News round up
Been overseas on a business trip the last couple of weeks (in Asia of all places), so I thought I’d catch up on some news that came up while I was away.
Rayner Units
So the media continues its circus surrounding Angela Rayner. Since then some actual tax experts have given their option of the whole affair. And those opinions range from “plain daft” to “a non-issue”. And of course there’s the rank hypocrisy of it all, quote:
“Central to the Mail/Tory pursuit of this Rayner non-story is the belief:
“When you derive a benefit you’re not entitled to, however small, it’s because you’re dishonest, when we derive a benefit we’re not entitled to, however large, it’s a trifling oversight to be forgiven.” — Nick Pettigrew (@Nick_Pettigrew) April 7, 2024
Its let to use of the term “Rayner units” comparing how much tax Rayner was alleged not to have paid to the amount of money the Tories, or party donors, have squandered (or stolen), yet the media and the police haven’t made a big deal out of it. In fact they’ve gone out of their way to bury the story.
Why are the police (the police chief who is investigating Rayner having spoken at a previous Tory conference) suddenly pursuing a case where they have very little chance of securing a conviction (worse case scenario, the tax experts say a small fine) on an issue involving a few thousand pounds, yet ignoring the numerous cases of fraud on the Tory side, that amount to tens of billions defrauded.
The response from Rayner and labour should not be to offer to resign. This is appeasement, and it will just mean the press will hound every left wing MP relentlessly until they get their pound of flesh. Instead labour should be calling out what is clearly a politically motivated investigate by the police and the media. While also making it clear that once labour is in power a new body will be setup to investigate political corruption.
And its first task will be to begin investigations into the conduct of Tory MP’s over the last 14 years. There will also need to be serious questions asked as to why police took such a biased pro-Tory position (e.g. are senior officers on the take?). Which, might prompt them to try and jump the gun and arrest a couple of Tories before the election (which should cause the Tory press little plan to backfire).
Similarly, labour should be promising a ban on foreign ownership of UK news media and tightening up the regulations to stop political client journalism (I’d make clear that on day one all of the right wing client media lose their press passes, the government won’t do interviews or issue statements to said papers, but will instead focus its attention on less right wing media outlets instead).
But none of this is happening. And one has to conclude its either A) because Starmer wants to lose the election. Or B) he wants to see Rayner damaged, as his goal is to shift labour and the UK permanently to the centre right. Any sort of meaningful progressive policies are now off the agenda in the UK.
Manufacturing descent
Speaking of policing, we had a situation where there was a pro-Palestine demo in London. And a member of a pro-Jewish group (wearing a Jewish skull cap & escorted by body guards one of whom is known to have worked in the past for the Israeli government) tried to disrupt the protest and was stopped by the police. This was clearly an attempt to try and provoke an otherwise peaceful crowd and force the police to intervene. And in fact there were a bunch of friendly journalists standing by waiting to film it all (and immediately they’d label this crowd of thousands as a violent mob, because a handful got provoked).
I’d note this is not an uncommon tactic used by counter protesters. The far right are known to use these tactics all the time (they’ve shown up to BLM protests wearing full KKK regalia). It’s a common feature of sectarian marches in Northern Ireland too, where either loyalists or republican counter protests will run around waving Irish/British flags, hoping someone will throw a punch (upon which, they’re mates will all dive in and a start a full blown riot). And indeed, there’s reports from the US of right wing groups paying people tens of thousands to counter protest pro-Palestinian marches in the hope of kicking off a riot.
So its also not that unreasonable for the police to say, no you are clearly trying to provoke a riot. And I’d rather not get bricks thrown at me, or spend the next 2 weeks filling out paperwork. Granted the police officers in question (as there was more than one incident, the mainstream media simply focused on the more spicy encounter and didn’t report on the others) weren’t exactly very diplomatic about it (then again, the met police are hardly famous for such things), but its no worse than what other protesters have to put up with.
So why is in that there’s now calls for police chief’s to apologise or even resign? Are they also going to apologise for everything they’ve done to left wing protesters as well? Keep in mind the police have often brutally put down such protests. Why are we giving one group a free pass?
And while the media were quick to make a big deal about this, it being top of the headlines for several days (so much so, it was being reported where I was in Asia). The minute more details started to come out that revealed it was a setup, the story disappeared from the headlines. Suggesting that those journalists who reported it weren’t simply duped but entirely complicit.
Its right privilege. They want a police state, just one that cracks down on everything they don’t like. In short, the right in the UK have lurched towards full blown fascism.
