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Flatulent tosspottery

What friggin’ cuts?

For years, the Tories said austerity was over. But look around: it’s getting worse, and there’s more to come
John Harris

This week’s budget is certain to bring more cuts. Westminster is missing the stark fact that people simply cannot take any more

Tax take is at 70 year high, public spending up in cash, in inflation adjusted and in GDP terms.

What sodding austerity?

Another Tosser then

And this requires another kind of realism – understanding what might appeal to the greatest number of people globally, from peasants in the global south to farmers in the global north. It’s unlikely, he says, that we’ll get communism or socialism in the next 10 years – a small farmer in Iowa “doesn’t want to obliterate private property”. But we can get “some pretty good stuff” through “decommodifying many of the key pillars of socioeconomic life and creatively working within ecological constraints”, even if “we’ll probably still have basic market mechanisms for some things”.

If some of this sounds like triangulation, he insists it isn’t. “In between meaningless reform and impossible revolution,” he writes, “we find mixed existing and historical models of formal state, civil, and guerrilla strategies.

Another of those idea sets clearly produced by frotting over Das Kapial in Mom’s basement.

Deluded

“Sure, it’d be a lot more convenient if you could harvest it whenever you wanted. But doing it the right way is part of our culture,” he said. “And so it makes absolutely no sense to me that our ancestors would just get rid of the woolly dogs because it was more convenient to use something else.”

Not understanding human beings at all.

The background:

But it was a dog, cultivated over millennia, that produced one of the more unusual materials for their weaving.

To ensure breed purity, the dogs were kept on islets, tended by Salish women who visited by canoe, bringing food including Pacific salmon, herring and other marine mammals. The dogs were sheared with mussel shell knives.

So, the claim is not just normal humanity but whitey did it. Ho Hum.

Ahh, here’s the complaint

Maybe we should be able to laugh at anything. But slavery?
Nels Abbey

Yes, slavery, suitable for comedy, satire. Great. But:

Look again at the projects listed above. All are American, the product of a diverse group of creative people. But in Britain, when it comes to satirical or comedic pieces on race and minority religion, the money, power and creative control tend to be placed in the hands of white people, or at least, out of the hands and reach of people of colour.

Black writer complains that no black writers are being paid to do this.

So children, can we all spell “Grift”?

Don’t, ever, establish a charity to inherit your money

One of Britain’s biggest charitable trusts is dismissing its entire board as part of a diversity drive after branding itself “white and privileged”.

The Tudor Trust, which has an endowment of £288 million and received £2.35m of government funding in 2018, wants a “more diverse group” and to put “social justice and anti-racism” at the heart of its work.

The group, which awards about £20 million a year through charitable grants, was founded in 1955 with the financial support of Sir Godfrey Mitchell, founder of the construction company George Wimpey. Several of his descendants have held trusteeships, including Matthew Dunwell and his brother Benjamin, both of whom could face the sack.

An email from interim chair Raji Hunjan of the Tudor Trust, seen by The Telegraph, reveals that the charity plans a “wholesale change” of the family-led board. New trustees and a permanent chair “more representative of the demographics and lived experiences of the communities we serve” will be appointed instead. The overhaul is expected to be complete by August 2024.

Because this is what will inevitably happen. Whatever you meant, thought, the money would be spent upon it will just end up as the same group of twats spending it on their wishes. However you write the rules, it’ll still end up this way. Whoever Popham was, you really think s/he meant to fund Spud?

Hell, sign it over to the Treaury rather than this monstrosity.

This is not so

Now astronomers want to erase this celestial distinction. They say that Magellan, the16th century Portuguese sailor, was a murderer who enslaved and burned down the homes of Indigenous peoples during his leadership of the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe. They insist his name should no longer be honoured by being associated with the clouds.

“Magellan committed horrific acts. In what became Guam and the Philippines, he and his men burned villages and killed their inhabitants,” says the astronomer Mia de los Reyes, of Amherst College in Massachusetts. Magellan led the 1519 Spanish expedition that achieved the first European navigation to Asia via the Pacific, but died in a battle, in 1521, with Indigenous people in present-day Philippines.

“Astronomers” are not making the demand. Some tinpot pisser at Amherst (of course) is hoping to make a name for herself by so demanding. Lots of invites to conferences on decolonialisation beckon if she can just get her name and that demand out there.

Damn right too

Starbucks is increasing pay and benefits for most of its U.S. hourly workers after ending its fiscal year with record sales.

But the company said Monday that unionized workers won’t be eligible for some of those perks, a sign of the continuing tension between the Seattle coffee giant and the union trying to organize its U.S. stores.

The union is, of course, complaining.

Logically, if you’ve a union negotiating your contract, pay and benefits, then the company cannot change those things without theunion agreeing.

Starbucks’ actions go against a September ruling by an administrative law judge for the NLRB, who ruled that the company acted illegally last fall when it raised pay only for non-union workers.

