Thursday 11th January 2024

[refitman]

Morning all.

[frog222]

Brrr morning all, warmed up from --5° but at least there's no wind !

Good that gilsey's eyes are recovering

[gilsey]

Good morning.


This essay was titled 'Gaza and the End of Western Hypocrisy', now changed to Western Fantasy.
I suppose someone could write a book about why this has happened, certainly this piece doesn't attempt to explain it. It's not very long.

I call it the end of hypocrisy. Take President Joe Biden. On two occasions he has publicly said that Israel is conducting “indiscriminate bombings” in Gaza, a war crime under international law. Lawyers have even argued his statements amount to a confession of aiding and abetting war crimes, no small matter.

Why would Biden do this? Why not simply proclaim a number of high principles and then proceed to ignore them in practice? The late Henry Kissinger seemed to know better and to be concerned with the role of hypocrisy in world affairs, a balancing act between the need for norms and the equally important need to occasionally break them.

Biden, by contrast, says the quiet part out loud.

[frog222]

The Post Office paid £15.75 compensation to one of its victims. Here’s the nine ways they minimise payouts.
Dan 11 January 2024 8:53 am

The Mail committing journalism --
It was this Daily Mail story that made me realise something was deeply wrong with the Post Office’s compensation scheme..

The detail is excruciating, how the PO's lawyers screwed the victims.

https://www.taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/01/11/hss_scandal/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ation.html

[frog222]

[frog222]

[refitman]

But have you considered Corbyn bad?

[frog222]

gilsey - from the link in the article --

"In the debate over the past few months we have witnessed staggering levels of fabulation. One television presenter said on air that no Palestinian Christians exist. One Israeli official added that there are no Christian churches in Gaza. When the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer was killed in an Israeli airstrike, an organised effort started online to portray him as a terrorist. Anything else would be a narrative violation. One of the biggest and most influential newspapers in Germany claimed, incredibly, that “Free Palestine is the new Heil Hitler.” The systematic destruction of almost every hospital and school in Gaza is presented as necessary to defeat Hamas. The silence around the killing of so many civilians is not imposed but accepted by those for whom every opposing fact would divert from the full enjoyment of fantasies where the West is once again fighting evil, and this time evil has no armed divisions with which to fight back."

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I've been out and got some French antifreeze so normal service shall be resumed.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Jake Berry saved by the bell.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Stuart Rose - there's a blast from the (even if relatively recent) past.

[gilsey]

Good to know our* instincts are confirmed by the data.

centre-left parties promising, for example, to be tough on immigration or public spending are unlikely to attract potential voters on the right, and risk alienating existing progressive supporters.

“Voters tend to prefer the original to the copy,” said Tarik Abou-Chadi, an associate professor of European politics at the University of Oxford and the co-founder of the Progressive Politics Research Network (PPRNet), which launched on Wednesday.

Abou-Chadi said the team of political scientists, from universities including Barcelona, Lausanne, Vienna, Zurich and Berlin, was not “aiming to advise or act as political consultants” but to present “careful, empirical, data-based” research.

“We’re looking to provide a more solid, accurate foundation for an open political debate about progressive politics, who votes for progressive parties and why, and the strategies available to them,” he said. “That involves a bit of myth-busting.”

Björn Bremer of the Central European University in Vienna said a survey in Spain, Italy, the UK and Germany and larger datasets from 12 EU countries showed that since the financial crisis of 2008, “fiscal orthodoxy” had been a vote loser for the centre left.

“Social democratic parties that have backed austerity fail to win the support of voters worried about public debt, and lose the backing of those who oppose austerity,” Bremer said. “Centre-left parties that actually impose austerity lose votes.”

and so on. No doubt Morgan McSweeney knows better.

Adopting rightwing policies ‘does not help centre-left win votes’



* most of us

[gilsey]

[refitman]

Great. We've got a bigot in charge of human rights reporting

[AnatolyKasparov]

Well hopefully she will lose her seat whenever we actually get a GE.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Question Time came tonight from Oxford, with an audience of undecided voters. Upon hearing this I let out an exasperated sigh and thought, 'this is going to be shit.' And so it was. We began with Karl in his fancy pants who pompously introduced himself as the founder of a 'deeptek' AI startup who'd voted Tory for the last 20 years and it didn't get much better. They sat gawping gormlessly in almost total silence for most of the evening resulting in an utterly anodyne affair, but if they had one overarching complaint it was the lack of difference between the two main parties, and in that they undoubtedly had a point.

