Politics

Where is Boris Johnson?
Cometh the hour, cometh the leader — or not

Is Carrie being sidelined already?

I’ve been transfixed, these last twelve months, by the zest with which Boris Johnson bangs elbows with startled strangers

Elbows?

Gavin Williamson is called ‘sly schemer’ by former Tory minister
Education secretary described as ‘venomous’ and ‘self-serving’ by Alan Duncan in newly released diary entries

He is, after all, a politician, is he not?

Sounds like fun:

Matt Gaetz and Florida pols played Harry Potter-themed ‘sex challenge’ game: report

Of course, Americans never quite do get rules making in games quite right. It being the English who get this right and then export said games.

In January, the Tampa Bay Times reported that Florida state Rep. Chris Latvala accused Gaetz in a 2020 tweet of having “created a game where members of the FL House got “points” for sleeping with aides, interns, lobbyists, and married legislators.”

Legislators got one point for sleeping with a lobbyist, two for sleeping with legislative staff, three for another legislator and six for a married legislator, the Tampa Bay Times alleged.

No, clearly wrong, a lobbyist is negative points. Partly on the base observation that having met an actual lobbyist will prove, without doubt, the truth of the contention but rather more importantly because the aim and purpose of a lobbyist is to screw everyone anyway.

92 million are uninsured or underinsured

To get to that number you’ve got to include all those on Medicaid as being uninsured or underinsured. Which is interesting, don;t you think? Man who argues for government health care says government health care isn’t enough?

There’s also this:

Unbelievably, the two richest people in America, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, now own more wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans combined.

Someone with no debts and a $10 bill usually owns more than the bottom 30 to 40% of the population in aggregate in any wealth distribution. Because it’s possible – indeed normal at times in the life cycle – to have negative wealth.

Majority (50) Democratic (48) Independent (2) Minority (50) Republican (50)

That’s what Amanduh describes as:

which gives the Republican minority in the Senate veto power over most legislation the Democratic majority

Umm, yes?

The other small thought is that Amanduh wants to have those background checks on who may buy a gun but not on who may vote. Umm, yes?

Just two days later, Texas filed the first major lawsuit against Biden’s administration, successfully blocking a 100-day deportation moratorium that the governor, Greg Abbott, chided as an “attempt to grant blanket amnesty” to immigrants.

Far from a one-off burst of hostility, that incendiary case marked a return to Texas politicians’ tried and true playbook of weaponizing the courts to derail progressive policies, a tactic that’s proven surprisingly potent amid ideological warfare with the feds.

There are some things the State should be doing, some things the Feds. It’s written down in the law which are which so it’s the courts that decide, right?

It has long amused that the progressives in the US do insist on using Federal power. Because the only places that are as interventionist as they want – and which also work – are those places which are interventionist on a local level. Bjorn’s Beer and all that – the Scandinavians.

Law enforcement officials including the director of the FBI have said the shootings in Atlanta in which eight people were killed do not appear to have been racially motivated, but the Georgia senator Raphael Warnock said on Sunday: “We all know hate when we see it.”

Sure, it’s hate. But not all hate is racially motivated.

The system of hereditary peerage is outdated and must be abolished, two candidates for House of Lords Speaker say today.

The 85 dukes, earls and barons who sit in the chamber by birthright

Actually, they’re the only members of the house who are elected. A very restrictive franchise, true, but they are elected.

That did not stop him losing hundreds of millions of dollars while in office. According to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, Trump’s net worth fell from $3 billion to $2.3 billion over the course of his presidency.

That’s not to say that only the EU suffers from the march of the Little Big Men (LBM). Look at Mark Drakeford, First Minister of Wales, who single-handedly has destroyed the stereotype of the Welsh as a roguish, lyrical people, with his love of lockdowns and insistence that baby food and sanitary towels were “non-essential” items. And that’s not to say that all Little Big Men are male – look at Nicola Sturgeon, the Joan of Arc of admin, who never saw a pint pot she didn’t want to penalise for not being metric.

