Sorry for being stupid. The Guardian supports the Greens. Surely if they think KS is disastrous for Labour (the Greens' rivals) they should be campaigning for him to stay. Or is it not as simple as that? Does it involve duplicity? Dishonesty? Hypocrisy?
Change the home secretary, yeah. Change the PM? Well, for whom? If you change the policies (dump the Blue Labour crap) you might be in a better position, but there are no guarantees. Journalists always want 'shake-ups', but feel no responsibility when they don't work. Where is the magic leader?
Britain is a rich country which has been captured by a small number of it's richest individuals over a number of decades. Its media hunts in packs, creating salience from irrelevancies, generating fears in the population unrelated to their actual problems in life and promoting the scapegoating of minorities while conducting little to no structural assessments of the real problems that the political and social worlds have inherited and intensified. It is surely of no little significance that it turns out that this model of public capture of political discourse for private gain is one which is revealed by these Epstein documents to have had been a global formula.
After today's English by-election result, a reminder;
www.thegist.ie/the-gist-uk-...
It did indeed look a bit like a protective roof (and was accompanied by a slogan translating as 'We will protect your children'). But it looked even more like two young 'nationals' making a Hitler salute. You can't do this kind of thing in Germany, but of course if you do you'll get publicity. 2/2
A call to ban the German far-right AfD party, whose brazenness and cheek perhaps outdoes that of similar outfits in other countries. A poster for AfD candidate Wilko Moeller showed a man and woman raising their arms over three children (all immensely 'Aryan' in looks) in the shape of a roof. 1/2
'Ah,' said my young Italian student, puzzled by an unfamiliar word in her set text, "SCOON-DREL? What is scoon-drel?"'
'Well, it's pronounced 'SCOWNDREL'. Let me see, what is a scoundrel? Yes, Nigel Farage is a scoundrel.'
Well, as Evelyn Waugh had a character say in 'Scoop', 'Up to a point, Lord Copper.' Maximalist manifestos written by and for radicals are kind of pointless. At the same time, there is also no point in making xenophobic noises to appeal to a segment of the electorate that won't support you anyway.
'Fillette' is a word (along with 'basse-cour') which seemed to be on virtually every page of my school French book. Virtually never heard it used in France later on.
smart clothing items for those with good taste - fashion or mourning garments - for ladies and little girls - first hop on your bike and cycle to Tours.
For unity, not division. Vote Labour.
I dislike Tony, but I recognise his (and GB's) achievements. I also recognise the huge contribution that 'less left-wing' figures (Gaitskell, Healey, John Smith) have made to Labour. I don't think the media (Sun, Mail) give a toss about DM's undoubted gifts. Labour at its best was a broad church.
Do we - for even a tiny moment - think that the media, which ridiculed 'Red Ed', would not have ridiculed 'Weird David', who had in bucketfuls the kind of piercing, grating 'sincere' intensity that Tony employed to send Britain to war in Iraq? Media hostility is a constant. Work around it.
We are thrilled that THE DESERTERS by Mathias Enard, tr. @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social, is on the International Booker longlist! Congratulations to all longlisted authors, translators and publishers: www.theguardian.com/books/2026/f...
Extract from the Press Regulations Authority 10th Annual report: Emma Monk, who fights misinformation through her popular 'debunking' Substack and social media profiles, tells us that as news consumption has shifted online and onto social feeds, "the headline is all that you will see, with the article often behind a paywall", ', and that even where full articles are available "many people will not click away from their feed to read the details". She documents techniques used by the press to create misleading impressions without making technically false claims, including omission of vital context and headlines that imply causation where none exists.
It was an honour to be asked to contribute to the Press Regulation Panel’s 10th Annual report into the state of press accountability in the UK a decade after the Leveson enquiry which was published today
www.pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk/10th-annual-...
1/3
'They', I'm afraid, intellectual*ish* journalists and recovering Corbynistas mostly, are unreachable and unteachable. Helmut Schmidt, a very effective German social democrat chancellor, was known as a 'Macher'. That is, a person who got things done. Let doing things suffice - and for others sniping.
It's a long haul. It's not all about winning the next election, though that is certainly desirable. It's about 'doing good' (I make no apology for that phrase) while you can. I suppose there is strategising. That's important, and requires clever chaps. Not sure my compatriot McSweeney was the best.
pejorative (I think).
A 'female MP'? Sounds slightly bizarre. An MP? If you like, if you think misogyny is a significant factor, maybe a woman MP. Certainly 'male' is now often used as a pejoritive, but 'female' sounds as if it should be uttered with a shocked, rising tone, as in Lady Bracknell's 'A HANDbag???'
Maybe someone should do a study of mid-term by-elections and how incumbent governments tend to do in them (over 40 years, say) just to show how few long-term 'learnings' can be derived from them.
Don't know what world you're living in. I saw a dog scampering down the street with a string of sausages in its mouth just yesterday afternoon, and - wait for it - all the silly butcher in his striped apron could do was stand outside his shop and shake his fist!
The good news, of a sort, is that AI will likely never get so smart that it meaningfully, or even efficiently, replaces human labour, much less art or science, or human connection. The pathway toward AI being a “reliable, profitable and scalable” replacement for human beings is very narrow, and that path vanishes to micron-width once, say, the global economy shutters tens of millions of jobs while quadrupling the price of every component necessary for AI companies to keep making the tiny, marginal gains it needs merely to maintain its current level of cataclysmic unprofitability. The bad news is that this means very little when a $700bn hype machine is currently telling every CEO on earth that their magical spellcheck technology means that they should sack tens of millions of employees while raising the price of every microchip on the planet. A hype machine staffed by avaricious tech companies and the sensible former politicians they employ. A hype machine giddily swallowed by governments and companies and journalists as they present themselves to Silicon Valley’s wallet inspectors, time and time again.
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Oh, the latter! The latter! Sorry if that wasn't clear.
Sometimes you just want to say 'Oh, fuck off.' But sadly you're too polite.
Especially endearing for the elderly: 'OK, Clive, let's just take our pants down.'
Russian stooges are a problem, and maybe a growing one, for Europe (and not just for the EU). Let us hope that there are various ways of making them feel the cold for their persistent obstruction of concerted policy. The EU, however, a rule-bound organisation, is slightly hamstrung in its responses.
Grendel's Mom?
children save rabbit
That's emotive.
