Saturday 16th & Sunday 17th March 2024

[refitman]

Morning all.

[gilsey]

Good morning, sunny here for a change.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Vaughan Gething is the new leader of Welsh Labour (and thus also first minister in the coming days)

[refitman]

Apparently the Graun keep their columnists in a dark hole, when not being made to write

[frog222]

Refit -- Sheela Bee should be shot for disrespect towards your next Ruler !

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I mean fair enough, but watching Corbyn supporters saying 'If Starmer played the flute in the Eighties he's not working class', then getting their arses well and truly handed to them has been pretty funny. My bog standard comp had a separate music block which housed (amongst other instruments) a glorious Moog synth. It's an absolute tragedy that music has since been erased from working class kids education.





[Edited 'cos I posted the wrong Twitter link]

[frog222]

Will Charlotte Higgins live this down ?

Anyway, will the next Ruler go to Washington to bend the knee like Mrs May, if it's Trump 2.0 ?

[frog222]

I mean fair enough, but watching Corbyn supporters saying 'If Starmer played the flute in the Eighties he's not working class', then getting their arses well and truly handed to them has been pretty funny. My bog standard comp had a separate music block which housed (amongst other instruments) a glorious Moog synth. It's an absolute tragedy that music has since been erased from working class kids education.

Hello Sky

Are Corbyn supporters in question that young, or just /cough> disingenuous ?

I think Blair erased learning a second language ?

Can't remember who sold off those school playing fields of my youth .

I expect it was Tory Austerity that did for music ?

[refitman]

I have no issue with Starmer saying more arts funding in schools is a good thing. Although he has immediately said that funding won't immediately happen, so don't go holding any breaths.

It's the utter bollocks of the Graun I take issue with.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Yes, in the seventies and eighties doing musical instruments at school was entirely normal - I know this as a former clarinet (Grade 5) player.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Are Corbyn supporters in question that young, or just /cough> disingenuous ?

Young by the sound of them, it's genuinely sad that they couldn't imagine state schools teaching music and having instruments.

I think Blair erased learning a second language?

I'm not sure about that. What I do know however is when I was at Uni I had the opportunity to study in Rome for a year so began taking a course in Italian, only for Blair to pull us out of whatever scheme it was and scupper my plans. I'll hold that against him for the rest of my life.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Just thought I'd check in on Chardine to see if she's taken being corrected by a myriad of (mostly) polite people gracefully on the chin.

Of course she hasn't, she's played the race card.



The 'white woman' she's accusing of having irrational visceral anger towards black women actually seems really nice and would be a pleasure to know.

https://twitter.com/drrachelbroady

It's incredible the lengths some people will go to just to avoid admitting they were wrong.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I remember watching some brexit debate the wretched ERG Tories were doing their best to filibuster when Jacob Rees-Mogg sneeringly proclaimed that the only reason the opposition benches were so incensed was because none of them had the vocabulary to talk for more than five minutes. Here we see Jacob proved wrong...with ferrets.

(I'd heard about this but not seen the transcripts)

[AnatolyKasparov]

Brilliant, wasn't it.

Effective filibustering is indeed an art.

[refitman]

Just watched some of that on a Twitch stream. Truss looked sooooooo annoyed, it was great.

[frog222]

Onwards to government

[AnatolyKasparov]

Just realised it was a Reform Party bus, all makes sense now

[frog222]

It would have been worse under Labour

[refitman]

Huge turn out for 30p Lee

[frog222]

The Invisible Majority --

[frog222]

Now, is that completely clear ?

But many Labour voters demand more than incremental change and technocratic social democracy. They want bold ideas. They want radicalism. This, perhaps surprisingly given her public image and innate caution, is where Reeves believes she can help: she is Labour’s chancellor-in-waiting but also its chief ideologue.

That may be so, but does securonomics really amount to anything more than an exercise in wishful thinking: Bidenism but without the money and the mighty dollar? More than this, as Adam Posen suggested in Washington, is it really another word for protectionism?

“Look, I have no problem with our great financial service companies selling to China,” Reeves told me. “But never again should we be reliant on China, a country that does not share our values, to build our nuclear power stations and never again should we open our 5G infrastructure to Chinese investment. Securonomics is not protectionism. But it is hard-headed realism. As for Bidenomics, I know we can’t put in billions, trillions in investment like the Americans can. So we will have to find different ways of getting investment in the economy by working in partnership with business.”

Reeves knows a long period of Conservative rule is ending and that the political sea-change is now for Labour. She is troubled by what she calls “British decline” and wants to position herself in the vanguard — alongside the US Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen — of a new economic consensus.

At the end of the 1970s, as the postwar order crumbled, the Thatcherites had a radical solution to the political and economic crisis in which Britain was mired. Can Reeves, with her talk of securonomics and new orthodoxies, and Labour effect a similar transformation today, during a comparable period of crisis? Or will the cycle of decline continue? We shall find out soon enough.

https://archive.is/dQEet#selection-2885.122-2915.381

[AnatolyKasparov]

Jason Cowley taking a break from making the Staggers well nigh unreadable, then.

[GetYou]

Well, that was fun.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Watch them lose to Coventry in the semi now

[frog222]

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Watch them lose to Coventry in the semi now

Was out wandering around the rural environs of Halifax so only saw it in semi-drunk snapshots while popping into the occasional pub. Watching it now online.

Shibden Hall for any fans of Gentleman Jack.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Blimey, I assumed Liverpool had played their youth side but apparently not.

Someone needs to have a word with ITV, who doesn't have a speed function on their web player these days? I was hoping to scoot through this at double speed with the crowd sounding like chipmunks.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Sod it, I'll watch it tomorrow.

Reading through the right wing press this weekend I've noticed a bit of a narrative forming. It'll be good to lose the next election because winning it would be a poisoned chalice so better Labour than us. Which, if you take the five stages of grief seriously (don't do that) would suggest they're in a mix of denial and anger (the first two stages). Next apparently we have bargaining which they should be good at given their free market beliefs, and then we have depression.

Depression doesn't exist in the Conservative world, it's either a ruse to claim benefits or more seriously a character flaw, despite one of their greatest heroes quite obviously suffering from it.

Which leaves us with acceptance. The most difficult of all. Which will never happen or they'd have to admit we were right.

[Sky'sGoneOut]