analysis is flawed. It's not the "Process State" that has processed people into canned chopped tomatoes: it's large corporations chasing profit. It's not a powerful state, it's a state that has ceded power to international corporations.
Yep. It isn't "the process state" that has closed down the High St in "left behind towns" it is Amazon.
It isn't "the process state" that has closed down your local butcher, greengrocer and pub, it's Asda, Tesco and Aldi.
It isn't "the process state" that has destroyed local and national newspapers, it is Social Media.
Etc etc.
And of course as consumers we have all played our part.
The process state though has massively increased turn over taxes which has absolutely hammered all those small businesses while Amazon can absorb them. I understand the thinking, turn-over taxes are hard to dodge so you get your money out of Amazon, but the level of turn over taxes is insane for small business.
There is a small business guy on YouTube who owns a wide range of successful businesses and employs over his various companies several 1000 people. A few years ago he bought an ice cream factory and the shops. He recently broke down the finances of his most successful ice cream cafe / shop location. On £1.5 million in gross turnover, once he has paid all the costs (remember he makes the ice cream himself), then the turn over taxes etc, he is down to less than £50k in profit. He had 10 shops and down to 2, because he said unless you can do over £1 million in gross turnover you will never make any money on a high street cafe. Its the turn over taxes that are the killer.
A massive problem that is hardly talked about in the UK (that isn't true in Germany), we have a small number of very large employers and a massive number of tiny employers. Now yes medium sized companies since the war have merged and been bought out, but the process system makes it incredible difficult to grow new small companies in the UK. We have hardly any that employ in the 1000s range.
That sounds like James Sinclair - watching him go from being very careful to be politically neutral to basically "this government is insane, why do they want to destroy small businesses" over the past year has been quite amusing.
He's right of course - loads of exemptions for the smallest businesses, as soon as you get to about 5 employees, or you want to move into a premises that over £12k a year in rent, or you somehow manage to make over £50k profit (on paper!) all of a sudden you get the full weight of all the taxation the government can throw at you. As someone who currently employs 5 people, and who would like to grow my business with some better premises etc etc, it feels like everything is pretty much designed to stop me.
Making it really easy to scale 3-5 person businesses into 10-20 businesses would probably do more for economic growth than almost anything else the government could do - even it was only achieved by some sorts of tax holidays that temporarily gave you some respite when you grow past a certain size.
Rebating business rates per FTE person employed might be an interesting thing to try which would help and incentivise business scaling.
It is him. His complaint over turn over taxes has been long held though. As long as I have watched his content he has brought up examples of the giant cost that is placed on businesses like his, and he isn't anti-regulation, in fact he credits strong regulation as giving him the ability to scale his child care business.
Politically, I reckon he probably didn't mind a bit of Tony Blair or David Cameron. Its since then that has had him increasingly struggling to stay "neutral".
All the changes in Reeves first budget will have hit him in particular really hard. He has businesses that requires lots of staff in child care and leisure industries, so higher minimum wage, higher employee NI, absolutely smash him. So not surprising ain't happy about the government.
What does he mean by turnover taxes? We have VAT, which is sort of (though not strictly) a turnover tax but has the highest registration threshold in Europe, and we have business rates which are a major headache and need reform, but are not turnover taxes in any sense.
Business rates and employers NI mainly. Also the steady ramping of the minimum wage to a point significantly higher than inflation.
I'm not sure there is a stupider form of taxation than taxing the provision of employment. Far better to abolish employers NI and raise corp/dividend tax rates to recover the lost revenue.
If you want to encourage business investment (which is where this mystical "growth" thing comes from) the idea tax regime is one where businesses are taxed very lightly (including on profits), but getting that profit out into the owners grubby little mitts is fairly heavily taxed (via dividends/income tax). But what do I know - I just run a small business that is struggling to grow because the system is so heavily stacked against it.
There are also lots other "taxes / fees" just to keep the lights on. Taxes on insurance, environmental levies on energy and waste disposal, stamp duties, etc. Sinclair is normally talking in a broad sense of the amount of his turnover that goes out the door in all these taxes, fees and levies if you were just treading water, rather than being taxed on the profit he actually makes.
That is what he is talking about with the ice cream parlour. He is basically saying there is no profit in having a high street outlet unless you can do £1 million a year as all these taxes, fees, levies will eat up all the margin and there is only so high you can go when charging for a coffee or a 99.
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
The big crowds didn't turn up for Tommeh, they turned up because they feel as though their (our) culture is under attack from the establishment and protesting is the only way to show that they won't be silenced by Starmer and his band of human rights lawyers. What started with a few people putting up flags and councils trying to take them down turned into a new nationalist/patriotic movement. I don't see that Robinson had very much to do with it.
If anything it's Nige that's the political genius, not Robinson. He's successfully harnessed these disparate movements into 34% of voting intention.
I think what's really done it recently is all of the free speech censorship, dismissal of rape and sexual abuse by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants by the state until they were forced to address it by protestors, the hotels and continued boat arrivals. But really, the first I think it what has really turned this from an anti-immigration movement into a much wider one, it's captured a lot more middle of the road people who are fed up of the censorship and being told that what they think is wrong by people who are now cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk.
As always, it's hypocrisy that voters really hate more than anything else. I don't think Robinson has really done anything on that front, the left and hard left who have lectured the world about how "being kind" is important are now dancing on the grave of a political opponent and using wokeness to censor speech is backfiring on them. Robinson just happens to be one of the more visible people on the other side. I'd say Nige has been much more important in bringing together the alliance that has added up to 34% of VI than Robinson.
I disagree. Tommy R organised this and was the driving force. I bet there were tens of thousands in the march, as you say, who actively dislike him. Yet he’s managed to harness them, as well
He is an absolute classic demagogue of the old school European tradition, right down to the history of street fighting and the criminal record. I can’t think of an equivalent in British history, all the comparisons are continental European. There are elements of Mussolini, elements of Hitler, a bit of Jean Marie Le Pen
Farage is gifted in a different way
No I still don't buy it, the hundred thousands there weren't there to support Robinson, they were there to protest censorship, erosion of British culture and illegal immigration. I'd guess that well over 80% of that crowd will vote for Reform when the election rolls around, not for whatever vehicle Robinson is in. Events and leftist hypocrisy drove people to protest, not support for Robinson.
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
The big crowds didn't turn up for Tommeh, they turned up because they feel as though their (our) culture is under attack from the establishment and protesting is the only way to show that they won't be silenced by Starmer and his band of human rights lawyers. What started with a few people putting up flags and councils trying to take them down turned into a new nationalist/patriotic movement. I don't see that Robinson had very much to do with it.
If anything it's Nige that's the political genius, not Robinson. He's successfully harnessed these disparate movements into 34% of voting intention.
I think what's really done it recently is all of the free speech censorship, dismissal of rape and sexual abuse by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants by the state until they were forced to address it by protestors, the hotels and continued boat arrivals. But really, the first I think it what has really turned this from an anti-immigration movement into a much wider one, it's captured a lot more middle of the road people who are fed up of the censorship and being told that what they think is wrong by people who are now cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk.
As always, it's hypocrisy that voters really hate more than anything else. I don't think Robinson has really done anything on that front, the left and hard left who have lectured the world about how "being kind" is important are now dancing on the grave of a political opponent and using wokeness to censor speech is backfiring on them. Robinson just happens to be one of the more visible people on the other side. I'd say Nige has been much more important in bringing together the alliance that has added up to 34% of VI than Robinson.
I disagree. Tommy R organised this and was the driving force. I bet there were tens of thousands in the march, as you say, who actively dislike him. Yet he’s managed to harness them, as well
He is an absolute classic demagogue of the old school European tradition, right down to the history of street fighting and the criminal record. I can’t think of an equivalent in British history, all the comparisons are continental European. There are elements of Mussolini, elements of Hitler, a bit of Jean Marie Le Pen
Farage is gifted in a different way
Oswald Mosley...