More Nazi tourettes
In other news, a Malaysian university invited a conservative professor from the US to speak at an event. And he accused Malaysia (as in the whole country!) of being antisemitic and supporters of a new holocaust. Needless to say this went down like a lead balloon, forcing him to flee the country. He claimed he did so based on US government advice that Malaysia isn’t safe, forcing the US state department to intervene and refute this claim.
I’d note that this particular author has previously praised colonialism (so who in their right mind thought inviting him would be a good idea I do not know). So he has form here. The thing is that such nazi tourettes are entirely counter productive. Going around accusing everyone you disagree with of being antisemitic cheapens the term, which is exactly what the real nazi’s have been trying to do for the last 80 years (in fact given this same author has also said nice things about German colonialism too, that could be his ulterior motive).
Spanish tourist protests
There’s been more protests in Spain against tourists, this time in the Canary Islands. As with similar protests in Barcelona or the Balearic Islands this has to be put in the correct context.
For example, the issue in Barcelona is tour groups, often off of cruise ships, following a set route and they end up swamping parts of the city, the Rambles, the Boqueria, the Sagrada Familia, old town, etc. In fact the best way to avoid the crowds as a tourist is to avoid these areas at certain times of the day (so go in the early morning or late evening and it will be just you and the locals), or go to places the tour groups avoid (such as the Columbus monument, as there’s only one small lift, so its not compatible with groups of large American tourists).
Similarly the issues with these islands is they are often seeing large groups of tourists coming in on cheap package holiday’s. And let’s be honest, a lot of them aren’t exactly going out there for the culture and food. Instead they are aiming for two weeks of sea, sun, sex & a ton of booze/drugs. So I think you can see what the problem is.
My concern is that the solution local governments are coming up with, that of limiting numbers or charging tourist taxes aren’t really going to work. It will just squeeze out the independent travellers (including quite a large number of Spanish), as the tour groups will monopolise those selected places. In fact this is sort of what happened in Barcelona, they started taking measures against tourists, which just meant more enrolled with a tour group and opted for safety in numbers.
The solution is thus to crack down on the tour groups. Five euro a day might not mean much to them, but a few grand per month in fees to operate, plus a limit on the numbers per tour group would.
The problem with this solution is who benefits from these tour groups? Why the local bigwigs, whose hotels, restaurants and coach services make quite a bit of money. So it looks like what the locals are going to get is some window dressing that doesn’t actually solve the problem.
Electric vehicle bubble?
According to a number of news sources, there’s an electric vehicle bubble that’s just burst. Actually, I’d argue its more that the hype train behind electric cars has met with reality.
As I’ve long pointed out, electric vehicles are part of the solution to climate change and future transport, but they are simply one piece of the puzzle. They cannot provide a like for like replacement for existing cars. Not least because one has to question whether we even WANT to have such a thing (replacing bumper to bumper traffic with petrol powers cars, with bumper to bumper electric vehicles is hardly progress).
For example, while there’s been a drop in EV sales in the US, there’s still strong growth in Asia. And its not hard to see why. They have opted for electric vehicles that are smaller and more affordable, such as two seater cars and electric scooters. Or gone for vehicles with less expensive battery technology (sodium rather than Lithium), or just make do with a smaller battery. Which is fine, if you are only commuting in and out of town. I’d say, based on my recent visit, the majority of vehicles on city centre roads in China these days are electric or hybrid vehicles.
But what if you want to drive long distance? While yes there are nice wide roads between say Beijing and Shanghai, or Osaka and Tokyo, but nobody is going to be stupid enough to drive between these cities. Not when there’s a perfectly good high speed line representing a faster and vastly more convenient alternative. Never mind the problem of where do you plan on parking when you get to the other end.
Then there’s the matter of repair costs. While you’ll see plenty of workshops in Asian cities where people can get their electric scooters & cars mended at a reasonable cost, in the west we’ve gone for an anti-repair model, which will expect customers to fork out for essentially a new battery (often costing as much as the car costs) for the most minor of defects, without even attempting a repair. Inevitably word’s gotten out about this and put off buyers.
So the issue with electric vehicles has little to do with the technology, but what the car companies are trying to do with it. And saving the planet is pretty low on their agenda.
Growing racism in Ireland
There has been a worrying rise in racism in Ireland. There’s been racist attacks of foreigners, including a Croatian who was killed for not speaking English (remind me, when did English become the Irish national language? I must have missed that one), arson attacks of migrant accommodation centres, as well as various protests (often organised by certain people with a less than honest agenda…who seem to be a bit too close to certain foreign powers).
Ireland is full apparently (well if that’s the case how about the people whinging about it leave and make room for the rest of us, or maybe we should stop subsidising their children, that would solve the problem!). As usual, unwilling to admit that they are just xenophobic bigots, they’ve tried to come up with an excuse for their racism, notably the housing crisis.
