Newspaper Watch

Alarge and impressive study of children’s progress into adulthood found that those who display bullying and aggressive behaviour at school are more likely to prosper at work. They land better jobs and earn more. The researchers claim to be surprised by their findings, but is it really so remarkable? The association of senior positions with bullying and dominance behaviour will doubtless come as a shock to many.

He does get the study right – it’s the character traits that cause both.

But the bullies’ triumph is also an outcome of the dominant narrative of our times: for the past 45 years, neoliberalism has characterised human life as a struggle that some must win and others must lose. Only through competition, in this quasi-Calvinist religion, can we discern who the worthy and unworthy might be. The competition, of course, is always rigged. The point of neoliberalism is to provide justifications for an unequal and coercive society, a society where bullies rule.

And that’s idiocy. Think of a collective system where we elect people to do stuff for us. Those bullies are also better at getting elected but given that we’ve handed over societal power to those who get elected we’ve given them more power over us than neoliberalism and the market allow.

But at every stage of our lives we are forced into destructive competition.

Jesu C on a bouncin’ pogo stick. George’s technical training was in zoology. Where he must have read Darwin at some point. The entirely of existence is a competition. And it’s against the fellow members of the same sex of our own species too.

Just idiocy.

‘Here, there is no future’: ethnic cleansing and fresh atrocities drive exodus of thousands from Darfur
Almost a year since conflict reignited in Sudan, its terrified people are crossing borders to Chad and beyond. An increasing number are trying to reach Europe as food supplies dwindle in the refugee camps and the eyes of the world look elsewhere

The Guardian has an Anglo Sudanese columnist, one big on telling us all about racism, migration, oppression and even slavery. Don’t we all look forward to her story of why her own Arab Sudanese are being so beastly to the non-Arab and blacker Sudanese?

The Labour party is in my blood. Here’s why I’ve just cancelled my membership
Owen Jones

How is that virulence inserted into the human body?

We notice that you have not logged in on Guardian Jobs for the last 912 days.

If you would like to remain on our records, please follow the link below within the next 21 days, otherwise we will remove your record

Why 933 days?

Labour’s plans will have a significant impact on parts of the media industry, which relies heavily on freelancers and other workers on precarious, short-term contracts.

As I’ve pointed out about California’s crack down upon gig work. It’s very, very, difficult to blank out zero hours contracts, legally, without also killing the entire basis of freelancing. Which is, of course, how large parts of the media work.

Folk might wake up to this at some point….for it isn’t that gig delivery and driving companies invented a new method of employment. Instead, they just picked up one that was lying around in the economy already – often and largely in media.

(According to one analysis, 30% of the properties sold in Paradise, California, after the catastrophic Camp fire went for less than their assessed value.)

Assessed value will incude the value of the building – and even if not, that the piece of land is in an area surrounded by other buildings, and electricity, and telephone, and water connections and – all the things that no longer exist.

Burnt out rubble in a whoilly burnt out town is cheap. Horrors.

Twice a week, a group of women gather together in a nondescript house in Ardamata, on the outskirts of Geneina in Sudan’s West Darfur state, to tell their stories to each other, cry, and drink coffee.

The women, who work or used to work in education, are all survivors of an ethnically targeted campaign of rape and sexual abuse carried out by fighters from Arab militias backed by the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group on 5 November, after the fall of the army garrison in Ardamata.

Most of the rape campaign’s victims were from the Masalit community, a darker-skinned ethnic African tribe that made up a majority in Geneina before they were largely driven out during fighting that began in April last year.

Given that she is Arab Sudanese she will be exploring this bit of oppression from her own hinterland, yes? Rather than just the usual chuntering on about how Jews and Whitey can just be so awful, y’know?

A faultline has opened in Keir Starmer’s pragmatic politics – and this time none of the usual fixes will work
Nesrine Malik

Gaza is an issue that Labour cannot simply finesse away. It is about real life, real death and the sympathies of millions

So’s the situation in your neck of the woods, Sudan and over into Darfur – we’re hearing reports of slaving expedictions by Arabs against Blacks.

Amazin’ how Britain’s leading Arab Sudanses commentator says nothing about the subject, no?