Not really
Mosley was an established politician from a very wealthy upper class family, who then TRIED - and failed - to become a powerful demagogue
Not the same. All the best demagogues come from the gutter
I don’t know who’s lying or fibbing or whatever in regards to the size of the Tommy March, but this is an insanely large, dense crowd, which I have never personally seen the like of, in London
I don’t know who’s lying or fibbing or whatever in regards to the size of the Tommy March, but this is an insanely large, dense crowd, which I have never personally seen the like of, in London
I don’t know who’s lying or fibbing or whatever in regards to the size of the Tommy March, but this is an insanely large, dense crowd, which I have never personally seen the like of, in London
I don’t know who’s lying or fibbing or whatever in regards to the size of the Tommy March, but this is an insanely large, dense crowd, which I have never personally seen the like of, in London
It is noticeable how Farage is keeping a careful distance from these events like yesterday. He has many of the same talking points and he loves a crowd cheering for him, but he won't speak at them.
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
The big crowds didn't turn up for Tommeh, they turned up because they feel as though their (our) culture is under attack from the establishment and protesting is the only way to show that they won't be silenced by Starmer and his band of human rights lawyers. What started with a few people putting up flags and councils trying to take them down turned into a new nationalist/patriotic movement. I don't see that Robinson had very much to do with it.
If anything it's Nige that's the political genius, not Robinson. He's successfully harnessed these disparate movements into 34% of voting intention.
I think what's really done it recently is all of the free speech censorship, dismissal of rape and sexual abuse by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants by the state until they were forced to address it by protestors, the hotels and continued boat arrivals. But really, the first I think it what has really turned this from an anti-immigration movement into a much wider one, it's captured a lot more middle of the road people who are fed up of the censorship and being told that what they think is wrong by people who are now cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk.
As always, it's hypocrisy that voters really hate more than anything else. I don't think Robinson has really done anything on that front, the left and hard left who have lectured the world about how "being kind" is important are now dancing on the grave of a political opponent and using wokeness to censor speech is backfiring on them. Robinson just happens to be one of the more visible people on the other side. I'd say Nige has been much more important in bringing together the alliance that has added up to 34% of VI than Robinson.
I disagree. Tommy R organised this and was the driving force. I bet there were tens of thousands in the march, as you say, who actively dislike him. Yet he’s managed to harness them, as well
He is an absolute classic demagogue of the old school European tradition, right down to the history of street fighting and the criminal record. I can’t think of an equivalent in British history, all the comparisons are continental European. There are elements of Mussolini, elements of Hitler, a bit of Jean Marie Le Pen
Farage is gifted in a different way
Oswald Mosley...
Not really
Mosley was an established politician from a very wealthy upper class family, who then TRIED - and failed - to become a powerful demagogue
Not the same. All the best demagogues come from the gutter
Mosley was definitely a capable demagogue, and organised large marches, and street fights, and had a criminal record.
Although unless I've missed something, he was a lot more successful with women than Yaxley-Lennon.
It is noticeable how Farage is keeping a careful distance from these events like yesterday. He has many of the same talking points and he loves a crowd cheering for him, but he won't speak at them.
Indeed, and he'll get 80% of the votes for zero effort. That's the real genius behind a political movement.
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
The big crowds didn't turn up for Tommeh, they turned up because they feel as though their (our) culture is under attack from the establishment and protesting is the only way to show that they won't be silenced by Starmer and his band of human rights lawyers. What started with a few people putting up flags and councils trying to take them down turned into a new nationalist/patriotic movement. I don't see that Robinson had very much to do with it.
If anything it's Nige that's the political genius, not Robinson. He's successfully harnessed these disparate movements into 34% of voting intention.
I think what's really done it recently is all of the free speech censorship, dismissal of rape and sexual abuse by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants by the state until they were forced to address it by protestors, the hotels and continued boat arrivals. But really, the first I think it what has really turned this from an anti-immigration movement into a much wider one, it's captured a lot more middle of the road people who are fed up of the censorship and being told that what they think is wrong by people who are now cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk.
As always, it's hypocrisy that voters really hate more than anything else. I don't think Robinson has really done anything on that front, the left and hard left who have lectured the world about how "being kind" is important are now dancing on the grave of a political opponent and using wokeness to censor speech is backfiring on them. Robinson just happens to be one of the more visible people on the other side. I'd say Nige has been much more important in bringing together the alliance that has added up to 34% of VI than Robinson.
I disagree. Tommy R organised this and was the driving force. I bet there were tens of thousands in the march, as you say, who actively dislike him. Yet he’s managed to harness them, as well
He is an absolute classic demagogue of the old school European tradition, right down to the history of street fighting and the criminal record. I can’t think of an equivalent in British history, all the comparisons are continental European. There are elements of Mussolini, elements of Hitler, a bit of Jean Marie Le Pen
Farage is gifted in a different way
Oh God, another strong man crush. As ever, your doppelgänger SeanT beat you to it and was wanking over Tommeh on here as a ‘patriot’ years ago.
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
The big crowds didn't turn up for Tommeh, they turned up because they feel as though their (our) culture is under attack from the establishment and protesting is the only way to show that they won't be silenced by Starmer and his band of human rights lawyers. What started with a few people putting up flags and councils trying to take them down turned into a new nationalist/patriotic movement. I don't see that Robinson had very much to do with it.
If anything it's Nige that's the political genius, not Robinson. He's successfully harnessed these disparate movements into 34% of voting intention.
I think what's really done it recently is all of the free speech censorship, dismissal of rape and sexual abuse by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants by the state until they were forced to address it by protestors, the hotels and continued boat arrivals. But really, the first I think it what has really turned this from an anti-immigration movement into a much wider one, it's captured a lot more middle of the road people who are fed up of the censorship and being told that what they think is wrong by people who are now cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk.
As always, it's hypocrisy that voters really hate more than anything else. I don't think Robinson has really done anything on that front, the left and hard left who have lectured the world about how "being kind" is important are now dancing on the grave of a political opponent and using wokeness to censor speech is backfiring on them. Robinson just happens to be one of the more visible people on the other side. I'd say Nige has been much more important in bringing together the alliance that has added up to 34% of VI than Robinson.
I disagree. Tommy R organised this and was the driving force. I bet there were tens of thousands in the march, as you say, who actively dislike him. Yet he’s managed to harness them, as well
He is an absolute classic demagogue of the old school European tradition, right down to the history of street fighting and the criminal record. I can’t think of an equivalent in British history, all the comparisons are continental European. There are elements of Mussolini, elements of Hitler, a bit of Jean Marie Le Pen
Farage is gifted in a different way
Oswald Mosley...
Not really
Mosley was an established politician from a very wealthy upper class family, who then TRIED - and failed - to become a powerful demagogue
Not the same. All the best demagogues come from the gutter
Mosley was definitely a capable demagogue, and organised large marches, and street fights, and had a criminal record.
Although unless I've missed something, he was a lot more successful with women than Yaxley-Lennon.
The biggest rally Mosley organised was estimated at 10-12,000
I don’t know who’s lying or fibbing or whatever in regards to the size of the Tommy March, but this is an insanely large, dense crowd, which I have never personally seen the like of, in London
Yes, pretty much. Similar to Hitler. Working the streets, proper demagoguery for the internet age
I don’t believe tommeh is a Nazi. But Hitler is an apt comparison in terms of what he does and how it succeeds
You don't believe Tommy is a Nazi? Would you like to identify some differences? And I don't mean he has no plans to invade Poland.
Oh don’t be daft
I'm not being daft. Go on show how he is not a Nazi. The overlap of his views and fascism seem pretty obvious to most. I don't even think he would disagree. Just look at the groups he has been a member of.
It’s a level of discourse which is so obviously infantile it bores me shitless. You do you, however
Hopeless.
You even said yourself 'I don't believe tommeh is a Nazi', so you are not even sure yourself. Then when someone challenges you on why you are 'not sure' you just give up and throw insults.
I mean talk about illogical nonsense. You have gone, in a matter of a couple of posts, from not being sure to being absolutely so sure that any discussion is infantile and not worth considering.
You have brains made of spaghetti.
If only PB would banish him to posting on ConHome, it would improve the average intelligence on both sites.
Isn’t the real question of the weekend how will befriender of poor/rich waitresses Farage accommodate the new populist movement sweeping the kingdom (southern half); share or shaft?
Excellent question. Are we going to get a Party to the right of Farage? The Yaxley-Lennons? There would then be three parties swimming in the same fetid tank. Nothing much keeping them apart except for the ambitions of their leaders.