For the Tories we had Andrea Leadsom. Andrea increasingly looks like she's died and an apprentice undertaker has done her make up. The only laugh of the evening came when she was championing her new 'Family hubs' and a lady pointed out her town wouldn't need one if the Tories hadn't shut down their Sure Start centre. According to Andrea the NHS was 'just about' fine then along came pesky Covid and those dastardly Russians and ruined all the Conservatives hard work (she didn't try to blame it on the strikes but that's probably because she forgot), she claimed we 'recovered faster' from Covid whatever that was supposed to mean, and said we vaccinated our population more quickly than anywhere else in the world, which is just nonsense. The cherry on her insanity cake however was the response she gave to a question about wealth disparity where she asserted that we have opportunities for all and a social safety net which provides a huge amount of support for those who struggle. Completely fucking bonkers.

For Labour we had Lisa Nandy. Lisa's usually a stalwart when it comes to QT but she struggled tonight, largely because she didn't have a lot to offer an audience who were desperate for her to offer them something. Anything. Just a single ray of hope. Amongst other things she was asked about reducing child poverty by removing the two child benefits cap. Nope sorry can't promise anything. And this is the problem Labour are creating for themselves. Faced with an undecided audience, many of whom were asking for some basic left wing alternatives to the mess we find ourselves in the best Lisa Nandy could offer was, 'We'll have to see', and, 'trust us', and as a result she faced the same tumbleweed as Leadsom. Until right at the end a bloke said she was more trustworthy than Starmer and we got the first proper round of applause of the evening so at least she had that to smile about all the way back to Wigan.

For politics bods we had Anand Menon. I like Anand, he's one of the few political commentators in this country unafraid to tell people a few home truths. This evening for example, while everyone else was bemoaning the tax burden he pointed out that in fact taxes in this country are about middle of the league table for developed countries and maybe it was time voters realised that if they wanted to live in a functioning country with proper public services they'd have to pay for it. He then went on to talk about taxing unearned wealth, a wealth tax if you will, so I fully expect to find him tied to a stake tomorrow surrounded by baying Tories as Starmer lights the pyre.

For Asda we had Stuart Rose. Stuart is obviously a very successful fellow given the number of companies he's run but he came across like a dick. You know the type, that kind of arrogant insouciant insistence that they have all the answers and yet when you try to question them they reply with more questions. A bullshitter in other words. It obviously works well at executive business level but tonight when asked specifics, or even merely his own opinion, all he had to offer were generalities and platitudes while looking pleased with himself. Arsehole.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Great. We've got a bigot in charge of human rights reporting

Ah come on. Really?

[AnatolyKasparov]

Sky, have you really forgotten Rose's inglorious role in the 2016 Remain campaign?

[Sky'sGoneOut]

There was a brief discussion about social care.

My Mum is now being funded by the council after her nursing home fees have blown through the £80000 she had in her account which came from the sale of her own mother's house.

My Dad had a visit from a young lady from the council who threatened to report him to whoever the fuck is interested for using what little of what was left of my Mum's money to buy her food and clothes because it could be regarded as deprivation of capital.

Fuck this country, I've just about had enough.

[AnatolyKasparov]

There was a brief discussion about social care.

My Mum is now being funded by the council after her nursing home fees have blown through the £80000 she had in her account which came from the sale of her own mother's house.

My Dad had a visit from a young lady from the council who threatened to report him to whoever the fuck is interested for using what little of what was left of my Mum's money to buy her food and clothes because it could be regarded as deprivation of capital.

Fuck this country, I've just about had enough.

Didn't even know that was a thing, I'm sorry that your parents had to go through this.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Thanks AK, the weird thing is so far they've failed to bring up the BMW he bought with her money just days after she went into the home.