Excuse me but Ireland’s had a housing crisis for the last two decades. Are these time travelling migrants? And one of the major flash points is accommodation for migrants, often in hotels (during the boom they built far more hotels than the country needs, so there’s dozens of so-called “zombie hotels” across Ireland that don’t make any sort of financial sense and are are often run at a loss). But surely putting them up in hotels will free up housing for locals? Surely this is something that should be encouraged?
As always its a convenient excuse, for bigots, but one that goes unchallenged as it hides a wider uncomfortable truth. To go into detail about Ireland’s housing crisis would fill an entire blog post (might do that in future), but the TLDR is Ireland’s had a massive boom in economic growth and population (more due to people having kids, or returning home from overseas, than foreigners arriving) but there’s not been a commensurate rise in housing stock. Successive governments have relied on laissez faire to magically provide a solution and, spoiler, its not worked (cos developers & landlords are trying to make money, not run a housing charity).
Then there’s also issues like NIMBYism. Everyone agrees we need more homes….just not in my backyard. Which is hardly helped by the fact those who own homes already, often don’t want to see more built (as it would bring down house prices). And outside of the big cities there’s a lack of good public transport, which means many affordable homes are of no use unless you have a car and are willing to drive for several hours into work.
To be clear, successive Irish governments have made some efforts to improve the situation, but just not nearly enough, for a wide variety of reasons. Most notably that by getting involved in housing (e.g. building thousands of affordable council homes, putting in new light rail lines, etc.) they’d be upsetting a lot of apple carts and vested interests. And it would cost money, which would mean taxes going up. And nobody wants to pay for that (there’s been protests about local rates, often from the same people now whinging about migrants).
But unfortunately a comforting lie will always be accepted instead of an uncomfortable truth. But just because the government hasn’t got an immediate answer, doesn’t mean you get to fill in the blanks with whatever fairy story most appeals to you. After all, brexit was sold as the snake oil that would “solve” migration, the housing crisis, farming, the NHS and give everyone a free unicorn. How did that work out? The migration rate has risen dramatically, the housing market is worse than ever, the farmers are all broke and the NHS is collapsing….and I’m still waiting on that unicorn.
AI Deception
Cold Fusion have a vlog post out about how much of the hype surrounding AI might be just a marketing stunt, but one with very damaging consequences. For example, they highlight Amazon’s “just walk out” stores, which supposedly used AI to monitor what customers picked off the shelves and charge to their card. Well in turns out, they have thousands of people in India monitoring these stores using CCTV and then manually inputting the purchases (leading some to claim that AI actually stands for “All Indians” or “Abused Indians”).
Its called AI washing, where by companies claim (Elizabeth Holmes style) that AI is central feature of their new product, when it has little to nothing to do with it. Or they are using a back office in a developing world country to act as a substitute for AI instead. While some are getting caught and charged, many are not. And some of these include fortune 500 companies.
Some worry this is creating a large and dangerous bubble in the tech industry. Indeed some are comparing it to the dot com bubble of the 2000’s. In the mean time however, its having real world effects as company CEO’s have been swept up by the AI hype train.
For example, a couple of months back Hasbro, who own the rights to D&D, fired a whole bunch of their game development staff, likely on the assumption they can just now use AI to generate art and game modules (good luck with that one!). Spotify has been accused by a whistle blower of quietly laying off thousands of employee’s with the goal of replacing them with AI.
So one has to ask, what’s going to happen when the AI bubble pops? Because so far, it just looks like an excuse to replace well paid jobs in west, with low wage exploitative work in the global south. And its not like that’s not happened before, nor backfired on us!
SNP maths
I think I’m starting to understand why Scotland’s not gotten independence, despite many decades of trying. And why their football and rugby teams are so unreliable. Its this common tendency for Scot’s to press the self destruct button.
Take what’s going on in Holyrood. Now when I heard that the SNP had withdrawn from their power sharing agreement with the Greens I assumed this was all part of some clever plan. And that the first minster had access to a calculator. Hence they’d understood the consequences of not having enough votes to win a no confidence motion. Well its looking increasingly likely the answer is no. They went ahead with this without doing some elementary maths first.
This could trigger an early election. The SNP are still in the lead and would likely be the largest party after an election, but its likely they’d lose seats and thus have to go into coalition with either labour or the lib dems (who are a lot less sympathetic to the independence argument than the greens). And that’s assuming such a vote takes place independent of the general election. If they take place at the same time, its likely the SNP will lose quite a lot of support in both elections (as people intending to vote labour to oust the Tories will vote labour in both elections).
Its possible FM Yousef is playing 3D chess, while the rest of us are playing drafts. But I suspect he’s just winging it and he’s managed to snooker himself and likely kicked independence into the long grass for sometime to come. In short, its a mess entirely of their own making.