Robinson has already given his backing to Advance UK. Habib spoke at yesterday's rally
You've got to be on your toes to follow the shenanigans of the far right......,
What a time to rejoin the EU. If only we had a Labour leader with a little bit of backbone we could say goodbye to Trump and Mandy and steer a course back to civilisation
Sadly, I think that would lead to violent civil war.
Having a far right party on 25%+ in the polls is convergence with Europe - Italy, France, Germany. To name but a few.
Civilisation, eh?
As high as 56%, in Villefranche Sur Mer.
Whatever arguments there may be for rejoining the EU, marginalising the radical right is not one of them.
Otoh Brexiting doesn’t seem to have done much to marginalise the radical right either.
It was part of the same flow. The politicians sold the people on -
1) The People are Sovereign (no deference to an aristocracy) and can do as they wish - True Democracy 2) You aren’t allowed to change a growing number of parts of public life. The Process State regards you as a tomatoes to be processed into canned chopped tomato. Your part in the process is to shut up and obey. And jump in the can.
Strangely, the Sovereign People didn’t take well to (2)
Again, I would say that analysis is flawed. It's not the "Process State" that has processed people into canned chopped tomatoes: it's large corporations chasing profit. It's not a powerful state, it's a state that has ceded power to international corporations.
Yep. It isn't "the process state" that has closed down the High St in "left behind towns" it is Amazon.
It isn't "the process state" that has closed down your local butcher, greengrocer and pub, it's Asda, Tesco and Aldi.
It isn't "the process state" that has destroyed local and national newspapers, it is Social Media.
Etc etc.
And of course as consumers we have all played our part.
The process state though has massively increased turn over taxes which has absolutely hammered all those small businesses while Amazon can absorb them. I understand the thinking, turn-over taxes are hard to dodge so you get your money out of Amazon, but the level of turn over taxes is insane for small business.
There is a small business guy on YouTube who owns a wide range of successful businesses and employs over his various companies several 1000 people. A few years ago he bought an ice cream factory and the shops. He recently broke down the finances of his most successful ice cream cafe / shop location. On £1.5 million in gross turnover, once he has paid all the costs (remember he makes the ice cream himself), then the turn over taxes etc, he is down to less than £50k in profit. He had 10 shops and down to 2, because he said unless you can do over £1 million in gross turnover you will never make any money on a high street cafe. Its the turn over taxes that are the killer.
A massive problem that is hardly talked about in the UK (that isn't true in Germany), we have a small number of very large employers and a massive number of tiny employers. Now yes medium sized companies since the war have merged and been bought out, but the process system makes it incredible difficult to grow new small companies in the UK. We have hardly any that employ in the 1000s range.
That sounds like James Sinclair - watching him go from being very careful to be politically neutral to basically "this government is insane, why do they want to destroy small businesses" over the past year has been quite amusing.
He's right of course - loads of exemptions for the smallest businesses, as soon as you get to about 5 employees, or you want to move into a premises that over £12k a year in rent, or you somehow manage to make over £50k profit (on paper!) all of a sudden you get the full weight of all the taxation the government can throw at you. As someone who currently employs 5 people, and who would like to grow my business with some better premises etc etc, it feels like everything is pretty much designed to stop me.
Making it really easy to scale 3-5 person businesses into 10-20 businesses would probably do more for economic growth than almost anything else the government could do - even it was only achieved by some sorts of tax holidays that temporarily gave you some respite when you grow past a certain size.
Rebating business rates per FTE person employed might be an interesting thing to try which would help and incentivise business scaling.
It is him. His complaint over turn over taxes has been long held though. As long as I have watched his content he has brought up examples of the giant cost that is placed on businesses like his, and he isn't anti-regulation, in fact he credits strong regulation as giving him the ability to scale his child care business.
Politically, I reckon he probably didn't mind a bit of Tony Blair or David Cameron. Its since then that has had him increasingly struggling to stay "neutral".
All the changes in Reeves first budget will have hit him in particular really hard. He has businesses that requires lots of staff in child care and leisure industries, so higher minimum wage, higher employee NI, absolutely smash him. So not surprising ain't happy about the government.
What does he mean by turnover taxes? We have VAT, which is sort of (though not strictly) a turnover tax but has the highest registration threshold in Europe, and we have business rates which are a major headache and need reform, but are not turnover taxes in any sense.
Business rates and employers NI mainly. Also the steady ramping of the minimum wage to a point significantly higher than inflation.
I'm not sure there is a stupider form of taxation than taxing the provision of employment. Far better to abolish employers NI and raise corp/dividend tax rates to recover the lost revenue.
If you want to encourage business investment (which is where this mystical "growth" thing comes from) the idea tax regime is one where businesses are taxed very lightly (including on profits), but getting that profit out into the owners grubby little mitts is fairly heavily taxed (via dividends/income tax). But what do I know - I just run a small business that is struggling to grow because the system is so heavily stacked against it.
There are also lots other "taxes / fees" just to keep the lights on. Taxes on insurance, environmental levies on energy and waste disposal, stamp duties, etc. Sinclair is normally talking in a broad sense of the amount of his turnover that goes out the door in all these taxes, fees and levies if you were just treading water, rather than being taxed on the profit he actually makes.
That is what he is talking about with the ice cream parlour. He is basically saying there is no profit in having a high street outlet unless you can do £1 million a year as all these taxes, fees, levies will eat up all the margin and there is only so high you can go when charging for a coffee or a 99.
That too. Engineering company up the road had a vist from HSE recently. Nothing terrible wrong, a few minor criticisms, but as soon as they find fault with anything, they can charge for the visit, so effectively it was £1k in random taxation. HSE are also becoming ever more unreasonable - eg they were asking for him to fit filtermist extraction units (£3.5k per pop) to be fitted to almost brand new milling machines, which is a nice to have, not a legal requirement (otherwise you wouldn't be able to buy a new machine without).
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
The big crowds didn't turn up for Tommeh, they turned up because they feel as though their (our) culture is under attack from the establishment and protesting is the only way to show that they won't be silenced by Starmer and his band of human rights lawyers. What started with a few people putting up flags and councils trying to take them down turned into a new nationalist/patriotic movement. I don't see that Robinson had very much to do with it.
If anything it's Nige that's the political genius, not Robinson. He's successfully harnessed these disparate movements into 34% of voting intention.
I think what's really done it recently is all of the free speech censorship, dismissal of rape and sexual abuse by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants by the state until they were forced to address it by protestors, the hotels and continued boat arrivals. But really, the first I think it what has really turned this from an anti-immigration movement into a much wider one, it's captured a lot more middle of the road people who are fed up of the censorship and being told that what they think is wrong by people who are now cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk.
As always, it's hypocrisy that voters really hate more than anything else. I don't think Robinson has really done anything on that front, the left and hard left who have lectured the world about how "being kind" is important are now dancing on the grave of a political opponent and using wokeness to censor speech is backfiring on them. Robinson just happens to be one of the more visible people on the other side. I'd say Nige has been much more important in bringing together the alliance that has added up to 34% of VI than Robinson.
I disagree. Tommy R organised this and was the driving force. I bet there were tens of thousands in the march, as you say, who actively dislike him. Yet he’s managed to harness them, as well
He is an absolute classic demagogue of the old school European tradition, right down to the history of street fighting and the criminal record. I can’t think of an equivalent in British history, all the comparisons are continental European. There are elements of Mussolini, elements of Hitler, a bit of Jean Marie Le Pen
Farage is gifted in a different way
Oswald Mosley...
Not really
Mosley was an established politician from a very wealthy upper class family, who then TRIED - and failed - to become a powerful demagogue
Not the same. All the best demagogues come from the gutter
Mosley was definitely a capable demagogue, and organised large marches, and street fights, and had a criminal record.
Although unless I've missed something, he was a lot more successful with women than Yaxley-Lennon.
The biggest rally Mosley organised was estimated at 10-12,000
There is no comparison
Correct. In the age before Twitter, mass private transport and with a population of roughly 50% of the size of today, a crowd of 10-12,000 is an incomparably more remarkable achievement than 300,000 today (if it was that many).
To put it in context, around 1000 turned up for the Easter Rising and about 100,000 sparked the February Revolution.
