mormont

I'm fairly sure, and when we get the trials we will know this one way or the other, that the rioters are not actually working class (or under-class) people, for the most part, but will turn out to be similar to the Jan 6 rioters in terms of profile. The people involved seem to have the time and money to travel significant distances to stir up trouble. Genuinely working class people, who are struggling to survive in these places, have bigger priorities. They're the ones cleaning up their communities after these people go home.

Not going to link for obvious reasons, but Tommy Robinson is currently very upset on Twitter because he took his family abroad because of security concerns, and someone leaked to the Daily Mail which hotel they're staying in, and now he's worried people might turn up outside the hotel and his kids won't be safe, and he's demanding to know how journalists can be allowed to publish this sort of information, and there is zero self-reflection in this post as you would imagine.

For an encore: https://www.thedailybeast.com/weinstein-ailes-and-more-rfk-jr-lists-gallery-of-infamous-friends

I'm sorry, but saying 'I'm not excusing the rioting' is inevitably undermined when your very next statement can be seen as excusing the rioting. What you're saying here is 'I'm not excusing the rioting, but it's the result of the establishment not listening and learning the wrong lessons'. That's not very far from what Farage is saying. And do these 'idiots' in fact have 'so much support'? I'm not seeing that from the reactions to what's happening. This seems to be conflating the rioters with voters who you normally are very keen to separate out - people who have concerns about immigration but do not carry out or condone violence because of it. You might have been able to predict that you would get this criticism, but that doesn't in any way make the criticism invalid.

That sounds like excusing the rioting. Maybe you don't think that's what you're doing: but it does come over that way. I do not think you would say a similar thing about any other violent behaviour.

They might want to look for an alternative title there. I think JD Vance was going to use that one for the title of his new book.

For a complete change of tone: How UK politicians would attempt to cross the big red balls in Total Wipeout

To be clear, at this point the suggestion is that the riots were triggered by folks who are not from the area but travelled there to start trouble. And by 'folks', I mean 'racists'.

It was actuality five minutes ago, so clearly it is possible now. But that's not the point: the point is that the movement away from universal benefits to means-testing has been going on for decades, justified by the same sort of rhetoric that's being used today (there's no money, they don't need it). And it's as much an undermining of the benefits system as using private contractors is an undermining of the NHS. The welfare state is being dismantled. State provision for the poor only will always be second rate, and that goes for benefits as much as, if not more than, education, healthcare and justice.

Byrne later wrote an origin story that had Reed and Sue meeting when he was a college freshman and she was 12, cutting that Kirby-era age gap considerably. Most writers since have aged all four characters up a bit, but have tended to split the difference between Kirby and Byrne when it comes to the age difference between Sue and Reed. The age difference on the actors is 12 years, which I think is in the right range, consistent with the comics if we assume the characters are both supposed to be a few years younger than the actors.

It's not an argument that finds much traction these days, but I'm a strong advocate for truly universal benefits. They make clear that the welfare state is about providing a stake in society for everyone, rather than being a nationalised version of alms for the poor.

I'm finding the Tory leadership contest pretty funny so far. Four candidates declared with three more expected to do so. That's seven from 121 MPs. They have no clue where the party should be going, but they're all pretty sure they should be in the driving seat.

Did not see that! I was working on the assumption that this was about BDP (Long form) but if it's about the BRW, agree that the betting scam scenario falls away somewhat.

I'm finding the suggestion of it being a betting scam to be a credible explanation, which doesn't necessarily conflict with it being Chinese-based.

Unusual voting patterns in the Hugos? https://glasgow2024.org/hugo-awards/statement-22-july-2024/ I'm shocked by these developments, and so are my good friends jormont, kormont and lormont.

That's the bit people keep leaving out. Hypothetical candidate has no problem getting every Dem voter to turn out, because hypothetical Dem candidate has no flaws, except of course for not existing, which is a pretty major flaw when you think about it. Then you have to add in the voters who don't vote at all because they don't like the way this has been handled. Biden does have a personal vote and that will not necessarily transfer fully, even if he endorses another candidate. Endorsements aren't 100% efficient. So which group of non-voters in all these scenarios is the smallest? Who knows. I will say this has reached the stage now where it has to be addressed and Biden might have to step down simply because it's the only way to stop voters getting frustrated with this as an issue, and the longer it goes on, one way or the other, the better Trump's chances begin to look.

To no-one's surprise: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/08/voter-id-rule-may-have-stopped-400000-taking-part-in-uk-election-poll-suggests I'll keep saying it: if even one legitimate vote is denied by voter ID requirements, they should be scrapped. They're about voter suppression, not voting integrity, and always have been.

Meanwhile at the Shadow Cabinet meeting: Still fighting like cats in a sack. You love to see it. I can't decide if this is my favourite bit: Or this?