Grumpy old men
Labour’s Jamaican switch
There’s was a strange story last week which I think explains a lot about UK politics. A Tory MP in London was campaigning for the opening of a fish and chip shop on his local high street. Oddly enough this same MP had voted voted against a fish and chip shop in the very same area back in 2019, when he was a Tory councillor.
You see as a councillor he had to deal with grievances of local tory voters. And ultimately tories are selfish, petty, vindictive and cruel. As far as they are concerned anyone with a slightly different skin colour is a migrant whose just paddled across the channel on a small boat (even thought its more likely they were born here) and thus obviously a terrorist, rapist and taking multiple jobs off locals in what little spare time they have. They see poor people as lazy, benefit scroungers and criminals (even thought most are working hard to make ends meet, while most Tory voters are retired or otherwise idle). And the most terrifying thing in the universe is a young person in a hoddie. Since many of the latter two would frequent a fish and chip shop, no surprise they’d oppose it. Always room for another Waitrose.
But as a Tory MP he’s expected to be a beer swilling every-man fighting against an out of touch elite. This despite the fact that most Tory MP’s are from very privileged backgrounds and the last fish products they consumed were likely smoked salmon or caviar, served to them on a silver plate. Plus there’s the obvious dog whistle that we want more of the sort of people who hang out in fish and chip shops and less of the ones who go to a falafel bar. And of course they get away with it, thanks to the Tory client media, who will ignore these obvious hypocrisies and petty racism.
Which tells us a lot about how the election will be fought. And not just this one, but every election for the next few decades, as British politics completes its transformation into US politics. Which means nothing is going to change. If you are struggling with the cost of living crisis or NHS waiting lists or you can’t find somewhere to leave, you are just going to have to deal with it, or consider moving to another country (which is going to be a bit of a problem post-brexit, as the UK burned that particular bridge). Labour’s core policies are now basically identical to those of the Tories. They’ll just pretend to be on the left in certain key areas.
Despite having a massive poll lead labour aren’t offering any real alternatively to the grinding rat race of an unregulated capitalist free for all, that brexit Britain has devolved into. The UK has transcended from being a plutocracy, to being a greedflationary kleptocracy. Yet labour offer nothing, not even platitudes. To pull up just one example, councils across the country are on their knees due to Tory cuts. Austerity has driven many people out of their homes and into poverty (which makes them the council’s problem, dramatically increasing their costs). Yet labour don’t seem to have any plan for how to fix things.
Its clear that labour are shifting to the right because those in charge of the party just don’t care. They WANT to shift the party and the UK to the right. They can’t even claim this is a tactic they need to adopt to win the election, as they are starting to lose support, precisely because of their right wing stance. Oddly enough the Tories have been talking about running on increasing public spending (as they know that’s what the public want), as well as highlighting the state of labour run councils (they’ll just leave out the bit about it being their fault) and portraying Starmer as a flip floper. They’re even now thinking of banning arms sales to Israel. Basically, attacking labour for everything Starmer claims he needs to do to win the election.
A few weeks ago, Owen Jones, a life long labour supporter quit the party and urged voters not to vote labour, as they’d gone power mad and were now only interested in gaining all the power for themselves, the country be damned. Keep in mind, Owen Jones was the same guy who was arguing back in 2018 that the Green party should just shut up shop and join labour, because Corbyn was going to lead us into the bright sunny uplands. Meanwhile another labour supporter George Monbiot is trying to organise primaries in UK constituencies to try and break the duopoly of UK politics.
Now I would moderate what Jones said. Obviously defeating the Tories has to be the priority. So if you are in a marginal seat and its a close race between a Tory and labour (keep in mind a lot of safe Tory seats will now be marginals), you’re going to have to hold your nose and vote labour. However, the majority of UK seats are not like this. There’s many marginal seats where the 2nd placed party is the lib dems (or SNP/Plaid Cymru). So you’d be doing everyone a favour by voting for those parties instead. And of course there’s safe labour seats, where you can pretty much vote for whoever you like as a form of protest vote, without fear of a Tory sneaking in. Indeed, there’s one or two labour seats where the greens are in with a shot.
The purpose of all of this is not just to ensure the Tories are beaten and beaten well, but also to keep labour in check. The more seats the third parties get, the more they get to ask questions in parliament. The Tories will just use their time to fight culture wars and pin the blame for their failings on labour. While the lib dems, SNP et al will ask awkward questions and hold labour to account (as they’ve been doing with the Tories on many issues Starmer’s ignored, such as brexit or Gaza).
