I feel like losing my mind every time we do another round of Covid discourse because I live in Bergen county NJ, I saw the freezer trucks full of dead people with my own two eyes
I feel like losing my mind every time we do another round of Covid discourse because I live in Bergen county NJ, I saw the freezer trucks full of dead people with my own two eyes
Politics today is less driven by ideological conviction and more by parties chasing votes based on a distorted picture of public opinion, one filtered through algorithms that amplify emotionally engaging content. This incentivises performance over substance and erodes democratic deliberation.
this Labour MP needs to be sat down and have it explained to them in very short words that the primary goal of a budget is to set good fiscal and economic policy that will pay off over the medium and long term, not to have something that will “land” well with anyone
Yvette Copper as HASC chair has said numerous times on the record how important family reunification is. How she has children and it’s what every family would want. The mind boggles at how much of a coward she is now.
The commonly cited AI water usage statistics are based on a methodology where, if your data center buys green energy from a hydroelectric dam (as lots do, including the hyperscalers), then “natural evaporation of the water from the lake behind the dam” is counted as that data center’s water use.
Been receiving messages like this all day, not because I said anything at all positive about the state of Israel or its actions, but because I dared to suggest that some people who think of themselves as being on the left are being radicalized to antisemitism in the name of anti-Zionism.
area man incapable of separating the Roma vs the Romanians
NEW -- Exactly 10 days after taking the oath early this year, Donald Trump nearly drowned dozens, potentially hundreds, of his own citizens in California’s Central Valley. Why? Because he is one of the most ignorant people you will ever meet. www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...
I agree with James's broader argument, but I think this is a fair criticism of his criteria for 'dying'.
You guys see where this is going? Right?
Government decisions are led by statistics—on the economy, employment, housing and more. The UK’s statistics are in a mess. There are question marks over key figures, the ONS is underfunded and in crisis…do we even know how things are going any more? www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/busine...
Morning: No. 10 recognises it's operation was malfunctioning, and that it had ceded narrative control to Reform; childcare policy launches. By late afternoon: Assisted by racist BBC questioning, the PM proves incapable of articulating a positive multicultural patriotism. Very depressing.
The Left as a whole has over-learnt Shaw's famous aphorism about never wrestling with a pig because you both end up dirty. They need to just be prepared to put the boot in, because the current one-side restraint looks very like unilateral political disarmament.
She might be correct that this is the view of the Democratic Party leadership, but she has every incentive to spread "Dems in disarray" stories.
Why does anyone pretend that Rachael Bade is anything other than a Republican apologist?
I hadn't heard that one, but I am genuinely curious to hear it now that you mention it.
True, but will any amount of due diligence be sufficient to diminish the risk posed to a free press by a revanchist authoritarian?
Is it that Chicken Tikka Masala isn't a British dish?
Apparently “leading” lawyers and “experts” say that the Good Friday Agreement is no obstacle to UK leaving ECHR. Me, being neither, merely sets out what the Good Friday Agreement expressly says. davidallengreen.com/2023/07/why-...
Here's the ECHR polling from @yougov.co.uk. It ill behoves a generation who've had everything on a plate for two decades to yet again burn the surface off the Earth and leave the young to try to rebuild. Maybe take a pass on this one eh Boomers.
There is a lot of sophistry in the Policy Exchange GFA report, especially parsing sources to give an inaccurate impression. Here I'm cited discussing the impact of the the GFA on the NI legal order as a whole and it is presented as authority for the commitments only binding NI's devolved bodies:
The sheer indolence of the government and Starmer personally has upset me more than anything else that's happened since they took office. There have been policy choices that I've been unhappy about, but this is indescribably negligent behaviour.
Elon Musk will be championing the Tommy Robinson 13/9 rally, on grounds that Nigel Farage is "weak sauce" on mass deportation and too soft on Islam Govt not even reviewing its use of X since 2022 shows different rules apply to Elon Musk than we expect of every school-child on British values
Elon Musk is a radicalised extremist openly championing the most racist faction who would deport the Foreign Secretary, the Leader of the Opposition, the Justice Secretary and the last Prime Minister The govt silence about such a level of extremism is craven: infinite tolerance of racial hatred
If I were trying to win elections and arguments, I simply would be doing everything I could to move UK political conversation away from a website run by an avowed enemy who believes and writes this stuff about me:
Shall we place bets on when he first uses the word 'Banderites' in this discussion?
