Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Peter Walker

@peterwalker99.bsky.social

31K followers 550 following 2K posts

Guardian senior political correspondent. New book, Stress tested, out now: https://tinyurl.com/mhn82a7m Email: [email protected] Secure email if needed: [email protected]

tinyurl.com

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 22h

Trevor Phillips: "Would it be nice for people to say, actually, this person I thought was a profound threat to international order actually turns out not to be that?"

I mean, I'd possibly argue it's a bit too early to call it so definitively.

5 2 36

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 22h

Blimey.

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 22h

This is a president who has sent the military into peaceful cities run by political opponents, and who authorises the destruction of what are pretty much random boats in the Caribbean to make a point about drug gangs. This would not normally be Peace Prize behaviour.

7 12 78

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 22h

Trevor Phillips on Sky about Trump and the Nobel Peace Prize: “Even long-time critics are conceding he will probably deserve it next year.”

I really don't think that's true. By any normal metric, Trump would and should be the very last person to win the prize, and many people realise that.

16 31 190

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 1d

I realise I slightly go on about this, but I'm not sure enough attention is paid to the fact that a fair proportion of comment articles in the modern Daily Telegraph are utterly unmoored from any sense of even tenuous reality.

Daniel Hannan

Britain has given so much to civilisation. Now the barbarians are inside

The poisonous ideas of Vladimir Lenin have infected our progressive elite

Contemplate those elderly buffoons in blue berets who hand out EU flags at the Last Night of the Proms. Do you suppose they have any real interest in rejoining the EU? Do they strike you as having looked into the budgetary, migratory and commercial implications? Of course not. They just loathe the people they imagine having voted Leave.

Listen to Sir Lenny Henry, who thinks that, as well as handing over squillions to the West Indies and Africa, we should pay black people in this country. So much for the notion of equality before the law.

I could go on. The museums rushing to give away legally purchased collections to people who have never owned them, and who will very probably sell them on to private collectors. The diplomats longing to surrender British territories in defiance of the wishes of their peoples. The universities eviscerating the Western canon in the name of decolonising the curriculum.

“Colonialism-and-slavery” is proffered as a binomial phrase, like “law-and-order” or “gin-and-tonic”. Few kids in our schools are given the slightest notion that the first, at least in Africa, was driven by the desire to extirpate the second. Even fewer are taught that African kings fought to defend the institution.

The Benin Bronzes, which our cultural leaders are so keen to give away, were seized to defray the costs of an 1897 expedition against a state that buried slaves alive. The British Museum, which owns most of them, dares not mention it. Instead it says the carvings were acquired during the “expansion of colonial power”

27 40 300

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 2d

The Lib Dems seem to firmly think it will largely be them v Reform in many ex-Labour strongholds in the north next May.

1 14

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 2d

What is the core point?

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 2d

That said, giving it to someone who opposes noted Trump foe Maduro is also quite clever.

1 27

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 2d

The Nobel Peace Prize committee's decision to honour someone who has tirelessly campaigned against dictatorship is both worthwhile and welcome, and objectively very funny.

21 80 580

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 3d

Yet more proof that as far as the British media is concerned, commuter cycling only exists inside zone 1 London.

1 27

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 3d

One day - *one day* - a UK newspaper will do a similar count of motor vehicles speeding inside a 20mph zone.

In 60 minutes I saw 172 cyclists run these lights – it’s a matter of time before they kill someone

The offenders included Lime bike riders, school children and a woman in high-heeled boots

20 31 200

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 6d

See also: Singapore and mass social housing.

1 32

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 6d

You could argue “only”.

1 2

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 6d

Even flatlining at 17% in the polls there are quite a few Tories who seems to assume the electorate will sort of come to their senses and beg to be rescued with their offer of fiscal credibility*

*Self-stated. Some voters will recall Truss.

1 1 17

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 6d

It’s striking how many Tory fringe events I’ve been at where people have confidently predicted a major fiscal or markets crisis for the government in the next 12ish months. I have no idea if that has any credibility, but it’s notable how much perhaps misplaced confidence it gives some Conservatives.

5 3 23

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 6d

In the Q&A, Holden is asked if 20mph zones should only be put on roads where there has been a fatality. Holden says he thinks it’s a bit much to expect someone to die before you get a 20 limit - but then complains a lot about their general use.

2 1 19

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 6d

He’s slightly making up for it in the Q&A.

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 6d

In an audience Q&A for Holden, one of the questions is to ask him if he will end the current “cyclist-first” transport policy. If you were in the hall and heard an inadvertent laugh, apologies.

1 3 55

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 6d

Well, that was a bit of a nothing speech. A few hits at electric cars but not a single mention of 20mph zones, LTNs or 15 minute cities.

5 1 12

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 6d

Labour are pursuing “an ideological war” on drivers, motorcyclists and the freight industry, Holden says. There we are.

4 2 25

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 6d

“Labour are actively punishing motorists,” Holden says, which I think counts.

4 8

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 6d

I’m in the main hall of Tory conference to watch new-ish shadow transport secretary Richard Holden give his speech. The title leads me to expect talk about the war on the motorist and 20mph zones.

3 5 23

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 6d

It’s the main day of the three for shadow ministerial speeches at the Tory conference and it’s fair to say that…. the main hall is not packed.

10 16 47

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 6d

“Our welfare system should be a safety net, not a lifestyle choice," says Whately, an MP who colleagues often praise as hardworking, nice and fairly sensible. But if you want to be on the current Tory front bench, it seems nastiness is the currency of choice.

4 1 22

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 6d

On the Tory main stage, shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately is leaning heavily into the "shirkers v strivers" narrative, contrasting hard-working types with "millions" she says are on the sofa with often mild conditions.

5 2 25