We have one of our own leading the Labour Party; Keir Starmer, whose more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger mien reminds one of that teacher who wasn’t cross, just disappointed, but who might one day snap if the class continued to play the fool. There is a distinct “you won’t like me when I’m angry” feeling about the LBMs – but we don’t like them anyway, for being bossy bores, which takes away their bargaining power somewhat.

But it’s mostly an EU thing.

Sure, nice insults and all that but no, not really.

The problem with the EU is that it puts such people in power. Not just over some minor Celtic nation that no one gives a toss about, but over an entire continent. This is the future, a bureaucrat regulating the human race, forever.

That’s not to say that only the EU suffers from the march of the Little Big Men (LBM). Look at Mark Drakeford, First Minister of Wales, who single-handedly has destroyed the stereotype of the Welsh as a roguish, lyrical people, with his love of lockdowns and insistence that baby food and sanitary towels were “non-essential” items. And that’s not to say that all Little Big Men are male – look at Nicola Sturgeon, the Joan of Arc of admin, who never saw a pint pot she didn’t want to penalise for not being metric.

We have one of our own leading the Labour Party; Keir Starmer, whose more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger mien reminds one of that teacher who wasn’t cross, just disappointed, but who might one day snap if the class continued to play the fool. There is a distinct “you won’t like me when I’m angry” feeling about the LBMs – but we don’t like them anyway, for being bossy bores, which takes away their bargaining power somewhat.

But it’s mostly an EU thing.

Sure, nice insults and all that but no, not really.

The problem with the EU is that it puts such people in power. Not just over some minor Celtic nation that no one gives a toss about, but over an entire continent. This is the future, a bureaucrat regulating the human race, forever.

That’s not to say that only the EU suffers from the march of the Little Big Men (LBM). Look at Mark Drakeford, First Minister of Wales, who single-handedly has destroyed the stereotype of the Welsh as a roguish, lyrical people, with his love of lockdowns and insistence that baby food and sanitary towels were “non-essential” items. And that’s not to say that all Little Big Men are male – look at Nicola Sturgeon, the Joan of Arc of admin, who never saw a pint pot she didn’t want to penalise for not being metric.

We have one of our own leading the Labour Party; Keir Starmer, whose more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger mien reminds one of that teacher who wasn’t cross, just disappointed, but who might one day snap if the class continued to play the fool. There is a distinct “you won’t like me when I’m angry” feeling about the LBMs – but we don’t like them anyway, for being bossy bores, which takes away their bargaining power somewhat.

But it’s mostly an EU thing.

Sure, nice insults and all that but no, not really.

The problem with the EU is that it puts such people in power. Not just over some minor Celtic nation that no one gives a toss about, but over an entire continent. This is the future, a bureaucrat regulating the human race, forever.

That’s not to say that only the EU suffers from the march of the Little Big Men (LBM). Look at Mark Drakeford, First Minister of Wales, who single-handedly has destroyed the stereotype of the Welsh as a roguish, lyrical people, with his love of lockdowns and insistence that baby food and sanitary towels were “non-essential” items. And that’s not to say that all Little Big Men are male – look at Nicola Sturgeon, the Joan of Arc of admin, who never saw a pint pot she didn’t want to penalise for not being metric.

We have one of our own leading the Labour Party; Keir Starmer, whose more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger mien reminds one of that teacher who wasn’t cross, just disappointed, but who might one day snap if the class continued to play the fool. There is a distinct “you won’t like me when I’m angry” feeling about the LBMs – but we don’t like them anyway, for being bossy bores, which takes away their bargaining power somewhat.

But it’s mostly an EU thing.

Sure, nice insults and all that but no, not really.

The problem with the EU is that it puts such people in power. Not just over some minor Celtic nation that no one gives a toss about, but over an entire continent. This is the future, a bureaucrat regulating the human race, forever.