First of all, the obligatory reminder that immigration isn't the biggest or nearly the biggest issue that voters care about. In poll after poll, their main issues are the NHS, the economy and the cost of living and concern about these issues is both higher and more consistent over time than concern over immigration. That said, it is a major concern for voters. But it is not a simple question and it is not obvious what the parties' response should be. Much can be learned here from another apparently simple but actually quite complicated issue that voters are concerned with, albeit less so, and that's crime. For decades, the parties' response to voter concern over crime has been to be 'tough'. This has largely consisted of three things - passing laws to make more things a crime, passing laws to send people to jail for things they didn't used to go to jail for (mostly by reducing judicial discretion on sentencing), and reducing early release. The public liked these measures and they didn't cost money - or at least, they didn't need immediate funding. But what they did do was fill up the prisons to the point where now one of the first things Starmer has to look at is how to send fewer people to jail. It's extraordinary that one of the first things he had to say as a newly-elected PM was 'we're sending too many people to prison'. It's even more extraordinary that if Sunak had won, he'd have had to do the same. Because we simply don't have any space left. The prisons we do have, do a terrible job because they're overcrowded, under-resourced, in poor repair, and not fit for purpose. In addition we have people waiting years for trial even for serious offences like rape and assault because the court system has all those problems too. And the police are struggling to shore all this up while at the same time covering for other underfunded public services. We finally got to the stage that politicians have been warned about for decades, where it's impossible to pretend that doing the simple thing that voters want the parties to do - be 'tough on crime' - actually does anything but create bigger problems. And now all parties admit they're going to have to release people from prison early because there's no more room, because the system is broken by years of being 'tough on crime', a policy the research suggests did absolutely nothing to reduce crime. So the lesson here is that politicians' responsibility goes further than just looking at the opinion polls and doing what they say. They have to look at complicated social questions and say 'we need to respond to this in a mature, responsible way'. Turning to immigration, it's more complicated than people think. For example, most people like most of the actual immigrants that they know personally. The immigration they're concerned about is a faceless blob, not actual people. They don't mind hearing Pawel the plumber speak Polish, they just get freaked out when they hear random strangers on the bus using it. So we need immigration and the politicians know that. And there is space, and a responsibility, for those politicians to have an adult conversation with the public about it. What is a manageable level of immigration? What are our responsibilities to immigrants, as well as theirs to us? How do we anticipate and respond to global events that increase migration pressures and how do we work with other countries on this? If we just get sucked into the 'we will be tough on immigration' discussion, we've seen where that goes: same place as 'tough on crime'. Simple responses promising to be 'tough' are never helpful, and usually harmful.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rwanda-migrants-uk-labour-vote-b2574427.html Insanely stupid, wasteful, and performatively cruel, the Rwanda policy is officially dead.

It's stated: it's the one thing he doesn't know, after all this time hanging onto the TARDIS. (Because the Doctor doesn't know it, either.) But this is the fundamental problem with RTD, which is that he will gild the lily. The basic idea of setting up Ruby's mother as a mystery, only to have her be an ordinary person - fine. But then he has her in a hooded cloak (what 15 year old in the early 2000s is wandering around in a hooded cloak?), pointing mysteriously at street signs (who is she pointing it out to?), and so on. Still, at the end of the day it's just a bit daft. Not the worst sin a TV programme can commit.

The eye patch and the cyborg arm do take some getting used to but I'm confident you'll be able to recognise me.

Yeah that was sort of the gag. :p And yes, the overweight Jedi was a white dude, though I have no idea why being overweight would rule you out from being a Jedi. If Yoda can do flips and barrel rolls, presumably it has nothing to do with your physicality.

The film has been out for nearly three weeks at this point, but to be fair policy is one month (IIRC) before spoilers are fair game, so OK. That much is true. Um... no. No, that sort of reasoning (a failure is actually a tactical win! Everything that was bad for this character was actually good!) is just post hoc rationalisation. The fact that he got a poor deal indicates a loss, not a win. No, he isn't. First time. Well, that's the main point I was making, as noted above. Dementus is a different character than Joe, so you can't expect Hemsworth to play him like Joe is played.

How so? In their first encounter, Dementus shows up expecting to take over the Citadel easily, and Joe demonstrates that Dementus is out of his depth. Joe's men are fanatically loyal and his position is unassailable. Dementus is easily repulsed. In their second encounter, Dementus, after taking over Gastown, tries to get the upper hand on Joe and it's a catalogue of blunders. He can't remember the code to carry out his threat (if it wasn't a bluff) and he loses his hostage. In the negotiation, he gets more water - but not as much as he asked for. He gets more food - but only what Joe chooses to give him. And then Joe just straight up takes two of his entourage to show who's calling the shots, and Dementus has to smile and pretend he has a choice. It's explicit that the only power Dementus has in this part of the film is that he's willing, or says he is, to blow Gastown up, and Joe sees letting him run it as the lesser risk. After that, as noted, he has the ruse with the water as part of the plan to lure Joe out, which is smart, but again struck me as something that only works because Dementus is willing to gamble big with a scarce resource in a way Joe wouldn't. That's Demetus' strength: he'll push the boundaries further than anyone else. It's hinted that's because of his backstory. But what he doesn't have is the ability to instil loyalty and fear the way Joe does, and that's shown. Even before he kills them as part of the ruse, Dementus tries to command one of them to put the paste on to disguise himself as a Warboy, and the guy refuses and says he only takes orders from the Octoboss.