How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.
It's one of those rather obnoxious stock phrases that people use when trying to sound profound.
To take the lowest hanging of fruit: If I wanted to keep the damn hands of the far right off my flag, which I do, I would have invited the winning England team to Downing Street on a day the prime minister could actually make and be in the photographs and clips for!
Starmer's greatest presentational weakness is his inability to sound authentic when making these kinds of statements. I can fully imagine Blair making a fairly bland statement like "I like flags" sound meaningful and genuine, but for whatever reason Starmer just can't pull it off.
Does Starmer fly a St George's Flag at home? Possibly, but does anyone who's on the fence about this issue really care?
The problem with this is the same problem as with a lot of Starmer's efforts to come across as down-to-earth: it just sounds inauthentic and pandering, even if it's sincere.
It is insane to me that the richest man in the world is using his global megaphone to call for millions of British people to be rounded up and deported (including my family) and somehow this isn’t even news.
So what precisely do the right want to do about the white working classes? Certainly not go to university, as they want numbers down. Nor to have a unionised manufacturing job, as they don't want unions. No, they just want pawns as part of their culture wars. They don't give a toss.
“The argument for mass deportations and for refusing to process asylum claims is that ‘we have to look after our own, not the rest of the world’. The trouble is, ‘our own’ will also suffer from the kind of policy Farage proposes.” My @theobserveruk.bsky.social column: observer.co.uk/news/columni...
Israel threatening to formalize its already-existing regime of annexation & apartheid over the Palestinians of the occupied West Bank in response to European recognition of the State of Palestine is the diplomatic the equivalent of “if you fire me from my job, then I will go home and beat my kids.”
The thing about a lot of these never Trump Republicans is that, unlike a lot of institutionalist Dems who think the fever will break and we can all return to comity or whatever, these guys saw the rot up close and know the only appropriate response is to tear them out of government root and branch.
'Is it in fact, a good idea to give money to the Taliban, you know, the Al-Qaeda hosting guys?' - if you don't understand why this was obviously going to be a thing to attack Farage on, you just don't *like* the average British person very much. You think they're a fool!
Famously, attacking Corbyn over Salisbury made a bunch of swing voters pro-Russia. Labour people love to go “it’s different this time”, it never is, it’s always just Labour doing what it almost always does. (Losing.)
Next level rice cooker.
A competent government comms strategy would make quite a big deal that this is actually the second Reform elected representative to be caught using the N-word this week.
As a national poll of what’s a two-round system per district, it’s hard to project. But here’s what the poll shows: The leading far-right party at 31%. The Left Bloc’s two halves at 16.5% & at 10%. Macron’s party at just 13.5%. And the traditional conservatives at 10%.
You thought AI was a cool technological development, but ... have you heard about heating up sand?
I am very much not of the view that PX are good people doing good work, which is a major reason why I find giving them excuses to masquerade as victims frustrating.
Okily dokily.
I'd like us to be able to uphold humanist values and substantially reduce inequalities of power and wealth, and thinking that petty vandalism is an effective way of accomplishing those objectives is an obstacle to actually doing so.
Sorry, thinking that vandalising a think tank's office reception is a bad idea is now fascism?
Ironically that's exactly the kind of privileged viewpoint that someone who's never actually experienced oppression would articulate.
Criticising Keir Starmer for moral cowardice is now the new Centrist Dad? The times really have changed.
I'd quite like us to win actually, but you do you.
If you want oppression to flourish, then keep fetishising impotent, masturbatory acts of vandalism that don't actually do anything to help the oppressed.
I'm sure the Telegraph are beyond reason, but that doesn't mean every media outlet is.
The Troubles is a paradigmatic example of tit-for-tat violence. You're eliding the causes of the Troubles with the nature of the conflict once it got underway.
Can you name a benefit that isn't self-gratification?
'Bellum omnium contra omnes' isn't a great maxim for a stable democracy.
Well yes, but it's a rainy afternoon/evening.
Come on mate, we're all yelling at clouds on here. This is Bluesky after all.
That was extremely apparent in my original tweet, but I realise we're in the Bad Faith corner of Bluesky, where ignoring natural and obvious inferences is par for the course.