Here’s one attempt:

The royal biographer Robert Lacey argues that the job of the monarch is to represent common values, and he believes that the Queen was ahead of her time in championing equality and diversity around the Commonwealth. He also thinks that Charles will do the same.

No, that isn’t it.

We need someone to pin the Victoria Cross on people. Or, if you’re not into that military stuff, the George Cross.

There needs to be – every society ever has had one and it’s unlikely we’ll ever have a society that doesn’t – someone, some thing, somewhere, that is unarguably the bit that confers that societal approbation.

Yes, yes, sure, Ks and all that, Baronies, they’re tied up with politics and so scheming scum end up with them. Leaving even that aside how much of an honour is a peerage now Prem has one?

But every society does have that stuff right at the top, the stuff that really is only handed out on pure, unadulterated merit. So, who should hand it out?

A largely inbred German duchess seems a reasonable enough compromise. It’s vastly better than the likely alternative, President John Prescott. No, the distaste for that is not because Prescott, but because that’s how any system of political selection would work. It would be someone from the political class, it would be someone who has climbed that greasy pole but who is, undoubtedly, a second rater. Among the current crop you could see Dianne Abbott running for it, Harriett would certainly have a try, Gavin Williamson anyone? Because that is what politics would throw up.

And, you know, given that the job is to pin the VC on people what might not be quite what we desire. Not entirely, not quite, because they’re all idiots but because the method of their getting there would mean they weren’t quite the person for the job. For anyone who has spent the necessary life in politics to get elected President shouldn’t be within 50 miles of the honour of a GC.

Far better to leave it to the lucky sperm club.

Or, speaking lessons at least.

He speaks – first speech of his I’ve heard – as if he’s reading a bedtime story.

So why does this please me? Because it suggests that civil society does have the legal capacity to challenge the government on the externalities it creates that impose a cost on society.

I’m part of civil society. P³ gaining funding imposes externalities upon society. So I get to see who is funding P³ and why?

Our brains hold clues for the ideologies we choose to live by, according to research, which has suggested that people who espouse extremist attitudes tend to perform poorly on complex mental tasks.

Commies are stupid.

A key finding was that people with extremist attitudes tended to think about the world in black and white terms, and struggled with complex tasks that required intricate mental steps, said lead author Dr Leor Zmigrod at Cambridge’s department of psychology.

“Individuals or brains that struggle to process and plan complex action sequences may be more drawn to extreme ideologies, or authoritarian ideologies that simplify the world,” she said.

Commies are stupid.

Participants who are prone to dogmatism – stuck in their ways and relatively resistant to credible evidence – actually have a problem with processing evidence even at a perceptual level, the authors found.

Yep, commies are stupid.

But then we knew that, right? The idea that eliminating the bourgeoisie as a class is going to solve anything is a stupid one to start with.

Vengeance may be said to be a dish best served cold but Alex Salmond, in the words of Robert Burns, his favourite poet, has been “nursing his wrath to keep it warm” every day of these past 11 months. So much so that most observers, including this one, now reckon that his long-cherished political aim – Scottish independence – is taking a poor second place to that of destroying Sturgeon.

Whether ScotIndy should happen or not is an interesting question. One that should be decided by mature reflection and consideration. I think yes but so what?

The claim here is that it will actually be decided by which demented porridge wog lied about the other.

Politics is, clearly, a really shitty way of running things.

Offering student debt abolition for Black students is the right thing to do, both morally and politically. Politically, because Biden owes his victory to Black voters, and should offer them something concrete in return for their loyalty.

The system’s about buying votes with other peoples’ money, d’ye see?

The violence has thrust into the firing line the hard-left Podemos party.

Podemos? Hard left? When did The Guardian start calling it hat? Somewhere between the Trots and the Tankies that is?

After all, according to Owen and the like Podemos is just a bunch of cuddly social democrats, isn’t it? An example to be followed here at home?

Agence France-Presse

Ah, The G is printing agency copy without, perhaps, editing it too much.