Nicaragua’s long-serving president, Daniel Ortega, has said the country will hold no further elections to prevent the opposition from coming to power.
The 80-year-old authoritarian leader, who has been in office since 2007, also said he would work with the congress he controls to pass new laws that would “build a wall” against the opposition.
Is he still a lefty hero? Or has all that passed?
But something else struck me while reading example after example of quoted texts. It was all tawdry, poorly written, poorly argued stuff. You come away not with the sense that this is an august magazine dedicating its formidable intellectual and journalistic resources towards a problematic minority it is concerned about, but with the sense that it isn’t a serious publication.
Its articles are the sort of content you get from GB News, or a bellicose radio phone-in, or a tabloid on a tear.
Nesrine, in The Guardian, says this about The Spectator?
The Spectator and its broader universe constitute what is now mostly a low-brow media attempting to dress up racist audience-baiting as high-end journalism, all of which is met not with alarm and objection by establishment politics, but a “cheers” in the sunshine. It is not that Muslims have turned into a bigger problem for the country, but that the country itself, and its so-called intellectual elites, have become small. In resisting the feeling that this is all just how it is, in not glazing over, we resist becoming small along with them.
Yes, Nesrine, in The G.
In the wake of his withdrawal, Democrats are asking themselves many questions, chief among them, who will replace him as their party’s nominee in the marquee Senate race? But the saga has also revived a deeper debate over whose flaws are forgivable – and whose are disqualifying.
“White men get to fail,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, which recruits young, progressive candidates to run for office. “Women do not get to make mistakes. People of color do not get to make mistakes.”
So, white bloke gets thrown out of Sentate race for mistakes made. Now this bint says that white folks what?
The grants are part of a broader shift that has caused dismay among veterans of the state department. In interviews, five former officials suggested that there has been a months-long effort by Trump-aligned individuals in the state department to subvert normal funding procedures and allocate US taxpayer money to conservative and Maga-aligned causes in the UK and Europe.
They’d prefer all the money continue to go to the usual NGO types, obviously. But, you know, when you concentrate so much power into government and then you have an election that power does become available to your enemies, no?
Nicola Sturgeon tried to destroy Alex Salmond to stop him uncovering her husband’s embezzlement of SNP funds, MPs have been told.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Sir David Davis said that Ms Sturgeon “knew full well” that Peter Murrell was stealing money from the party and using it to fund “luxury purchases”.
But the senior Tory MP said that “her most evil act was stitching up Alex Salmond to hide the truth” about Murrell’s crimes.
It can be said, we can repeat it.
But probably best if we do not discuss it all the same. But it is a fun and interesting claim, no?
Man arrested over threat to shoot Farage
Police detain suspect over social media post that said ‘I am going to shoot you in the head if you win’
So two weeks back the press was in full cry hunting him for accepting money to pay for security. Now this.
This is only a comment as with Napoleon’s desire for generals who are lucky. It’s not about what has actually happened at all. Rather, that he just is lucky in that everyone starts shouting about him over x and then y happens that shows that x was, in fact, quite right.
Further, the harder he works at it the more this luck happens.
There’s also the fun that apparently this is a Hindu Lib Dem terrorist. Which is a new one….
George Cottrell and Stephen Cottrell are, respectively, mates with Nige and the Archbishop of York. Names don’t lie, they’re connected!
I shall soon be launching an investigation into how Big Church is controlling Reform. Send money now to fund this!
The 2022 election brought a record-breaking gender gap between men and women, and the latest statistics show that in September the gulf is likely to be even wider: a recent survey by Statistics Sweden found that twice as many men as women support the far-right Sweden Democrats, while female support for the Social Democrats is 10 percentage points higher than its male equivalent.
That entire feminisation of politics raises that interesting question, no?
One is led by Sweden’s first female prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, and has promised smaller school-class sizes, more housing and free dental care for young people. The other, led by Jimmie Åkesson, has neo-Nazi roots and has pledged to lower taxes, improve public safety and treat “anti-Swedishness” as a hate crime.
I do tend to think the world would be further right if only men had the vote. Of course, dependent upon your own stance this might be ewlcome. But it all has made a difference, no? And as with any difference made it’s possible to muse on whether it’s a Good Thing or not.
Reform UK would have held just 15% of the donations it received last year if a proposed £100,000 cap on political donations had been in force, according to analysis shared with the Guardian.
The analysis by Friends of the Earth using Electoral Commission data highlights the party’s reliance on a handful of wealthy backers in advance of a showdown over political funding.
Can’t have outsiders challenging the establishment of the uniparty now, can we?
The issue that should be convulsing France is Le Pen’s legitimacy as a public representative.
If the voters vote for her, knowing what they know, then she’s in. ‘S democratic that way, see?
A militant transgender group has urged supporters to target Wes Streeting’s office as part of a direct action campaign.
In a guide distributed to activists, Bash Back instructs them to cause “direct harm” with “lasting effect”.
Borrowing the methods of direct action campaigns organised by pro-Palestinian and environmental activists, the group is urging supporters to identify “transphobic” targets and then “hit them repeatedly until they desist from their activities”.
Erm, doesn’t trans mean “not”?
But, anyway, if prominent politicians require protection why should this only be for those politicians in office? Why not also for Establishment outsiders?