In fact if the other parties can get enough seats, one might even get to lead the opposition (alternatively they could form a technical group, effectively acting as one party within Westminster, while being separate parties outside of it). This would again, increase their influence and set themselves up as the government in waiting. And more importantly it would kill off the Tories (as the dark money who support them will only continue to do so as long as they are useful to them, and they need to be at least leading the opposition to do that).
Another consideration is a split within the labour party. There are a lot of politicians within labour who are known to have strong left wing sympathies (e.g. Angela Rayner, who used to flat share with Rebecca Long Bailey). They might be going along with all of this, as they want to see the Tories annihilated before making any sort of move. In theory if labour have a narrow majority, or the opposition is led by someone other than the Tories, then a split would make them king makers. They could force the change they want onto labour. But again, that only happens if the Tories get decimated and the labour majority is cut down to size.
In fact in the event of a Tory wipe out, or them losing the support of their wealthy donors, one could see a scenario whereby in the post-Tory world UK politics undergoes a Jamaica like inversion, whereby labour having moved so far to the right that they become the new conservative party. And the opposition on the centre to centre left become the new left.
But either way, labour are not offering a credible alternative to the Tories. They risk just alienating another generation of voters (like Blair) who will then throw in their lot, not with moderates, but those on the extremes of politics (the far left and far right).
Something is rotten in the state of Illinois
There’s some controversy in the village of Dolton Illinois (within the commuter belt for Chicago), regarding its Mayor Tiffany Henyard, who was been branded “America’s most corrupt politician”.
She’s been accused of misusing village funds. Most notably by running a fake charity, or spending lavishly on hospitality for herself and her entourage, including trips to Las Vegas and DC at the town’s expense. Keeping in mind, between her role as mayor and administrator for the wider township, she’s earning a 6 figure salary already. And also consider that Dolton isn’t a particularly wealthy town, with relatively high rates of poverty (compared to the rest of the state).
She’s also been accused of using the local police as her personal goon squad, one turning in 300+ hours of overtime in two weeks (implying he worked +21 hrs every day!) protecting her from unspecified threats. She’s been using the police to shake down local businesses for money (those who refuse to pay being closed), spending city funds on dictator like self promotions and much more (notably a strange obsession about ice skating rings). The FBI are now apparently investigating her.
I think what this highlights is that America is actually a lot more corrupt that many people think. The problem is that a lot of this corruption is so ingrained it doesn’t get called out as corruption. Hence why the US tends to rate lower that it should on the corruption perception index (i.e. the corruption either doesn’t get reported, or isn’t perceived as corruption).
For example, we have the massive corporate feeding trough that is US military spending (fun fact, the US military has never managed to pass an audit). As I previously discussed, the war on terror cost the US trillions, without a lot to show for it and massive mismanagement on funds, much of which ended up in the pockets of defence contractors….who just happen to be major donors to a lot of prominent members of congress. Then there’s the various money burning parties, such as the Littoral combat ship, the F-35 or the Zumwalt class (the gun cruisers….without working guns).
Then there’s the scandal surrounding Boeing, which is largely down to corruption, with congressmen who have received bribes campaign contributions from Boeing giving the company exceptions on rules regarding safety and sweetheart deals at the expense of its competitors (including those in the US). And this is something that is a fairly common occurrence. There’s an entire lobbying industry in DC whose sole purpose is to facilitate “campaign contributions” to politicians in exchange for political favours.
In another example, many were left scratching their heads after SpaceX was awarded the sole contract for the new lunar lander, despite having arguably the bid least likely to succeed (furthermore the 2nd stage of this contract was supposed to pick two contractors, not just one). Well the NASA official who picked SpaceX (and allegedly coached them as to what exactly they need to say in order to get the contract), retired from NASA. And, by remarkable coincidence, is now working for SpaceX…on Starship!
Plus I’d also point out to those Muskrats holding a circle jerk over Starship’s recent “success”, distributing space junk simultaneously to the gulf of Mexico and the Southern Indian Ocean (on a supposedly reusable system) is not something I would boast about. Its still unproven that Starship can even reach orbit (it was in a sub-orbital path, not an actual orbit) never mind deliver any payload (the weights for it include fuel and the empty mass, but no payload, normal protocol for this sort of test would be to include a tank of water or a block of concrete to simulate the payload mass), nor that its even person rated (that would mean proving it can land, or boost itself away from a failing BFR and make it down again safely). When its done all that and shown it can do so consistently, then you can cheer like a bunch of gormless half wits.
