The European welfare state is more a Christian Democratic achievement than a socialist one! I beg her to read a single book!
Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
www.thetimes.com
November 28, 2025 at 11:18 AM
The European welfare state is more a Christian Democratic achievement than a socialist one! I beg her to read a single book!
People across the democratic world keep coming up with the "left on economics right on culture" wheeze until they all realise the same thing: those voters absolutely exist, they just hate political parties
The thing about "left on the economy, right on culture" is it's based on analysis of swing voters. Those voters are often low attention and their politics are often not especially coherent. Which is fine for them, it's not their job to run the country, but, you know, the government is
November 27, 2025 at 11:36 AM
People across the democratic world keep coming up with the "left on economics right on culture" wheeze until they all realise the same thing: those voters absolutely exist, they just hate political parties
A big day for ctrl-F in commentary world today
November 26, 2025 at 12:50 PM
A big day for ctrl-F in commentary world today
Thing is, there are countries like Germany that have gone down the route of technical education and manufacturing that Blue Labour wants for us and a. they still ended up with the same progressive middle class we do and b. that economic model is doing *terribly* right now
November 25, 2025 at 5:26 PM
Thing is, there are countries like Germany that have gone down the route of technical education and manufacturing that Blue Labour wants for us and a. they still ended up with the same progressive middle class we do and b. that economic model is doing *terribly* right now
I have been on Twitter's "for you" feed recently and discovered that just about every post can best be responded to with this
October 26, 2025 at 9:30 PM
I have been on Twitter's "for you" feed recently and discovered that just about every post can best be responded to with this
The problem with these AI plans is that they all rely on "what if *thing I remember* met *other thing I remember*" which basically means all culture just becomes those terrible Scary Movie knockoffs from the 00s
David and Larry Ellisons’ sloptastic vision for Hollywood is coming into focus:
“Paramount has reportedly signed a $200M+ multiyear deal for Higgsfield AI to use mass-use Popcorn AI model that ingests dailies and script notes, then outputs regional cuts: new leads, alternate jokes, revised endings”
“Paramount has reportedly signed a $200M+ multiyear deal for Higgsfield AI to use mass-use Popcorn AI model that ingests dailies and script notes, then outputs regional cuts: new leads, alternate jokes, revised endings”
October 23, 2025 at 6:47 PM
The problem with these AI plans is that they all rely on "what if *thing I remember* met *other thing I remember*" which basically means all culture just becomes those terrible Scary Movie knockoffs from the 00s
Reposted by Fred Maynard
Alternatively: one person does not have a class. A million people do.
Seeing talk on here about class makes me wish people could at least acknowledge the Marxian point that class is not just another form of identity politics, but is about one's relationship to the means of production - eg I'm now bourgeois whatever my upbringing, prejudices etc.
October 2, 2025 at 11:53 AM
Alternatively: one person does not have a class. A million people do.
The debates also bring home what an achievement the emancipation proclamation was. The fact that only five years after the caution Lincoln expresses here the same guy would enact a step even his radical fringe would not have dreamed of is, I think, instructive.
it may feel a little like homework, but i genuinely think people should read the lincoln-douglas debates to see what the practical politics of anti-slavery looked like in an environment where the public was neutral to hostile to the question of emancipation
September 28, 2025 at 4:35 PM
The debates also bring home what an achievement the emancipation proclamation was. The fact that only five years after the caution Lincoln expresses here the same guy would enact a step even his radical fringe would not have dreamed of is, I think, instructive.
Isaac Chotiner: it's interesting you don't use wireless earphones
Me: I actually save a lot of money this way.
IC: Because wired headphones are cheaper.
Me: Right.
IC: how much have you spent replacing cheap broken headphones?
Me: *laughs* I mean a lot right, probably a lot but -
Me: I actually save a lot of money this way.
IC: Because wired headphones are cheaper.
Me: Right.
IC: how much have you spent replacing cheap broken headphones?
Me: *laughs* I mean a lot right, probably a lot but -
September 24, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Isaac Chotiner: it's interesting you don't use wireless earphones
Me: I actually save a lot of money this way.
IC: Because wired headphones are cheaper.
Me: Right.
IC: how much have you spent replacing cheap broken headphones?
Me: *laughs* I mean a lot right, probably a lot but -
Me: I actually save a lot of money this way.
IC: Because wired headphones are cheaper.
Me: Right.
IC: how much have you spent replacing cheap broken headphones?
Me: *laughs* I mean a lot right, probably a lot but -
Next time, we absolutely promise, we won't devolve into factional bickering
Presumably someone at these things always says "let's not what we always do and what everyone expects us to do and collapse into factional bickering" and everyone in the room agrees and then they just immediately do so anyway
Here’s a characteristically well sourced @siennarodgers.bsky.social feature on the founding of Corbyn’s new party www.politicshome.com/news/article...
September 18, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Next time, we absolutely promise, we won't devolve into factional bickering
Increasingly convinced that the conversation in the USA about whether you can ever again get a civil political discourse is just a proxy for "can the USA ever get proportional representation"
September 18, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Increasingly convinced that the conversation in the USA about whether you can ever again get a civil political discourse is just a proxy for "can the USA ever get proportional representation"
"It's the institutions stupid" can replace most political commentary, most of the the time
September 12, 2025 at 6:49 PM
"It's the institutions stupid" can replace most political commentary, most of the the time
Bayrou's short tenure reminds me just how impossible it must have been in the Third Republic to remember who was French PM.