The publisher of The Daily Mail has said it should be allowed to take over The Telegraph to bulk up and challenge the power of Google and other tech giants.

In a submission to the House of Lords communications committee, DMG Media dismissed concerns that it would hold too big a share of the news market if it bought The Telegraph, saying British media outlets were now “minnows” compared to their US tech rivals.

Casuistry.

The “tech giants” do not compete with newspapers, they are complements, not substitutes. Complete bollocks therefore.

Paying their bills was their top concern, so what do they make of Sunak paying an effective tax rate of only 23% on his vast capital gains? Income of the same amount gained through work would be taxed about twice as much as sitting back and letting rewards flow effortlessly in from rents, shares or self-inflating valuables.

Rents are taxed as income, of course. So too are dividends from shares (with allowances for the corporation tax already paid).

Sigh.

Dan Neidle of Tax Policy Associates lays out the yo-yo history of capital gains tax (CGT), where the pay of private equity executives expressed as “carried interest” attracts only 28% tax, avoiding the 45% top income tax rate. Another affront: the first £6,000 of capital gains attracts no tax. Add that to the basic £12,570 personal tax allowance and CGT payers get an £18,570 starting point. Who are the gainers?

In 1988, the Thatcherite chancellor Nigel Lawson equalised capital gains tax and income tax, rightly declaring: “There is little economic difference between income and capital gains.” This dismisses the handy myth that low CGT encourages investment: it doesn’t, the IFS proves.

Neatly missing Dan Neidle’s point that if CGT rate is to be equalised then there must be an inflation allowance as well.

Another uncosted CGT gift to the rich is mocked by Paul Johnson in his book Follow the Money: any capital gains you owe on your death dies with you. Your shares, property or antiques may have swollen 1,000-fold in value in your lifetime: don’t sell and your heirs take it all without paying any CGT you owe, HMRC’s loss unknown.

And that’s cretinous. Because you pay 40% inheritance tax, of course.

False prophets are peddling conspiracy theories about Ireland’s history. Here’s the truth
Emma Dabiri

From Russell Brand to Steve Bannon, pundits are distorting our past oppression – when it should be a source of solidarity with refugees

OK, so that might be a theory worth testing.

Western liberal democracies are apparently inhabited by vast and increasing numbers of disaffected, dissatisfied citizens who could conceivably put populists in power on both sides of the Atlantic over the coming year. Donald Trump’s White House comeback bid should be the stuff of dystopian fantasy, not a news story. But as Naomi Klein describes brilliantly in her new book, Doppelganger, our collective trajectory away from reality seems to be in freefall.

Ah, describing Naomi Klein as brilliant. It’s bollocks, isn’t it.

The former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s much touted sit-down with Vladimir Putin was many things.

It was damaging to global democracy, giving ammunition to the craven congressional Republicans who want to do Putin’s bidding by denying aid to Ukraine. It was boring, particularly given the Russian president’s long discourse, early in the two-hour slog, on his version of the history of the region.

And it was a priceless propaganda gift, helping Putin in every possible way with his messaging – internally in Russia, and externally to the world – about Ukraine. That started with Carlson’s introductory video message, recorded after the interview, urging his viewers on X (formerly Twitter) to see Putin above all as “sincere”.

If Putin had offered the interview to Margaret Sullivan – but of course he wouldn;t to one so inconsequential – then she’d have leapt at it.

That she wasn’t offered it is what grates, that as a print journo she’s just not important enough. Never, ever, underestimate the egos of American print journalists. They’re the real thing you know, Masters degrees in journalism and all.

Equally important is the means by which the bill establishes transgender people as “separate”. The bill mandates that transgender people be given unique identifiers on their birth certificates, outing them as transgender. Anyone born in Iowa who wishes to change their birth certificate after obtaining gender-affirming care would be forced to have both gender markers on their birth certificates, making their transgender identity obvious any time they use their birth certificate. This raises the question: why is it so important for the state to readily identify transgender people?

A badly written article – it dives into the weeds and details far too early, without actually explaining what is being whined about – on an issue of little importance – birth certificates will record natal observation – and so on. But it’s about trans, by trans.