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
The big crowds didn't turn up for Tommeh, they turned up because they feel as though their (our) culture is under attack from the establishment and protesting is the only way to show that they won't be silenced by Starmer and his band of human rights lawyers. What started with a few people putting up flags and councils trying to take them down turned into a new nationalist/patriotic movement. I don't see that Robinson had very much to do with it.
If anything it's Nige that's the political genius, not Robinson. He's successfully harnessed these disparate movements into 34% of voting intention.
I think what's really done it recently is all of the free speech censorship, dismissal of rape and sexual abuse by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants by the state until they were forced to address it by protestors, the hotels and continued boat arrivals. But really, the first I think it what has really turned this from an anti-immigration movement into a much wider one, it's captured a lot more middle of the road people who are fed up of the censorship and being told that what they think is wrong by people who are now cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk.
As always, it's hypocrisy that voters really hate more than anything else. I don't think Robinson has really done anything on that front, the left and hard left who have lectured the world about how "being kind" is important are now dancing on the grave of a political opponent and using wokeness to censor speech is backfiring on them. Robinson just happens to be one of the more visible people on the other side. I'd say Nige has been much more important in bringing together the alliance that has added up to 34% of VI than Robinson.
I disagree. Tommy R organised this and was the driving force. I bet there were tens of thousands in the march, as you say, who actively dislike him. Yet he’s managed to harness them, as well
He is an absolute classic demagogue of the old school European tradition, right down to the history of street fighting and the criminal record. I can’t think of an equivalent in British history, all the comparisons are continental European. There are elements of Mussolini, elements of Hitler, a bit of Jean Marie Le Pen
Farage is gifted in a different way
Oh God, another strong man crush. As ever, your doppelgänger SeanT beat you to it and was wanking over Tommeh on here as a ‘patriot’ years ago.
I’m literally comparing him to Hitler. I know you love to think I admire Hitler, but it’s not the case. This is not a budding bromance
I am fascinated by politics, aren’t we all? Hence our presence here?
I like to look at it dispassionately. Examine it. Weigh it. Tommy R is a type of demagogue we simply haven’t seen in the UK ever before, in terms of his reach and success. That is a fascinating evolution, also a disturbing evolution. It is not a sign of a healthy polity when street fighting demagogues achieve major success, in fact it is a morbid sign of dysfunction. But we can’t ignore it
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
Political geniuses who caused millions of deaths and ruined Germany?
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
The big crowds didn't turn up for Tommeh, they turned up because they feel as though their (our) culture is under attack from the establishment and protesting is the only way to show that they won't be silenced by Starmer and his band of human rights lawyers. What started with a few people putting up flags and councils trying to take them down turned into a new nationalist/patriotic movement. I don't see that Robinson had very much to do with it.
If anything it's Nige that's the political genius, not Robinson. He's successfully harnessed these disparate movements into 34% of voting intention.
I think what's really done it recently is all of the free speech censorship, dismissal of rape and sexual abuse by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants by the state until they were forced to address it by protestors, the hotels and continued boat arrivals. But really, the first I think it what has really turned this from an anti-immigration movement into a much wider one, it's captured a lot more middle of the road people who are fed up of the censorship and being told that what they think is wrong by people who are now cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk.
As always, it's hypocrisy that voters really hate more than anything else. I don't think Robinson has really done anything on that front, the left and hard left who have lectured the world about how "being kind" is important are now dancing on the grave of a political opponent and using wokeness to censor speech is backfiring on them. Robinson just happens to be one of the more visible people on the other side. I'd say Nige has been much more important in bringing together the alliance that has added up to 34% of VI than Robinson.
I disagree. Tommy R organised this and was the driving force. I bet there were tens of thousands in the march, as you say, who actively dislike him. Yet he’s managed to harness them, as well
He is an absolute classic demagogue of the old school European tradition, right down to the history of street fighting and the criminal record. I can’t think of an equivalent in British history, all the comparisons are continental European. There are elements of Mussolini, elements of Hitler, a bit of Jean Marie Le Pen
Farage is gifted in a different way
Oswald Mosley...
Not really
Mosley was an established politician from a very wealthy upper class family, who then TRIED - and failed - to become a powerful demagogue
Not the same. All the best demagogues come from the gutter
Mosley was definitely a capable demagogue, and organised large marches, and street fights, and had a criminal record.
Although unless I've missed something, he was a lot more successful with women than Yaxley-Lennon.
The biggest rally Mosley organised was estimated at 10-12,000
There is no comparison
Lol, there’s actually an oswaldmosley.com. In typical bombastic style they say he organised the ‘largest indoor political meeting in the history of the world’, 30k at Earls Court.
For those doubting the importance of Tommy, consider this. Could anyone else in British politics have summoned Elon Musk - world’s wealthiest man, and one of the most powerful - to speak live, and passionately, to 300,000 British people marching through London?
Sir Ed Davey, perhaps? lol
No, only Tommy can do this. He is becoming pivotal
It agree it was quite a coup getting Musk, but your logic is utterly silly. He is in his lunatic circle. Obviously Davey or Badenock couldn't get him, but they would get someone else from their circle, whom you would probably never have heard of, that Robinson could not get in a million years. It is horses for courses.
You are doing your usual getting excited and coming out with silly exaggerations and extrapolations. I give you the 300K you quote for the size of the crowd which exceeds all accepted estimates by some margin, except Tommy's of course which is actually 3 million (lol)!
'Britain will “never surrender” to far-right protesters who use the flag as cover for violence and to instil fear, Keir Starmer has said, condemning attacks against police officers and the racist intimidation of minorities.
Isn’t the real question of the weekend how will befriender of poor/rich waitresses Farage accommodate the new populist movement sweeping the kingdom (southern half); share or shaft?
Excellent question. Are we going to get a Party to the right of Farage? The Yaxley-Lennons? There would then be three parties swimming in the same fetid tank. Nothing much keeping them apart except for the ambitions of their leaders.
Robinson has already given his backing to Advance UK. Habib spoke at yesterday's rally
You've got to be on your toes to follow the shenanigans of the far right......,
What a time to rejoin the EU. If only we had a Labour leader with a little bit of backbone we could say goodbye to Trump and Mandy and steer a course back to civilisation
Sadly, I think that would lead to violent civil war.
Having a far right party on 25%+ in the polls is convergence with Europe - Italy, France, Germany. To name but a few.
Civilisation, eh?
As high as 56%, in Villefranche Sur Mer.
Whatever arguments there may be for rejoining the EU, marginalising the radical right is not one of them.
Otoh Brexiting doesn’t seem to have done much to marginalise the radical right either.
It was part of the same flow. The politicians sold the people on -
1) The People are Sovereign (no deference to an aristocracy) and can do as they wish - True Democracy 2) You aren’t allowed to change a growing number of parts of public life. The Process State regards you as a tomatoes to be processed into canned chopped tomato. Your part in the process is to shut up and obey. And jump in the can.
Strangely, the Sovereign People didn’t take well to (2)
Again, I would say that analysis is flawed. It's not the "Process State" that has processed people into canned chopped tomatoes: it's large corporations chasing profit. It's not a powerful state, it's a state that has ceded power to international corporations.
Yep. It isn't "the process state" that has closed down the High St in "left behind towns" it is Amazon.
It isn't "the process state" that has closed down your local butcher, greengrocer and pub, it's Asda, Tesco and Aldi.
It isn't "the process state" that has destroyed local and national newspapers, it is Social Media.
Etc etc.
And of course as consumers we have all played our part.
The process state though has massively increased turn over taxes which has absolutely hammered all those small businesses while Amazon can absorb them. I understand the thinking, turn-over taxes are hard to dodge so you get your money out of Amazon, but the level of turn over taxes is insane for small business.
There is a small business guy on YouTube who owns a wide range of successful businesses and employs over his various companies several 1000 people. A few years ago he bought an ice cream factory and the shops. He recently broke down the finances of his most successful ice cream cafe / shop location. On £1.5 million in gross turnover, once he has paid all the costs (remember he makes the ice cream himself), then the turn over taxes etc, he is down to less than £50k in profit. He had 10 shops and down to 2, because he said unless you can do over £1 million in gross turnover you will never make any money on a high street cafe. Its the turn over taxes that are the killer.
A massive problem that is hardly talked about in the UK (that isn't true in Germany), we have a small number of very large employers and a massive number of tiny employers. Now yes medium sized companies since the war have merged and been bought out, but the process system makes it incredible difficult to grow new small companies in the UK. We have hardly any that employ in the 1000s range.