But I digress. Previously I talked before about how tipping is out of control in the US. I also mentioned how this is less of a problem in Europe, as we have better worker protections and a higher minimum wage (hence workers don’t need to depend on tips). Why hasn’t the US simply raised its minimum wage? Well because of lobbying from the very companies who benefit from the status quo. Why is it that thousands more American’s die of food poisoning each year than Europeans? Again, lobbying from an industry that puts profit ahead of people’s lives. Or there’s more gun deaths. Or a lack of affordable health care? Or an opioid epidemic? So this corruption is not a victimless crime, it literally kills thousands of Americans every year. Yet nobody does anything about it. Largely because so many Americans pretend it isn’t an issue, largely cos they can’t handle the truth.
We also have a US supreme court where’s its widely known that Justices are openly taking kickbacks and “hospitality” from wealthy republican donors (said justices then provide rulings that are beneficial to those donors). And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s been other cases where judges have gone out and bought shares in companies (or had their relatives do so) before making a favourable ruling. Or sending lots more people to prison to the benefit of their pals running a local private prison.
Certainly it has to be acknowledged that the republicans are often the worst offenders. During the Trump administration the US treasury was treated as his own personal piggy bank, with him and his cabinet using state assets for activities that were clearly not work related. Such as taking weekly trips to his own hotel in Florida, that the government then had to pay him for (or foreign diplomats renting out rooms in his hotels just to curry political patronage).
However, that doesn’t mean the democrats get a free pass. Case in point, Nancy Pelosi and her husband have an amazing lucky streak with their stock picks. So either she’s a financial genius, who should really quit politics and set up her own hedge fund. Or she’s misusing classified information to commit insider trading.
And the worst part is, all of the above (and I’ve only scratched the surface) is that its not even a secret. Its openly known. Its not being investigated because the mainstream media largely ignores it (or selectively reports it when they need to attack a particular politician or party). And there’s no agency tasked with the job of investigating politicians or judges. Nor is it even technically illegal for them to misuse public funds, or commit insider trading, or take bribes….sorry receive campaign contributions.
This is largely because the US system assumes any politician who wins an election must be a gentleman, a scholar and a good judge of whisky who will serve the people faithfully (ya sure, & I’ve got some magic beans I can sell you). By contrast, in many European countries its assumed that politicians can’t be trusted and the authorities are empowered to investigate them. Hence its not unheard of for former minsters or even prime minsters to end up in jail (not because Europe is more corrupt, but because they are more likely to get caught).
Also America’s two party system creates problems. It is inaccurate to describe the US as split between blue and red states (there’s plenty of republicans in California and plenty of liberals in Texas). However, drilling down into certain districts, you will often find some individual towns and counties that do lean strongly left or right. Hence, if you can get on the ballot in that area, for whichever party is dominant (which given the apathy towards local politics, can be a case of just getting all of your family and friends to vote for you), you have a very strong chance of being elected, regardless of ones suitability for office.
And given that in the US positions such as administrators, judges, prosecutors and sheriffs are often elected (rather than awarded on the basis of who is best qualified to do that job), it means a lot of people getting elected on the basis of how good they are at lying to people, rather than how good they are at actually doing their job. It also politicises these roles (this is one of the reasons for America’s dangerously flawed system of punitive justice, as they are constantly appealing to voters, rather than trying to fix a broken system). Meaning they toe the party line, or are beholden to those who got them in power (usually some juiced in local bigwig), rather than the serving the public trust.
In short this Dolton mayor is the tip of the iceberg. The only difference between her and the other politicians is that’s she’s a bit of an egomaniac and doesn’t seem to realise she should be keeping quiet (bit like that Hushpuppi hacker who took to flexing on Instagram, when should have kept a low profile). She’s a street hustler, running a shell game, shaking down her neighbours for their last dime. Meanwhile the rest of the politicians are running vast casino skim operations. Its regular crime, versus very well organised crime. If anything one has to wonder why the media is hyperfixating on her and not all these other cases of corruption (I don’t know maybe because she’s black?).
Now too be clear, two wrong’s don’t make a right. Just because all the others have their snout in the feeding trough doesn’t mean you can do the same. If these allegations are true then she’s exploiting her neighbours. Who, as previously noted, aren’t particularly well off. If so, she should be arrested and prosecuted. To paraphrase boondocks, just because the US justice system is institutionally racist and regularly persecutes minorities for the crime of not being white, doesn’t mean that everyone who is accused of a crime is Nelson Mandela. Even a stopped clock is still correct twice a day.
However, let’s not kid ourselves into believing that corruption in the US starts and ends with one dodgy village mayor.
Farm protests and the dangers of conservatism
Labour go full Judean people’s front…again!
So Starmer’s flagship policy was to root out antisemitism in labour, that he claims was largely the fault of Corbyn. And now his party is mired in several scandals over….antisemitism.