Starbucks has appealed that ruling, saying NLRB’s standards don’t allow employers to make unilateral changes in the wages or benefits of unionized employees.

Quite.

Betcha, no, betcha

In my local Highams park, a fantastic bit of green space on the edge of Epping Forest in north-east London, Humphry’s cafe is a community-supported venue in a former social hut for postwar prefab houses, where you can always have a big cup of builder’s tea for £1. As a result, it’s a fantastically welcoming space, always busy, with anyone from school kids bunking off to dog walkers, pram-pushers and senior citizens putting the world to rights. Yes, you can still buy avocado on sourdough toast if you have the readies, but the presence of that cheap brew makes the cafe what it is – accessible and open to all the community.

It doesn’t seem unreasonable that museums, galleries, major libraries, hospitals and so on could take a lead from churches or my humble local cafe and start offering tea (or instant coffee) for far less than the preposterously high prices they charge now. Politicians love to brandish mugs of tea in weird displays of authenticity, but it’s galling that they have their hot beverages heavily subsidised by the taxpayer in the House of Commons cafes, where a brew costs as little as 70p.

With that in mind, it’s about time we reclaimed institutional tea and campaigned for the simple comfort of our national drink at a reasonable price – #onequidtea for all. Perhaps then we’d even be able to push the boat out and buy a monster cookie to go with it.

Guarantee you this same ignorant tosser would be outraged if you suggested lowering the £10.40 minimum wage. Which is, I assure you, one of the reasons for expensive tea. Wages are about 30% of any catering operation.

A new one on me here

Deconstructing Homonationalism And Pink Washing: How Israel Uses Queer People To Excuse Human Rights Violations
The pink washing tactics used by Israel in response to valid criticism show how their queer affirmative policies are inherently discriminatory towards Palestinians.

Because Israel is fine – legally – with LGBTQ and Palestine is not, therefore Israel pointing out that it’s fine with LGBTQ and Palestine is not is pinkwashing.

Summat to do with the Joos as far as I understand it.

Windypuff or total windypuff?

The narrow debate around AI “guardrails” perpetuates a tug-of-war between the impulse of government to regulate and the power of business to profit. Instead, government and business must act together to show citizens that the full power of the AI age will redress the structural deficiencies of our current capitalist model and make our economy work for all, not just the few. The gathered dignitaries must use the summit to provide a global declaration that defines the shared responsibility of the public and private sectors for a root-and-branch reform of capitalism.

We need a clear and definitive joint declaration signed at the highest level. In order for it to receive public confidence, it cannot be a government “communiqué” or a “techno-optimist manifesto”. At its very core it must answer the vital question posed by the King in his recent speech at Mansion House, where he asked: “Have we succeeded in equal measure in schooling ourselves, and our communities, in the importance of our responsibilities toward one another?”

While there is a global trend to introduce AI guardrails through a swirl of policy frameworks centrally concerned with the safety risks of AI, this is not enough. In fact, perversely, if this were done without a clear commitment to the common good, fully embraced by public and private sectors, AI is likely to exacerbate the levers of inequality and social division that plague our world today.

A concrete declaration based on moral clarity could change everything. It will harness the potential promise of AI to establish a truly inclusive capitalism. We want a cohesive society where we no longer think of “us” and “them” but where we all believe that our economic system works equally for all.

Lynn Forester de Rothschild is founder and CEO of the Council for Inclusive Capitalism

Rich bird windypuff I suppose.

It’s not even precise enough to be able to critique it. Just “AI should be sugar and spice”.

Yes, Huffington Post goes there

Ghastly.

Then again the piece itself seems remarkably confused:

The United States considered that American Indians were savages, animals. Occupied their land with colonists. To protect them, she annihilated ancient villages. Those who survived were confined in what we call reservations. However, the soldiers who defended ‘El Álamo’ are considered national heroes.

The Alamo was a battle against the equally European and colonialist Mexicans…..

Artista y profesor de la Escuela de Arte Pancho Lasso de Lanzarote

If at first, then try again

Ministers should cap domestic sugar production to tackle Britain’s obesity crisis, according to a new report backed by health experts and environmental campaigners.

The UK grows and imports more than two and a half times the population’s maximum recommended intake of sugar, according to Sugar Pollution, a report by environmental campaigners Feedback Global and Action on Sugar, a group of specialists in medicine, nutrition and public health.

Insisting that everyone change the recipes so that they have less sugar in them didn;t work. Many of those low sugar versions are now redundant – not enough people bought them for their viability.

So, now, as the true fanatics, they demand another way to impose their desires upon the population.

What this will really mean – of course- is that much food production will move offshore. Limiting raw sugar supply will raise the price of raw sugar. So, people who use raw sugar in making things will do so elsewhere and then import the product. Mars bars will be made in Holland – to the extent that they’re not already. Just like Lifesavers are made in Canada.