That sounds like James Sinclair - watching him go from being very careful to be politically neutral to basically "this government is insane, why do they want to destroy small businesses" over the past year has been quite amusing.
He's right of course - loads of exemptions for the smallest businesses, as soon as you get to about 5 employees, or you want to move into a premises that over £12k a year in rent, or you somehow manage to make over £50k profit (on paper!) all of a sudden you get the full weight of all the taxation the government can throw at you. As someone who currently employs 5 people, and who would like to grow my business with some better premises etc etc, it feels like everything is pretty much designed to stop me.
Making it really easy to scale 3-5 person businesses into 10-20 businesses would probably do more for economic growth than almost anything else the government could do - even it was only achieved by some sorts of tax holidays that temporarily gave you some respite when you grow past a certain size.
Rebating business rates per FTE person employed might be an interesting thing to try which would help and incentivise business scaling.
It is him. His complaint over turn over taxes has been long held though. As long as I have watched his content he has brought up examples of the giant cost that is placed on businesses like his, and he isn't anti-regulation, in fact he credits strong regulation as giving him the ability to scale his child care business.
Politically, I reckon he probably didn't mind a bit of Tony Blair or David Cameron. Its since then that has had him increasingly struggling to stay "neutral".
All the changes in Reeves first budget will have hit him in particular really hard. He has businesses that requires lots of staff in child care and leisure industries, so higher minimum wage, higher employee NI, absolutely smash him. So not surprising ain't happy about the government.
What does he mean by turnover taxes? We have VAT, which is sort of (though not strictly) a turnover tax but has the highest registration threshold in Europe, and we have business rates which are a major headache and need reform, but are not turnover taxes in any sense.
Business rates and employers NI mainly. Also the steady ramping of the minimum wage to a point significantly higher than inflation.
I'm not sure there is a stupider form of taxation than taxing the provision of employment. Far better to abolish employers NI and raise corp/dividend tax rates to recover the lost revenue.
If you want to encourage business investment (which is where this mystical "growth" thing comes from) the idea tax regime is one where businesses are taxed very lightly (including on profits), but getting that profit out into the owners grubby little mitts is fairly heavily taxed (via dividends/income tax). But what do I know - I just run a small business that is struggling to grow because the system is so heavily stacked against it.
There are also lots other "taxes / fees" just to keep the lights on. Taxes on insurance, environmental levies on energy and waste disposal, stamp duties, etc. Sinclair is normally talking in a broad sense of the amount of his turnover that goes out the door in all these taxes, fees and levies if you were just treading water, rather than being taxed on the profit he actually makes.
That is what he is talking about with the ice cream parlour. He is basically saying there is no profit in having a high street outlet unless you can do £1 million a year as all these taxes, fees, levies will eat up all the margin and there is only so high you can go when charging for a coffee or a 99.
That too. Engineering company up the road had a vist from HSE recently. Nothing terrible wrong, a few minor criticisms, but as soon as they find fault with anything, they can charge for the visit, so effectively it was £1k in random taxation. HSE are also becoming ever more unreasonable - eg they were asking for him to fit filtermist extraction units (£3.5k per pop) to be fitted to almost brand new milling machines, which is a nice to have, not a legal requirement (otherwise you wouldn't be able to buy a new machine without).
Sinclair has a food distribution company. So things like vehicle insurance and road tax. Of course congestion charges and emissions zones, the congestion you can't fully get around and for emissions, you either pay or need to upgrade your fleet (which comes with their own taxes). In isolation these things aren't necessarily bad, but it is the totality of all these costs being imposed on business.
I don’t even know how Liverpool have the brass neck to celebrate these late goals, when they are utterly unconvincing and undeserving of the win. It’s cringe seeing them go yeeeeaahhhhh with their arms in the air after the most unconvincing display of football week after week.
For those doubting the importance of Tommy, consider this. Could anyone else in British politics have summoned Elon Musk - world’s wealthiest man, and one of the most powerful - to speak live, and passionately, to 300,000 British people marching through London?
Sir Ed Davey, perhaps? lol
No, only Tommy can do this. He is becoming pivotal
It agree it was quite a coup getting Musk, but your logic is utterly silly. He is in his lunatic circle. Obviously Davey or Badenock couldn't get him, but they would get someone else from their circle, whom you would probably never have heard of, that Robinson could not get in a million years. It is horses for courses.
You are doing your usual getting excited and coming out with silly exaggerations and extrapolations. I give you the 300K you quote for the size of the crowd which exceeds all accepted estimates by some margin, except Tommy's of course which is actually 3 million (lol)!
All these small dick guys supporting each other; it's worse than the Freemasons.
Isn’t the real question of the weekend how will befriender of poor/rich waitresses Farage accommodate the new populist movement sweeping the kingdom (southern half); share or shaft?
Excellent question. Are we going to get a Party to the right of Farage? The Yaxley-Lennons? There would then be three parties swimming in the same fetid tank. Nothing much keeping them apart except for the ambitions of their leaders.
Robinson has already given his backing to Advance UK. Habib spoke at yesterday's rally
You've got to be on your toes to follow the shenanigans of the far right......,
What a time to rejoin the EU. If only we had a Labour leader with a little bit of backbone we could say goodbye to Trump and Mandy and steer a course back to civilisation
Sadly, I think that would lead to violent civil war.
Having a far right party on 25%+ in the polls is convergence with Europe - Italy, France, Germany. To name but a few.
Civilisation, eh?
As high as 56%, in Villefranche Sur Mer.
Whatever arguments there may be for rejoining the EU, marginalising the radical right is not one of them.
Otoh Brexiting doesn’t seem to have done much to marginalise the radical right either.
It was part of the same flow. The politicians sold the people on -
1) The People are Sovereign (no deference to an aristocracy) and can do as they wish - True Democracy 2) You aren’t allowed to change a growing number of parts of public life. The Process State regards you as a tomatoes to be processed into canned chopped tomato. Your part in the process is to shut up and obey. And jump in the can.
Strangely, the Sovereign People didn’t take well to (2)
Again, I would say that analysis is flawed. It's not the "Process State" that has processed people into canned chopped tomatoes: it's large corporations chasing profit. It's not a powerful state, it's a state that has ceded power to international corporations.
Yep. It isn't "the process state" that has closed down the High St in "left behind towns" it is Amazon.
It isn't "the process state" that has closed down your local butcher, greengrocer and pub, it's Asda, Tesco and Aldi.
It isn't "the process state" that has destroyed local and national newspapers, it is Social Media.
Etc etc.
And of course as consumers we have all played our part.
The process state though has massively increased turn over taxes which has absolutely hammered all those small businesses while Amazon can absorb them. I understand the thinking, turn-over taxes are hard to dodge so you get your money out of Amazon, but the level of turn over taxes is insane for small business.
There is a small business guy on YouTube who owns a wide range of successful businesses and employs over his various companies several 1000 people. A few years ago he bought an ice cream factory and the shops. He recently broke down the finances of his most successful ice cream cafe / shop location. On £1.5 million in gross turnover, once he has paid all the costs (remember he makes the ice cream himself), then the turn over taxes etc, he is down to less than £50k in profit. He had 10 shops and down to 2, because he said unless you can do over £1 million in gross turnover you will never make any money on a high street cafe. Its the turn over taxes that are the killer.
A massive problem that is hardly talked about in the UK (that isn't true in Germany), we have a small number of very large employers and a massive number of tiny employers. Now yes medium sized companies since the war have merged and been bought out, but the process system makes it incredible difficult to grow new small companies in the UK. We have hardly any that employ in the 1000s range.
That sounds like James Sinclair - watching him go from being very careful to be politically neutral to basically "this government is insane, why do they want to destroy small businesses" over the past year has been quite amusing.
He's right of course - loads of exemptions for the smallest businesses, as soon as you get to about 5 employees, or you want to move into a premises that over £12k a year in rent, or you somehow manage to make over £50k profit (on paper!) all of a sudden you get the full weight of all the taxation the government can throw at you. As someone who currently employs 5 people, and who would like to grow my business with some better premises etc etc, it feels like everything is pretty much designed to stop me.