I didn't compare vandalising a building with the Troubles, I was making the point that normalising violence as a political tactic tends to create an escalatory spiral that, if left unimpeded, results in uncontrolled inter-communal violence like the Troubles.
Manchester City and Plymouth Argyll are both football teams, but that doesn't mean that they draw the same gate, for example.
Leaving my snark aside for a moment, I think the problem here is that you're confusing the extent to which an action is perceived by its intended audience, with the nature of the action itself.
I think vandalism is capable of being violence in and of itself, and also potentially a prelude to greater violence. I don't think that means it's the same kind of violence as shooting someone, but then again I didn't realise that I'd need to spell out these kinds of natural inferences.
Oh the irony.
In particular, you might want to note the words "ever-escalating".
I didn't do any of that actually. You might want to re-read what I wrote.
I think you're overestimating how much information the average viewer retains from news broadcasts.
I've yet to see the Guardian or the Mirror be particularly effusive about them, and the FT and Independent probably fall into the mixed basket.
I wasn't aware those two words were antonyms?
Ok, but how about we don't add to the sum total of violence, especially when our brand of violence does nothing to prevent violence from being done to the marginalised?
That's pretty minimal in the grand scheme of things.
I'm not exactly expecting them to listen to me anyway, but it's a free country y'know.
This isn't like vandalising an Elbit factory where you can plausibly argue that you're impeding, even if only marginally, Israeli atrocities.
I think vandalising an office reception is dumb and bad. I also think Policy Exchange are bad. We all contain multitudes, etc.
If you're arguing that the vandalism mainly got attention because PX are well-connected, then that answer is probably simultaneously true and not a good rebuttal of the argument that I'm making, which is that vandalism is in and of itself a bad idea.
Parts of the media do, others don't. That tends to be the way with most things.
How many people do you think have heard of Policy Exchange?
I mean, I'm not the guy suggesting that it's impossible for multiple things to be bad.
Or - and hear me out here - multiple things can be bad to differing degrees, and acts that are morally comprehensible can nonetheless be a bad idea.
Hi Phil, how are you mate? I subscribe to the view that vandalising a building for absolutely no benefit is a waste of time and doesn't really meaningfully protect asylum seekers from harm. YMMV though.
I think the people who chose to vandalise a building can fairly be blamed for any resulting bad publicity.
Oh the irony.
That they're lobbying for bad policies? That's distinct from whether or not their lobbying is inherently different in character to other people's.
Watching folk get radicalised over the other place is quite the depressing sight. But then again, if government isn't prepared to tell a story of complexity, not surprising if many people think there really is a simple solution like leave the ECHR.
Do I really need to spell out that the same activity can be carried out with different levels of impact, without altering the fact that it's fundamentally the same activity?
It's a very opaque question, so I you might want to rephrase it.
If you think not wanting to normalise political violence is 'icky', then you are already dangerously radicalised.
What point do you think you're making here?
Because they're lobbying for bad policies. If they were lobbying for good policies, I would care far less. Also, they are far better funded than most individual citizens.
I think they advocate for bad policies, isn't that enough?
I don't particularly want an ever-escalating cycle of violent tit-for-tat retaliation between different political groups in society. It's the sort of thing that leads to a Troubles-style social meltdown.
By people who don't like them. Is this really so hard to grasp?
By lobbying elected politicians, something anyone can do.
It would be great if the Left could think a bit more deeply about tactics and strategy, rather than just self-indulgently doing whatever they feel like and having absolutely zero impact.
What actually has been accomplished by this then? Policy Exchange get to present themselves as victims of political violence, absolutely no-one who didn't already dislike them is persuaded, and it will have no effect on their advocacy of terrible ideas.
By all means campaign against Policy Exchange's work, but realise that normalising violent conduct inevitably results in more violence, not less.
Don't be so pessimistic; give it another couple of years and we'll have Iain Mansfield making land acknowledgements before Policy Exchange events.
Ben Obese-Jecty is the only Conservative MP and frankly one of the vanishingly small number of MPs, full stop, to react to this stuff in a normal way.
Indeed. Plain truth is that there is a vast majority in the country as a whole to be rallied against this stuff. Labour seem to want to lead a republican front without ever saying “Vichy was bad”, and other than Obese-Jecty, Tory MPs seem to think someone else will deal with the problem for them.