50 years of saying "I thought it was Ribot, no, Herriot, no that was in October" etc
50 years of saying "I thought it was Ribot, no, Herriot, no that was in October" etc
September 8, 2025 at 4:18 PM
Bayrou's short tenure reminds me just how impossible it must have been in the Third Republic to remember who was French PM.
50 years of saying "I thought it was Ribot, no, Herriot, no that was in October" etc
50 years of saying "I thought it was Ribot, no, Herriot, no that was in October" etc
I feel like people online have a very different idea of Ezra Klein to the one that actually exists
*ezra klein guy voice* The problem with the left is that they've lost the willingness to speak reasonably with their opponents, such as this guy I interviewed recently who easily conned me into supporting eugenics
September 6, 2025 at 2:16 PM
I feel like people online have a very different idea of Ezra Klein to the one that actually exists
Presumably someone at these things always says "let's not what we always do and what everyone expects us to do and collapse into factional bickering" and everyone in the room agrees and then they just immediately do so anyway
Here’s a characteristically well sourced @siennarodgers.bsky.social feature on the founding of Corbyn’s new party www.politicshome.com/news/article...
Inside The Founding Of Jeremy Corbyn's New Party: 'End This Horrible Power Struggle'
The trials and tribulations of founding a new party on the left. Can they unite? What challenges lie ahead? Sienna Rodgers reports
www.politicshome.com
September 6, 2025 at 11:16 AM
Presumably someone at these things always says "let's not what we always do and what everyone expects us to do and collapse into factional bickering" and everyone in the room agrees and then they just immediately do so anyway
It is crazy to me that in one lifetime you could plausibly have seen Shakespeare perform, Rembrandt and Velazquez paint, read a first edition Paradise Lost and Don Quixote, heard Allegri's Miserere, and met Spinoza, Descartes and Galileo.
August 24, 2025 at 1:12 PM
It is crazy to me that in one lifetime you could plausibly have seen Shakespeare perform, Rembrandt and Velazquez paint, read a first edition Paradise Lost and Don Quixote, heard Allegri's Miserere, and met Spinoza, Descartes and Galileo.
The sheer number of gambling ads I am seeing right now either says something very worrying about the country or very worrying about me
August 15, 2025 at 8:06 PM
The sheer number of gambling ads I am seeing right now either says something very worrying about the country or very worrying about me
The connecting thread of my political beliefs is increasingly that life should be harder: children should learn poetry, voting should be compulsory, takeaway food should be restricted to a luxury, tiktok should be banned. A kind of puritan/high Tory virtue leftism with absolutely zero constituency.
One direction in which I am travelling politically rn is that I think I have determined there is, actually, a social cost to decadence, defined here, in a nutshell, as the desire to force someone or something else to do all your work for you.
I think this is especially pertinent if you cant conceptualise sympathising with the labour side of the worker/consumer dichotomy.
August 14, 2025 at 4:52 PM
The connecting thread of my political beliefs is increasingly that life should be harder: children should learn poetry, voting should be compulsory, takeaway food should be restricted to a luxury, tiktok should be banned. A kind of puritan/high Tory virtue leftism with absolutely zero constituency.
- Richard Dawkins, first draft of the God Delusion
August 8, 2025 at 12:26 PM
- Richard Dawkins, first draft of the God Delusion
It's a simple line but I think back to Steve Carrell in the Big Short saying that for 15,000 years, fraud and short sighted thinking have never worked
Sorry to pollute the feed with technical financial terms, but this is all fxcking nuts
www.ft.com/content/8a16...
www.ft.com/content/8a16...
August 8, 2025 at 9:17 AM
It's a simple line but I think back to Steve Carrell in the Big Short saying that for 15,000 years, fraud and short sighted thinking have never worked
I get very annoyed by this because Christianity is not a culture, it is a very specific claim about the divinity of Christ. You may as well claim to be "culturally" a tuna sandwich.
Saying, as Badenoch does, that you don’t believe in God but you’re a “cultural Christian” is the creepiest shit
August 7, 2025 at 11:52 AM
I get very annoyed by this because Christianity is not a culture, it is a very specific claim about the divinity of Christ. You may as well claim to be "culturally" a tuna sandwich.
Tom Lehrer could as a throwaway gag write a Gilbert and Sullivan parody of "Clementine" with better lyrics than all of actual G&S
The mister resisted/The sister persisted/I kissed her, all loyalty slipped/When she said I could have her/Her sister's cadaver/Must surely have turned in its crypt
The mister resisted/The sister persisted/I kissed her, all loyalty slipped/When she said I could have her/Her sister's cadaver/Must surely have turned in its crypt
July 27, 2025 at 8:22 PM
Tom Lehrer could as a throwaway gag write a Gilbert and Sullivan parody of "Clementine" with better lyrics than all of actual G&S
The mister resisted/The sister persisted/I kissed her, all loyalty slipped/When she said I could have her/Her sister's cadaver/Must surely have turned in its crypt
The mister resisted/The sister persisted/I kissed her, all loyalty slipped/When she said I could have her/Her sister's cadaver/Must surely have turned in its crypt