Making it really easy to scale 3-5 person businesses into 10-20 businesses would probably do more for economic growth than almost anything else the government could do - even it was only achieved by some sorts of tax holidays that temporarily gave you some respite when you grow past a certain size.
Rebating business rates per FTE person employed might be an interesting thing to try which would help and incentivise business scaling.
It is him. His complaint over turn over taxes has been long held though. As long as I have watched his content he has brought up examples of the giant cost that is placed on businesses like his, and he isn't anti-regulation, in fact he credits strong regulation as giving him the ability to scale his child care business.
Politically, I reckon he probably didn't mind a bit of Tony Blair or David Cameron. Its since then that has had him increasingly struggling to stay "neutral".
All the changes in Reeves first budget will have hit him in particular really hard. He has businesses that requires lots of staff in child care and leisure industries, so higher minimum wage, higher employee NI, absolutely smash him. So not surprising ain't happy about the government.
What does he mean by turnover taxes? We have VAT, which is sort of (though not strictly) a turnover tax but has the highest registration threshold in Europe, and we have business rates which are a major headache and need reform, but are not turnover taxes in any sense.
Business rates and employers NI mainly. Also the steady ramping of the minimum wage to a point significantly higher than inflation.
I'm not sure there is a stupider form of taxation than taxing the provision of employment. Far better to abolish employers NI and raise corp/dividend tax rates to recover the lost revenue.
If you want to encourage business investment (which is where this mystical "growth" thing comes from) the idea tax regime is one where businesses are taxed very lightly (including on profits), but getting that profit out into the owners grubby little mitts is fairly heavily taxed (via dividends/income tax). But what do I know - I just run a small business that is struggling to grow because the system is so heavily stacked against it.
Can't have all the taxes depend on profit, or they would ebb and flow too greatly with the economic cycle.
I don’t even know how Liverpool have the brass neck to celebrate these late goals, when they are utterly unconvincing and undeserving of the win. It’s cringe seeing them go yeeeeaahhhhh with their arms in the air after the most unconvincing display of football week after week.
Isn’t the real question of the weekend how will befriender of poor/rich waitresses Farage accommodate the new populist movement sweeping the kingdom (southern half); share or shaft?
Excellent question. Are we going to get a Party to the right of Farage? The Yaxley-Lennons? There would then be three parties swimming in the same fetid tank. Nothing much keeping them apart except for the ambitions of their leaders.
Robinson has already given his backing to Advance UK. Habib spoke at yesterday's rally
You've got to be on your toes to follow the shenanigans of the far right......,
What a time to rejoin the EU. If only we had a Labour leader with a little bit of backbone we could say goodbye to Trump and Mandy and steer a course back to civilisation
Sadly, I think that would lead to violent civil war.
Having a far right party on 25%+ in the polls is convergence with Europe - Italy, France, Germany. To name but a few.
Civilisation, eh?
As high as 56%, in Villefranche Sur Mer.
Whatever arguments there may be for rejoining the EU, marginalising the radical right is not one of them.
Otoh Brexiting doesn’t seem to have done much to marginalise the radical right either.
It was part of the same flow. The politicians sold the people on -
1) The People are Sovereign (no deference to an aristocracy) and can do as they wish - True Democracy 2) You aren’t allowed to change a growing number of parts of public life. The Process State regards you as a tomatoes to be processed into canned chopped tomato. Your part in the process is to shut up and obey. And jump in the can.
Strangely, the Sovereign People didn’t take well to (2)
Again, I would say that analysis is flawed. It's not the "Process State" that has processed people into canned chopped tomatoes: it's large corporations chasing profit. It's not a powerful state, it's a state that has ceded power to international corporations.
Yep. It isn't "the process state" that has closed down the High St in "left behind towns" it is Amazon.
It isn't "the process state" that has closed down your local butcher, greengrocer and pub, it's Asda, Tesco and Aldi.
It isn't "the process state" that has destroyed local and national newspapers, it is Social Media.
Etc etc.
And of course as consumers we have all played our part.
The process state though has massively increased turn over taxes which has absolutely hammered all those small businesses while Amazon can absorb them. I understand the thinking, turn-over taxes are hard to dodge so you get your money out of Amazon, but the level of turn over taxes is insane for small business.
There is a small business guy on YouTube who owns a wide range of successful businesses and employs over his various companies several 1000 people. A few years ago he bought an ice cream factory and the shops. He recently broke down the finances of his most successful ice cream cafe / shop location. On £1.5 million in gross turnover, once he has paid all the costs (remember he makes the ice cream himself), then the turn over taxes etc, he is down to less than £50k in profit. He had 10 shops and down to 2, because he said unless you can do over £1 million in gross turnover you will never make any money on a high street cafe. Its the turn over taxes that are the killer.
A massive problem that is hardly talked about in the UK (that isn't true in Germany), we have a small number of very large employers and a massive number of tiny employers. Now yes medium sized companies since the war have merged and been bought out, but the process system makes it incredible difficult to grow new small companies in the UK. We have hardly any that employ in the 1000s range.
That sounds like James Sinclair - watching him go from being very careful to be politically neutral to basically "this government is insane, why do they want to destroy small businesses" over the past year has been quite amusing.
He's right of course - loads of exemptions for the smallest businesses, as soon as you get to about 5 employees, or you want to move into a premises that over £12k a year in rent, or you somehow manage to make over £50k profit (on paper!) all of a sudden you get the full weight of all the taxation the government can throw at you. As someone who currently employs 5 people, and who would like to grow my business with some better premises etc etc, it feels like everything is pretty much designed to stop me.
Making it really easy to scale 3-5 person businesses into 10-20 businesses would probably do more for economic growth than almost anything else the government could do - even it was only achieved by some sorts of tax holidays that temporarily gave you some respite when you grow past a certain size.
Rebating business rates per FTE person employed might be an interesting thing to try which would help and incentivise business scaling.
It is him. His complaint over turn over taxes has been long held though. As long as I have watched his content he has brought up examples of the giant cost that is placed on businesses like his, and he isn't anti-regulation, in fact he credits strong regulation as giving him the ability to scale his child care business.
Politically, I reckon he probably didn't mind a bit of Tony Blair or David Cameron. Its since then that has had him increasingly struggling to stay "neutral".
All the changes in Reeves first budget will have hit him in particular really hard. He has businesses that requires lots of staff in child care and leisure industries, so higher minimum wage, higher employee NI, absolutely smash him. So not surprising ain't happy about the government.
What does he mean by turnover taxes? We have VAT, which is sort of (though not strictly) a turnover tax but has the highest registration threshold in Europe, and we have business rates which are a major headache and need reform, but are not turnover taxes in any sense.
Business rates and employers NI mainly. Also the steady ramping of the minimum wage to a point significantly higher than inflation.
I'm not sure there is a stupider form of taxation than taxing the provision of employment. Far better to abolish employers NI and raise corp/dividend tax rates to recover the lost revenue.
If you want to encourage business investment (which is where this mystical "growth" thing comes from) the idea tax regime is one where businesses are taxed very lightly (including on profits), but getting that profit out into the owners grubby little mitts is fairly heavily taxed (via dividends/income tax). But what do I know - I just run a small business that is struggling to grow because the system is so heavily stacked against it.
Can't have all the taxes depend on profit, or they would ebb and flow too greatly with the economic cycle.
Well also massive multinational companies have become expert in minimizing tax on profit. There are good reasons for taxation on for instance employers NI, but it is a) the level, b) the full extent of what is being taxed and levied to operate a business and most importantly c) government don't seem to really understand the situation, they are hyper focused on massive companies, no how to get small companies to become medium ones (and once they get their, how they can be supported to go even further). Too much public pressure and lobbying from other side is passed through the lens on how this effects the massive multi-nationals.
The setup is tolerable if you are massive, and depending on the business its somewhere between ok to great* if you are absolutely tiny, its the you want to grow from 5 people to 50 and then 50 to 500, it then feels like the whole system is against you.
* as we found a huge proportion of ZHC are actually white collar jobs on very high salaries as the system is very generous if you are a one man band providing professional services from your home office.
There’s no future in this story, Big G, it will fizzle out in favour of another headline to direct unhappiness at. It’s how politics always works 99% of the time. Starmer was ultra careful in PMQs not to answer a question with a lie, that’s the moment he got away with it.
