Tenebris Nox

Thanks for the info. These sort of things are always difficult. A bit like finding out a favourite musician breaks a boycott or has dodgy ideas but makes great music.

I wasn’t aware of the issues with the Lemmy devs. Some of the original posts about them don’t seem accessible. Is the issue because they are pretty pro-Chinese government?

Isn’t the concern that “Those that need them still” won’t get them? There is a HUGE amount of unclaimed benefits in this country. Many old people can’t cope with the level of tech you need to apply (you can’t just phone up or pop into a benefits centre in most parts of uk).

Do we, though? Macron’s reaction seems to go too far the other way. Surely a “Congratulations on your reelection, Mr President and we look forward to working with you in the interests of both our countries” would be sufficient.

My first two heads were both involved in fraud. This was in the early days of grant maintained schools. The first one set up a printing business within the school and staff could only do photocopying etc through the printers. He was taking home a nice cut of the “profits”. The second one defrauded the school for about a million pounds in a scam where her husband sold the school computer equipment, got a stupid deputy to sign for empty boxes and then claimed that the computers had been supplied. That head went on the run to Spain. Eventully went to the High Court and she got away with it. We were told by local LEA that if we leaked anything to the press we would be prosecuted.

Also have to mention the heads who pretend you aren’t there when you try to talk to them in a corridor. I was once told never to approach one head because “Kings only talk to other kings!”

Regular state school. I worked in another where the executive head hired a private investigator to keep an eye on staff who were on longer-term illnesses and do “background checks”.

It works fine. Not many videos there - but it’s early days. It doesn’t seem to be a desktop app. Works through the Loops app.

Really awful. Starmer could congratulate Trump without indulging him.

Worked in a school where the head refused to employ any of the candidates who turned up for interview because none of them wore a poppy (and one of them wore tan-coloured shoes that hadn’t been polished, too!) Some of the candidates were perfectly suitable and the school needed to fill the post to help reduce workload on the rest of us.

Labour: like the Tories but better at it.

Living in an insanely pro-Brexit area, the usual comments are either: “Best thing we ever did. We control our borders now.” or “We’re not going to talk about it. Democracy won.” I think if the referendum was run again the results would be the same - or a bigger Brexit majority. The crazies in my area are obsessed with “illegals”.

And if they can pull a “Falklands” in the next 12 months may keep their eternal grip on power. War with… er… Greece… over some ancient… oh… Greek statues… anyone?

We’ll just have to disagree about this. What you misread (which is exactly what Trump and the right-wing Tories over here want you to do) is that they want to tear down the structures of power and wealth. They really don’t. They might want to gain advantage within the Establishment but none of them want to see it brought down. It’s purely rhetoric. Look at Truss as an example. She bent the knee. They all bend the knee. Starmer has literally kneeled down and been knighted.

My fear is the rise of fascism. Just saw a poll this morning that showed a large number of young people have no interest in democracy and would welcome a strong military take over.

Frightening when you consider yesterday was the anniversary of Pinochet’s seizure of power in Chile.

Ho ho ho! Next you’ll be telling me Trump is the anti-Establishment candidate in the US.

I use the traditional definition of Establishmemt: all the structures and processes that are used to maintain the political power of inherited wealth in this country. John Gibbs, the cultural writer, describes it as the “Norman Continuity Empire” where 1200 aristocratic familes close to William the Conqueror. The aims of the Tories is to best represent that Establishment and the aims of Labour is to help prevent the redistribution of that wealth.

I can tell that you like to see yourself as a moderate but knowing that half-a-million children live in extreme poverty (a Westminster calculation) and NOT sorting it out is a crime against those children. Starmer, for example, says that he will maintain the 2-child cap on child benefit at the same time as promising the excessively wealthy that he wont tax them. Both parties and all leaders (with possible exception of Greens) agree on that. And it’s not a moderate position.

Edited: added the word NOT

Absolutely correct.

I often wonder whether the UK is used as a petri dish for neoliberal macroeconomic experimentation in the West (in the same way China does with certain megacities and provinces). How far you can cut taxes, how low you can drop living standards, how well you can use the media to manipulate the way that a population behaves.

What nonsense.

I think there’s more chance SIR Keir is on the payroll of the Establishment.

I guess you’re one of those that keeps on saying that Corbyn is a racist and anti-semite.

I think all three of them are not “great reforms”:

• Great British Energy is a mechanism to attract PRIVATE investment . The actual sums being proposed are to subsidise private enterprise. It’s not a state-owned energy company. Labour spin it like that to appeal to people who want to see utilities brought back into public ownership. The devil is in the detail.
• Labour MIGHT bring in gender reform but Starmer’s drift towards anti-trans positions doesn’t look promising.
• Labour have been very clear that they WON’T repeal the existing anti-trade union legislation. This has irked the TUC and Labour are not supporting the TUC taking legal action on an international level.

We need radical policies that address thr extreme poverty and collapse of our social services in the UK. Things must be made better for the poorest (eg. increasing social security, rent caps, free school meals for all, greatly increase the minimum wage) and start taxing the excessively wealthy and corporations.

Labour won’t do this because they are now utterly a tool of the Establishment to maintain the power and wealth of the excessively rich.

Your analogy is only an analogy. Certainly, on issues I consider important Tories and Labour hold the same positions at the moment. For instance, many people are in utter poverty in this country. We have friends who both work and have to make decisions about whether they pay their extortionate rent or feed their kids. No one in the UK should have to put up with that.

And what do we hear from Labour? Nothing about rent comtrols, nothing about free school meals, nothing about raising the minimum wage to a genuinely living wage, nothing about taxing the excessively wealthy (or anything about redistributing wealth in fact). All we hear from Labour is that they will - like the Tories - “Grow the economy”. I’m sure you heard Rachel Reeves caught out on LBC recently by having her former words about the need to tax the wealthy.

Labour - with SIR Keir - are part of the Establishment and exist to make sure that the excessively wealthy and those with inherited wealth maintain their power and economic position.

That’s not an “optical illusion”, that’s looking at things very clearly in broad daylight. Perhaps your “moderate” postion where you can accept a country where half a million children live in destitution/extreme poverty is the vantage point that needs to be examined.

It’s a shame that Labour can’t articulate what the differences in things like civil rights and foreign policy actually are.

Can you actually tell me a single major policy where Labour fundamentally disagrees with the Tories? (Not vague “We will just do things better” promises. Though I’ve no doubt Starmer and co will run a Tory economic policy better than the Tories.