Or have we already answered that question?
Andy Burnham is to press ahead with the deal that cedes the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, according to a senior Foreign Office official.
Robbie Bulloch, the director of the Foreign Office’s overseas territories and polar directorate, met Gavin Glover, the attorney general of Mauritius, last week and said that plans to give the archipelago to Mauritius were “unlikely to change”.
It is the first official confirmation that Mr Burnham will persevere with Sir Keir Starmer’s plans to hand control to Mauritius, an ally of China and Iran.
It can’t just be that Phillippe Sands is a buddy of Starmer’s.
What’s the real reason here?
If adopted, these motions would become official Green Party policy, meaning thousands of hospitality venues would need to adjust their menus if the party gained power.
The motion, which is being backed by at least one senior Green, also calls for the introduction of plant-based-only catering across the entire public sector, with vegan diets being promoted through diversity, equity and inclusion strategies.
There always are those out there with a bonnetbee or two. They’re also the sort who turn up to meetings on rainy Tuesdays at a venue with no beer. So, true bottom up democracy leads to nonsenses like this.
The correct answer is “Go eat somewhere else”. But that doesn’t sate the bonnetbee.
We can and should go further too. You know that idea of the “truly democratic economy” that is so commonly touted over on the left? That would be like this too. Worse in fact. Most understand eating, rather fewer the economy.
It’s really not an attractive prospect. A nation run by those who turn up to meetings on rainy Tuesdays at a venue with no beer. Shudder.
Count Binface alone can‘t clean up British politics. MPs now have that chance, and they must seize it
Stella Creasy
Amid the allegations about dark money and funding, I have a solution: limit all single donations in a year – from any individual – to £100,000
Also: my enemies get their money in big chunks from rich people. Stop my enemies getting money in big chunks from rich peoeple!
Of course, of course, this won’t limit the money my side gets from unions and so on – that’s collective money, not individual, see?
Ministers also considering licence requirement and regulator to try to cut bills and increase choice
As it happens that’s about vets’ prescriptions. But the subject matter isn’t relevant, it’s the very idea. Not gonna work, is it?
SARs are a formal mechanism by which banks, solicitors and other regulated parties can send the NCA, as the agency explains, details about “knowledge or suspicion of money laundering”.
They are not crime reports or proof of a crime, but as the NCA says, they are “a vital source of intelligence …[and] provide information and intelligence from the private sector that would otherwise not be visible to law enforcement”.
Re money going into Reform.
That’s how the legislation was drafted, yes. But that’s not how it turned out. Anything that doesn’t have jots and tittles correct is referred. There are 850,000 such references a year. For the incentive is to over-report. The penalties on a bank for not referring are huge. The costs of doing so the filling out of a form. So, the form gets filled out.
The important number is those investigated and found to be dodgy. Which is, at least as far as we know at present, zero.
But that’s not what The Guardian is running with, now is it?
I have absolutely zero knowledge of any details here but at this point my claim would be “hit job”.
But this sort of scrutiny of the evidence by independent professionals was not at all Farage’s preferred solution, it transpired.
….
Farage, the public school educated son of a stockbroker, Guy Justus Oscar Farage, has often played this card: presentation of himself as a tribune for the little man.
…
Perhaps. Much, though, depends on whether Farage, an undoubtedly skilled communicator, can convince the British public, and not just those in Clacton, that this is not just a cynical ploy.
Just the news, straight news, eh?
Calls for Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for US Senate in Maine, to withdraw his candidacy intensified Monday after a woman accused him of sexual assault in an exclusive report by Politico.
While Platner denied the claims, many top Democratic figures quickly called on the beleaguered nominee to step down.
So, which internal section of the D Party doesn’t like Platner then?
After all, an allegation of sexual assault is pretty easy to make – some who do so cannot even recall in which year it occurred for example. And if an allegation is all that is required to derail and electoral campaign then, well, you know, politics is about winning……
Crypto billionaires Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo will face restrictions to making multimillion pound political donations for a year after moving back to the UK under strengthened legislation returning to parliament this month.
The Observer understands that changes to the representation of the people bill will prevent overseas voters who have returned to the UK from donating more than £100,000 for the first 12 months after they relocate. The move will apply retrospectively from 25 March this year, meaning any sums above £100,000 donated since that day would have to be returned.
Harborne, who is based in Thailand, has donated £15m to Reform since the 2024 general election. He was restored to the electoral roll in June, registering his address at a farmhouse in Hampshire. Delo, who has said he is moving back to the UK from Hong Kong, gave £4m in the first quarter of this year. It is not known whether the two men have made further donations that have not yet been declared.
Not that the US has the same laws abour residency and voting and so on anyway. But this is startlingly close to a Bill of Attainder, no? Something so carefully crafted as to hit only a couple of people. Which the Americans don’t allow.
Even in the British system it’s more than a little off. Those who currently win elections deliberately skewing the system so as to harm those who might beat them at the next election. Vile stuff.
Where did we put that Tyburn Tree?
However, the bumper survey findings – based on polling of about 10,000 voters – show that if whoever succeeds Keir Starmer adopts radical policy measures, including rent controls and higher taxes on wealth, they could engineer a dramatic turnaround against Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in important battleground seats across the country.
But if so, why wouldn’t people just vote Green anyway?