Underlying it is lack of economic growth and easing of credit crisis, once/if Starmer gets that he’s safe as houses to lead Labour into the next GE.
On topic, if the answer is Burnham you asked the wrong question.
Though, it does show what a shambles labour are in, and in particular Starmer and Reeves performance over the last 15 months
It speaks to the paucity of talent in British politics. Every party is led by the second rate. Backed by the fifth rate.
You look at Thatcher’s cabinets - sure, there were one or two clowns. But a good half of them could have been PM.
Well, it's often said we get the politicians we deserve but I think the quality of political journalism and analysis as presented on all media is disappointing. GB News is unwatchable as is Sky. Most questions are presented as simplistic binary options (which they aren't) and nobody is given time to put forward complex arguments for discussion. Trying to "discuss" immigration in two and a half minutes in an informed and reasoned way is impossible unless your sole argument is "sink the boats" or "deport them all".
I think the coming of social media and the 24/7 news cycle and the end of any kind of deference have made an enormous and negative impact to the quality (as distinct from the quantity) of our politics.
The counterpoint to this is it turns out there's an audience for really long politics podcasts. In the US it's mainly been Rogan, Lex Fridman, people like that. They tend not to do very hostile questions but they do talk about issues and give you a chance to hear an issue discussed in depth.
Politicians who are used to the soundbyte culture are scared of going on these because it'll create a lot of material and then the opposition will pick out the worst part and blast it across all the shallower channels. But with the actual listeners it seems to kind of inoculate them, because the people who listen feel like they know the candidate and they won't believe an attack that doesn't match what they heard.
Calling Rogan a political interviewer is like calling my cat a chef because he sometimes likes to take a bite of wet food and then a bite of dry food and then another bite of wet food. Sure, you can hear an issue discussed in depth, but the issue might be an entirey made up culture war confection. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
I mean I don't think it matters whether you call him a political interviewer or not? A politician can go on there and talk about politics, and Rogan or whoever will make various noises through his mouth that keep them talking about things his listeners want to hear about. It's definitely true that he (and other podcast hosts) won't provide a lot of well-informed pushback in the way that a TV interviewer is theoretically supposed to, but the upside of that is that the politians actually have an opportunity to develop and argument and don't have to talk in soundbytes all the time.
Yes, if you are the sort of person Rogan wants to interview* and want to talk about something, facing only some softball questions, it's a great opportunity to do that. Is this a good thing for society broadly? Given he's ended up promoting a bunch of conspiracy theories and radicalising audience members like @Sandpit , I'm not convinced it is.
Does it show there is an audience for long-form political discussion... Maybe? There are lots of long-form politics podcasts on the right and on the left, but I think they are largely preaching to the choir. They're sometimes just repeating platitudes, not digging into issues. There are some long-form podcasts that do topics justice and that are really interesting, but there are long-form podcasts about everything. You don't need much of an audience to keep a podcast going.
So thumbs up for (some) podcasts, but I don't think they solve the issues created by the 24/7 news cycle and TikTokification of media.
I don’t even know how Liverpool have the brass neck to celebrate these late goals, when they are utterly unconvincing and undeserving of the win. It’s cringe seeing them go yeeeeaahhhhh with their arms in the air after the most unconvincing display of football week after week.
It was bizarre and cruel on Burnley
Can Man Utd get anything this afternoon? Lose 4.1 is Amorim sacked in the morning? It’s clear he’s lost the dressing room.
There’s no future in this story, Big G, it will fizzy out in favour of something else to feign unhappiness. It’s how politics always works 99%. Starmer was ultra careful in PMQs not to answer a question with a lie, that’s the moment he got away with it.
Underlying it is lack of economic growth and easing of credit crisis, once/if Starmer gets that he’s safe as houses to lead Labour into the next GE.
I have said previously, at most there will be some sort of review of vetting procedures, Team Starmer found that they walked the line under the current guidance, he personally didn't see the full extent of it and nothing dodgy went close to his desk. And the upshot will be some poor sod nobody has ever heard of being given a cardboard box to stick his things in before being ejected from Downing Street as he will be pinned as the person who didn't look into things as hard as he could.
I don’t even know how Liverpool have the brass neck to celebrate these late goals, when they are utterly unconvincing and undeserving of the win. It’s cringe seeing them go yeeeeaahhhhh with their arms in the air after the most unconvincing display of football week after week.
Three points are three points, and you win the league by grinding out results on your poor days and going home with the points in the bag.
Comments
Even the Marxist Professors at Brighton Uni told us to watch out for that one
Which is pretty extraordinary
Alternatively he likes Frinton, which has a reputation of being a bit twee, as seaside Essex goes
It was quite alright though for the right people at the right time to bewail:
The decade that broke Britain: the disastrous decisions that left millions in a cost of living crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/01/the-decade-that-broke-britain-the-disastrous-decisions-that-left-millions-in-a-cost-of-living-crisis
Thanks
His main point (as I see it) is that the whole discourse is now driven by all the social media platforms, and the more adept users (and in one case, an owner) want catastrophes, but if they can’t actually cause one they at least want the unhappy and disaffected to perpetually feel that we’re on the edge of the abyss. We can even see on here that the radicalised go mental at every whiff of unattributed bullshit.
In your dreams.
As you say: Harris himself has built an impressive career out of visiting “broken” “left behind” Britain, and talking to Britons in these places. It’s his entire narrative
So for him to now turn around and say “actually, everything’s OK, this is all far right propaganda” is seriously disappointing. He can do better
Dr Rosena gets it.
Starmer said the St George’s flag “represents our diverse country” and that he would not tolerate people being “intimidated on our streets because of their background or the colour of their skin”.'
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/14/britain-far-right-protesters-flag-keir-starmer
The less innocent joy explanation is it's only the tax aspects of the transaction that have a clean bill of health.
Or maybe he loves Frinton and wants to retire there.
He was on TWTW as a commentator on the Trump visit and as a friend of Charlie Kirk. Commentary on the explicit place of religion in US politics, that does not exist in the UK *.
(IMO he's not looked at Danny Krueger and friends, but TCF he has been in the USA for more than a decade and said he was out of touch when they asked him a different question. Also TBF I'm sure if Kruger and friends do the full "my personal Lord and Saviour" things, which Charlie Kirk did do in spades.)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gk8j7yk2zo
They canceled the swim at the Ironman… so now it’s just bike and run. Guess they are more tin-men than iron-men.
My grandfather had a grocers shop and I used to go and "help". This was before I was 9 as we moved on my 9th birthday. My memory (or it may have been stories) were of him selling cheese with maggots. There would be a big round and a vicious looking wire cutter. I'm now wondering if this was true as we moved in 1963 so this seems a bit late for this to be allowed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRIRaBZ9CEE
Rhodri Marsden @rhodri.biz
My wife just told me about a thing where people are colouring in England flags to make them look like slices of Battenberg cake, how marvellous
https://bsky.app/profile/rhodri.biz/post/3lyrwbkrgb22a
My piccie for the day.
Now the easy option is to rent a place, or buy a cheap flat and pretend you are local (I referenced Gove who did this in Surrey Heath [rented], then promptly buggered off and the previous Tory MP for Guildford who bought a flat, when her actual home was elsewhere [actually only about 20 miles away]). So even if they do this and even if relatively local they still get some flack unless they are fully embedded.
So Farage, who was under even more scrutiny about being an absent MP, did the right thing (almost) to cover off those complaints. Of course the 'almost' bit is coming back to bite him, but there are plenty of other MPs who haven't gone as far as him to show local credentials and are getting no flack.
He's right of course - loads of exemptions for the smallest businesses, as soon as you get to about 5 employees, or you want to move into a premises that over £12k a year in rent, or you somehow manage to make over £50k profit (on paper!) all of a sudden you get the full weight of all the taxation the government can throw at you. As someone who currently employs 5 people, and who would like to grow my business with some better premises etc etc, it feels like everything is pretty much designed to stop me.
Making it really easy to scale 3-5 person businesses into 10-20 businesses would probably do more for economic growth than almost anything else the government could do - even it was only achieved by some sorts of tax holidays that temporarily gave you some respite when you grow past a certain size.
Rebating business rates per FTE person employed might be an interesting thing to try which would help and incentivise business scaling.