Two candidates from the party right have had to be suspended over remarks they made about the war in Gaza (one of whom is still running, as its too late to change candidates). However, the controversy was that initially Starmer tried to avoid suspending them. Its worth noting that previously several people on the left of the party were suspended, or even thrown out, not for things they said, but for simply standing on a platform next to someone who might have said something mean about Israel in the past. Think about that, you happen to sit next to someone in a meeting and then get fired over something he said, not to you, but to someone else years before. So unsurprisingly some are arguing that fairness dictates that he should suspend everyone in the room or within earshot of these remarks.
The Forde report (whose author is practically banging his head against his desk right now) specifically warned that antisemitism was being used as a factional weapon within the labour party and warned that this had to stop. Well instead team Starmer when into overdrive. Its pretty clear that they were just using antisemitism as an excuse to go after their political enemies within the party (too be clear I’m not saying there weren’t issues in labour, I’m saying that Starmer had ulterior motives for trying to do something about it).
As regards the specific comments, well firstly given that the ICJ, as well as US courts, now believe Israel is carrying out possible war crimes in Gaza. So letting the Israeli’s define what constitutes antisemitism is a bit naive. So far they’ve accused the Pope, the Irish president (a poet!), Elon Musk, South Africa, the head of the UN, Human rights watch, Amnesty intentional, and even Greta Thunberg. Not because they’ve said anything nice about Hamas, but because they were judged to be not suitably supportive of Israel.
In short, the Netanyahu government have nazi tourettes. As for these conspiracy theories regarding possible prior knowledge of the attacks by them, my two cents is never ascribe malice to that which can be more easily explained by incompetence and stupidity.
But why is it that criticising Israel is considered racist, yet criticising Iran or Saudi Arabia is okay? (both see themselves as the leaders of different branches of Islam). How about critcising Russia’s war in Ukraine, which is home to the Russian orthodox church, why is that allowed, but not crticism of Israel? And why is it okay for those on the right like Boris Johnson to get a free pass when they make antisemitic comments?
In a democracy you have to be able to have a conversation about things like this, not least in order to counter the aforementioned conspiracy theories (else they’ll just circulate on social media and snowball). In fact I’d argue this is a big part of the problem. Politicians in the west refuse to offer any sort of criticism, for fear of what Israel might say about them, even when they are literally committing war crimes on TV. Which, as you can imagine is going to look pretty weird and f*cked up to anyone in the Muslim world. Is it no wonder then that such conspiracy theories start circulating.
So what next for Starmer? Well this crisis in the middle east (which has by now spread beyond Palestine) isn’t going to end any time soon. Its also clear from how this story broke that either A) the Tory press have gone back to phone hacking or B) they have paid spies and informants within labour recording every conversation, in case anyone blurts out something juicy. So what’s he going to do? Tape all his MP’s mouths shut for the next 9 months until after the election! And what’s he going to do then? Inevitably labour will have to attend UN and NATO conferences, where this issue will come up. Is Starmer going to stick his fingers in his ears and go NANANAN not listening.
I’ve never really been much of a labour supporter myself. And its the same reason that, despite their being a natural left wing majority in the UK, the country tends to be under Tory rule. Its because of the extreme factionalism within labour and the UK left in general. Once when I was in Glasgow the hard left wingers fielded 4 candidates against one another in the same constituency. The end result was a Tory slipped in.
In the 2017 election, Corbyn was offered the option of an electoral deal by the greens and lib dems, which would see them withdraw from certain marginal seats if labour did the same for some seats where the other parties had a better chance of winning. He refused and as a result enough Tories slipped in, some by margins as tight as 50 votes, to keep May in power (yes Corbyn chose not being PM over doing a deal with others on the left).
In the 2019 election Corbyn spent most of his campaign screaming splitters at Blairites who’d left the party, or attacking others on the left, rather than fighting the Tories. I had a labour supporter try and argue that I should vote labour, even though I was in a seat that tends to swing between the Tories and SNP (so he wanted me to help the Tories win, but at least we’d get one over on the SNP). Oddly enough, the labour election literature that came through my letterbox did not mention Corbyn once (obviously the local candidate was from a different faction).
And having lost to the Tories by a historic margin, Corbyn declared victory, claiming he’d “won the argument”. In other words he’d poisoned the well and burnt the house down, insuring nobody else on the left, could get into government. Because that was his real goal, not to win the election, but stick it to the Blairites and get back at them for his isolation during the Blair/Brown government.
And once Starmer took over the Blairites goal seems to have been to get some payback, the public good be damned. I’ve been wondering about all those promises Starmer’s been ditching. Now he says its to make an airtight case for a labour government, which gives the Tory client media no avenue of attack. However, they’ll always find an excuse to attack labour. In fact, I’ve noticed they seem to be road testing the argument that he’s a flip flopper, largely down to all of those policies he’s ditched!