Yep, that’s the US edition of The Guardian. The UK one is far more robust on this matter these days. Freddie complained, around the time he gave birth, that the appearance of an article in The Guardian by someone not wholly supporting trans demands made him fear for his very life. Freddie has “moved on” from The Guardian.

Strange as it may seem the London end of the paper is odd, wrong, deluded etc, but not actively mad. They might want to get more of a grip on the editorial line of the US end.

Who’s steering the Conservatives to the right? The backseat drivers of Reform UK
John Harris

As the Wellingborough byelection approaches, the one-time architects of Brexit are revelling in power without responsibility

Apparently standing in an election to try to get into Parliament is undemocratic now or some such foolishness.

Sometimes a disaster is so large that it obscures its own details. Behind the number of dead and displaced in Darfur, for women and girls the conflict has been disproportionately grinding. In a “cruel inversion” of the history of this conflict, the head of UN Women told the Associated Press, women and children have borne the brunt of the war.

The details are unfathomable. There are about 50,000 pregnant women in Darfur and 40% of those pregnancies have been classed as high risk; 180 give birth daily. The healthcare infrastructure has been all but obliterated. According to the charity Care: “There is no doctor, midwife or nurse to support women during labour. There is no pain medication, anaesthesia or hygiene material when women give birth.” Babies are born on the ground in the wilderness, umbilical cords cut with whatever sharp object there is to hand, and tins filled with hot water keep the newborn warm. C-sections, painful in the aftermath even when drugs are plentiful, are being performed without any anaesthesia at all, by surgeons who do not have any water to wash their hands, let alone sterilise them, and no antibiotics for any resulting infections. In some cases, according to Washington Post reporting, C-sections were performed on women postmortem.

Ryanair was forced to fly planes with more than one in ten seats empty last month after Michael O’Leary’s budget airline was banned by a host of online travel agent websites.

The Irish carrier said its load factor – the proportion of seats filled – had slipped to 89pc in January, down two percentage points from a year earlier.

Load factor’s always the number to look at. So, down 2 percentage points because thrown off booking sites. Terrors.

Meanwhile, rival low-cost carrier Wizz Air also revealed its flights were less full in January, weeks after it was forced to pay out £1.2m in compensation to passengers in a row over cancelled flights and delays.

The airline carried 4.7m passengers last month, a 14.2pc increase on a year earlier.

However, its load factor fell by four percentage points to 82pc compared to January 2023.

The other airline not thrown off booking sites, load factor down 4 points.

Erm, maybe it’s not the booking site thing to blame?

Finland also generates the most waste per person in the EU (20,993 kg), while Croatia produces the least (1,483kg). The average EU citizen’s waste footprint in 2020 was 4,815 tonnes.

Journalists at The Guardian can’t do numbers. Film at 11.

Over the years, La Tour d’Argent has served a number of heads of state, A-list celebrities and the world’s royals including the Prince of Wales and Queen Elizabeth II, who dined at the restaurant in 1948 and were gifted a bottle of cognac from circa 1830.

In 1948 there was no Prince of Wales and the current PoW wasn’t born then either. The last before that born in Nov 1948, which looks a little early to be going to a posh restaurant. The one before that stopped being so in 1910 upoon his coronation as GV.

So, err, no.

Via email:

Here Are The Skills You’ll Need

Strong financial acumen and a thorough understanding of market dynamics.
Exceptional writing and communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex financial information.
Proven experience in financial journalism or related fields.
Some knowledge of marketing.
Willingness to appear on camera and excellent presentation skills.
Attention to detail and the ability to meet tight deadlines.
Familiarity with digital platforms and content management systems.

Here Are The Benefits Of This Job

Competitive salary within the range of £28-35k.

Holy shit that’s bad pay for a London based job.

LA Times fires 115 journalists in ‘HR zoom webinar’ following union protests
Young journalists of color ‘disproportionately affected’, with many Black, Asian American and Latino staffers laid off, Times guild says

It’s a union shop. In a union shop layoffs (as opposed to buyouts) work by seniority. So, the new layer of diversity hires gets hit hardest nby the layoffs. This is the fault of the union contract.

Which isn’t the thing The Guardian tells us.

Odd that.