But yesterday he managed - and it is mainly him - to get 300,000 people (my honest estimate) to march through London. Even if it was only the “110,000” that the Met claim (with dubious precision) it’s an extraordinary achievement. He’s not long out of prison
I do wonder if he has some innate genius for this. A proper working class demagogue with real skill, operating on a level we don’t always appreciate. We haven’t seen someone like this in Britain… ever? It’s a type we’ve only seen in other countries
Note that this is not some fanboi nonsense. Hitler and Goebbels were, to my mind, political geniuses
I don’t believe tommeh is a Nazi. But Hitler is an apt comparison in terms of what he does and how it succeeds
Politically, I reckon he probably didn't mind a bit of Tony Blair or David Cameron. Its since then that has had him increasingly struggling to stay "neutral".
All the changes in Reeves first budget will have hit him in particular really hard. He has businesses that requires lots of staff in child care and leisure industries, so higher minimum wage, higher employee NI, absolutely smash him. So not surprising ain't happy about the government.
The whole world went mad. It led to me making a decision to leave my employer at the time as it went Turbo-Woke and started launching events about White Privilege.
And, then, the endless lockdowns.
There’s always been a tension between city and country of course, and always a dual view of the big city that it’s both a privileged enclave whose out of touch inhabitants do awful things like take their children to Yo! Sushi, and a rotten hellhole that no one in their right mind would venture into, but the propaganda has been relentless since about 4 or 5 years ago, and really taken off after Musk took control of Twitter.
Still, I was planning on heading out into your Telegraph Hill hellscape this afternoon but then it started raining.
He’s becoming a potent player in British politics. At some point he might get too powerful for the state to continue persecuting him
Probably the worst year for tens of millions of people, in fact
Sir Keir Starmer cannot think that his embattled premiership is going to gain lustre from bringing this guest [Trump] to our shores. The ideal state visit is an occasion to celebrate and nurture the ties that bind two countries. Other times, they are endured as a necessary price of realpolitik.
This visit is the most cynically conceived I can remember. It is best thought of as the apotheosis of Operation Ingratiate: the obsequious strategy that Sir Keir started pursuing even before Trump returned to the Oval Office. Starmer aides contend that laying on a splash of regal pageantry and catering is a price worth paying to swerve the most punishing of the Trumpian tariffs. Signatories on UK-US tech partnerships will be hyped as another fruit of the relationship.
Playing nice with The Donald turns the stomachs of the median Labour MP who would much prefer to enjoy Sir Ed Davey’s freedom to declare that he is boycotting the state banquet at Windsor Castle in protest at the horrifying carnage in Gaza. Donald Trump will regard his visit to our shores as a success if he comes away with an ego-gratifying photo album of happy snaps with the royals and the Household Cavalry. Sir Keir has a contrasting need – to show his domestic audience at least glimmers of progress on Gaza and the security of Europe.
There is a distinction between the necessities of realpolitik and obeisance so slavish that you make yourself look like a vassal, meekly compliant to the capricious and authoritarian White House. The prime minister won’t do his reputation or our national dignity any favours if he loses sight of the difference this week.
Not only is "Tommy" (or "Tommeh" if you prefer) the name he is now universally known as (as per Boris, and Ken) which is a great branding asset, but it is a particularly appealing one. Who could think ill of a Tommy?
And then, of course, at the back of the mind, there are are the WW1 resonances of that name which is deeply embedded in our collective psyche.
That really is clever (and monstrously cynical), sad to say.
The best quote:
"We decided the best way to protect land was to own it; so we set up the National Trust in 1895."
I learnt about a thing called a "Side Road Order", which are what are created to cut through all the side roads when building a motorway or trunk road, and that - plus a legal precedent - may well mean that my unregistered-as-a--PROW footbridge across the M1 that the bigger-roundabout demanders are ignoring, may actually be protected as it runs between Carter Lane West and Carter Lane East and so can be shown to be an existing Right of Way.
But i need to find the order. It's FOI time.
If anything it's Nige that's the political genius, not Robinson. He's successfully harnessed these disparate movements into 34% of voting intention.
I think what's really done it recently is all of the free speech censorship, dismissal of rape and sexual abuse by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants by the state until they were forced to address it by protestors, the hotels and continued boat arrivals. But really, the first I think it what has really turned this from an anti-immigration movement into a much wider one, it's captured a lot more middle of the road people who are fed up of the censorship and being told that what they think is wrong by people who are now cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk.
As always, it's hypocrisy that voters really hate more than anything else. I don't think Robinson has really done anything on that front, the left and hard left who have lectured the world about how "being kind" is important are now dancing on the grave of a political opponent and using wokeness to censor speech is backfiring on them. Robinson just happens to be one of the more visible people on the other side. I'd say Nige has been much more important in bringing together the alliance that has added up to 34% of VI than Robinson.
The Royal College of Defence Studies will not accept students from Israel from next year, the Government confirmed.
He is an absolute classic demagogue of the old school European tradition, right down to the history of street fighting and the criminal record. I can’t think of an equivalent in British history, all the comparisons are continental European. There are elements of Mussolini, elements of Hitler, a bit of Jean Marie Le Pen
Farage is gifted in a different way
You even said yourself 'I don't believe tommeh is a Nazi', so you are not even sure yourself. Then when someone challenges you on why you are 'not sure' you just give up and throw insults.
I mean talk about illogical nonsense. You have gone, in a matter of a couple of posts, from not being sure to being absolutely so sure that any discussion is infantile and not worth considering.
You have brains made of spaghetti.
Also the steady ramping of the minimum wage to a point significantly higher than inflation.
I'm not sure there is a stupider form of taxation than taxing the provision of employment. Far better to abolish employers NI and raise corp/dividend tax rates to recover the lost revenue.
If you want to encourage business investment (which is where this mystical "growth" thing comes from) the idea tax regime is one where businesses are taxed very lightly (including on profits), but getting that profit out into the owners grubby little mitts is fairly heavily taxed (via dividends/income tax). But what do I know - I just run a small business that is struggling to grow because the system is so heavily stacked against it.
Sir Ed Davey, perhaps? lol
No, only Tommy can do this. He is becoming pivotal
That is what he is talking about with the ice cream parlour. He is basically saying there is no profit in having a high street outlet unless you can do £1 million a year as all these taxes, fees, levies will eat up all the margin and there is only so high you can go when charging for a coffee or a 99.
Mosley was an established politician from a very wealthy upper class family, who then TRIED - and failed - to become a powerful demagogue
Not the same. All the best demagogues come from the gutter
Weren’t they close to a million or something bonkers?
I witnessed the Countryside Alliance March as well, which - IIRC - was around 300,000. Tommy’s March was easily as big as that, judging by the images
Although unless I've missed something, he was a lot more successful with women than Yaxley-Lennon.
As ever, your doppelgänger SeanT beat you to it and was wanking over Tommeh on here as a ‘patriot’ years ago.
There is no comparison
To put it in context, around 1000 turned up for the Easter Rising and about 100,000 sparked the February Revolution.
I am fascinated by politics, aren’t we all? Hence our presence here?
I like to look at it dispassionately. Examine it. Weigh it. Tommy R is a type of demagogue we simply haven’t seen in the UK ever before, in terms of his reach and success. That is a fascinating evolution, also a disturbing evolution. It is not a sign of a healthy polity when street fighting demagogues achieve major success, in fact it is a morbid sign of dysfunction. But we can’t ignore it
In typical bombastic style they say he organised the ‘largest indoor political meeting in the history of the world’, 30k at Earls Court.
You are doing your usual getting excited and coming out with silly exaggerations and extrapolations. I give you the 300K you quote for the size of the crowd which exceeds all accepted estimates by some margin, except Tommy's of course which is actually 3 million (lol)!
https://news.sky.com/story/labour-mps-already-angry-over-claim-mandelsons-appointment-was-worth-the-risk-13430757
The setup is tolerable if you are massive, and depending on the business its somewhere between ok to great* if you are absolutely tiny, its the you want to grow from 5 people to 50 and then 50 to 500, it then feels like the whole system is against you.
* as we found a huge proportion of ZHC are actually white collar jobs on very high salaries as the system is very generous if you are a one man band providing professional services from your home office.
Underlying it is lack of economic growth and easing of credit crisis, once/if Starmer gets that he’s safe as houses to lead Labour into the next GE.