Let’s be honest, at this stage he could include a policy that says he’s going to go around the country hitting people in the groin with a pool cue and at least half the country would still vote for him, as they’d rather that than another 5 years of the Tories. I do wonder if the real reason for dropping these policies is to stick it to the Corbynites. Own the libs and all that. Either that or do his new buddy Rupert Murdoch a favour.
Meanwhile, if there’s anything everyone on the left seems to agree with its that they need to stop George Galloway winning this byelection. Well actually I disagree. Yes I’m aware he’s now just a hired gun, a spoiler candidate in the employment of dark money. The left’s equivalent of Lawrence Fox or Nigel Farage. But seriously, have you heard what some of the knuckle draggers in the Tory party have been saying recently. He can’t be that bad. And we’d only have to put up with him for a few months (case in point, we’ve had politicians in the Irish parliament who thought potholes on roads were caused by fairies). Plus Galloway would have to defend this Rochdale seat (or risk being seen doing a chicken run), which he has zero chance of winning in a fair contest. So winning this by-election could end his little junket.
Granted, I probably won’t vote for him myself (I’m assuming there’s got to be a green or lib dem candidate). But no, because he’s not “one of us” those on the left would rather risk a Tory getting in. So I’d say it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he won. It might actually scare the left straight and get them to stop this factional warfare and remember who the real enemy is.
Don’t worry, we are getting a laser
The UK is the middle of a cost of living crisis (increasingly becoming a cost of survival crisis), the economy is in the toilet. But don’t worry, according to the Tories, we are getting a laser. The army can’t recruit enough soldiers to maintain current staffing levels, let alone increase numbers. So much so that they are talking about decommissioning certain ships early. But don’t worry we are getting a laser (we’ll just have to hire someone from Poland to fire it).
Why is the army having trouble recruiting? Well put it this way, would you be willing to lay down your life for Fishi Ri$hi and the rest of the Tory ghoul’s? Plus they subcontracted recruitment out to a private company (likely after payment of a significant bribe…sorry campaign contributions!). Obviously they are going to be more interested in collecting their fee than actually finding suitable candidates. Plus look how badly veterans have been treated by this government. Would you sign up?
Its also worth noting that the UK is little more than a cheerleader in the conflict in Yemen (ignoring the question as to whether attacking the Houthi rebels is counter productive). As Tory cuts to the Royal navy means many UK warships now lack any form of land attack weapon system. In fact some don’t even have the ability to fire at other ships. So they are limited to the gun at the front (which is really a sort of last resort weapon system), or the use of bad language. But don’t worry, we are getting a laser.
Millions more in the UK are now in dire poverty thanks to the Tories. Retail theft is up 32% in a year (my store down the road is like a bloody fortress these days!), as are muggings and petty crime. In fact supermarkets are not only steeply raising prices, but shrinking the size of portions, or using inferior ingredients. Loan sharks and other criminals are taking over neighbourhoods. Simply “getting a better job” isn’t always an option. In fact there’s now trend of young people turning down jobs because they can’t afford the commute or the relocation costs. But don’t worry, we are getting a laser.
You may have heard that we are getting a laser. Well the thing is, while laser weapons have their uses, they also come with serious limitations. The square cube law limits their range to a few tens of km’s. Overcoming this requires a massive up-scaling of the weapon as well as its power requirements. For example, the US Airborne Laser system of the 2000’s morphed from something that could be carried by a fighter, to taking up an entire 747. And even those would have such a limited range that they’d have to operate outside of US air space (or in some cases over enemy territory) to get within range of the missiles they were expected to shoot down.
The laser also has to maintain the beam on the target for several seconds, which limits the number of targets it can engage, which risks it being overwhelmed by shear weight of numbers. It may prove useful at dealing with threats like drones. But there are alternative ways of downing those, using close in weapon systems, electronic jamming or EMP. The Ukrainians have used a combination of these tactics to develop an increasingly effective defence against drones, without the need for fancy lasers.
But this is the problem, much like Hyperloop, flying cars or solar roadways, things like laser weapons seem cool and sexy. Most journalists don’t have a clue about science and thus make it out to be some sort of massive new development. When its really just rehashing an old idea from the era of Reagan’s star wars program. While this laser system might have some future value (e.g. v’s hypersonic missiles), life is about priorities and right now the government could have achieved a lot more by just investing the same money in conventional forces (you know like having warships that can shoot at things!). Or maybe using the cash to fund the NHS or something useful like that. But that won’t have generated tabloid friendly headlines. Which tells us a lot about the government’s real priorities.
daryanblog 
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