They will then demand bans on hte import of things containing sugar. Of course they will. And so it will come that smuggling Mars Bars is a valid and profitable occupation. Bags of pure white available on street corners – Nah mate, the demerara, that’s specialist gear, innit? Be 10 minutes to get some.

Simples, they’re nuts

Causality is always a problem:

Research indicates that political progressives have lower levels of mental well-being than political conservatives. However, while attention has been paid to why conservatives have higher levels of well-being relatively little attention has been used to examine why progressives may have comparatively low levels of well-being. Recent events connected to a “Great Awokening” suggest that identity politics may correlate to a decrease in well-being particularly among young progressives and offer an explanation tied to internal elements within political progressiveness. Regression analysis with data from the Baylor Religion Survey indicates that identity political variables, but not a desire for higher government spending, are consistently negatively related to lower well-being and mediate the ability of progressive political ideology to predict lower levels of well-being. By paying attention to political progressives, rather than political conservatives, a nuanced approach to understanding the relationship between political ideology and well-being begins to emerge. It is plausible that political progressives are not equally prone to lower levels of well-being as those committed to a class-based type of progressive activism seem to be better off than those tied to issues of identity politics.

One possible answer is that such concerns make you unhappy. Or, alternatively, that nutters believe such things.

My own belief – belief – is that so much of this identity politics is the sort of narcissistic fluff only indulged in by those already nervous and unhappy. You know, the sort of kids who would benefit from having the faces pushed in their pink school custard a few times.

Firearms deaths in children

Saw a couple of American pieces referring to firearms deaths in hte US. Of course, given hte meeja, they led to calls to abolish the 2 nd Amend etc. Gun control now! So, found the actual paper:

In 2021, firearms continued to be the leading cause of death among US children. From 2018 to 2021, there was a 41.6% increase in the firearm death rate. In 2021, among children who died by firearms, 84.8% were male, 49.9% were Black, 82.6% were aged 15 to 19 years, and 64.3% died by homicide. Black children accounted for 67.3% of firearm homicides, with a death rate increase of 1.8 from 2020 to 2021. White children accounted for 78.4% of firearm suicides. From 2020 to 2021, the suicide rate increased among Black and white children, yet decreased among American Indian or Alaskan Native children. Geographically, there were worsening clusters of firearm death rates in Southern states and increasing rates in Midwestern states from 2018 to 2021. Across the United States, higher poverty levels correlated with higher firearm death rates (R = 0.76, P < .001).

So, it’s poor, black, male, teens murdering each other. Presumably over drugs or ho’s if we are to believe the soundtrack. And yes, of course this will be prevented by disarming suburban Moms.

Twats

California set to give green light to Dutch-style cannabis cafés
Campaigners hope that the new law will help businesses in the struggling marijuana industry to fight back against the black market

You cannot, of course, smoke a cigarette in a bar…..

A Guardian seminar to miss

The academic and writer Kehinde Andrews will join us for a livestreamed event to introduce his new book, The Psychosis of Whiteness.
Through regular appearances on TV debates, Andrews has become increasingly frustrated by the irrational tone of conversations about race and racism. In The Psychosis of Whiteness, he invites us into a strange and alarming world – one in which Piers Morgan is an authority on race, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump are seen by the majority as the ‘right (white) man for the job’, and white people are queuing up to buy books to help them cope with their whiteness.

Andrews is the first professor of Black Studies in the UK, and the author of bestselling books Resisting Racism, Back to Black and the New Age of Empire. Join him as he discusses this witty yet vital new perspective on race and white privilege. You will also have the opportunity to put forward your own questions at this livestreamed event.

I’m washing my mustache that day….

As opposed to me Naomi

In my defence, it was never my intent to write about it. I did not have time. No one asked me to. And several people strongly cautioned against it. Not now – not with the literal and figurative fires roiling our planet. And certainly not about this.

Other Naomi – that is how I refer to her now. This person with whom I have been chronically confused for over a decade. My big-haired doppelganger. A person whom so many others appear to find indistinguishable from me. A person who does many extreme things that cause strangers to chastise me or thank me or express their pity for me.

I am referring, of course, to Naomi Wolf. In the 1990s, she was a standard-bearer for “third wave” feminism, then a leading adviser to US vice-president Al Gore. Today, she is a full-time, industrial-scale disseminator of unproven conspiracy theories on everything from Islamic State beheadings to vaccines.

Me Naomi being the one who writes about everytihng being a capitalist comspiracy…..

An interesting point

Take the very different attitudes towards drag queens and “blackface” entertainers. It is OK, even laudable, for men to dress up as a grotesque parody of the opposite sex, but very much not OK for white performers, in a similar travesty, to sing My Mammy with boot polish on their faces.

Umm, yes?

Children target corner shops to buy vapes because of lax ID checks, academic says
Study finds children are twice as likely to go to small shops to buy vapes than they were in 2019

Err, the modern world has become so detatched from reality that it requires an academic to tell us this? Or academia has become so that an academic thinks we need to be told this?